Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Through Ann Brashares' series entitled The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Ken Kwapis' film of the same title, many young women have been learning what it means to be a "sister" to one another.  From learning about what it means to trust your friends to learning how to continue to invest in each other from across the country, Tibby, Lena, Bridget, and Carmen grow in friendship and sisterhood over the course of the series.  I grew up with these characters and admired their camaraderie; however, I have been learning more and more what their friendship was actually missing.  Their friendship was missing the solid foundation of Jesus Christ.

At FOCUS' New Staff Training (NST), we are divided into groups of about eight women or men, called colleges.  This year I was blessed to live and pray alongside seven other women in the College of Saint Catherine of Siena (pictured below).  And it was here that my definition and understanding of sisterhood began to deepen...

Top (left to right): Ninoska, Martha, me, Jennifer, and Theresa
Bottom (left to right): Stephanie, Samantha, and Katie

Being placed with seven random women, one cannot help, but be ever so slightly nervous at the beginning of training.  Before we all came together thoughts and questions ran through my mind: What if we don't get along?  What if I don't remember their names?  (I actually had an awkward moment where I did not remember one girl's name...or that she was in my college).  What if they're all a bunch of extroverts? (Which a good number of them are).  What if I don't get my alone time?  Never anything too serious, but still, concerns that sat in the back of my mind.

God, however, is the master planner, and placed me with seven of the most amazing women I have ever met in my life!  We very quickly became as thick as thieves, basking in each other's company, sharing life, and being generally goofy and loud.  But natural chemistry isn't what makes a sisterhood, a sisterhood.  (Anyone can tell you that!)  Rather, it was the depth of our concern and care for each other that revealed to me what it meant to be a sister.  Being a sister meant praying for each other regularly, asking for prayer intentions, anticipating each other's needs, serving the group as a whole, ministering to the sisterhood and not only a sister, intentionally spending time together, stepping out of one's way to see how the others were doing, sharing your heart, sharing your prayer life, working together as a team.  Sisterhood takes work, but the fruits of this work are infinite, especially when all of this care and devotion is poured out in a Christ-like fashion, holding nothing for yourself, but rather constantly letting His love fill you to the point that it overflows into them.  You withhold none of His love.  Through the course of the summer, I have cared for these women and I myself have been cared for.  We have shared tears and hard times.  We have carried each others' burdens and stresses.  Together we made it through five weeks of  Catholic bootcamp.  Together we will continue to encourage and serve each other from across the country.  With Christ at the center, we know we will see each other everyday in the Eucharist.  We may be physically apart from each other, but there is a deeper spiritual communion that will hold our sisterhood in place.

We might not have a pair of jeans to keep us together, but we do have Jesus Christ to hold our bonds of Sisterhood in place.

The College of Saint Catherine of Siena at the Women's Volleyball Tournament