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I wrote the following reflection in the tail end of a 10-hour travel day, on my return from a quick weekend trip to surprise my girlfriend at Notre Dame for her birthday. I submit it to you unedited and unrevised, knowing it's a bit garbled and unrefined. I usually try to be attentive those edits and revisions, but for this post, I'll leave you the rough draft!

I am flying back from a wonderful weekend spent with my dear girlfriend. For the overwhelming majority of our relationship, we have been long-distance. While she is finishing college at Notre Dame, my post-grad path took me to Ireland for ten months before I moved to California to start my first job.

We've gone months without seeing each other many times. The distance seriously cramps our style in daily life, forcing us to contrive windows of time in which to talk on the phone or sit down to a video chat because we want to stay intimately involved in each other's lives. The distance also puts a lot of pressure on the rare time we do get to spend together, which causes her to miss me before I'm even gone and pushes me to want our time together to be as it would if we saw each other every day.

The low-light for me is the partings. I think my rock-bottom was walking 30 minutes in the dark, wheeling a suitcase in one hand while grasping her hand in the other, to leave her off at a 4am Dublin airport bus on Main Street in Wexford, Ireland. After a tearful goodbye and watching the bus take her away from me once again, I walked home in the cold under a drizzly rain, my eyes adding their own precipitation to the moment as I trudged back home in the night.

But today was different. Today involved no airport, no curb, no bus stop. We had just left Mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus at Notre Dame, followed by the post-liturgy mingling that we Catholics love so much. We went to the Grotto, sat and talked for a few minutes, and knelt to say a prayer with hands joined. Then, we strolled under the rocky overhang. I grabbed our candle, and Katherine took a wooden stick. I placed it in a empty cylinder, and she lit the wick. Then we moved away from that sanctuary of hope, and God granted us the grace of a loving, trust-filled, calm, and collected goodbye.

Sometimes, tears intimidate me, and I shy away from people whose emotions are pouring forth in that way. Part of it is jealousy – I wish I could cry more easily, but for me, it takes a good surprise. The only time I'm perfectly content amid the tears is when they're joyful, and our partings are usually marked by those tears – hers as we part and mine after I've let her go.

Today, she didn't cry while I hugged and kissed her goodbye; I didn't cry after I left. A deeper peace has struck us in the grace of communion with each other and with Christ. We know the end of distance dating is near, and those frustrations and exhaustion will soon evaporate.

His will is our peace, and for the two of us, that is so true. As I settled into the peace on my drive to O'Hare, I realized the nature of my desire for our distance to dissolve. I have grown most tired of how, mostly by necessity, she has come to be compartmentalized in my life. Because of the 3-hour time difference and the varying demands of our days, we usually have to schedule our conversations. This often leads to a lack spontaneity and causes me to be more stale than I usually am.

I told Katherine that I'm tired of being “on” for those minutes or hours each day; I just want to be there for her pervasively, ubiquitously. I don't wanna perk up when the video chat rings and power down after I hang up. I'm excited – pumped up – for that gradually nearer time when I can see her anytime and any day and be there for her at the drop of a hat.

And in the context of how committed we are to our relationship including God – to treating our relationship like a triangle whose sides we are trying to shrink so as to bring the three of us closer together – it hit me. This is the nature of our faith. This is what Christ calls us to do. This is unceasing prayer. This is the constancy of the gaze and the intensity of the glimpse coinciding.

The weakness of relationships – whether romantic, friendly, or spiritual – often stems from inconsistency. We only give a crap when it benefits us, when it's convenient to us. The modern social trends and social media influence us to seek a maximum number of acquaintance relationships and to seek quantity in parties and “hang outs” rather than vulnerable conversations between two hearts. We aren't seeking to support each other with the supreme loyalty of unconditional love; we endorse a relativist live-and-let-live approach while responding to others with the “maybe” answer or saying “let me know and we'll see” or “depends who's going” because we shy away from vulnerability and self-gift. Instead, we seek the most “fun” and the highest profiles.

I don't want myself to be so prone to those traps. I need to be attentive to my well-being but vet my intentions, too – am I physically/mentally/emotionally drained and exhausted or just lazy? Am I legitimately skeptical of how expensive something is or hiding behind cheapness? I want to give an enthusiastic yes to friends who reach out to me. I want to respond their invitation with my presence and openness and discern how our relationship can grow from it.

We need to look at our social lives and vet our motivations, to be honest with ourselves and with others. And we owe the same to God. Why didn't you go to Church last Sunday? Were you actually too busy or do you just dislike Mass? Do you have no time to pray or go to Mass or do you simply not prioritize your spiritual life? Do you not volunteer because you can't find something that works or because you don't understand the importance of solidarity?

We need to be honest with God. In our reflections, we need to ask: am I giving God a chance to permeate my life? Can my faith really nourish me if it's collecting dust in the attic of my mind and heart? The classic retreat cliché applies here – you only get out of it what you put into it, whether it's Mass, prayer, Scripture study, faith-sharing conversation, or whatever. If you just go to a building for an hour a week out of obligation, you doing something, but it surely can't provide much.

An hour a week at the gym doing weights and cardio doesn't increase your endurance or sculpt your muscles much. An hour a week learning and practicing a musical instrument barely gets you playing the basics. An hour a week for a 15-year-old learning to drive might delay their getting a license until college. Heck, an hour a week of watching a TV series barely gets you hooked on the characters – how easily will we pass hours a week racing through a TV show start-to-finish!?

If we God permeate our lives the way the internet does, we'd be in better shape. We are so proficient at troubleshooting smartphones yet so inept at recognizing God in our lives. What will your entry point be? Can you download an app for Bible study or prayer? (Catholics check out Laudate) Can you pick a reset button, something in life that will move you to think of God? Can you choose a spiritual mantra to run through your head throughout the day?

I have to live with the reality of being 2,000 miles away from my girlfriend for at least a few more months. It will be a continued challenge, causing intermittent frustration and giving me countless opportunities to grow in love until the day when we can be near each other and drop the compartmental boundaries that limit the manner in which we can support and uphold each other.

What about you though? God is all around us. Christ is with you and in you. What are you waiting for? How will you welcome Him into your days, hours, minutes, and seconds? What will you do? When will you start?