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This is incredibly dorky but…that has rarely stopped me from making many of the choices I’ve made in life. So here goes: I was reading one of my perennial favorites, Sancta Nomina, and I got to wondering if anyone out there has ever polled the audience on how many Catholics out there use, ahem, magisterial monikers for their furry family members.

I’ll admit to having a cat named Pia, dubbed thusly after a somewhat traumatic pilgrimage to Italy including stops at many of Padre Pio’s notable locales.

I’ve also got friends with a dog named Newman – yes, for that Newman. And I recall meeting a plump, orange tabby named Bonaventure who was at the time in residence with the CFRs in the Bronx.

So, there are weirdos out there like me who name their pets after saints. I have a pocketful of rejected baby names, like Tiber, that were simply a bridge too far for Dave (pun intended), but might conceivably one day end up affixed to a creature without a rational soul as a sort of consolation prize.

What about you? Would you ever name a pet after a saint, or a saintly place? Do you have a dog you call Avila, and your neighbors don’t quite grasp the significance of it? Or do you think it’s completely bizarre?

Pia the long-suffering and resigned.

Coming in hot on Spy Wednesday (tl;dr: round up “30 pieces of silver” to hide in various spots around the house and turn your kids loose for a survival of the fittest scramble to remember.)

Or if you’re like me, and you happen to be reminded of the dubious liturgical significance of this date at approximately 9 pm the night prior by a sentimental child coming round excitedly knocking at your bedroom door inquiring about this deeply held “family tradition” that he definitely can’t wait for!!! you can scrounge around and come up with 21 silver coins of various denomination and explain that the Pharisees got nailed by inflation and Judas didn’t net his full 30 pieces of blood money in 2021.

But enough about the profound liturgical living traditions in my domestic church. We’re now safely nestled into Holy Week, and instead of feeling like guiltily doubling down on fasting for this final stretch, as I do most years, I’m getting a distinctly more “crawling to the finish line” sorta vibe about the imminence of Easter.

Last week, through a series of unfortunate events, I believe we fulfilled our annual medical deductible in record time. From rusty nails to stairways to vicious(?) carpeted floors designed especially to split baby lips, I believe my children memorized the f word as well as if it had been included on their vocal list.

Did I mention I also made it to confession for the first time in 2 months? Or that I need to go back probably tomorrow?

We’re attempting a modest, Ikea-driven kitchen renovation that has spiraled, predictably, into proportions beyond anything in my wildest dreams or nightmares. After spending 4.5 hours on hold with various friendly women in Maryland at IKEA headquarters, we learned the sobering truth that our would be cabinets were not, in fact, winging their way to our front porch as anticipated, but were either indefinitely out of stock or languishing in a traffic jam in the Suez Canal (I wish I were joking).

The real kicker is that we’d already paid for everything. Daniel in customer resolutions could not understand why this was an issue for me, so after taking a restorative week off to simmer in impotent rage about big box socialism, I’ll be back at it bright and early Monday morning hunting down those pesky dollars that we kinda sorta need to order, you know, other cabinets. Ones that aren’t on a boat in Egypt.

It’s a first world problem to be sure, but as my best friend assured me during a highly emotive and likely profane voice text, it’s also the reason people pay lots and lots of money to outsource the fun to designers and general contractors.

I have a few links that I’ve been wanting to share and, absent from social media, I had the quaint, 2006-style experience of just texting them to a couple of people. But then I remembered I have a blog! So here you go: a curated must-read/watch/listen list created just for you:

Dave VanVickle was at Franciscan during my tenure, though I don’t recall our paths crossing. He gave an excellent and short talk on spiritual warfare, touching on everything from possession and his experience assisting at exorcisms to the best practices for protecting your family (hint: it’s…not what you’d think). Watch here.

Dennis Prager has been keeping me sane, from 2020 and beyond. My dad used to send me audio clips of his show back in the 90s, and always encouraged me to listen to and read his stuff. I started up again sometime last year between lockdown and nervous breakdown, and I haven’t looked back.

He is truly a man outside of time, his intellect and wisdom tower about the inch-deep emotive soup that passes for public discourse and debate in our present milieu. If you’re a current or recovering news hound like me, listening to his take on the world and, more importantly, on the art of living, makes for some pretty great mental stimulation. He keeps me company from my Alexa most weekday mornings in the kitchen, though my three year old Zelie does tend to scream when she hears the show opener start playing. I guess rabbinic wisdom, current events, and political commentary isn’t her particular cup of tea. Go figure.

This was a fascinating and extremely apolitical presentation on the science – trust it, it’s science TM – that isn’t being acknowledged or publicized about covid, the various therapeutics and prophylactics. If you’re firmly in camp “covid is forever,” it might raise your blood pressure. But if you’re like me and hoping we can return to some good old fashioned normalcy now that we’ve got a helluvalotta science to prevent, slow, and treat the course of disease, well, I think you’ll like what he has to say. Quick listen, too!

This author. I’ve been devouring his books since early February. I’m about to finish my 8th title of his, if I’m counting right? 2 trilogies and a double header. All about apocalyptic disease outbreaks (do I know how to unwind or what?) space and time travel, the complete breakdown of civilization and global and universal war, on one level or another. Sounds grim and gruesome but the stories are all fast paced and captivating, the sexy stuff is generally minimal and totally absent in some books (though definitely written by a guy who thinks he knows what women like, L to the O L, nope) and every time I get to the end, my Kindle is like “Ding! Congratulations, you’re one click away from the next installment of the Super Out of Control Space Pandemic series, or something, and like a Netflix binging college student, I do click, I must confess.

Sweet Carrie (whom I openly fangirl) sent me 2 gorgeous and decidedly chrism-scented bags of delicious Theology of Home…coffee! The coffee doesn’t taste like chrism, don’t worry. But the bags do smell ever so slightly on the outside of that heavenly scent, and more-so-slightly on the inside of a different and almost equally heavenly scent. We haven’t dipped into Vespers yet because I’m desperate for caffeine this week, but I can confirm Vigil is delicious, dark, complex, notes of chocolate and berries, tastes great black as an espresso shot or French pressed with cream. Honestly, I’m ruined. It’s so good.

I could have sworn I had more things to link but, like sand through an hourglass, diapers through a giant pack, minutes of sleep before 6 am, they’ve just…slipped away.

Wishing you a beautiful and blessed Triduum and Holy Week!

Gosh you guys, I think the hardest thing about getting back into a regular blogging schedule is going to be the title crafting. Headlines have always been a real Achilles heel for me because gosh darn it I JUST CARE TOO MUCH. Which can frequently result in analysis paralysis and just clicking “leave as draft” and letting many a post languish in blogging purgatory.

Not this time. Prepare to be underwhelmed by the depth of thought and the precision of language I will employ. And bear with me as I coax my atrophied writing muscles out of hibernation.

Anyway, last week I was driving in a … let’s call it a “gritty” part of town. Lots of pot shops and pot holes. Not the country club district.

I’m driving the speed limit and I’m relatively undistracted because I’m alone in the car, sans kids. A pair of Canadian goose come into sight on the road up ahead, sauntering across the busy 4 lane highway at their leisure.

I glanced in my mirror and saw a car behind me and a car in the lane next to me, so there would be no slamming of brakes or switching of lanes.

They’ll probably move in time, Thought I.

Spoiler alert: they did not.

This is the part where I reassure my gentle readers that I actually quite enjoy Canadian geese as a species and don’t even overly mind their horrific toileting habits since I don’t see too many of them in my immediate neighborhood, so homicide was not on my radar that morning. Weighing my options between swerving into the occupied righthand lane, hitting the brakes with fingers crossed that the guy behind me did the same, and just, um, soldiering on, I soldiered.

It was a rather stomach lurching “Fwwumph” and then it was over. I may have let out a little shriek in panicky disgust. Bracing my hands against the steering wheel and trying to calm my nerves, I saw out of the corner of my eye, a car pull up next to me, the driver gesticulating wildly for me to roll down my window.

Shit. Did I lose part of my bumper? Wait, I drive a giant van that could take out a 96 gallon trash can. Is that even possible?

I cracked the window and tilted my head toward my neighboring driver, who, as it turned out, was not interested in the wellbeing of my bumper or any other part of me or my belongings.

“YOU STUPID (CENSORED) (CENSORED), DIDN’T YOU (CENSORED) SEE THOSE (CENSORED) (CENSORED) GEESE BACK THERE? YOU ARE GOING TO (CENSORED) HELL AND I HOPE YOU (CENSORED) DIE AND THAT’S A (CENSORED) 10,000 DOLLAR FINE YOU (CENSORED) (CENSORED).

This time I did swerve just a tiny bit over the yellow line, trying to put a little space between myself and the C list extra from Breaking Bad who was leering at me with his 6 remaining teeth and trying to ram his duct taped gold minivan into the side of my substantially larger could-pass-for-an-airport-shuttle monstrosity while letting fly a string of curse words and gestures that would have made Kid Rock blush.

This guy is going to kill me because I ran over a goose, I thought wonderingly, slowing down to let him weave crazily ahead of me.

As he sped off, he and his co-pilot saluting me with their tallest fingers, I burst into adrenaline driven tears and told Siri to call Dave. I needed my husband to tell me that my goose and run wasn’t a felony (it’s…complicated. But also, the City and County of Denver made thousands of Canadian geese into goose tacos and fed them to the homeless last year, so…it’s also not?) and to generally calm me down.

The moral of this story is, our culture is in its death throes, and a toothless meth head tried to run me off the road in an act of solidarity with our feathered friends.

Just kidding! Or, maybe. The real reason I’m writing it is because Dave laughed so hard when I related the entire affair to him afterwards, and then he said “you should blog about it,” and I said “yeah, if I blogged still, I would totally blog about it.”

And so here you are. Front and center for my writer’s version of a couch25k while I try to reclaim some muscle memory in these typing fingers of mine.

p.s. I’ve decided to leave commenting closed for the foreseeable future. Thanks for stopping by, even if you can’t tell me directly, you’re telling me with your clicks and shares : )

Lent is upon us. It’s here. I’ve messed it up already by mindlessly popping handfuls of cashews and pumpkin seeds into my mouth at various times during this Ash Wednesday, so things can only improve from here.

Lots of people give up social media this time of year – I often did when I was active there. And I wholeheartedly recommend it! Not only is it so helpful for establishing/bolstering a spiritual life (magically available minutes and HOURS of time you thought you didn’t have every day) but, once you soldier through the dopamine withdrawal of the first 72 … or 96 hours or so, you will wake up to an incredible amount of clearheadedness, patience, and joy.

If not outright joy, then contentment. Sometimes they feel like the same thing.

And contentment seems mighty hard to come by these days.

I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly envious person. Not because I’m uniformly virtuous, but as it happens, envy isn’t my primary struggle. A root sin, if you will.

But I’m more inclined to believe that the cultivation of envy – or if not outright envy, then discontentment – is at the root of the design of social media.

Can it be used well? Absolutely. Not by me in this present season of life, but I know people who can game the system and not get sucked in on a personal level while still delivering incredible, impactful content.

I wrestle with that on a personal level because it feels …. icky, for me, to create online content and not partake in the consumption of it. I know I know, people are there anyway! Gotta go where the eyeballs are! I understand it all…but it’s still something I wrestle with.

At any rate, because nature abhors a vacuum and because you don’t want seven more demons taking up residence in place of your little Instagram habit, here are a couple things to do on the internet that don’t require opening a social app.

First things first, are you still reading blogs the old fashioned way: by clicking directly over? I remember thinking years ago that it seemed risky to host all of one’s content on Instagram or on a Facebook page. In addition to becoming a time suck whenever you hop on there to drop a link, I suppose I intuited that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and that when you don’t own the keys to the place, it’s not actually your home.

Rosie has recently resurrected a good old fashioned blog link up for the express purpose of returning to those “simpler times” when you hopped from website to website, checking in intentionally on a few writers or content creators whose work interested or entertained you before moving on with your day. When it comes down to it, it’s really a matter of active consumption versus passive consumption: you’re seeking out the content you want to read and then, well, reading it. With a feed or algorithm curating your reading list, you’re being served rather than choosing for yourself.

Subtle differences, but significant.

Okay this one’s a little weird so bear with me…but my 5 year old, Luke (yes, the verb. That kid.) discovered a YouTube channel he calls “The rat a tat men” (Actual name: Survival Builder) and he cajoled me into watching with him yesterday afternoon and my mind was blown. These two brothers use ancestral techniques and primitive tools to build elaborate and touchingly beautiful underground houses, swimming pools, all kinds of incredible stuff. There were moments when I felt emotional watching their strangely mesmerizing process, which they post with the speed toggled to double or triple time to enhance the viewing experience. I think it was awe for the human body and wonder over how different – and how poor, in many ways – our current modern way of living and relating to our environment is.

This was a hugely important piece that helped coalesce my thought around the fundamental flaws of overconsumption of media of all kinds. Interestingly enough, a few days after I’d read it, a friend floated the idea of a not-too-distant future where the wealthy have the luxury of living a totally offline existence, should they choose, where they’re free to maintain or reject maintaining social media personas, seeking out news, making networking connections online, etc. Because they’re able to outsource it all, and knowing what we now know about the effects of so much online time on the brain, they opt out for wellbeing reasons. I find the idea fascinating!

Karen and I are going to continue our podcasting venture together under a new, coming-soon podcast that I’ll share here when it’s live. So watch wherever your pods are cast from and we’ll be popping up there soon.

Finally, anything Joshua Becker curates in his weekly roundup for Becoming Minimalist is always of high value. He has such a knack for finding great, thoughtful content. He generally publishes Inspiring Simplicity, his weekend roundup, on, well, the weekends.

Hope your Lent is off to a more observant start than mine!

Soooooo, pretty chill to like, write on a super controversial topic and then go dark for a month…err, 5 weeks.

I used to mourn my favorite bloggers as they would reach a critical mass of kids or a critical mass of success with some other venture and their writing would, slowly but surely, recede into sporadic and then entirely absent appearances. I’m really trying not to be that guy! Not because I don’t fully comprehend exactly how it is that happens, now, but because blogging is my first love and you always come back to your first love. Right? RIGHT?

Moving on.

1.

It’s 3 degrees here in Denver today, which is contrasting, erm, frostily with the way my week began. Which was 80 degrees and tropical. Thanks to a combined herculean effort of many covid-negative family members, dear friends, hospitable extended family on the island of Oahu, and some very, very well used Southwest Airline miles, Dave successfully pulled off the actual surprise of a lifetime and took me to Hawaii for a week. During a pandemic. Having arranged childcare for our half dozen children before presenting me with said surprise. Husband bonus level: triple platinum.

2.

The backstory is that 11 years ago while honeymooning on the Big Island, he made a promise to bring me back for our 10th anniversary, at which I scoffed and said something about probably having too many kids by that point. Reader, I was not wrong on that point, as we spent the actual date of our 10th anniversary in the hospital preparing to welcome baby number 6. But Dave? He’s a determined guy. And so accounting for the aforementioned combination of factors above plus the highly specific negative covid tests required by the Hawaiian health department, he planned, executed, and pulled off the most incredibly sweet and astonishingly relaxing week of our lives thus far, deferred to year 11 rather than 10. He is the absolute best, and yes, I’m a little bit depressed that he’s back at work and I’m currently typing on a laptop propped up at a mysteriously sticky kitchen counter wearing 3 layers of clothing and listening to the gentle strains of Spongebob and intermittent screaming wafting in from the other room.

I love this guy.

3.

Our kids are somehow, someway, miraculously still in school and have had no (looks around anxiously for wood to punch through) cohort quarantines so far this semester, and only one last semester. I don’t know if it’s the hand washing, the extra intense cleaning, or some big Holy Spirit intervention but it feels a little bit like, well, yeah, a miracle. Our sweet neighbor kids who go to public school were finally allowed back into the classroom again in January, and so far, so good for them too.

Happily, I learned tonight that our extremely liberal and frequently frustrating governor went ahead and applied for federal emergency relief funds for non-public schools in Colorado last week and so I’d like to take this moment to publicly go on record for the first and possibly only time and say a heartfelt and sincere THANK YOU to Jared Polis. Our teachers have been busting their buns for the past 11 months like nothing they’ve ever experienced before, I’m sure, and if we can get even a modest amount of those funds into their paychecks and offsetting their expenditures on classroom supplies and cleaning stuff, well, hallelujah.

4.

I’m cohosting? Co-experiencing? Co-whatever…ing a really cool course my dear friend Karen Cruess, LPC, created called Rewriting Your Story With God. It’s a 7-part, self and group guided journey through 7 modules exploring something Karen calls “story work” which is, in a nutshell, examining the story your life is telling and re-envisioning it through the story God intends to tell through it. While storywork is a therapeutic technique and a super successful one at that, this isn’t therapy. It’s more like a whole-Lent long retreat with weekly sessions where we check in and process through some of the material for the week and answer questions and make suggestions and share insights. And because it’s not actual counseling, it’s literally a fraction of the price. Like cheaper than a single therapy hour. Register here. The price jumps up by $50 bucks after midnight on Sunday, so maybe tell your husband what an amazing Valentines Day gift this would make.

5.

Hey, I finally started a podcast! Only took 10+ years.

Just kidding, I’m just freeloading on Karen’s…though, it has been super well received and it’s been a lot of fun recording together, so, I think we actually are going to keep recording regularly under the umbrella we’re calling the True, Good, and Beautiful Project … and eventually, the podcast.

For now, find us on iTunes, Spotify, or here. This episode in particular explains a little more about Rewriting Your Story With God.

6.

I made a life changing decision recently to stop wearing ugly pajamas and if you haven’t thought of anything to gift your husband with yet this Valentine’s Day, might I suggest this extremely low hanging fruit? I’m not even suggesting anything very exciting (though, you do you) but like, a step or ten up from a ripped up men’s Notre Dame t-shirt and paint splattered drawstring shorts. I also just feel generally less disgusting around 9 am when I finally have time to get dressed and I’m wearing cute pajama pants and a “sleeping sweater” (thanks Target for creating something we all know you just made up especially for 2020) and not the aforementioned couture. So marriage booster and self care. Win/win.

7.

Benny is by far our craziest baby in the physicality department. Which is … really saying something for anyone who knows Zelie. Or Luke the verb.

Today alone, for example, he launched himself off the couch and did a full front flip, dove into the side of the bathtub like a breaching whale and instantly got the biggest black eye I’ve ever seen on a baby, and taunted me from his perch in a bay window on TOP of his sister’s dollhouse, waggling his eyebrows and shaking his booty with delight when I discovered him and moved in for the capture and release.

He also can’t walk yet at nearly 15 months, which is par for the course for Uebbing kids, but God help us all when he finally finds his sea legs.

Happy Valentine’s day, happy Friday, and happy return to semi regular blogging.

In the works: my very tardy What I Read in 2020 post (would you believe it’s like, super, super long?) a fun day in the life look, and some deep thoughts on marriage.

I’ve missed you guys!

Last night we spent a beautiful, and possibly illegal, evening with friends reminiscing about the passing away of 2020 and the dawn of the new year.

Our host challenged each couple to take turns sharing what the greatest blessing of 2020 had been for them, which I suspect was a particularly countercultural exercise this year.

There are several couples in our community carrying such unspeakably heavy burdens that one would reflexively recoil in horror were such a cross presented to them. And yet each of them were able to express sincere gratitude to the Lord for His invitation into deeper suffering, for “the kiss of the cross,” as one of the husbands put it.

As we took turns giving thanks for the unexpected blessings of a year for the history books, we were able to look back at the last 12 months and see both incredible suffering and, truly, incredible fruit.

Yes, 2020 was a shit show. No, I don’t wish to repeat it and would not have suffered many of its “kisses” willingly, had I been given the choice.

But there has been such good, good fruit in our lives, and in my heart. And though we remain in the midst of global suffering and a civilization in crisis, we are not crushed by the impossible weight of it all, because we aren’t carrying it alone.

2020 will mark a turning point in all our lives, no doubt. But I wonder if it isn’t true that some of what we’ve turned away from, been stripped of, is ultimately for our greater good.

We learned to love our family with a more proper sense of gratitude and awe for what God has done for us and through us. We were invited to reject material security to a degree that would have plunged a younger version of me into paralyzing anxiety.

We were reminded that our health and our wealth and our very daily routines do not belong to us, ultimately. Have never belonged to us. Are only on loan, and are intended to be generously spent for the sake of others.

We learned that 24 hours, 72 hours, 100 straight days of no one to see and nowhere to go and nothing to do … didn’t kill us. That life was more than a secure job and a pleasant routine and a stimulating social life. That, actually, summer break needn’t feel like the zombie apocalypse because you’re “stuck at home” with your kids (God forgive me for ever eyeing the end of May with such dramatic foreboding).

We learned that despite sickness, depression, financial stress, and loneliness…the greatest suffering is to be separated from God. We learned to long for the Sacraments, to value them and our access to them as never before. That our churches really could close their doors overnight. And that it could happen again. And we learned that God would still be enough.

We learned to say a family rosary without drawing blood (but not necessarily without yelling.) We learned that social media was a joke, and relearned the freedom of life without a camera constantly in front of your face.

I learned that my kids are funny, frustrating, and adorable even if no one else sees them. Even if I document none of it.

I learned that the ultimate form of self care isn’t running, but rest. At least for now. I learned that childcare and a gym membership aren’t lifelines, but luxuries. That I really could run our home for days and weeks on end without a “break”. That God could fill my cup with quiet minutes stolen alone with Him, a cup of coffee, and Daniel Tiger’s hideous cadence providing the soundtrack to my meditation. That I wouldn’t actually die of anxiety, of sleep deprivation, or of overstimulation by continual human contact.

It’s much easier to jump on the dumpster fire bandwagon when it comes to assessing what we’ve all just walked through, what we’re still walking through. But even in darkness – perhaps especially in darkness – the Light is still visible.

My prayer for this new year, which I foster no rosy expectations for, is that no matter how dim the world grows, or how dark things seem, I may keep my face turned towards the light. That we all might. Because this present darkness will never succeed in extinguishing it.

A happy and blessed 2021 to everyone. May we remember that no matter what the new year brings, God is its author, and we have been chosen – hand selected – to enter into it.

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I’ve recently finished Rod Dreher’s latest book, Live Not By Lies, a read I found deeply sobering and prescient. He had already written the bulk of it prior to covid, and so I read many of the recollections of emigres from the Soviet Bloc with a sickening sense of deja vu.

The stories of torture, of kidnapping and starvation, and of loss of jobs and status and livelihoods were chilling. But the stories of resistance were deeply hopeful and desperately consoling to a mom who is trying to figure out how the hell to keep her kids safe and more than that, how to keep them whole in the midst of a world gone mad.

I worry about their physical health, certainly. And their mental health? More than ever this year. But most of all I worry about their spiritual health, and how to inoculate them against the falling darkness all around us.

This book is equipping me with some of the answers. One particularly story from the book stands out to me – a family of Czech Catholics who almost singlehandedly led the resistance efforts in Prague during the reign of Communism. The catch was, they were in the extreme minority both as believers and as Catholics. Most of their neighbors were agnostic, if not completely atheist. They did not live in the kind of Benedict Option bubble one might imagine raising kids in the midst of an evil regime might require. (But then, did you actually read the Benedict Option? Or just someone else’s hot takes on it? It’s worth reading for yourself – you’ll see what I mean)

This family even had the opportunity to emigrate to the US of all places during a period where the patriarch of the family had been imprisoned for political activism. Nevertheless, they persisted. They remained in their homeland, in their hometown, and they demonstrated, for me, the very epitome of what is meant by blooming where you are planted. Today the father is no longer living, but the mother is the proud matriarch of a sprawling Catholic family, of which every single member for two generations is a practicing Catholic.

This story gives me so much hope that in a world gone sideways and in a culture that is increasingly tuning out reason and reality, my kids can still thrive.

This year has taught us all a lot about who we really are, and about what we really value. If you’d asked me in December 2019 whether I could ever envision weeping with joy for getting to receive Holy Communion, however much I’d have liked that to be a quality of piety I possessed, I would have politely demurred.

Then lockdown happened, and the joy of being able to receive Jesus again after such a prolonged fast at last produced the desired effect on my soul and the appropriate level of gratitude in my heart.

Now, don’t misunderstand me, I haven’t managed to maintain anything near that level of gratitude and excitement for once again being able to participate in the sacramental life of the Church, but it certainly afforded me a glimpse into the reality that difficult circumstances produce purified Christians.

As much as I hope we never experience anything like the global lockdowns again, I am not naive enough to imagine that 2020 has been simply a bump of suffering on the road to a return to normalcy.

Whatever the hell else “new normal” means, it certainly doesn’t mean we’ll be going back to life “BC” anytime soon. Now that the powers that be have had a taste of the power that fear can afford them, I can’t see anyone in a position of power – unless they posses almost superhuman virtue – willingly giving back what they’ve taken by force.

Watching small businesses and restaurants sputter and die while Home Depot and Target grow fat has had almost an unreal quality about it. On Saturday I naively popped into Target for “a couple things” and was jolted to see crowds well into the hundreds. It is, after all, just 2 weeks before Christmas.

And yet, meanwhile, the salon across the parking lot closed its doors forever last month, strangled by the regulations that destroyed its profitability.

Very little of the behavior that we have engaged in collectively over the last 9 months makes sense. It might evoke feelings of comfort and control for the simple fact that at times doing “something” (wearing a fashion mask from Old Navy, for example) feels better than doing nothing, but it is certainly not doing much in the way of reducing the spread of a virus whose microscopic proteins are capable of penetration at a level so much laughably smaller than the holes in the fiber which comprises it that it’s best not to think too long or hard about it.

And hey, you’re welcome to disagree with me about masks! But maybe pretend it’s still 2019 and do so in a way that doesn’t call into question my humanity and my inherent worth as a person? For what it’s worth, here in Colorado masks are mandatory pretty much everywhere and guess what? Covid rates are climbing every day. Because it’s a coronavirus! And it’s cold and flu season! We’re all going to either get it, have our immune systems successfully fight it off, or sign up for an experimental vaccine that I pray to God will not be compulsory and cross our fingers the side effects aren’t disproportionally grave.

An aside, before you bust out the pitchforks: my father in law is seriously ill with Covid right now, and we’d welcome you to join in praying and hoping for a complete recovery. He had several pre existing conditions working against him when he contracted it, so we’re not surprised but are of course concerned. Because it’s possible to be both appropriately worried by a serious illness and also not to take leave of your rational mind.

Something else 2020 has impressed upon me? The vital importance of knowing what you believe, and finding resources to remind you of it, and to strengthen you in your conviction.

For us, that has looked like leaning into our small groups of community harder than ever before. It has looked like Zoom calls and Voxer messages, BBQs and coffee rosaries, happy hours and holy hours, evenings gathered to pray and delve deep into the Word and strengthen one another in the only real solution to this hideous mess we all find ourselves in at present: Jesus.

My prayer life is inconsistency personified. But there are a few daily patterns I’ve been able to persist in this year.

1. Praise. I tell Alexa to play Hillsong or Bethel or Josh Baldwin and I unabashedly throw my hands up and I praise Him, at the kitchen sink or over homework supervision or alone in the car. My kids have gotten more used to hearing me pray spontaneously out loud, and my hope is that I continue to grow in boldness and readiness to speak His Name and seek His Face during moments of tension and sorrow and joy.
2. The over-the-sink Bible. Despite looking a wreck for all the splashes and splatters, this habit has probably been one of the most transformative of my adult life. I’m usually in the Psalms, and I’m constantly reading things I’m pretty sure I’ve never read before. The other morning as I plunged into the breakfast dishes, filled with concern over our nation’s future, I looked up to find it open to Psalm 74, which I’m sure I’ve never read and whose subtitle (at least in this particular version of the Bible) reads: “Prayer in time of national calamity”. Okay Lord, loud and clear.
3. Rest. I need so much more rest than I’d ever have imagined. Call it the weight of stress or grief or just plain having 6 kids under 10, but I’ve never needed more downtime in my life. Granted, it comes in 10 minute increments in between endless tasks on the to do list, but this is the year I’ve finally figured out how to say “no” and also how to say “enough.” Hence the silence here on the blog and on social media. I’m trying to write more, but I have no intention of ever returning to IG or Twitter or personal FB – if you follow the blog’s FB you’ve probably notice by now it’s a link drop and not a place I engage in the comments e.v.e.r., lol. Sanity be mine.
4. Gratitude. So cliche, but truly, I’ve never been so grateful to be a stay at home mom with a rock solid community of other women who are trying to raise holy families and keep the home fires burning. Most of us also work part time in various income generating capacities, because hello two earner economy, but the ability to already be sort of an “expert” on how to make a home work – and work hard – has been a great boon to life lately. I can’t remember how many times I’ve rearranged every single room in our house this year, but I know that I have, and I’ve grown in appreciation and gratefulness for the shelter and flexibility our imperfect 70s fixer upper (and not the cute JoJo kind) has provided.

Gonna wrap things up there but wanted to at least tap the mic and let you all know I’m still alive and the brain is still percolating, albeit at a slower and frequently-interrupted pace.

I plan to write much more about LNBL when I can find the time, so… come for the social commentary on marxism but stay for the hot takes on potty training, I guess?

Hope the last weeks of Advent afford you some moments of respite from the weary world out there. I know that I, for one, have never felt the need for our Savior more acutely than I do this year.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, indeed.

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Anyone else throw those Christmas lights up a little early this year? Like maybe a month or two early? I have to admit that despite all my posturing and practice of liturgical rigor in the early days of motherhood, I happily blitzed through Walmart for 1,000 extra sparkle lights the week before last.

Dave came home in the newly dark 5 o’clock hour last Friday and found me perched on a ladder in the front yard cursing and stringing up lights by myself, realizing in the cold twilight how much math is involved in the process. Is math the right word? All I know is that it is not as easy as it looks to get those strands lined up and I wished I had a dozen outdoor outlets, but alas, Clark Griswold I am not.

I’m excited for thanksgiving, in whatever form it takes and whatever number of guests it features. All are welcome, as is the case every year, and all are equally free to recuse themselves over health concerns or other anxieties. As for me and my house, we will serve the turkey. (And the Lord.)

It has been difficult to find time and, honestly, the energy to put much of anything creative into the world lately. I made a huge push (pun unintentional but perfect) to finish the Postpartum NFP Survival Guide last month, and the process of multiple hours-long days of editing and find tuning was exhausting to my overstretched 2020 brain.

I’ve popped in on social media twice since the election and both times been sick to my stomach afterwards by the hatred, the vitriol, and the viciousness there. I truly don’t miss anything about Instagram. (Well, I thought I missed the pretty decorating pictures, but then I had a flashback to 2014 and remembered Pinterest, lol)

Speaking of the Postpartum NFP Survival Guide, it’s on sale this week at nearly 40% because Black Friday is really more of a season this year, is it not???

If you’ve been on the fence or know a newly postpartum mama who you think could benefit from it, snag yours here. (Giving it as a gift? Awesome! Just use enter the recipient’s email in place of your own at checkout, or drop me a note with their email at [email protected])

I’ve had a couple people ask for more details on what it is, exactly. I tell them it’s a bit like a more interactive e-book, minus the need for an e-reader or an app. It covers everything from common postpartum struggles with hormones, emotions, and relationship stressors to tips and tricks to help nudge your cycle gently back into place even while breastfeeding.

And best of all? Every Postpartum Survival Guide now includes access to an exclusive online community, Th Postpartum Posse, just for postpartum NPF using mamas.

(Already purchased yours? Check your inbox, you’ve been invited into the community too. and no, it’s NOT on Facebook.)

A few mamas have graciously allowed me to share their feedback:

“This is exactly what I needed. I just had my 3rd and thought I knew everything I needed to know, but this is opening my eyes!” – K.L., postpartum mother of 3

“My husband gifted me this after our last baby was born in October and I tore through in a couple days. It is SO good not to be alone.” A.N., postpartum mother of 4

“I was impressed how detailed and attentive you were to hormone issues and common experiences with postpartum charting.” H.C., NFP instructor

You can order yours here – the discount is good through midnight on Black Friday, November 27th.

I’m seriously, seriously contemplating putting up another 500 Christmas lights this afternoon. It’s just such a weird, dark season of life for so many people, and it has helped me tremendously to narrow my focus a bit to the four walls of our home and the illegal amount of people contained therein. (Add a couple neighbor kids watching Dude Perfect in my basement and we’re officially over the respectable number of occupants. #bigfamilyproblems)

It has also been so stabilizing to have the liturgical year to fall back on and to lean into. You guys know me and I’ve never been the craftiest or homemakey-est gal in the blogosphere, but gosh darn it we are going to ADVENT OUR HEARTS OUT THIS YEAR.

Because saying, Come, Oh Come Emmanuel has never felt more appropriate or more urgent.

I’ve got a whole post on Advent plans and tweaks to those plans which the present darkness will make necessary, so stay tuned.

A blessed and gratitude filled thanksgiving to you and yours, whatever form your own celebration takes this year. Though there is much darkness in the world, the light is greater; and the darkness has not – and will not – overcome it.

Last week I launched a brand new baby into the world and have barely had a chance to talk about it, much less write about it. Life has been weirdly, um, chaotic this week. Anyone else? No?

Ahem. Moving on.

I’ve been working for a couple of months now on a secret little project that is especially near and dear to my heart as a veteran survivor of postpartum NFP six times over. In any other industry I think I’d be in senior management, but since my bosses are small and unpredictable and emotionally unstable, I’m still pulling all night shifts in housekeeping.

Eh, what are you going to do?

Around a year into my experience creating content for my NFP membership site, Off the Charts, I started to feel a pull to create more content specifically for postpartum mamas, since that is, in my humble opinion and extensive personal experience, the black hole of NFP.

It’s the time when things are simultaneously the least clear – you might even call them cloudy, ba dum ching – and yet the stakes seem the most high. And, depending upon the kind of delivery you had and whether any complications ensued, the stakes really might be the most high they’ll ever be.

First I’ll say what I always say to mamas who are looking for help with NFP: you need to work with an instructor. Don’t do your own dental work, don’t sew up your own stitches, and don’t try to self teach NFP. I mean, emergencies happen and circumstances can certainly merit the occasional hacking off of one’s limb while trapped for days in a very large boulder crevasse, but…you get the idea.

So, now that we’ve established what this ebook/digital resource is not (NFP lessons) let’s talk about what it is.

When I tell people what I do, I invite them to imagine I’m their best friend who will absolutely look at your test stick if you send a text over, will absolutely meet you for a glass of wine and a good cry when you’re on day 57 of consecutive highs in postpartum Cycle 0, and can point you in the direction of a truly excellent NFP instructor who teaches online.

I can also help you understand why to use NFP, what differentiates it from contraception, why it can be such a powerful force for good in your marriage and in your overall health, and some best practices and common stumbling blocks to look for.

The PNFP SG (that’s a mouthful; think I’ll stick to writing it out from now on) will also help you identify:

• Common hormonal situations that can crop up on the first 12 months after baby
• Opportunities to improve and even deepen your marital relationship even in this kind of crazy and sometimes chaotic season
• Best practices to introduce into the most important relationship in your life: your marriage
• Spiritual resources to help you navigate it all
• And other insider info you probably aren’t going to find in your typical NFP program or by just randomly clicking around in facebook groups

I wanted this to be super accessible, affordable, and easy to distribute and so I used a digital content platform when I created it rather than going a more typical ebook publishing route. It also means you don’t need a kindle or any other kind of e-reader to access it!

You can buy yours here – if you’re purchasing it for a new mama as a gift, simply use her email when you order it, or send an email with that information after purchase to [email protected] and we’ll make sure it gets to her.

Thank you SO much for your support – I can’t wait for you to read it too.

Early praise for The Postpartum NFP Survival Guide:

“This is such a missing link kind of resource – there’s nothing else like it for NFP using couples.” – Kelly F, NFP instructor

“I’m seriously impressed with the stuff you included about hormones and different postpartum scenarios – couples NEED this info after baby” – Marie C, NFP instructor

“I wish I’d had this after our youngest was born. I experienced so many of the symptoms of progesterone deficiency and had no idea what to look for. I’ll know better next time.” Rebecca, NFP user

Grab yours today, or get one for a new mama you love!

Hi, hello, my name is Jenny, and I spent 6 and a half hours on the internet yesterday. Unsurprisingly, I followed that “questionable” (being charitable to myself here) life choice with nearly a whole bottle of inexpensive prosecco and a bedtime more suitable to one’s twenties than thirties, and I may have fallen asleep with fingers scrolling through a Twitter feed rather than sliding across a set of rosary beads last night.

In that brief, humiliating but illuminating intro paragraph, I believe I managed to encapsulate 90% of the highlights from the “don’t do this” list which I am about to reveal to you.

2020 has been a year filled with anxiety, and for the already anxious it has felt, at times, a bit like being trapped on that moving conveyor belt that escorts your car through the carwash, except there *is* no car and you’re just standing there utterly at the mercy of drenching water and pummeling brushes and the terrifying spinning flapping things that make my babies scream.

Listen, as Dave and I are won’t to quote back and forth to one another regularly, “Nobody in my family is dramatic!” But, then, you don’t come here expecting gravitas and composure, do you?

I have found through much trial and error (see again: last night) that the most difficult days are those which combine the 1-2-3-4-5 punch of: pathological fixation on terrible destabilizing world event + too much time online (especially on social media) + overindulging in mind altering substances + no sleep + no prayer.

Weird.

Anyway, here’s what I know I need to stay mindful of during these bizarre and buffeting storms that just keep on rollin’ in. Maybe you’ll find something helpful for yourself:

• The news. Do you watch lots of it? Stop. It’s trash, it’s entertainment packaged as knowledge that leaves you stupider, sicker, and more scared for having consumed it, and I’m beginning to doubt that there are more than a couple real live journalists left anywhere in the world, apart from those doing old school reporting and analysis in niche markets. The news is why we have an epidemic of stupidity and hate and stark raving panic sweeping across the globe. Turn off the news. Whatever happens that you absolutely, essentially must know about? It will find you without your having to sit captive to the doom scroll ticking across the bottom of your screen for hours on end hearing what’s the latest. You will survive without knowing. You will thrive without knowing. Free yourself.

• Of course, you know that the only thing worse than the news is social media. I know, I know…my forever soapbox. But look, that “dictatorship of relativism” that Benedict warned us about way back when? I think this is it: a self-inflicted nightmare alternate reality you both create and are held captive by, emanating from the tiny computer in your hands where the only objective truth you acknowledge is the one that suits your personal preferences. Social media is literally self brainwashing; within its dopamine-bathed echo chamber, an intellectual circle jerk where it’s nearly impossible to entertain an opposing viewpoint or offer a corrective counterpoint, one reflects and, indeed, becomes that which one consumes. Our viewpoints are reinforced, our positions entrenched, and our objectivity blurred by the blue light emanating from our tiny pretend remote controls for reality. Delete Facebook and Twitter, deactivate Instagram, and if you really, really need to check in with one of the disembodied personalities you interact with on the internet, well, it’s not 2005 anymore and you can actually access information on most of these platforms without having an account or a presence there yourself.

• About that bottle of prosecco… Back during the darkest days of lockdown we had to mandate (you know, for ourselves, as card carrying adults capable of self parenting) no alcohol Sunday through Wednesday nights. Does that sound pathetic? Well, it was. And it was also sleep spoiling and waistline expanding. But we live, we learn, and we moderate our consumption back down to a reasonable place where wine accompanies feast days and not just random Tuesdays.

• I have never been so tired in my entire life. Confusingly, it isn’t the baby. A piece of it, surely, can be attributed to parenting half a dozen kids, but even adjusting for offspring inflation, I feel like the crypt keeper. Guess what? Staying up until 11 pm reading hot takes on twitter makes you feel like shit on so many levels. SO many. (refers self back to bullet point 2.) Seriously, I’ve been lying down to nap or attempt something thereof on the days when the big kids are all at school and the babies nap together, and not only does this feel deeply pathetic, but I’ve yet to rediscover my pep, my joie de vivre, my internal drive to succeed at life. Apart from the 208 lawn and leaf bags of toys and clothes and what else I cannot say that I’ve dragged to the thrift store since March, I really don’t have much else, concretely, to show for myself apart from keeping these children alive and my hair occasionally (very occasionally) washed. It’s truly pathetic. I attribute it partially to poor sleep hygiene. Maybe I’ll sleep on November 4th…

• We’re doing better in the spiritual realm, lately, but it’s still always the first thing to go when things derail. If I spent as much time with my Lord as I spend with my phone…Dave and I have been spending the first 10 minutes each morning reading the daily Mass readings out loud together and then doing like the world’s briefest take on Lectio Divino as we share whatever insights or inspirations we receive. It has been incredibly fruitful for our marriage and unlike the pulling of teeth that is grinding out the daily rosary, it’s something we actually both enjoy and look forward to. I 100% believe the rosary is critically important right now, too, however it is a less emotionally satisfying discipline for sure.

I think plenty of us are in a place where a little extra self care could go a long way – and I think of the categories outlined above as real, basic selfceare, the kinda stuff that really does keep the wheels from coming off.

As a very wise and holy priest said earlier this year, “make of this time what you can, let it be the year you look back upon and say ‘oh, yes, 2020, that’s the year we started praying the rosary together as a family, began going to daily Mass, returned to the Sacraments after years away.

2020 was when it all began again.”‘

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