Inviting Christ Into My Loneliness as a Single Woman

In high school, I handled being alone very well. I was a floater, the girl who was known for being nice to everyone. On most days, I told myself I loved this role. I stayed out of drama and was able to spend time with all different types of people. I would hang out with my friends at school, and our relationships would pretty much end there. I never really had a best friend growing up anyway, so I was used to doing my own thing. It was my version of normal. I prided myself on being independent. I handled being alone very well. Until I didn't.

Coping with Cancelled Plans and Unexpected Loss While Planning a Wedding in the Pandemic

When I said yes to marry my fiancé on December 26, 2019, nothing could have prepared me for all the challenges that would come between my engagement and when we say “I do” in December 2020.

Letters, CreateBethany SpringelmeyerOctober 21, 2020loss, God's plan, Living Peace Comment

Seeking Unshakeable Peace in Uncertain Times

Have you ever entered Lent with a laundry list of ways you desire the Lord to work on your heart? Have you hoped that adding this or that prayer routine and giving up this or that time-suck activity would create the space to end up as the perfectly new spiritual version of your Ash Wednesday self?

Friend Crushes, Loneliness & Receptivity: Finding a New Approach to Friendship

I wanted close friends so badly because, as an only child, I never had a sister of my own. I had supportive family relationships and friendships, which more than made up for not having siblings. But, instead of receiving their love as a gift from God, all I could see was the hole left in my life by the sister I'd never had.

Trusting in God’s Sustenance

Holding our 9-month old daughter who weighed less than thirteen pounds, I prayed that God would send us to the right doctors. I prayed for her healing and placed her on the altar with Isaac, hoping for a resurrection. I had to trust that God would bring us through whatever happened, although my heart ached for her to be healed. She was His daughter too, after all.

Finding Friends Wherever God Has You

During the spring term of second grade, my parents were thrilled that I was finally off the waitlist and able to attend the Catholic school near our home. Even all those years ago, I remember being the new kid at school, feeling alone and outcasted, desiring the simplest gesture of friendship from a peer.

With Christ in the Garden

It all started with Lent. I wound up experiencing a lot of suffering throughout the Lent of my junior year in college in various different aspects of my life. In my relationships, in my schoolwork, and even in my mental health… Coping with my depression and anxiety started to become more and more difficult.

Suffering with Christ: How Slowing Down for an Injury Impacted My Relationship With the Lord

Most of my trip to Lourdes was spent asking the Lord to reveal where in my life I needed the most healing, and after sitting in the queue for over an hour, meditating on rosary after rosary, I was finally ushered inside to ask the Blessed Mother to heal my heart from a life of past abuse.

The Breath of God and the Power of Storytelling

I’ve always had a fascination with the wind. I love the way it seems to move just about everything in creation, from the tallest of trees to the small, cut shavings of grass. I love the way wind can send shivers up your spine or give our bodies a small moment of respite on a hot, muggy day. I love thinking about how the wind makes animals run for shelter or makes the trees whistle and whisper to one another.

Bereaved and Beloved

Eight months after we got married, I took a pregnancy test at 3 am. It was positive. Although my husband was amazingly supportive of our NFP journey, NFP was my idea. And we weren’t trying to conceive that month! After four hours of panicked Hail Marys, I finally nudged my husband, Taylor, awake (silently sending up one last prayer that he would receive the news well!). He was overjoyed!

Do Not Mourn the Life You Must Leave Behind

It was a hot and muggy Wednesday evening as I sat alone in a church pew for adoration. Sweat was soaking the back of my shirt, tears were streaming down my face, and my only thought as I knelt before the golden monstrance and the Blessed Sacrament within was “What the heck am I doing here, God?”

Choosing Life in the Face of Mental Illness

I still felt clueless about successfully coping with anxiety but I was steadily on the road to recovery. I was still depressed and still suicidal but, as I held my nephew, I realized the many successes of choosing life again and again that had brought me to this moment of meeting him. So I whispered a soft “Thank you” to him because deep down I knew I wanted to live for God and I’d been searching for a meaningful way of doing so.

Discerning My Career and Letting Go of the Need for Validation

Some days after the conversation with Sr. Hope, though, sitting before Jesus in the Adoration chapel and still mulling over the job offer, I asked a different question: “Lord, what would bring You joy? How do You want me to serve?”

He didn’t answer by saying ,”You’ll bring me joy when you have a Ph.D.”; or, “You’ll delight me when you become a professor.” Instead, He whispered, ever so gently, “You bring me joy when you use the gifts I have given you, right here and now. You delight me already.”

What I've Learned from Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom

Savoring these moments with my children doesn’t mean letting those goals go. It has meant that they take on a different character. The beauty of this is that, although the dreams I had for myself were big and exciting, they were still somehow less than what God is doing with my heart. What he is doing with me now is more wild and untamed than the conventional way I could have imagined my life unfolding. Is this strange to say about a life of domesticity?

Working Motherhood and the Story God is Writing

But what I do know is that each day of juggle and wonder and struggle and worry is stretching me to the shape of God’s intentions. His plan for me is so much greater than any “ideal” story I tell myself in my head or compare against someone else’s. And though I’m currently struggling with “balancing it all” as a working, Catholic mother, I know in the end my story is pushing me toward my ultimate salvation.

Archive of Letters to Catholic Women