Born a hop, skip, and jump from the Chesapeake Bay, Stephanie now resides in Appalachia, thanks to love. Her sweet husband Andrew teaches English there. She delights in bike rides, good books, puddle jumping, The Avett Brothers, hammocks, avocados, and the notes Andrew sneaks under her pillow. She is thirsty. Knowing so many others are, too, she spent a missionary year with Generation Life speaking to students about human dignity and authentic love. Her passion is telling young women they possess immense worth and that pure, sacrificial love is real; she thinks a truthful understanding of sex and love is medicine for an aching culture. Upon noticing there were few resources for Catholic brides-to-be, Stephanie decided to make a humble attempt at filling the void. Her blog,Captive the Heart, is a collection of wedding ideas, spiritual reflections, inspired dates, and general ways to plan a sacred, stylish celebration and a holy marriage.
I don’t really like abstinence. Wait. What? I certainly think restraint is valuable–I resist the kind of trips where you go to Target for two things and come out with ten. I try not to eat meat on Fridays. I teach NFP. In some cases, however, particularly the case of sexuality, abstinence seems to miss [...]
Aside from the good stuff like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, a lot of questionable things came out of the 80s. Perms, spandex, Rick Astley…if there’s a kernel of truth from that decade, though, it’s this: love is a battlefield. Thanks, Pat Benatar. Seriously, during my engagement, I became more aware of spiritual warfare than I ever had before, [...]
Do you ever get the feeling, around the middle of Lent, that you’re dragging? The zeal that typically fills me at the beginning and again during Holy Week tends to dwindle. I complain about the sacrifices I’ve chosen instead of try to embrace them, and I wonder if I’m getting anywhere. Two weeks ago, I [...]
I bet not everyone gets to learn about contraception with the help of a Slip N’ Slide. Seriously. Born and raised Catholic, I learned somewhere along the way that the Church never permits artificial forms of birth control, but until I attended this particular gathering of my high school youth group, the one involving said [...]
No, really. Can we? A few months ago, my husband and I were invited to give a talk on sex and marriage at a retreat for engaged couples. Now and then , we observe how sometimes, there can be a lot of theological talking around issues of sexuality, yet not a whole lot of actually diving into them. We [...]
I am a woman under siege. Lately, for reasons not entirely known to me, I’ve constantly fallen into despair about my worth, my talents, and my virtues. Several times a week I inexplicably find myself in tears, hopelessly unable to believe that I’m beautiful and dignified simply because I am made in His image, that [...]
Often, I wonder what an authentically Catholic, person-centered approach to evangelization looks like. So many goods, particularly sex, love, the body, and the family, have been twisted and misinterpreted by the culture. The truth is ours to reclaim. I still can feel the floor under my little carpet square. Seven years ago, I went [...]
Flax oil was the gateway. When I got engaged two years ago and signed up for Natural Family Planning courses, I received a hefty box containing workbooks, charts, a thermometer, and most interestingly, the book Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition by Marilyn Shannon. Figuring the months leading up to my wedding and eventually, babies, were as good a [...]
Q. How do you pronounce “ignitum”? A. Well, you have some options. The Romans would have said ig-NEE-toom. In church, we’d say “in-YEE-toom.”
Why?
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