It has been a snow-bound week and the office has been closed all week.  While I have been celebrating, over on facebook, the joys of solitary shoveling… and while my introvert has appreciated the quiet…  I really have missed the team.

Yea, “team.”  I work and minister with beautiful, feisty, talented, passionate women who are gifts to our local and national experience of church as well as to my own life.  In our time of transition, we have grown together as a team through many, many shared projects and countless hallway conference meetings. 

Youth ministry is supposed to be a team effort. Church is supposed to be a team effort. (Why do you think Jesus recruited twelve?)  Well, throughout this week-long celebration of Valentine’s Day, I would be terribly remiss if I was not offering up a Catholic Youth Ministry Valentines to our team.

(And who is not pictured are Ann Marie and Susan, our administrative staff who constantly amaze in their ability to keep us all straight while learning new skills to serve the filed. Yeah, yeah, I daily live out the Hail Mary as “Blessed am I among women.”)