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I’ve heard – and read – plenty in the past week thanks to that Trump post that went viral (should I refrain from pointing out that Trump, also, went viral? Alas, I cannot. The puns live loudly within me.) about how Christians of good will can “agree to disagree” on the fundamental issues at stake in this election. That it’s possible, according to some voting guide coughed up by some totally disinterested and nonpartisan organization, I’m certain, to tally up the pro life stats of Biden and compare them with the cumulative pro life stats of Trump and bring oneself to the fantastical conclusion that Biden, is, in fact the more pro life of the two candidates.

I suppose it is also possible, along those lines, to compare the number of hit singles and dollars earned between Mozart and Tswift and reach the conclusion that Taylor Swift is, in fact, the more masterful musician of the two.

But is it true?

And in the case of the example above, are the metrics equitably weighted?

When I skimmed a “pro life” voting guide last month that suggested Biden outweighed Trump by double digit numbers because his stance on the environment and racism and immigration gave him a higher cumulative score than the incumbent who has busied himself about appointing solid judges, defunding Planned Parenthood, stripping funding for abortion from international aid, and finally, has put forth THE MOST CRITICALLY IMPORTANT SUPREME COURT NOMINEE TO EVER BE RAISED TO THE HIGH COURT WHO COULD ACTUALLY HELP TO OVERTURN ROE V WADE, I wanted to simultaneously laugh and cry.

Are we this foolish, my fellow Americans?

And are we this poorly formed in our consciences and our capacity to reason, my fellow Christians?

The media is very pleased indeed when the talking points go out across the digital echo chambers proclaiming environmentalism as a core “life issue,” just as much as abortion, and inviting believers to fall all over one another to signal their wokeness on social media by solemnly nodding in virtual agreement that of course, of course immigration and green energy laws are on equal footing with the willful destruction of a human being – OF COURSE THOSE ARE EQUIVALENT ISSUES. It’s not the dark ages, after all. Everyone knows to be truly pro life you have to also be very concerned with gender equality, the wage gap, and carbon footprints.

My friends, this is bullshit. And I invite you to search your hearts and discover if, in fact, deep down you already know that it is.

Out of an abundance of false piety, held aloft to distract from truly crucial moral issues, tepid Christians and milquetoast Catholics trumpet about being “consistent” and not getting pegged as a Single Issue Voter. Because what could be more dreadful than that?

How about death? Could death be more dreadful than that?

Could Planned Parenthood, the single greatest perpetrator of racism in the 21st century, be more dreadful than that?

Could 125,000 deaths every single day of the year be more dreadful than that?*

How about racism? But then, you have to be alive to be a victim or a perpetrator of racial discrimination, bias, or violence.

Perhaps immigration? Then again, dead people cannot escape violence and famine by fleeing their homelands.

It is particularly trendy to claim climate change as The Issue of the day, but again, you need living people to both care for our common home and craft just and prudent legislation for her care.

Are you seeing a theme here? Because I am. And it’s this: maybe the culture – and I’m including everything from Teen Vogue to your social studies class in high school to social media to the trash we watch on tv – maybe it’s beating you over the head with the concept that one mustn’t be a Single Issue Voter, that there is truly no greater sin. That one must diversify one’s focus when it comes to being “truly” pro life, and to not get myopic over abortion as if it were some greater sin against life than All The Other Issues.

But what if they’re wrong?

And what if the culture does not find its true north in the Word of God, in the teaching authority of the Church?

What if the culture values things that are very much in tension with what we profess as believers of Jesus Christ to be the highest good?

If so, would it not appear that your conscience, properly formed in submission to the mind of Christ, would it not appear that your conscience was in fact permanently at odds with the prevailing sentiment of the age?

Christians, we are responsible for forming our consciences and for following them – but forming our consciences means we are pressing them against a form, holding them up to a template and pushing, stretching, continually pursuing the perfection we are called to emulate.

And if your conscience tells you abortion and the right to live, to breathe, and to exist on planet earth is on equal footing with carbon emissions or racism or prison reform, then your conscience is wrong.

Consciences can be improperly formed, after all. And the formation is the work of a lifetime. And – here’s the really, really humbling and tough to swallow part – when our consciences and the Church come to an impasse over an issue, when there is a rebellion in the soul, well, let me break it to you gently: it’s not the Church who is in error; it’s me.

When our consciences lead us astray from the moral order, from the natural law which is written on and discoverable by every human heart, than our consciences are wrong.

And however you might want to parse things out otherwise, this election, because of this Supreme Court vacancy and because of the laundry list of other pro life accomplishments I listed in last week’s post, this election truly does come down to a single issue.

Life.

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.

Deuteronomy 30:19-20

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*According to WHO, every year in the world there are an estimated 40-50 million abortions. This corresponds to approximately 125,000 abortions per day.

In the USA, where nearly half of pregnancies are unintended and four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion [1] , there are over 3,000 abortions per day. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies in the USA (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion. [2]https://www.worldometers.info/abortions/

4 years ago seems like a lifetime, honestly. I had 4 kids instead of 6. We were still renters. I was still juggling part time work on someone else’s schedule, trying to make everything fit. The run up to the 2016 election season felt insane, but now that we’re all snuggling in to the waning hours of 2020, the year from actual hell, I think I can safely say 2016 was a bit like a contentious student council run off, yes?

I knew I couldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton, not for all the money in the world, all the penguins in the zoo, all the coffee in the southern hemisphere, etc etc etc. So I held my nose, averted my eyes, and stealthily, guiltily, shamefacedly cast my vote for Trump.

Was I embarrassed? You betcha. Too embarrassed to put so much as a thumbs up on social media, so chastened was I by the mere fact that I was selling out my very soul, according to the court of public opinion, by voting for this clown of a man, this caricature of an actual human being.

Nevermind the fact that Hillary Clinton was – is – demonstrably one of the more (most?) corrupt politicians in recent American history. Never mind that her stance on every issue under the sun was about as far left as the Golden Gate bridge, never mind that her husband was an actual sexual predator who carried on his philanderings in the actual White House, I was expected to – nay, commanded to – throw my support behind Clinton based largely upon her proud possession of a uterus. Because feminism!

Besides, Trump was, according to the media, the political peanut gallery, and multitudes of people of faith, both on and offline, a bonafide monster. A p*ssy grabber. A misogynist cad with a bad hairpiece a third marriage (probably just for show) and a brash and “uncharitable” way of speaking his mind.

If I were a good Christian, a good person, the rhetoric insisted, I’d have refrained from sullying my conscience and simply abstained from the vote entirely.

But, here’s the thing. As I looked around at the political frenzy that surrounded 2016 and the increasingly hysterical rhetoric surrounding the candidacy of Donald Trump, as I watched the media hyperventilate as he dominated the Republican debates, rising about a tepid and wilting crowd of career politicians, I couldn’t help but notice that the same media who fundamentally opposed almost everything I stood for, from the sanctity of human life to the dignity and sacramental nature of marriage to the blunt reality that men have penises and women have vaginas, well, these people really, really did not want Donald Trump to get elected.

So much so that, it turns out, either every single one of them spectacularly misread the polls, or else they willfully ignored, suppressed, or manipulated the data that would have made election night 2016 less of a bombshell.

I was stunned. I think the entire world was stunned. How could the media have gotten it so wrong? How could it be that there were enough deplorable, hate-filled, ignorant, bible-clutching, gun-toting morons in these great United States of America capable of handing Trump one of the biggest upsets in modern politics?

As the reality of what had transpired sank in, and heads exploded across airwaves and social media platforms the world over, I reflected on the disparity between what I’d been shown in the news coverage and what had actually transpired.

And I realized something.

I realized, perhaps shamefully late in life, but I got there, nonetheless…I realized that the media itself, every inch of it, had – has – an agenda. And that agenda? It trumps (no pun intended) absolutely everything else.

And we had just witnessed perhaps the greatest rebuke to that agenda of all time.

The American people were supposed to reject Trump resoundingly. Because the moral elite, fatally impaired in most of the actual virtues but prodigies in the art of virtue signaling, insisted that we do so, because Trump was yucky.

As this realization sunk in over the first year of Trump’s presidency, while I was still holding my nose and watching with skepticism as he began to govern, I found myself increasingly clicking over to Cspan or the Whitehouse.gov YouTube channel, sort of checking in to contrast the mainstream media coverage with what had actually transpired. I wanted to see if he really was the dictatorial monster Anderson Cooper and AOC make him out to be.

So I watched, and I listened.

I watched him address the March for Life, streaming the coverage from EWTN because it wasn’t on a single other channel. I listened to his live streamed speech before three quarters of a million marchers gathered on the national mall, not fully understanding how a sitting president of the United States of America could get away with the following statement:

As you all know, Roe vs. Wade has resulted in some of the most permissive abortion laws anywhere in the world.  For example, in the United States, it’s one of only seven countries to allow elective late-term abortions, along with China, North Korea, and others.

Right now, in a number of states, the laws allow a baby to be born [torn] from his or her mother’s womb in the ninth month. It is wrong; it has to change.

Americans are more and more pro-life.  You see that all the time.  In fact, only 12 percent of Americans support abortion on demand at any time.

Under my administration, we will always defend the very first right in the Declaration of Independence, and that is the right to life.

What?

What had I just heard? I shook my head in disbelief, logging in to Twitter expecting to find Catholics and other Christians cheering in solidarity. Instead I found snarky, sarcastic criticism about how if he were “truly pro life” he would change his stance on immigration, parental leave policies, access to contraception, etc etc etc.

About a year later as the immigration crisis began to rise to a critical level, as the media coverage indicated, pictures started circulating of immigrant children detained at the US border in cages. Trump, the monster, according to most news reports, was personally responsible. Oddly enough, some of the earliest circulating photos accompanying the media coverage of this objectively disturbing situation dated back to … 2014, during the Obama Administration, attributed to a Congressman’s website where he details a visit to the border and his satisfaction at finding the immediate needs of migrant men, women and children so diligently met by US agencies and various coordinating charitable organizations.

What?

Then and there I adopted a new habit: to dig into the dull, densely worded and not-at-all headline-shaping transcripts from CSpan, NPR, whitehouse.gov and other duller than dirt government sources on Twitter and the like so that I could read through Trump’s judicial appointments, policy decisions, and executive orders myself, needing to know for sure that I was getting the truth.

This is what I found.

• Thus far, Trump has installed two (soon to be three, most likely) Supreme Court justices and 205  judges overall to the federal bench — all for lifetime appointments. (Even if Trump is not reelected in 2020, his presidency will continue to have an impact on the direction of the US due to the sheer number of conservative federal judges he’s installed.

• Three years into his presidency, Trump’s signature legislative achievement remains a Republican tax bill that made sweeping changes to the tax code — the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The law was the biggest overhaul to the nation’s tax code in three decades, permanently slashing the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% while also providing temporary benefits for individuals and their families.

• Trump signed the First Step Act into law in December 2018, marking the first legislative victory in years for advocates seeking to reform the criminal justice system. The bill also aims to lower recidivism by offering more rehabilitation and job-training opportunities, and it includes provisions intended to treat prisoners humanely — banning the shackling of pregnant inmates, halting the use of solitary confinement for most juvenile inmates, and mandating that prisoners be placed in facilities within 500 miles from their families.

• After a five-year effort led by the US, ISIS’s caliphate was finally defeated in March 2019 when a US raid led to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the world’s most wanted terrorist up to that point.

• Trump finalized the Protect Life Rule, cutting Planned Parenthood’s federal funding by $60 million.

• He reinstated the Mexico City Policy that ends federal funding of overseas abortions. The Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance program safeguards more than $8.8 BILLION in overseas aid from being used for abortions.

• Signed a bill that allowed states to defund Planned Parenthood of Title X (family planning) funding, reversing an Obama attempt to force states to fund abortion providers.

• Defunded the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) which supported China’s population control program (which includes forced abortions).

• Issued new guidance ensuring hospitals provide medical care to infants who survive abortions.

•  Cut HHS funding for fetal tissue research…

So, um, should I go on?

While we’re being browbeaten by an amoral, scratch that, immoral media, powered largely by Hollywood and celebrity outrage culture for voting for a man who is just a hairsbreadth above satan himself when it comes to moral character, according to Lady Gaga and Nancy Pelosi and even my very kind neighbor lady, he’s over there in DC like, signing bills that lower taxes, facilitate prison reform, and protect unborn human life.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick to death of being moralized and preached to by a corrupt, spineless, and utterly compromised media who literally say the opposite of what is true.

I’ve seen Catholics in recent weeks make the case that Joe Biden – Joe Biden! Who has been in his basement for the past 4 months and can’t form a cogent sentence! – is the only morally sound choice this year.

Joe Biden, a lapsed Catholic who shows no sign of having repented from serving in the most corrupt and anti life political administration in history. Joe Biden whose credible (look this word up, it will become increasingly important especially as the impending SCOTUS nominee starts having their lives nuked in the coming days) accusations of sexual assault were ignored, downplayed, or outright accepted by the media and his political allies because even though he may have actually raped that one woman, he is still a better overall choice for all women (?????) than is the sitting President.

Joe Biden, who has aligned himself with a vice presidential candidate who is literally a socialist and a virulent anti Catholic, to boot.

But at least he’s not Trump, right?

I know lots of people are disgusted by Trump’s past, by the sleaze, the divorces, the degrading comments towards women. But is he still there? And most importantly, does it inform the way he governs?

I don’t want to make excuses for immorality, for corruption, for sin. And I won’t. But if someone has changed? If someone lives a corrupt life and turns away from it? Even if not in a public act of repentance, if in word and deed (read: what someone says and what someone does) someone amends their life, does this make a difference?

This is important. It is fundamental-to-Christianity level important. Is he still pro “choice”? Is he passing laws that undermine the family and the sanctity of human life? Is he raping women in the White House? Is he molesting children? Is he embezzling from government coffers, spending taxpayer dollars on entertainment? Abusing the power of the US military?

What is he doing now, today, that merits his title as Monster in Chief, bestowed on him by the illustrious court of public opinion and presided over by the Honorable Judge Hollywood?

Because it matters. Tremendously. Do the research. Figure the answer to this one out for yourself. You owe it to your country, to your family, and to the rest of the free world. Don’t let the media – and that includes social media, maybe even more so depending on your demographic – do your thinking for you.

Don’t settle for anything less than reality.

Just because something isn’t popular doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

In fact, in the year 2020, it may well be that if something is popular, you should take a long, hard second look at it, and figure it out for yourself.

“Is it true?”

Truth matters. Reality matters. Results matter.

Trump 2020. I’m not ashamed anymore.

(P.s. Comments are closed, because I’m also not stupid anymore. Happy election season!)

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In this phase of life – of parenthood? Of 2020? – time seems exceedingly distorted. Mornings stretch out into almost infinity as I process load after load of laundry only to look up and see that it’s 9:23 am and, so, apparently time has stood still.

If it’s later in the week, on a day when I have only 2 sleeping babies at home, if the stars align and they synch up their naps, time speeds to triple and I blink and it’s time to leave for carpool. I’m so grateful our kids are in full day school this year, so grateful there have been no issues so far, so happy they’re so happy. Lockdown was hard on all of us, hardest on me, I thought for sure, but now that they’re with their friends again, playing sports, swapping stories of what I did on my weirdest summer vacation ever, I realize how hard it must have been on them.

Yesterday I ordered takeout from a favorite burger place for a living room picnic with the 4 little kids while Dave had a work dinner and the big boys were camping with Grandpa. Later in the evening I overheard Luke describing the interior of the restaurant to Evie in exacting detail, commenting on the lights, the tables, the piped in music. I had to laugh because we were in the lobby for maybe 25 seconds, standing just inside the entrance while a hostess grabbed our to-go order from a makeshift station and handed it over. But the poor guy, he has hardly seen the inside of a building other than home or our parish in 6 months. He was entranced! I made a mental note to let him join me on my next shopping trip. If he thinks the lobby of Bad Daddy’s was rad, wait until he sees Walmart.

I’ve noticed, also, that my drive to work outside of our four walls has waned to an unrecognizable level. I’m still enjoying running Off the Charts, supporting and encouraging couples in their practice of NFP, but my appetite for growing the ministry, for speaking or writing outside of this little space and the videos I record for the community there, has dwindled to nothing. At first I chalked it up to PPD; once that was handled, I figured it was a 4 month sleep deficit and lockdown ptsd. But, I think it’s something else. I’ve been spending a lot of time lately sort of sitting at the feet, so to speak, of more experienced moms, reading their essays, watching their youtube tutorials. I spent hours last week during our freakishly early snowstorm and 48 hour cold snap poring through the Like Mother, Like Daughter archives, reading post after post from Leila Lawler’s years and years of compiled wisdom. I’ve come to realize, after spending days and weeks and months tethered more closely than ever to home, that far from being a drudgery and prison, it has become a place of increasing freedom.

Let me back up a bit.

For much of my motherly life, as those of you who’ve been reading from the beginning already probably know (gulp, Mama Needs Coffee turns 10 next year!) I’ve found myself walking that familiar tightrope of identifying as a stay at home mom but also, “something more.”

Initially I worked out of necessity, I told myself, paying down my student loan debt and chipping away with a BIG shovel at the ‘ol Dave Ramsey snowball. And then the babies started coming. I doubled down my efforts and kept apace, but something strange started to happen. My shovel shrank.

Or, rather, the pile of snow started to accumulate rather than melt away, with diapers and hospital co-pays and the cost of living with 3 and then 4 and then 8 family members, yes, but also with the cost of convenience foods, dinners out, trips, gym memberships, babysitting, trips through the Starbucks drive through, the Target dollar spot, sparkling water by the caseload…all things that I could, technically, do without, but things I wasn’t willing to surrender so long as I was working like a dog to “do it all.”

I took on massive freelance projects, pushed myself after babies’ bedtimes to hit deadlines that I’d plowed ahead and committed to, working my regular job in the shrinking hours between kid needs and meal requests.

As the babies grew into toddlers and then preschoolers and kindergarteners, their immediate physical needs waned, even as their emotional and social needs skyrocketed. I could no longer count on 2 or 3 hours of quiet work time in the afternoons. I could no longer count on any quiet work time. My mornings got earlier and my nights got later. I was tired and resentful and definitely not enjoying motherhood.

Enter baby number 6. Benny’s pregnancy was really the last straw. It only took half a dozen kids, but I finally hit the limit, mentally, physically, and emotionally. It made zero sense on paper, but I finally got the courage to quit my job at CNA and started out on my own with increasingly regular speaking gigs, bigger writing projects, and of course, Off the Charts. All throughout the first 2 trimesters of that pregnancy I was pretty much high on the intoxicating rush of freedom and sheer terror that is self employment. I switched gyms and joined the YMCA specifically for their 2 hour daily childcare limit. I worked feverishly at a peeling laminate table squeezed between the racquetball courts and the men’s locker room, familiarizing myself with the back end of a website and learning about list building and sales funnels and how to batch record content. I registered for an LLC, bought a handful of domains, hired a bookkeeper, added 2 contract employees to help manage admin tasks, and it was off to the races.

The first 6 months were exhilarating. The second 6 months were excruciating. Now, more than a year out, I’m finally feeling like I know enough to know that I don’t know much, at all. The fire to grow my audience and self promote has dwindled to absolute ashes, thanks in large part, no doubt, to abandoning social media in all its forms.

And the strangest things begin to happen.

I spend time scrolling though soothing images of clean, empty rooms on Pinterest and somehow find bags and bags of clothes and toys and books to donate. Every week at least another bag or two. I start googling things like “how to deep clean a bathroom” and I watch video tutorials on big family batch cooking and how to expertly roll paint on a wall. As the online world fades and the actual world seems like an ever hotter burning dumpster fire, home starts to look less like a prison and more like a refuge. I let my sister direct a redecoration of almost the entire first floor of our house, tossing out hand me down end tables and the mishmash of “eclectic” pieces of furniture we had somehow amassed over the 7 years since we moved home from Rome.

The thrift store angels yield up one treasure after another, items and prices too good to be true: a 12 by 14 ft jute rug still rolled up in its packaging, unmarked and haggled by me down to $19 dollars. I googled it later and widened my eyes at the original price: $500. I toss all our old, mismatched plastic kid gear and fill the cupboard with one shelf of thrifted, all white Corelle dishes. Shatterproof, yes, but not technically, entirely unbreakable. Even so, the peace and beauty of the kitchen without Paw Patrol water bottles and neon green plastic cups and bowls is worth the price of a broken dish every couple of weeks or so. (Luke.)

As home becomes more beautiful and kids become increasingly awake, active, and self aware, my focus continues to shift ever more inward, my vision narrowing at times for days and days on the four walls of our house.

When I was a younger mom I had to leave the house at least once a day for the library, the gym, Chicfila, just anywhere but here. I felt frantic to escape the narrowing walls of what felt, sometimes, a bit like a prison. I chafed at the weight of the daily tasks required of me, the tasks I felt at once overqualified to perform at at the same time deeply unprepared to carry out well. I had yet to experience the sweaty satisfaction of a bathroom well scrubbed and sanitized, a massive pile of laundry reduced to nothing.

I knew little about home making, and so making a home seemed little, too. Insignificant and secondary. Cooking 3 meals a day felt – still feels sometimes, truth be told – like some kind of work release program: “yes, you get to have these cute kids and wonderful husband, but there’s a catch – they’re going to want to eat. Every day.”

Where am I going with this rambling, meandering reflection? I’m not sure. But there is some thread running through this all I can’t quite pull together, something about narrowing one’s field of vision and suddenly having the entire horizon filled with the beauty of your immediate surroundings.

With increasing regularity, I am learning not to mind standing at the sink, washing the millionth pile of dishes for the week (our dishwasher broke in June, because of course it did. And the part is backordered forever because 2020.) I am content not to weigh in on The Latest Thing, much of the time now. I’m not sure, financially, what will be the ramifications of my pulling back from my earning potential, saying no to more outside work as the pace of the inside work accelerates. But I know it’s what they need.

And it’s what I need, too. And I can say that now, honestly. I need to be home. My home needs me. And it is not beneath my station to learn how to properly scrub a toilet or roast a cheap cut of meat. Quite the opposite, I’m finding it thrilling to grow in mastery at things I just assumed I wasn’t good at.

Kind of like that season I spent learning HTML and online marketing.

I think we’ve all been given a rather unique opportunity to see the value of the work done in and around the home these past 6 months. How many of us darkened the door of a hardware store in that span, perhaps for the first time in a long time, the first time ever? How many internet searches for “how to repair a blank” were sent out into the ether? How many of us experienced the beauty and the exquisite, exquisite pain of explaining multiplication or a finer point of grammar to someone who shares your last name and your dinner table but whose academic formation was formerly a complete mystery?

I have no conclusion, but I wonder in continued curiosity at the way things are unfolding, the way life is developing in a totally different direction than I’d have ever predicted – or asked for.

(p.s. I still don’t really like to cook.)

I am finding myself oddly relieved that summer is on its way out whilst simultaneously dreading the advent of Fall for, perhaps, the first time in my adult life. I have always loved PSL season, the thrill of premature seasonal decor in the harder-core neighbors yards, (anyone who used to follow me on Instagram knows exactly which neighbors I speak of: At the time of publication, a skeleton biker gang, zombie red riding hood and a big bad werewolf AND 5 dozen fake pumpkins had already been spotted. Also, a single, empty wheelchair waits hauntingly atop their driveway. One can only imagine what mid-September will yield.) and (sob) the return of football season, cut brutally short at its very heart and soul this year with our local governance’s ordinance against outdoor high school sports. Because, you know, if we ban football, those big, goofy, naughty 17 year olds definitely aren’t going to be finding other ways to gather in groups and touch each other.

But I digress.

I did a somewhat maniacal stress-cleaning of the basement this morning, sweeping legos and cat food and spiders and old Doritos (??) alike into trash bags, beads of sweat rolling off my face and hitting the concrete. Joey and I made a run to the thrift store to drop off, somehow, 5 entire bags of donations plus a couple pieces of under-utilized furniture. Don’t ask me how many donation runs I’ve made during the rona season, because I’ll never tell. My endless aspirations to minimalism have only been stoked higher and hotter by days and weeks and months spent in close, close quarters with my beloveds.

After trundling though a line of 14 cars (is anyone else experiencing this? I bet it’s easier to get an indoor table at a nice restaurant these days than a spot in the drop off line at Goodwill) we turned our big white beast of a van back around (hi, hello, we bought a 12 passenger van and now the stereotype is complete) and circled the lot for a parking spot in order to complete what Dave affectionately refers to as the thrift store rental cycle (Donate, browse, buy, repeat). In my defense, it is 97 degrees today here in Denver and by Tuesday it will plummet to 25 (!!!) and I don’t know where any of our sweatshirts or light jackets are lurking, plus I suspect all the lbs we accumulated during lockdown are going to necessitate at least a minor shuffling of the outerwear deck.

Thrilling, thrilling weekend be mine. Last night I spent time in both urgent care with my sister who suffered a nasty charcuterie board injury AND, merely an hour later, was summoned to the ER with one very, very lucky six year old whose brother did not cut her thumb completely off with garden shears while harvesting pumpkins. So much for girls’ night out. This morning we audibly and specifically thanked every single family member’s guardian angel before praying our Saturday morning rosary, because they’re putting in some serious overtime in our house lately.

I’ve been trying to spend more time reading books and less time reading the news – quitting social media has been a great boost, but there are still a few news aggregators I find myself compulsively checking in a residual occupational tic I’ve found hard to break even as my illustrious journalism career lies further and further in the rearview. I’ve been working to disrupt the cycle by carrying my kindle in one dress pocket and my phone in the other so that I actually have a choice rather than defaulting always, always to the phone (also, hi, hello, I’ve been living in a rotating 4 pack of hideous, shapeless bag dresses from walmart made out of – honest to gosh – stretchy headband material, and they are both wonderfully comfortably and deeply, deeply unflattering but there is so very little will left to present oneself to the world these days, you know?

Also, alas, the baby weight.

Every time I find myself with all 4 options in the dirty clothes I vow to return them to the garbage pile of fashion from whence they evolved, but then one comes back to me, hot and stretchy and sagging fresh from the dryer and gosh darn it I just can’t help myself.

I need a What Not to Wear level intervention, but first I need about 7 straight days of uninterrupted sleep and for my kids to go back to school.

We are wonderfully, blessedly, eagerly returning to in person learning at our fine little school, but alas a back to school cold that would have cost us 2 days of absence any other year stretched interminably into a week plus a long weekend “just to make sure” nobody is secretly harboring The Virus, masquerading as a common cold and sans fever, shortness of breath, or chills.

2020 you’ve given us so little to work with.

And yet, we have made improvements, too. Our kids spend more time together than ever before, which includes cage fighting but also much more frequent (read: ever) family rosaries. A wonderfully holy priest counseled a friend early in this whole shitshow: “Forget reading about the news. Let 2020 be the year you look back on one day and say, ‘oh, yes, 2020, I remember what happened that year…that’s the year we began praying the rosary (together/alone/as a family) every day. It’s the year I started going to daily Mass. It’s the year I began starting every day with God’s Word.’”

I think about his words often. I wonder what God’s intention for 2020 is, for me.

Onward to the reading list:

“The Age of Miracles” – guys I read this in a single day, during which time my children ate nothing but granola bars and yogurt. this is the quarantine comfort read WE’VE ALL BEEN LOOKING FOR. (and by comforting I mean, of course, their situation is decidedly worse than ours. Spoiler alert, but at least the earth’s magnetic field is still intact!)

“Discernment of Spirits” – I’ve been meaning to read this for years, and despite the fact that my spiritual director of 10+ years regularly directs Ignatian retreats, it turns out I had a few pretty significant misconceptions about what Ignatian Discernment actually entails. It’s SO good.

“The Day is Now Far Spent” – I know he’s too old, but man I wish Cardinal Sarah would be the next pope. A slow, beautiful, thick read. I’m only halfway through after a month.”

“For Women Only” – Embarrassing title, world rocking content. Cannot recommend highly enough for every married or engaged woman.

“The Family and the New Totalitarianism” – weirdly prophetic from the 90s (but not really, considering it was written by Michael O’Brien). A good gut check that all this craziness didn’t appear overnight, that the foundation has been eroding for some time now. Not all doom and gloom, but definitely a serious sort of read.

“My Lord John” – my last Georgette Heyer (sob); I’ve now plowed through her entire catalogue and she’s dead, so, also, is a part of me.

“Parenting From the Inside Out” – I don’t remember enough about this except to say it was mildly distressing to read about a lot of the traumas I’m re-inflicting on my own children from not having fully processed my own crap.

So instead I’d recommend…”Mindsight” – by the same author, which delves into a lot of the stuff explaining why we are the way we are, including unconscious beliefs/actions, patterns of behavior, inherited baggage, generational trauma, and just really so much interesting stuff. It was not a lighthearted read, but neither is it depressing. Validating is the word I’m looking for.

“The Heart of Perfection” – liked, but didn’t love. Well, I should say I liked the chapters introducing me to new saints very much – Campbell has a way of really humanizing characters who have a way of seeming too aspirational and one-dimensional, which is amazing. I didn’t really connect with her personal sections though, maybe because I’m wandering around in a dirty topknot draped in sleeveless, size XL walmart mumus these days so perfection is not something one might say I am actively striving to attain.

“A Higher Call” – so good. Do you love WWII books? Read this.

“Boys Adrift” – a must read for all parents of boys. Be warned, you will probably spend $100 dollars on stainless steel water bottles and glass tupperware before you finish the book. My apologies in advance to your budget.

wish I could take credit for this gem, but all props go to some bro called ThioJo.

Let me start this off with a big ol 2020 caveat: if you’re concerned about transmitting or contracting covid, whether because of an underlying condition or an immunocompromised person in your life, you should be free to stay home and exercise every precaution. This is not a post telling people with depressed immune systems or chronic diseases to suck it up and start taking public transit again. If you feel safest at home, you should be free to remain there. And thanks to an increasingly digital economy, it is actually conceivable that someone could shelter at home more or less indefinitely.

End disclaimer.

I’ve noticed a troubling trend in coverage, whether secular or religious, identifying people who are eager to get back to in person worship as either foolhardy (at best) or selfishly reckless (at worst). At first I was perplexed because the same voices were generally in favor of (safely) patronizing newly re-opened restaurants and hair salons and other small businesses who had struggled mightily during lockdown. I was further perplexed because my church, at least, mandates the most slavishly observant covid protocol-adherence of nearly anywhere else I’ve been during this madness, including doctor’s offices, airports, grocery stores, and restaurants.

As the lockdown has continued to ease and summer has marched on, I’ve continued to observe a disturbing apathy among believers coupled with outright sneering disdain from the culture at large when it comes to a return to public worship. The latter surprises me not at all, but the former is a bit alarming.

At a glance, I can see two obvious reasons for the reluctance to resume in person services. First, if you aren’t Catholic and you don’t believe there’s anything beyond fellowship, great music, and compelling preaching happening up there on the altar, the stage, or whatever you might call your focal point of worship, then, I suppose that makes sense. While you can’t totally replicate it streaming at home or in a small house church kind of setting, you can probably come fairly close with enough creativity and a good wifi connection.

But we Catholics, you see, cannot.

Don’t get me wrong, we can (and we must, I’d argue with increasing urgency) form small, intimate communities of faith and get in the habit of worshiping together in informal and ordinary spaces like our homes and places of learning. If we don’t share our faith organically with our family and friends in our homes and in our ordinary lives, our faith is not going to survive what is coming. But let us not presume for a moment that the Mysterium fidei can be supplanted by Zoom Bible studies and conveniently live-streamed Masses said by our favorite celebrity priests.

It is wonderful that we have unleashed the gospel anew across what Pope Benedict called “the digital continent” during these deeply troubling and uncertain times over the past 5 months. But we must never forget that our primary obligation as believers places us firmly and messily in the midst of real people in a real building with the Real Presence of Jesus Christ Sunday after Sunday, and yes, in most places the Sunday obligation is still dispensed and so we are not bound by canon law to attend Mass, particularly so where it is difficult or impossible to do so, as is sadly the case in so many dioceses around the world. But if we can go, shouldn’t we?

If we are well enough, if we are resuming our normal lives in so many other ways, doesn’t it feel essential that we return to the pews to worship our Jesus as He asks to be worshiped, in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass?

And doesn’t it seem important to take up space in this way so that other people don’t forget that public worship is, for Catholic Christians, very much an essential service?

And doesn’t it seem important so that we, ourselves, do not forget this?

Again, if you are frail or elderly or have any other reason to be exceedingly cautious in striving to avoid this virus, this is not a adjournment to go out and put your life on the line, so to speak. But if one has resumed in person shopping in stores, visiting doctor’s offices for in person appointments, getting hair cuts and buying bookshelves and potted plants and catching up over drinks or coffee…and if all these things can be done safely and prudently, then shouldn’t we be beating down the doors of our local parishes and begging our priests for the Blessed Sacrament?

Because that is one thing we can’t replicate, remotely.

Or one Person, rather. Jesus comes to us through His word and He is present to us in our vocations, and of course He is omnipotent because, hello, God. But there is only one place we can receive Him physically. Touch Him. Consume Him. Be transformed and renewed by Him.

And it can’t happen over Skype.

Our culture desperately needs to know this. The world needs to know it. Jesus doesn’t make telehealth visits. He spits in the mud and touches ears and pulls hands into bloodied wounds and He rests on our tongues and in our bellies. And worship of Him is not predominately a private, personal affair best kept behind closed doors and safely tucked away in private residences.

The ultimate form of public worship – participation in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – is really one of the most fundamentally corporate thing we can do as human beings. It’s the most massively public experience imaginable. Because not only are we united in fellowship with our surrounding congregation, during Holy Mass, we are united with the entire communion of saints, with heaven itself.

And it is essential. Don’t ever let anyone convince you otherwise.

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I know I should be gently nudging our days back towards something resembling structure, particularly structure of the academic variety, but with the prospect of a very, very different sort of back to school season looming over our collective heads, I haven’t had the heart to start implementing much in the way of housebreaking these fine and feral children of mine.

Actually, I take that back. I’ve started keeping a random pair of shoes that fit most of my 2 to 6 crowd, so when someone inevitably “forgets” to finish getting dressed and we have to go into, I don’t know, a gas station or someplace exotic like that, I can point to that sad, scuffed pair of hot pink Cat and Jack velcro specials and say “I don’t care if you’re a boy and very offended right now, you’re also barefoot and vaguely sticky. Shoes. on.”

It’s called standards. Look it up.

Speaking of standards, and getting back into the academic swing of things (<— flawless transition line if ever I’ve seen one), my friend Cassie created a life preserver to toss to other parents, forged in the grueling fires of corona lockdown and born of the necessity to have something – literally anything – that doesn’t involve a glowing screen to help us weather “the new normal” (gentle barfing sounds) amidst the new boutique elementary schools we’re all running in our homes.

I don’t know about you, but I’m crossing my fingers it’s business as usual come late August, but also planning for Apocalypse Then, if, you know, it comes.

Enter “SchoolBoxCo: it’s a hands on, turnkey subscription box filled with standards based, interactive lessons in four core content areas each month: English/Language Arts, Science, Engineering, and Math.

We got to preview the 2nd/3rd grade box for September, and it was descended upon by my preK, kindergartener, 3rd grader and the tag along 2-year-old as soon as it hit our porch. The soon to be fourth grader didn’t get in on the fun only because the box looked like a carcass from the elephant graveyard scene in the Lion King by the time Luke was finished “sampling” the materials, but otherwise I found it spot on age appropriate and engaging for kids between ages 5-9.

What’s funny (to me, at least) is that Cassie taught elementary school for nearly a decade and still found Lockdown: Not the Movie to be almost as traumatic as I did, who has spent nary a second even playing a teacher on tv.

We both agree that the “distance learning” thing we experienced – nay, endured – was closer to penance than progress, experientially. The battle of the screens was real, and it was intense. Especially for younger kids whose learning is so vitally hands on (or at least, it should be) the switch to laptops and zoom calls and pre recorded video content was a rough ride, and we saw attention spans and tempers fray all around.

I’ll be tucking SchoolBoxCo into my back pocket for the Fall, come what may, because having a fun and custom designed “treat” (but secretly, learning!) to dangle as a big fat carrot if they’ll just please, please finish their spelling words sounds like a good game plan. And even if we don’t end up back in domestic quarantine (please, baby Jesus), it’ll be great to have a non-netflix prize to hand out after school when the boredom bugs bite.

You can order your own SchoolBoxCo box here, and learn a little more about it here.

P.s. Between now and July 31st, new subscribers can save 15% off their first order. (Not sponsored! Just think it’s great.)

In what attention I’ve paid to recent news cycles, the dominant theme – the one thing that we still collectively agree on, one might be forgiven for thinking – is anger.

Anger with causes both righteous and dubious. Anger that is justified and anger that is rooted in pure, spleen-venting malice. Anger that fuels the engines of progress and anger that feeds the devouring flames of destruction and death.

The cancel culture, sprung up from that same fetid, fertile soil which grew the court of public opinion to a stature such that it towers over any actual ruling court of law, demands a curious new form of instantaneous retribution, the parameters of which are set by the prevailing mob.

Disagree with someone on social media? Cancelled. And perhaps shadow banned or reported, just for good measure.

Disagree with someone at work? Cancelled. HR complaint lobbied, perhaps accompanied by a laundry list of past shortcomings and errors over the previous years.

Disagree with someone in your family or circle of friends? Cancelled, disinvited from Thanksgiving – which itself will probably have to be cancelled, this year, too, for being so inappropriate, come on – and removed from the group text.

As I stood brushing my teeth last night, contemplating the ideological extremism draping our nation and, one could be forgiven for thinking so – a large swath of the developed world – in a frenzy of hatred: of self, of neighbor, and of nation, I couldn’t help but think that so much of the violence in the streets, in the media we consume and produce, and in our own hearts is rooted in a near-total illiteracy in the art of forgiveness.

If humanity has lost the God-given ability to extend and receive forgiveness, whether because it was not modeled for us by our parents or because vengeance and cruelty holds a dark, primal attraction (and acting on primal urges has been having a bit of a moment, these past few decades, has it not?), well, it comes as little surprise.

A culture that glorifies violence, specializes in vitriol, rewards greed, and pardons excesses of every kind is not a culture that is quick to extend forgiveness.

And in fact, I’m beginning to wonder whether we’ve purged the concept from our collective memory entirely.

It wouldn’t surprise me.

Alexander Pope knew it, and I’ll repeat the phrase for my fellow public school graduates out there who may or may not have had to google its origin as I just did: to err is human, to forgive, divine.

In other words, humans mess up, and it is not in our nature to let each another forget it. Ever.

But it is in His nature. And to the degree that we are emulating His nature, accessing the graces flowing from the sacrament of our Baptism which make us like Him, we can take on His nature, we can resist the primal urges of our created and fallen human nature, and we can overcome our baser instincts to be like God, in whose image and likeness we are created, and by whose Blood we are redeemed.

But can a culture which has deemed God nonessential, relegated Him to the rapidly reorganizing annuls of history, or forgotten about Him in an unconscious sort of benign neglect, still access the divine super power of forgiveness?

I guess we’ll find out.

Meanwhile, I’m planning to double down on a practice my spiritual director introduced me to months and months ago, maybe even a whole year ago.

I remember thinking he was kind of over the top at the time but now? Woo boy. He told me this: that he was doubling down on his own adherence to the laws of decency, of common courtesy, of basic civility.

He said “as society becomes more and more lawless, I will become more law-abiding. I will follow the posted speed limit. I will bite my tongue when I am inconvenienced. I will turn the other cheek when I am angry, and will respond to wrath with peace. And I struggle with wrath! In short, I will allow the present conditions to call me further and further back to Christian charity, so as charity erodes from the public square, I can be a beacon of charity that remains.”

Because he possess a similar temperament to mine and is quick to rage against injustice and mightily tempted to leap into action, I found his proposition at once horrifying and almost hypnotically attractive.

It turns out, also, to be difficult as hell to put into practice.

But I’ve found that like every other pursuit of virtue, it’s the small, incremental, and almost totally invisible actions, choices, and habits which make up the whole of what we actually are.

I have been very, very angry these past few months. I am no sweet tempered saint. My blood boils hot and it boils quick, and I have no trouble at all stepping right up to confrontations that smarter people might let pass.

But meekness? Gentleness? Biting my tongue until it’s nearly bleeding? Those, my friends, are heroic acts of the will in my book. And as I look around at our wounded, suffering, seething culture, I know that I am not alone in this.

In the words of that truly banal tune (and probably misattributed prayer) of St. Frances, Lord, make me a channel of your peace.

If enough channels open up, an ocean of mercy awaits, and it can quench the fires of a world that is burning to the ground in hatred.

And if not an ocean? Well, even a ragged stream winding its way through parched ground is a welcome sight to a fellow traveler.

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Lately, prayer has been um, more ejaculatory in nature. Less journaling and contented silence spent in the adoration chapel, more shouting the Lord’s name decidedly not in vain and hoping that the kids understand mommy isn’t swearing, she really is calling for help.

Sometimes that’s all I’ve got.

Particularly during the darkest days of this past spring, it was all I could manage to think the name of Jesus.

I began listening to a really wonderful podcast back in April; there was a specific series Adam did that really struck me to the core. It involves re-imagining of the Psalms as a sort of template for the human experience: highs and lows, joys and pain, suffering and consolation.

I started propping a Bible up in the window over my kitchen sink, cracked open to the Psalms, and slowly but surely I’d read my way through one Psalm or even just one paragraph of one Psalm day by day. It became a sort of touchstone during what amounted to, some days, the only peaceful moments in an otherwise prolonged sequence of cry, feed, discipline, scrub, wipe, repeat.

It also took me from reading the Bible, um, never, to reading the Bible every day.

Maybe you’re not in a season of life where doing a Bible study is possible, or even attractive. Maybe you’re not even able to read the daily Mass readings for each day (raises chagrined hand) or crack open a Magnificat.

But I bet you have to wash dishes. I bet, strung together over the course of a day, you stand at your sink for at least 20 minutes or more.

This has honestly changed my life: I’m reading the Psalms slowly, savoring the poetry contained within, marveling that the writer is sometimes living out my same story, thousands and thousands of years ago. I’m widening my eyes (or sometimes crying) when the perfect sentence or phrase pops out for the exact thing I’m dealing with at that exact moment.

I think this is what is meant by the Word of God being a living thing, not just dead words on a page. Scripture is interactive in a way the digital world and even the actual world can never be, because is is continually renewing itself, proving itself Real, in the life of every single human being in existence.

Wild.

Anyway, highly recommend it, and highly recommend you warn your spouse/roommate not to “tidy up” and move your poor watermarked Bible from its perch. I pointed out to Dave that a wrinkled and water stained Bible was preferable to a really pristine edition that hasn’t been read in a while, and he had to concur.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

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I can’t count how many times over these past few months I’ve stopped and rolled my eyes (and maybe shaken my metaphorical fists a tiny little bit) heavenward and asked God “WHAT ARE YOU DOING? SERIOUSLY, WHAT?WHY??”

I don’t know about you, but when I filled out my little year at a glance worksheet for 2020 back in January, I for suuuuure wasn’t banking on a global pandemic, economic turmoil, or civil unrest featuring quite so prominently. But here we are.

Hasn’t it felt a bit, lately, like something along the lines “LIFE ON EARTH: THE SERIES FINALE?” I mean, were I netflix, I might think about picking up those rights.

It’s a funny tension that we live out as Christians even under the best and most peaceful of circumstances, though, isn’t it? The lines that blithely trip the my tongue during periods of contented tranquility and normalcy, phases like “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” and “we believe that you will come again to judge the living and the dead” take on a little more weight when things feel…weightier.

And that is precisely how life has felt. Weighty. Impossibly heavy for weeks and months on end, not just internally in my heart and in our home, but in the larger world outside our four walls.

I can speak of it now with the tiniest bit of hindsight because once again, that almost miraculous 6 month mark has come and gone and even though we’ve done this six times over now, it still feels like it won’t, and it isn’t, and it may not this time…until it does. (And while I can’t in good conscience recommend a government mandated lockdown as the ultimate sleep training method, I have to say, Ben has been a great little sleeper. Funny what never leaving the house will do for a guy’s circadian rhythms.)

In hindsight? It seems to me very clear that God wanted – and wants – our attention. I’ve had this line from CS Lewis echoing in my head for months now, “…pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

If I retain nothing else from this season of intimate and secluded suffering, may it be a new wakefulness, an attentiveness to the Holy Spirit who was too frequently drowned out by activity and that low hum of static which accompanies ordinary life.

In this wakeful state, I’ve been able to hear the Lord more clearly, (Not like, literally, because tbh I swear too frequently and probably relay a tad overmuch on chemical stimulants for that level of sanctity.) and He has impressed a few action items on my heart. I want this for you, I seem to sense Him saying. Maybe He is saying something similar to you?

First, no more social media. I deleted my personal social media accounts a couple of months ago, and I haven’t looked back. Yes, I’ve done this before. Yes, it’s terribly addictive, and yes, I will probably look very stupid a year from now if/when I crawl back to Instagram like a dog returns to its vomit etcetera etcetera, but I feel so incredibly convicted that the very nature of the game: the algorithm, the endless dopamine feedback loop, the social positioning and posturing and signaling, is not just benign wasted time, but is actually bad for us.

Here is a personal example: when I am on Instagram, I literally see life differently. I’ll squint at a funny or terrible toddler episode through a critical eye and consider “is this good content?” before snapping a picture and freezing a moment and sort of stepping back from the present moment like I’m the creative director or producer of my own life.

When I am the producer of my own life, I am not actually in it, moment by moment. I’m thinking of getting the shot, of capturing the quote. I’m thinking of you guys, of an audience out there, waiting and willing to consume the funny or thoughtful or entertaining content I’m blasting out into the world. And there isn’t anything wrong with that at first glance, right? Except that, for me, it’s constant. It’s not like a well-planned and carefully policed time limit where I indulge in harmless good fun for a set number of minutes a day and then put the phone away, it’s constant.

Is it possible to become addicted to hearing your own voice? That’s how instagram makes me feel.

Whether or not that resonates with you (or whether you now correctly presume that I am a selfish megalomaniac irl) I think we need to be very careful with social media and how much of our time and attention we trade away. Yes, there were days and days on end where I didn’t see another adult human besides Dave, and it felt like a lifeline. But it was a lifeline not tethered to solid ground, not quite capable of pulling someone all the way to safely.

So maybe … reevaluate? Take it to quiet prayer and ask God if He has anything to say about it. I do think He wants more of us, literally, than we realize. I’m not sure at what point I figured this out, but prayer seems to me to be proof that God’s primary love language is quality time.

Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t managed to restructure my life to resemble anything like the lives of the saints: I am for sure not spending hours or even many minutes strung together in prayer each day, but in the midst of all the chaos of this season, I slammed right up against the brick wall of reality: well, what else are we actually here for?

It’s crazy to me that I think of God as someone I fit into my schedule instead of the other way around. Again, I think this is my dictatorial tendencies bleeding through, but in the off-broadway production of Jenny, the Life, I’ve got God cast in more of a supporting role.

And I think that’s what’s wrong. With my parenting, with my marriage, with my friendships, with my hard days…hell, with the whole world.

So resolution number 2: don’t relegate God to a supporting role in the epic biopic that is your life.

And finally? I think this one is really critical, but I feel super strongly that God wants us to say the Rosary every single day, ideally as a family. Breaking news, right? It’s only like, the one thing the Blessed Mother asks of us in every single approved Marian apparition ever. But sure, I have better things to do with my time eye roll eye roll.

I was certain of it in those terrifying days late in March when nobody really knew what the h was going to happen and every level of society ground to a shuddering halt, and for a while with daddy working from home and a rosy, novel shine on “homeschooling,” or “school at home” or “remote learning” or whatever the hell it was we were actually trying to do, we did it. We prayed a family rosary every day, and it was amazing.

And then April turned to May and May to June and life began to grind back into motion and guess what? Guess what falls most readily off the schedule when things get busy and interesting again? Yeah, I’m shocked, too.

We’re managing a morning decade, me and the kids, which ostensibly Dave and I finish before we go to bed, but…Anyway, begin again, right? Right!

We’re also blessed beyond all understanding here in Littleton, Colorado, and I have my pick of 5 daily Masses within a 9 minute drive of my house and do I make it to one every day?

Don’t bother, I’ll punch myself.

Yes, it’s like letting food go to waste when your neighbor down the street is starving to death. Yes, I need to try harder. We’re up to twice a week for daily Mass, me and the 6-pack, and they are … not good at it. It’s almost like they spent 12 weeks locked in the house and forgot how to sit still, wear pants, or interact with other human beings. But, corragio, we forge ahead.

It helps to get emails like this one after a particularly, um, robust showing at noon Mass:

(Attention pastors: this is how you build life-long brand loyalty. I may re-read this email to myself every Sunday for the next 18 or so years. Also, yes, my kids and 7 of their cousins were all in attendance at this Mass together. Looks like Utopia on paper. Felt – and sounded – more like Purgatory.)

So yes, I need to continue to drag myself and my loud and lovely children before the Lord. Because He wants to spend time with us, with me, and because what do I honestly have to do in my day that is more important? There are no lessons or team sports, no social functions, the swimming pools are still locked down for goodness sake. So ask me again in a week or two, how’s that daily Mass habit working out, Jenny?

I think The Lord is up to something big though, guys. And I think He wants our attention. I think He needs our attention, in fact, to bring it about.

Do we have ears to hear it? That part, I’m seeing, is absolutely up to us. When the still, small voice of God is drowned out in the cacophony of daily living, in good times and in bad, well, that’s on us. That’s on me.

He is speaking. And I want to listen more carefully. And I think things are only going to get more interesting.

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Hi, hey, how are you guys? Long time no, um, write. Right, so anyway, picking up in a less emotionally fragile state at the moment. Maybe we can just, you know, pretend the past 4 months or so was a little foretaste of Purgatory.

Yes?

Yes.

SO, if you’ve been reading me for a while now, you’re probably aware that I have a … fraught relationship with the internet. On the one hand, I make my living writing words, and many of them live online in perpetuity, published into the digital ether. On the other hand, I am a human being with a finite capacity for intake. As the platforms have multiplied and proliferated, and along with them the expectation of being available and online at all times, I’ve found myself further and further convinced that this – by this I mean the constant online-ness and 24/7 availability – isn’t actually what I was made to do.

But writing? Yes, and I miss it. I miss the uncomplicated days of putting a bunch of babies down for synched up naptime and pounding out an essay length blogpost on something weighing heavily (or lightly!) on my heart. 

And I miss sharing it with you guys, my readers. Not followers. Not fans. Not an amorphous mass of silent double tapping strangers. 

An essential component of being writer means having an intended audience for whom one is writing. When I sit down to write, I write for a person. I write for an audience whom I can imagine and envision and with whom I am trying to communicate. 

And I really think that’s my lane. I don’t think people read me because they want detailed info on my shopping habits or the brands of clothes I buy for my kids (Neighborhood hand me downs meets Old Navy couture, if you’re wondering. Affiliate link nowhere.), but because they are genuinely interested in something I’m diving a little deeper into, whether it’s faith or motherhood or morality or human relationships or, okay, yes, sometimes boxed wine reviews.

So if you’d like to see more of that? And perhaps some monthly live-streams where we can delve a little deeper into a particular theme I’m addressing, whether it’s a particularly challenging teaching of the Church or some hard truth about marriage? Well, I’m here for it. 

There’s just one minor detail. Synchronized nap times dried up ages ago, and maybe you’ve heard the one about the global pandemic that knocked out all kids activities and educational programming? 

Still, for a robust hourly rate, one can still source a babysitter for half a dozen children. They need to be … relaxed.

And that’s where you come in. If you’d like for me to keep writing, may I humbly invite you to become a monthly patron of this digital space? I can’t promise anything fancy like a private podcast or a monthly newsletter where I wax eloquent about eloquent things, but I will keep blogging. And given the number of new subscribers to ye olde rss feed (and the number of “where’d you go?” texts and emails in my inboxes) during the past 3 months of almost complete radio silence on my end, I do suspect there are a few of you out there. 

So from me to you, may I say this? I miss you too.

I miss writing every week. I miss weeks where I’d write multiple days in a row. I miss sharing ideas and creating thoughtful content that takes longer than 5 minutes to read (and to write!)

And yes, there are longer term projects in the works. Projects that may eventually end up being available on Amazon, if you’re picking up what I’m laying down. But, again, primary caregiver to a small army and all that.

Consider this your formal and slightly tacky invitation to become an official patron of Mama Needs Coffee, and keep the caffeine flowing.

And if you can’t, or you’d rather not? Please know that what I write on this blog will always be free for anyone and everyone to read. I’ve had enough messages from catechists and pastors and parents over the years to be convicted to my core that God is using this little corner of the internet for good, and I never want the cost of entry to deter someone from finding something useful, encouraging, and inspiring. 

But if you do find yourself with the cost of a cup (or a pound!) of coffee to spare each month? 

Well, just know that it will get funneled directly back into a thriving local economy of transient summer college students and intrepid homeschoolers with flexible weekday schedules and a strong stomach for diaper changes. And maybe on the occasional cup of coffee, too.

Cheers,

Jenny 

P.s. so grateful for every one of your prayers, emails, kind messages (and did I mention prayers???) over these past couple months. Things are better. I can totally see how getting off of social media when I did was God’s profound and perfectly-timed mercy for me. Even if it took, you know, a minor/majorish mental health crisis to precipitate the move.

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