After three decades of marriage, I finally noticed that our wedding anniversary, May 31, falls on the feast of the Visitation. As a non-Catholic Christian, I wasn’t familiar with the title given to that that beautiful journey when our Blessed Mother joyfully hastened to the hill country to visit her cousin Elizabeth — both miraculously pregnant. Elizabeth’s child would prepare the way for the other, the Savior of the world. I also didn’t know this event counts as the Second Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. Nor could I fathom that the Rosary surrounds significant scenes in Christ’s life as viewed by the first person who invited Jesus into her life: his Mother.

During our 28th year of marriage, my husband and I hastened on a journey of our own and consummated our deep faith by joining the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Yet another six years passed before I connected our May 31 anniversary to the Second Joyful Mystery.

Now, with our 39th anniversary, I have finally recognized how the Visitation’s themes — of friendship, of a child leaping for joy within its mother, and of traveling to visit loved ones — have graced our married life.

Although David and I grew up in neighboring towns, our romance grew long-distance while in college. We exchanged snail-mail letters and phone calls with sporadic in-person visits that felt all-too-brief.

We both were nominal Christians when our relationship developed, with faith not at the forefront in our relationship. Our time was spent doing things we enjoyed. David taught me to ski and to sail, and we bought season tickets to the theater downtown, a subscription maintained to this day.

Our wedding invitation bore the words: “This day I will marry my friend, the one I laugh with, live for, dream with, love.” For our honeymoon, we donned backpacks and headed to Europe. If the Visitation is about loved ones communing together in harmony and friendship, we were off to a strong start.

Our first home as newlyweds was located near both sets of our parents. Early into our marriage, David’s father suffered a devastating stroke and lived out the next seven years bedridden at home. My mother-in-law relied on our caregiving help, and we learned the depths of friendship — of truly washing one another’s feet.

In those early years, we had three children and were attending a large evangelical church that had local “care groups” made up of folks who lived near one another. I remember being nine months pregnant with our third child and sitting on the sofa while group members gathered around to pray for our baby and for a safe delivery. In those moments of receiving prayer, the child within me began to leap for joy. I believe she was encountering the Spirit of God in that moment. That same child turns 30 soon, and I often immerse myself in the ethereal strains of music that float down from the loft where she plays her violin at a magnificent historic Catholic church in Philadelphia.

David and I moved once — after our fourth child was born — across town. His father had passed by then, but all five of our children grew up communing regularly with the remaining grandparents from both sides, and a deep abiding love and friendship existed there. When my dad passed away suddenly, leaving my mother in mid-stage Alzheimer’s, our eldest son played an integral role in the caregiving that allowed us to keep Mom at home until the end.

David and I envisioned the same local arrangement with our own children and grandchildren living close by. But a scholarship took our eldest daughter to Scotland for one short year that has turned into 13, since she met her husband there. They are expecting their seventh child, and I’ve learned that a relationship with my grandchildren requires a committed investment of time and travel. The connection with our daughter and her family is maintained through concerted joint effort of regular visitations, whether it be through FaceTime, letters, or periodic in-person visits that prove that “Scotland Is My Cup of Tea.”

Our eldest son married a beautiful Brazilian woman whom he met on Catholic Match. We are thrilled that they live nearby but empathize deeply with our daughter-in-law’s family members, including godchildren, who now live thousands of miles apart from one they love so dearly.

Our middle son serves in the military, and over Easter my husband traveled to spend the Triduum with him where he is stationed in Colorado. Soon, he will be deployed overseas — another beloved relationship now characterized by visitations.

When tempted to opine, I focus on the gift of life and think of those parents in the Holy Scriptures who had loved ones living far away.

Rebekah left her family abruptly to marry Isaac. “Then Rebekah and her servant girls got ready, mounted the camels, and followed the man. So the servant took Rebekah and left” (Genesis 24:61).

And after David killed Goliath, he never returned home to live. “And from that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return to his father’s house” (I Samuel 18:2).

The Psalms liken children to arrows, and God is shooting some of ours quite a distance. We make haste to visit them and experience the blissful reuniting of hearts. Our inner souls leap for joy upon seeing one another and finding Jesus present within that loved one.

This year, our anniversary falls on a Saturday, like it did the year we were wed. I recently spoke with a young man getting married on May 31 and assured him of the excellent choice of his wedding date. He didn’t realize the connection with the Visitation. I wish him well and pray his marriage is blessed with deep friendship and that his wife might experience her unborn child leaping for joy at God’s presence. And, if their loved ones are one day living abroad, I hope they can visit often. But most of all, I pray this young man and his wife will take that most-significant journey together, hand-in-hand, to meet the Lord in his one, holy catholic and apostolic Church.

St. Elizabeth, pray for us. St. John the Baptist, pray for us. Blessed Virgin Mary of the Visitation, pray for us. Amen.

Lisa Livezey writes from Pennsylvania where she found her way to Rome via the Anglican Ordinariate. She is the author of Minding Mom: A Caregiver’s Devotional Story (En Route Publishing) and posts weekly photo devotions at lisalivezey.com/olivetree.