All the married ladies

There's nothing like small children to make you feel like a celebrity. Last weekend, I visited some dear friends and their four young boys. As I pulled up to their house, the three oldest were racing back and forth across the yard, the littlest one watching excitedly from the window. Before I could make it to the front door, the almost four year-old bounded over to me. Where's your car? he asked. I pointed it out and a friendship was born. As I greeted my friends inside, the boys soon followed after and the conversation that ensued was peppered with more questions, silly jokes, an outfit change to show off a baseball uniform, a proud demonstration of a remote-controlled toy, a pat on the knee and an I like your pants! They're fun! Our adult conversation wasn't interrupted but rather enhanced by the unselfconscious additions of the little ones around the table. Their parents laughed genuine laughs at their silliness, took their concerns seriously, listened patiently as they struggled to remember the details of a story. When my friend called one of them over to her, he came running and looked attentively at her as she reminded him not to play so roughly. It was a joy. There's something striking about this season I find myself in: nearly all of my friends are married. And the truth is, I love it. I love toasting to their engagements, wiping away happy tears at their weddings, touring their newly bought homes, holding their babies, and stepping into the vibrancy and joy and chaos that is marriage and family life. My own joy has multiplied time and again with the addition of so many husbands to my social circle. It's as if my friend group has automatically doubled, and not only that, but the women who first made up said group have become more alive, more themselves, more settled and rooted and content. These husbands and wives I know and love are striving to live their vocations well, and it shows. Over and over I've been welcomed with joy into their beautiful families. I've caught sight of a deeper meaning of that call to openness to life. Yes, it's a call to welcome new life in the womb, but it extends so far beyond that. Too many times to count, I have been the grateful recipient of my friends' generosity, of their open doors and arms and hearts. When a couple is already living with a sense of mission, already laying down their lives for each other, already in the practice of looking at would-be frustrating interruptions as occasions to love and to cooperate with grace, they are ready to share that love with whoever comes their way. Often, it's me. As my time out of the convent and back in the world grows longer and longer, and as I live this quiet, simple life of a single 31 year-old city dweller, I can't help but marvel at the workings of God in my heart. I look around and see these happy couples, their families growing and vocations blossoming, and I feel only joy and contentment. In some dark corner of my heart, I suppose, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the seed of jealousy or comparison or woe is me-ness to creep in, yet it hasn't. Every engagement announcement, every wedding, every new baby, delights me. I can only thank God for that. It's not me in the slightest, not my merit or virtue or even any conscious choice on my part. It's total grace. And what helps immensely on a human level is that I happen to have the most thoughtful, generous, compassionate of friends. And they seem to keep choosing the best of men to marry, men who look out for me and affirm me and give me dating advice and assemble my furniture. When a friend of mine settles happily into her vocation, that means that I have yet another place to find a home. And it's not about the four walls they inhabit at all—no, it's the love of man and wife, the love that could make a home of joy and peace and security in a palace or a slum. It's the love that multiplies anew, coming into this world with cries and coos and bursts of the heart. The love that welcomes me in as I wait and wonder at my own uncertain future. It's a love that dies to self to give the other life. Maybe that's a love I'll share one day, and maybe it's not. Whatever the case may be, I'll be forever grateful for these married friends of mine.