A person never intends to fall off the wagon. It just happens—life gets busy, you wish you had enough time for prayer, and next thing you know it’s been a year since you’ve thought about the blog you intended to update twice a month.

As with most things, life simply gets in the way. But that’s not to say I’ve abandoned my faith journey, or consider myself backslidden in any respect. On the contrary—and maybe for the first time since Confirmation—it feels like I’m moving in a way that makes sense, even if life continues to “get in the way.” Over the past year, I’ve:

• Found a church to call home (really, it’s a shrine, but let’s not get technical)
• Joined the church choir
• Re-affiliated with the Columbiettes (after my old auxiliary folded)
• Expanded my home prayer corner (and often use it!)

Finding a home has always been a challenge, with the number of times I’ve moved and then moved again. But with that comes making friends, people who not only attend Mass but know it to be true and real, who go out of their way to contact and support one another. It was a major part of my journey I’d been missing. I’ll never forget the luncheon this year where we all sat around the table discussing and comparing scapulars—there’s nowhere else you’d have a conversation like that. (I have started to wear one, sometimes, which I should be better about.)

Over the past year, I’ve also read a good number of books, which are far too many to list here. A couple standouts are Dante’s Divine Comedy and St. Augustine’s City of God, which each require a tome of its own to properly review.

Perhaps more changes are coming. Perhaps this past year has been a “chapter 1” to a larger story, one that’s seven years in the making. Perhaps I’ll start writing again, too. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves—we’ll start simply with this blog first.