We're Back

...and Enide started out as a chronicle of my engagement and marriage to the man I love more than anything in the world. I gratefully shared my triumphs and challenges with the people who mean the most to me until our August 15 wedding date.

After fifteen months of marriage, I can attest that the romance of Erec and Enide is indeed a spectacular analogy for the effort and joy of being married. There is no space for complacency or ingratitude in marriage. Marriage really is a quest, a constant journey two people undertake to find their vocation and happiness together.

But now, our journey begins to take a turn. Just a few weeks ago, Adam and I found out that we are expecting our first little boy or girl.

We would like to share this exciting new road, full of excitement and anxiety, with those who have already come so far with us as a community. Look for posts leading up to our early July due date.

Welcome back. And thank you for joining us on our journey.

...and Enide

To my readers, I apologize for failing to post over the past few weeks. As I'm sure you can imagine, I've been extremely busy being pampered and hosted--for which I'm extremely grateful. I probably won't post again for a week or to after our big day tomorrow. But, before I go from Miss Enide to Mr. Erec, I wanted to share with you a short reflection on what this blog has meant to me.

I started the blog as a gift to Adam for Saint Valentine's Day. He knows I want to write for publication, so he has heavily encouraged me to practice more often than I do. Over the past few months, though, what started out as a gift for Adam has become more of a gift to me.

First, the warm encouragement of Adam and other friends has given me a courage to write that I've never really felt before. Adam's gentle criticism has helped me to be more open to the suggestions of others. And the loyalty of many of my readers has given me faith that people will read when I have something meaningful or worthwhile to say.

Second, I never expected ...and Enide to blossom on- and off-line the way it has. I'm astounded at having readers on several continents who regularly follow my project. But I am far more astounded at the number of friends and family who have e-mailed me or sought me out in person to start a serious discussion about issues I've raised on ...and Enide. The blog isn't just my thoughts anymore. I'm not the only one who thinks seriously about relationships and marriage, so I've been honored to have my own ideas tempered and honed by people who care as passionately about Godly relationships as I do. And other people's imput has done a lot to give me a better sense of perspective about the seriousness of marriage, something I often worry about more than I ought to.

Most importantly, though, I've been so blessed by the community that's sprung up around ...and Enide. I feel truly loved to have people discuss the ideas on my blog with me and in front of me. Readers have gone out of their way to show me how supported Adam and I really are.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, "Thank you." Thank you for coming along on part of the journey with us. That you for taking time out of your busy day to follow along in this small but important piece of our lives. We are very grateful for our community and for your friendship.

...and Enide will continue when I get back from my honeymoon--at least for a little while. We hope to see many of you at the wedding, at the later Mass in DC, or as soon as you can visit us. Our home is always open to you.

Apologies

I know I haven't reliably posted this month. I have three excuses.

First, with Adam in town, I don't need an outlet as desperately. It's always been difficult to maintain a blog while he's around. I'd rather spend time with him than writing.

Second, I'm writing an article (hopefully) for publication. It's made me less enthusiastic about writing blog posts.

Finally, with my wedding so imminent, it's difficult to force myself to think abstractly about marriage or weddings. I don't want to think about marriage--I want to be married.

So, I will do my best to keep the blog updated over the next eighteen days as my wedding approaches. Hopefully you can expect lots of pictures from the week-long celebration.

Thank you for bearing with me.

Comments

I've just been informed that people have had a difficult time commenting on my blog. I've opened comments to annonymous users--at least for the time being. Your thoughts are always welcomed!

More Oxford

I'm leaving Oxford this morning at four am. If you're one of my readers from outside of Oxford and just haven't had enough of Oxford yet, I suggest you direct your browser to Exetera, the new webcomic/blog of one of my very best Oxford friends, Ruth. Hilarity will ensue, I promise.

A Good Omen

If you've been looking at ...and Enide's FEEDJIT feed, you may have noticed that we've been getting a surprising number of hits from Google for my post about our Old Testament reading. I finally got around to doing a bit of digging to find out why.

I have to say that I'm delighted about what I found. If you do a Google search for "Old Testament 'Allow us to live together to a happy old age,'" ...and Enide is the second cataloged hit. I'm not one for superstition or omens, but it I love the idea that people looking for such a delightful ideal in scripture find it on our blog.

Wedding Website

My mother has been religiously checking Emily Post's Wedding Planner for Moms just to make sure she hasn't committed some gross breach of wedding etiquette or forgotten some vital part of the ceremony. I half-listened one January night as she poured through the engagement checklist. "Alison! When are you going to make a wedding website?" she cried.

At the time, I was extremely loathe to create a wedding website. It seemed self-indulgent and unnecessary. But, as with many of my unrealistic and idealistic impressions of wedding planning, the unnecessary website proved unavoidably useful. There's just no other simple way to provide a large group of people with a large body of information--information about directions, accommodations, and registries.

And so, without further ado, I reveal to you the wedding website.

There's also a new, permanent link on the side bar of this blog for easier access.

(The domain name does make me feel warm and tingly! The URL is at www.thesoloves.com. Adam and I have our own domain together! We're almost more official now than we were when we declared ourselves engaged on Facebook.)

Blogging: A Moral Question

A friend of mine asked me today whether I thought "the sudden and dramatic explosion" of blogs was "a good thing." His question tapped into a issue I've spent a lot of time thinking about over the past few days. What is the value of keeping a blog?

We all know that blogs come in all shapes and sizes. Some make us more aware of the world around us. Others are simply fun. And some are stream-of-consciousness journals, unedited accounts of those willing to bare their souls for the world to see. All of us are asserting ourselves in a vast, world-wide medium, competing for our moment on the LCD screen. What's one more drop in a pond that vast?

In the end, I guess I just like stories. I like to read them, to study them, to tell them, and to write them. Stories mean something. They gives us a vocabulary for understanding our own lives. Sometimes, just reading a story can liberate us, set us free to think about our selves and our experiences in ways we never thought possible. They help us to step outside ourselves, to see our actions in the stories' characters, helping us to understand who and what we are.

Stories, too, shape the narratives of the lives we lead. What teenage girl hasn't pined away for a great unrequited love just because that's what teenaged girls do in stories? Better yet, what child hasn't whispered "I think I can" to herself the first time she rides a bicycle? And what Dickens reader has read the final scene of A Tale of Two Cities without the instant to go and do some "far better thing" of his own?

Best of all, a story has its own, external existence. Romeo and Juliet is timeless because of what it shares with no many stories of tragic love, both real and fictional. Dante's Commedy remains relevant because a struggle with faith is a common human experience. Hundreds of stories get retold on paper and on the stage of the world around us every day. We share the narratives that run through our lives with billions of other people in human history. No two people share the same narrative threads, but those threads create a vast and intricate web connecting all of human history. That's why reading really can make us more human. We all have our own stories. But we are never truly alone because there is never a new story.

So ...and Enide is my attempt to tell my own story--a story I share with hundreds of other people, but told in a way that's uniquely my own. My blog is my quest to find others like me who share tales of prince-like lovers or of conquering their own personal monsters. It's my quest to shape my own engaged, and later, married life into the patterns of Enide, Jo March, or even my parents--patterns that work. And it's my quest to share my story with people still writing their own stories in the hope it will help them understand their own.

No, I don't think that "the sudden and dramatic explosion" of blogs is "a good thing." Or at least not necessarily. In fact, my blog--my story--may not mean what I would like it to mean to anyone else but me. Still, I do believe there is a value in people telling their stories in a medium free from the struggle to be profitable or trendy. And whether they are interesting or not, stories almost always have a value. I hope you, as a reader, continue to find some value in mine.

I'm Back

I'm back in Oxford with more time and initiative to think and write. I should be back to posting every day or two. If I have any readers left, please take note.

Other Blogs

As you may know, I started writing ...and Enide because I thought someone ought to be blogging about getting married, rather than having a wedding. I was pleasantly surprised when my favorite whimsical wedding-planning blog included this entry today. It's nice to learn from the insights of other brides-to-be. And, when my fiance is so very, very far away and there is a major deadline looming on Thursday's horizon, it's nice to be reminded to look on the bright side.

Trip to Italy

My brain is still a bit too comatose from traveling to have something serious and reflective to say beyond "I really missed Adam." The five days I spent in Italy made up the longest time I've been without having a conversation with Adam, I believe, since the day we met.

Until I come up with something clever to say, I invite you to read more about Italy and my trip on Amateur Anglophile.

We'll be back soon!

They're Gone

My sisters are gone, so hopefully I'll be back to regular (albeit lonelier) posting by this afternoon.