I have been blessed to visit the Eternal City three times now, and it never gets old (older I should say…LOL).
My recent visit was on Resurrection Day, Easter 2018. It was the first time I visited during a significant holy day, and the atmosphere was different. I was even more excited because my sister, her husband, and daughter were with us. They had never been to Rome. It was a blast to see it all again through their eyes.
Every time I go to Rome I pray ahead of time and ask the Holy Spirit about my visit. The first time I went was with my husband on our five-year anniversary. We had a grand adventure running around the city. It was like a scene from a love story movie. We got caught in the rain, bought an umbrella on the fly and stumbled into a small cafe for an early dinner. We had the whole place to ourselves, and the staff swooned over us being so much in love or making fun of us because we were eating dinner so early. We didn’t care we enjoyed ourselves.
On that trip, the Holy Spirit demonstrated his deep love for me through my husband. He called me into a deeper relationship with Him by showing me our marriage in a new light. He revealed that a vacation from the kids to focus on your love for each other is worth the time money and effort. He impressed upon my spirit that I should do the same with growing my relationship with the Him, the Holy Spirit. Since then I made it a point to go weekend conferences or opportunities to break away from day to day life and focus on Him. I will be writing more about those times in later posts. I will say there has not been one of those times set aside that I did not return refreshed with a new perspective.
In my novel, Over My Dead Body, I decided to highlight Joel and Hannah’s relationship as newlyweds growing more in love with each other as they set out on their adventure. I pray it demonstrates the overall theme of Jesus’s love for his bride, the church. I hope it reminds us that the adventure of eternity with the Holy Spirit begins here on earth.