"I am a recent college graduate, a cradle catholic, and a nature lover. I love to play music and create art from paintings to poetry. I play dungeons and dragons with multiple groups. I also am pretty active, from hiking to rock climbing to fencing. I love fantasy and sci fi books and would love to have a book of my own published at some point in the future. I don't know what the next year looks like post graduation but I hope that it is what the Lord wants for me. And I just happen to be bisexual."
What would you like to share with us?
"This is a piece of prose inspired by the tiny chapel at my Newman Center and Adoration."
Katherine L
"Beauty in the Struggle"
For a long time, I thought I didn’t deserve the crown at my feet. I thought I was too broken. I don’t know how to love properly and ruin everything I touch. I realized this after crying in that chapel so many times. I wasn’t broken; my brain was just wired differently. I know now that being on the ace spectrum isn’t being broken. It just means I don’t always have the same desires as others. I have proven I can feel those feelings; it takes longer than average. So when that light hits the stained glass in that tiny chapel, I thank the creator for seeing it, and it can be refracted against the tabernacle candle. I know that five years ago, I would have thought you didn’t deserve the king of the world to come down and enter into your life. I have walked with him, and he has taught me that your barefoot prints in the sand matter so much. Even though not all of those steps have led me to where he wanted, he had a plan the whole time. And I still don’t know what that plan is exactly, but I trust him. I want to keep encountering him in all the ways I know, from the beauty of the sunsets over the Shenandoah mountains with all of the purples and oranges to the ocean I see all the time to the beauty of the sacraments. I know that being on the ace spectrum and bisexual doesn’t define me.
What defines me is being loved by the creator and called his beloved daughter. I want to say that if you find yourself in the middle of a season where seeing his face is complicated due to your sexuality, know that he loves you and will never desert you. He is someone you can always count on, and one day you will be able to find a community of people who understand what it is like to be queer and catholic. Let him slowly move your heart like a wood carver and a beautiful clock. Time will soon tick by, and there won’t be a strip of wood in front of you anymore. You will be a changed thing. So accept the challenges that God is putting on your heart, and he will bring you to a place where you can see that you are royalty even though you might not have sandals on your feet yet.