open valentine year II

After half my emails bounced back (I really ought to update my address book!) I'm posting an open valentine to bloggers and facebook for the second year straight...

So much has happened in the past year to be thankful for. The biggest news is that the "guy" I mentioned last year asked me to marry him :) So I will! At a very small wedding on New Year's Eve coming up. We are thrilled, our families are thrilled, and perhaps the most excited of all is Pepper. She adores Jay!

Jay synopsis: Jay is the supervising news producer for the CBS affiliate in Charlotte, finished in the top 1% of the Boston Marathon last April, placed 3rd in his age group in the Richmond Marathon this November, loves music and harmonizes with me in the car, hales from the village of Newark in upstate New York (where he is a local prank celebrity), and is a born and bred Packers fan.

I also mentioned last year that I had entered the discernment process to become an episcopal priest. After 18 months of interviews and prayers and many life lessons, the bishop granted me Postulancy for Holy Orders. Being a postulant just means I get to go to school to be a preist--Yay! There are still lots of steps before becoming a priest, though... so more on that in years to come.

As for where I'll be in school next year--I'm waiting to hear back from my first-choice school: General Theological Seminary in New York City. I checked the mailbox this afternoon in hopes that I'd have news on that front for this (already day-late) Valentine, but nothing yet! Regardless, the plan is for me to go to school this fall, finishing my first semester without Jay while he finishes out his contract in Charlotte (boo!) We'll be married between semesters so Jay and Pepper can join me sometime between January and March. We're excited about starting our marriage in a supportive community of faith at seminary :)

And that's the scoop! I did take a group of 34 kids to Nova Scotia on pilgrimage this year, traveled to the Bahamas with Jay for my 30th birthday, spent a week on Lake Ontario at Jay's family's cottage, attended several best friends' weddings (singing in two of them), celebrated several births, and celebrated my granddad's 80th birthday in Texas with every single aunt, uncle and cousin on that side of the family. It's been quite a year, with lots of love to celebrate.

I pray that you too are celebrating love every chance you get. May we all find even more love in our hearts this year than we knew we had, remembering Proverbs 15:17, "A bowl of vegetables with someone you love is better than steak with someone you hate."