She heads out in to the cold night air to clear her head. Pressure is mounting. She just walks aimlessly for a while until she notices that she's standing in front of a church. Not just any church, a church she had visited often as a child. She steps in. She has a favor to ask.
"I hadn't been in a church since TJ's christening. Before then I hadn't been in a church in years. Ma always tried to get me to mass on the big holidays but I couldn't find the faith to go. Who I am in the eyes of God is an abomination. Isn't that what they taught us in Sunday school as kids? And abominations will burn. I don't want to burn. I don't want to burn just because I love. I refuse. So I didn't go to church.
"The last few years have been rough on me. It's not easy being me. Work, family, responsibilities. Too much of one means too little of the other. Balance is impossible. I have found a balance. It kind of works. Everything blends into one big melting pot. I often don't know where one ends and another starts. Where everything is one nothing gets left out. I tried adding to it, entering a relationship, thinking it would melt into the pot without issue. I was wrong. I was so wrong. He didn't fit. I tried making him fit, he even tried to make himself fit but it was all wrong. Wrong.
"It wasn't love. It was a schoolgirls' obsession from twenty years ago. People around tried to tell me, I didn't listen, I pushed them away. I pushed my friends away. I pushed my own mother away. I pushed my best friend away. How does obsession blind you so? Why did you put that trait in us? Nevermind, you gave us free will, absolving yourself from all problems. You should've reined some of our qualities in. It's not becoming. Ugly. It's ugly. But yeah, with everybody out of my corner I could focus on him. And I did. And he focused on me. I thought it was romantic, he sort of proposed, in the way he knew how. Picnic, sunny, technicolor dream.
"Maura got upset. I upset her. I... I neglected everyone, but her... I hurt her the most. I didn't get it then but I got angry with her. The person I upset. Deflecting blame. Maybe trying to displace my own feelings of insecurity. Most definitely trying to displace blame and insecurities. She spoke words but I just heard doubt. In me, in my relationship. I've never been good at analyzing myself. I try it but the anger I find, the anger I found then was disruptive of the view I had built up over months. The details in my relationship annoyed me in a way they didn't annoy me elsewhere. And to be quite honest, large things too. " You know the email, of course you know the email, you're God! Anyways, the email broke my heart but the relief that came with it caught me by surprise. But Maura was there to catch me. Sweet Maura with her kind words I didn't deserve. I guess that brings be to why I am here. It has been four months of love. Nothing but love from Maura. Four months of catching up what we could've had for years. Four months of bliss. I guess I am here to ask for... No, to tell you that love is never wrong. Love isn't an abomination. Love. Love is Maura. Maura is love. And I love her."
She gets up from the pew with a soft amen and heads out to the night, cold night air touching her once again. Doubts gone. If He had listened, that house of His would soon host their wedding.