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Do not quit.

In 2011, only five weeks before the end of what had been a difficult semester of grad school, I pined for finals week. Being in that place reminded me of what it feels like to aim for the finish line on a dragon boat.

Several springs ago, I spent a season on a dragon boat team and a day competing in the Tampa Bay Dragon Boat Races. It is an art to paddle in sync with 19 other people, which you must do in order to stay on course. It is exhilarating. And exhausting.

The easy part — once you’ve trained — is starting strong. The hard part is staying strong for the rest of the race. Your job is to throw your arm into the air and put the paddle back into the water, over and over, in unison with your teammates. You get splashed and you get blisters. Sometimes your whole body hurts. Continue reading “Do not quit.”

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Please don’t accept me as I am.

One day I will look my future husband in the face and say it: “Please don’t accept me as I am.” I turned 30 before I decided that I would do this — a decision that Timothy Keller helped me make.

In his book The Meaning of Marriage, Keller dissects, in part, the prevalent urge to resist relationships with people who won’t accept us as we are, whose involvement with us could disrupt the habits we established before we met.

The quest then is for a spouse who doesn’t just choose and love you as you are, but whose relationship with you doesn’t change you.

Which makes little sense for us who are Catholic, because we believe that marriage, like all vocations, should change us — we’re supposed to be holier at the end than we were at the beginning, because of grace and each other. We’re supposed to be committed to each other’s sainthood, not to maintenance of each other’s status quo. Continue reading “Please don’t accept me as I am.”

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How chastity can lead to good sex.

As a colleague and I crossed the parking lot at the Port Richey bureau of the Tampa Bay Times, he pointed at the bumper sticker on my car’s rear windshield.

He read it aloud: “Chastity is for lovers.” He furrowed his brow and tilted his head, perplexed by what he had read. “How can chastity be for lovers if it means you can’t have sex?” he asked. What I said surprised him:

It doesn’t.

I explained why, what chastity is, and how it differs from abstinence in a column I wrote for the Tampa Bay Times. Click here to read it.

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New to my work? Check out my book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. So, if you click the links and purchase the products I recommend, I earn a little commission at no extra cost to you. And when you do, I am sincerely grateful.

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How to determine what your significant other is thinking.

I recently saw an article about body language and dating that had the following subheadline: “Next time you find yourself wondering what he’s thinking, try observing these nonverbal cues.”

Or—here’s an idea—ASK HIM (or her, gentlemen. It works for you, too).

We do not know what other people are thinking but advice that encourages us to use any method for finding out other than “ask them” is advice that discourages communication. And that is advice that misleads us.

We are designed to communicate explicitly in relationships.

This is not always easy but it is healthy, and it is worth discomfort. If we are unwilling to communicate while we date we will be unwilling while we are married.

And neither our world nor our Church needs more marriages with the walls that spouses build between each other when they don’t communicate.

New to my work? Check out my book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. So, if you click the links and purchase the products I recommend, I earn a little commission at no extra cost to you. And when you do, I am sincerely grateful.