"We're all phamily here, right?"

Back when I was in high school, it was still a little odd to say you had friends on the internet whom you'd never met before.

But for me, I've had faraway friends almost as long as I've been online. The first batch came from the virtual pet site Neopets. I still have all the letters that my friend Lieren and I exchanged from the time I was in 7th grade up through my early college years. 

In high school, I fell into the fandom of a wonderful novel-length story posted on FictionPress.com. I met Courtney then; she was older than me, and both of us were practicing Pagans at the time. She was there for me when I got saved, and I shared her joy when she made the same decision a few years later. We cried together when she learned she was pregnant in my senior year, and celebrated when she delivered healthy twin girls.

Then there was ExWitch, where I made many lasting friends, including the man who became my first serious boyfriend. We were together for 3 years, and while it didn't work out, I can say honestly that I wouldn't be who or where I am now if not for the time I spent with him. 

So it felt like the most natural thing in the world, then, when I piled into my boyfriend's truck with all my stuff and headed to Pittsburgh two weeks ago, a place I'd never been before, to meet some of the folks from Phatmass for the first time.

It wasn't weird. Not for a second. If anything, being with them felt like being home.

Here in the flesh were people I had laughed, cried and prayed with for five years, in some cases. The only difference was this time, we were finally in the same room. 

Living Catholicism with every drop of my strength is sometimes a very lonely road. I came to Phatmass just two weeks before I finally went back to the Sacraments. When I did, they were there. And they've always been there, every step of the way, teaching me and lifting me up and sometimes carrying my cross when I was too broken to do so alone.

One of the places we went together was St. Anthony's Chapel, which contains the largest collect of relics from the saints outside the Vatican. Before we left, I knelt at the old school communion rail to pray, and shivered. I was keenly aware that all the saints were there with me, praying with me.

I felt it again at out last Mass together at St. Paul's Cathedral, overwhelmed with gratitude that God could connect so many lives from all across the world.

We've always called ourselves phamily. Sitting around the table eating and drinking (and drinking more) together, it became more real to me I can express. "Wherever two or more are gathered in My Name..."

I love you, guys. See you next year!