large family, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, motherhood, NFP, pregnancy, Pro Life

The wonder of the last baby

August 28, 2020

I hold my breath, waiting for another cry to pierce the midnight air. Ten, twenty seconds pass. Maybe I imagined it. Then a wail goes up like a fire engine and I push myself up and swing my legs over the side, toes groping the floor beside the bed for the shoes I must wear at all times, even for quick walks across the room. The lingering scars and injuries from his increasingly distant pregnancy and birth are daily reminders of the price his entrance extracted.

His cries halt the moment I crack the door and are replaced with urgent grunts and snuffles; I lift him from his crib, 24 pounds of warm, wriggling baby pinching at strained back muscles, and I know I would pay it again, a hundredfold.

He wakes relatively infrequently now at nearly 9 months old, and I don’t begrudge him these occasional nocturnal intrusions. The earplugs I’ve forgotten how to sleep without mean that Daddy hears him first, most nights. I mix a quick bottle using tap water from the bathroom sink and the can of formula we stash below it, shaking my head at the younger version of myself whose every mothering instinct would recoil from all of the above: formula, tap water, bottle.

We settle into the battered glider I bought off of Craigslist for his big sister’s nursery years ago, and we rock as he sucks greedily at his midnight snack. He looks up at me laughing, hitting my chest and swiping for pieces of hair loosened from my bedraggled ponytail. I shift my weight in the rocker, hips pinching from the too-snug grip of the chair arms. In the aftermath of his difficult pregnancy and birth and a stretch of time in the hospital for RSV last winter, I found myself heavier than I had ever been in my life. The weight is coming off slowly, incrementally. I calculate the rate and realize he might be potty training by the time my body returns to a more recognizable state, but then, I’ll be 40, so is it even reasonable to expect a return to familiar territory? Is he really our last baby, NFP being what it is? I’ve felt sure of it before, but the months and years have a way of smoothing things over – or fogging the short term memory up.

He laughs and swats his bottle away, ready to make flirty eye contact and pinch my face with his fat baby hands. It’s 2 in the morning and he wants to chat, and I can’t find it in me to resent it, to worry over the lost hours of sleep and the specter of the next day. The hardest baby I ever met is snoring lightly in the room down the hall, all 8 and a half increasingly gangly years of him stretched out on a top bunk littered with nerf darts and lego creations. I pull this latest edition closer, understanding now that I’ll blink and he’ll be starting kindergarten. The days are long, so long. Some of them longer than others. The first years of motherhood stretched out eternally, a string of endless days of filling and wiping and washing and zipping. These middle years have begun to speed up, almost imperceptibly at first, almost as if I’d selected 1.5x speed on a podcast or voice message without realizing it, looking up in surprise when the episode, the month, the year is over.

The last month of his pregnancy was riddled with doctor’s appointments and ultrasounds and hours ticked by on the monitor strip, watching his heart rate dance up and down, wondering and worrying. His birth was peaceful and easy, until it wasn’t. My c-section scar healed “beautifully,” the doctor said, but the scarred fascia and muscle beneath is still bunched up painfully. My brute of a 5-year-old slams his head into my waist at precisely the right level to leave me breathless with pain at least once a day. My feet ache from plantar fasciitis and my forearms tingle with residual carpal tunnel.

I throw away all my old jeans, even the pairs I scorned in the months after the previous baby’s birth, vowing I’d “never get that big” again. I laugh and remind myself that this season, too, with all its physical discomfort and disarray, will one day be a wistful memory triggered by pictures of my younger self, and I will come across them stop and marvel that I was once so young, so unwrinkled, so beautiful.

It is morning now and the baby is on the floor, slapping the ground and giggling, now falling with a resounding thump as his 110% percentile head bounces on the carpet. He starts to cry but stops as soon as I scoop him up, shifting him to my left hip and fixing a second coffee with my free hand. He rests his slightly sticky cheek against mine for a moment and I squeeze him closer. I don’t love him more than I loved the first five babies, but I like him more. I know now how fleeting babyhood is, how soon I’ll be wrinkling my nose and collecting his wet swimsuits and dirty socks from the bathroom floor. By the time he is eating as much as his brothers do, my hips will probably fit in jeans again.

Another sibling sidles up to us, reaches for the him, pleading that he is needed for an important game they’ve concocted in the back yard with the neighbor kids. I surrender him with a cautionary admonition to “hold him with an arm around the waist and under his booty, not by the neck.” His underaged minder staggers off under the weight of him, carrying him away into the orbit of sibling love that only tangentially involves me, and mostly at meal times.

And I smile, glad we had one more.

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About Me, body image, motherhood, pregnancy

Some thoughts on body image during pregnancy and postpartum, and the ego-shattering expense of motherhood

December 29, 2019

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

Seriously, though, it was the worst of times for about the last 3 weeks of Benedict’s pregnancy, which seemed to stretch interminably out over major holidays and multiple trips to labor and delivery for additional monitoring. Dave can vouch for my extra special attitude during this season of anticipation and antacids.

At some point during the final week, the fortieth, much to my astonishment, I begged God specifically that I’d not have to face another Sunday Mass “still pregnant” because a. our church is being renovated and the basement is hot as hell and b. I wanted to crawl violently out of my own skin while doing the extreme walk of shame back and forth to the restrooms escorting yet another weak bladdered offspring and offering the entire parish an eyeful courtesy of the single remaining body con maternity dress that still “fit.”

Mostly I just wept, sat up at night timing contractions, and cycled through every heartburn medication on the market in a desperate bid to emancipate my esophagus from the fires of hell. And that’s pretty much how all of November went.

(N.B. He has lots of hair! Enough to braid, practically. Old wives tale confirmed.)

About 5 days before Ben was finally born, I finally hit the right combination of google terms and discovered a secret subculture of kindred spirits: other women, most of them multiparous, also plagued by unrelenting and utterly unproductive contractions night after night for days and weeks and even months of pregnancy.

Weeping with relief, I initiated myself honorarily into the sisterhood of the “irritable uterus,” devouring post after post of other women’s stories about contractions lasting 10, 12, 15 minutes at a time for hours on end, their uteri locked into rock solid basketballs of tension pretty much 24/7.

It’s not Braxton Hicks, it’s not prodromal labor, and it’s not actual, baby-bringing contractions. The answer is d., Alex, none of the above. And the reason for it is … elusive. Age? Fatigue? Number of prior pregnancies? Physical condition? Probably a little bit of everything. At any rate, it was a long November and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. If for no other reason then we’re definitely on a procreative hiatus and even the most broken night of newborn sleep beats the hell that was my uterus versus somnolence.

November 2019 was not my best work.

I would be remiss, however, to fail to share the silver lining of Ben’s pregnancy. Other than the sheer physical hell of that final 4 weeks, I honestly felt good. Maybe not physically so good (raises eyebrow at total spent on physical therapy copays and massage) but emotionally and spiritually, pretty great.

This pregnancy was healing and transformative in a lot of ways. I was able to receive more of God’s grace for my vocation as a wife and mother, was able to see His version of myself more and more clearly, and most shockingly of all, for me, was able to let go of (or at least table, more on that in a future post) a lot of my deeply held and longstanding issues with food and weight and body image.

And guess what? I didn’t magically have a celebrity pregnancy because I stopped obsessing about food and how I looked. I still got huge, I still felt pretty awful by the end, and I am still struggling now, 4 weeks postpartum, with the fallout of crafting and carrying another human being under my heart for the better part of a year. My kids are simultaneously asking “so mom, when will you be skinny again?” and also “can we have another baby pretty soon?” so it’s pretty much every woman’s dream.

Here’s the thing though: for much of the past 10 months, I was at peace.

I was at peace with having a sixth baby (which felt – and still feels – shocking. Not the half dozen children so much as the being at peace part); I was (mostly) at peace with what was happening to and through my body, and I was at peace with how I looked.

None of that should have been possible. All of that is miraculous. I can only credit a well-timed introduction to the concept of intuitive eating, working with a wonderfully gifted RD, and God’s perfect timing.

Pregnancy has always been pretty terrible for me in the self image department. Blame the decades of disordered eating and the short stature, but I’m not a cute pregnant woman, and I don’t “wear it well.” The baby wears me. I am all baby and also the baby is all over, and we are both of us huge.

I was cradling Ben at his 2 week well child visit waiting for my turn to place him on the scale and the mom ahead of me looked back at us, eyes popping out of her head and cried out “another one? Again? So soon?!” I looked around and realized she was talking to me and politely asked “what?” knowing full well what was about to happen…

“How old is your baby?” She jabbed a finger towards Ben’s carseat, her eyes widening when I replied “12 days;”

“And you’re pregnant again???”

I stared at her with dead, sleep deprived eyes for a full count of 3 before calmly replying that no, I’d just had the baby 12 days ago. Her eyes goggled at my Kate Middleton-esque midsection and her cheeks had the decency to flush slightly as she stumbled over her words and I brushed past her to hoist my 10 pound baby onto the scale.

I wish I could say I was more incensed over the profound failure of our educational system to transmit the most basic fundamentals of human biology to a seemingly card carrying adult female, but alas, my pride was wounded deeper than my intellect. Though I do still wish I’d been able to slip her a little something to explain how ovulation works. Maybe just like 2 pages ripped from a high school biology textbook?

I’m not bitter.

I was talking with a friend earlier this week about how the newfound confidence I discovered during pregnancy is starting to wear thin as the hormones continue to come down and the baby weight…doesn’t. She pointed out I was less than a month postpartum, Christmas was only just happened, and perhaps I hadn’t been sleeping much? Not exactly a recipe for weight loss and wellness.

Here’s the thing, though. All that new peace and acceptance I found while Benny was on the inside? Now I get to fight to keep it. Now I get to experience the freedom and the terror of having the training wheels kicked off, of being at peace in my body just as it is, no baby on board to shield me from my own expectations or those of the world.

Because the acceptance and freedom I found during Ben’s pregnancy were a little bit conditional, it turns out, and dependent upon my “producing” something, having some sort of excuse for my body being less than perfect.

Now that I’m not growing a baby? Or nursing one? It is so, so tempting to get sucked back into the belief that my body is only as good as what it can do, as how it looks. As how well it performs.

I’m not actively “trying” to lose weight right now. I’m not doing a 30 day cleanse or a 4 week reset or trying a new diet of any kind. I’m not signing up for boot camp or pledging a certain number of trips to the gym per week for 2020. I’m not readily identifiable as an athlete of any kind, at the moment. And ironically, I’m not able to fit into any of my old clothes that don’t involve lots and lots of spandex, so living in running tights though I may be, no actual running is taking place.

For now, for the moment, in this uncomfortable in between season of sweet baby cuddles and scary parenting meltdowns and the whole-house post holiday hangover, I’m just me. I’m just a tired mom with a new baby and gross stains on most of her shirts and I don’t look or feel very cute, but I am happy.

And I’m starting to think I might be on track to find deeper, truer happiness than what I was hoping to find via the keto brick road or whatever other previous promises I’d clung to about finally being satisfied “when”.

As I sat down with my (dusty) laptop to write what this turned out to be, I happened to lock eyes with my bridal self in a wedding picture that hangs near my desk.

“I used to look like that. Look how beautiful I was.” I indulged the self pity for about 4 seconds and then shook myself with the rueful knowledge that however beautiful 26 year old Jenny had been, 37 year old Jenny would still look different. That there was no way I’d still be that girl in the picture, 6 kids or no.

And I recognize that I could easily, easily spend the rest of my 30s, my 40s, and beyond chasing that elusive image of who I used to be. Of trying to freeze time and keep her eternally present, if only from certain angles or through Instagram filters.

Or I could eat the pizza. Have the baby. Drink the beer.

This is less an “I give up” manifesto than an “I surrender” explanation. And in this season of lots and lots and lots of surrender (cough cough emergency c section + team no sleep) I’m figuring out that happiness lies less in what the mirror is reflecting back to me and more in what I’m able to reflect out to the world.

(And hey, lest we end this on an overly pious note, it must be said that I had the temerity to scream “what is wrong with you???” at a 7 year old child today for the heinous crime of crushing chocolate sprinkles into the dining room table with the back of a spoon, so please know that I am an all around ideal and uniformly excellent mother who is all done with spiritual growth and development, and I definitely did not get caught earlier in the day by the 9 year old muttering “good God I CANNOT WAIT for school to start” while bent over rehoming clean laundry found strewn across a closet floor.)

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Culture of Death, Evangelization, Marriage, NFP, planned parenthood, pregnancy, Pro Life, scandal, Sex, sin

NFP for clergy

November 7, 2018

That title, right? I know. But, yes. Seriously.

After one of the talks I gave in Nashville last month, a group of nice young Catholic guys who were, I surmised, discerning the priesthood, came up to chat afterwards and to say thanks for being on campus. We got to talking and one of them in particular was a little taken aback when I enthusiastically expressed my hope for every priest and seminarian in formation to get a basic education from a trained professional (or an experienced married couple) in at least one method of Natural Family Planning.

“But why,” he wondered (sincerely and earnestly, I must say) “would a priest need to know about that…stuff?”

I smiled and started to tick off the reasons one one hand. “Well, for instructing engaged couples, for assistance when giving spiritual direction, for time in the confessional, of course, so that their homilies will be challenging and well informed, so they can walk alongside couples in their suffering and in their joy. Just to name a couple off the top of my head.”

His eyes widened as he nodded his head, “I guess I hadn’t thought about all the ways it could be helpful.”

For parish priests especially, the bulk of their flock will likely be made up of people who are married or will be eventually, so it would serve them well to be prepared to speak on something that is as foundational to marriage as sex and procreation.

Many, many priests with whom I have corresponded or spoken with over the years have reported having little to no formation or formal instruction, if any, on NFP. Is it any wonder that so few Catholics practice NFP when so few pastors have ever spoken of it from the pulpit, let alone in the confessional?

I don’t mean to imply that there are no good priests striving to teach and preach what the Church does on love and marriage. There are! But we need more of them.

Tomorrow morning I will have the privilege of speaking to a classroom full of seminarians, future priests all, God willing. I’ve been invited by their sexual ethics professor to talk about the “lived experience” of NFP, specifically:

“It would be great if you could:

– Offer your testimony.

– Show the different sufferings and difficulties of periodical abstinence/ with the Fertility Awareness Based Methods (NFP) for a couple. Don’t be afraid of making it real. That will be a great preparation for the seminarians.

– Touch on the just causes (psychological, physiological, financial, social) that may make NFP necessary. Why it is good that we (the Church) don’t have a concrete list of situations.

– The blessings of NFP – Even if it is very difficult, it is the only way of living with true love… How NFP has helped you or other couples in their communication… And therefore, why NFP is not “Catholic” contraception.

– Different methods of NFP and contraception.

– Of course your personal experience with couples opposed to NFP

– Experience about how contraception is different…”

So, you know, just the basics. Gulp. I figure I’ll at least have time to touch on what our own experience with NFP has been.

The elevator pitch version goes something like this: get engaged, sit inattentively through CCL (sympto thermal method) classes as part of marriage prep, disregard all charting with joyful abandon and conceive honeymoon-ish baby. Welcome another baby 18 months after that. Nervously learn Creighton (mucus based method) bc postpartum NFP is hell on wheels. Move overseas, change diet and lifestyle radically, conceive “method failure*” Creighton baby. Move back home. Conceive second Creighton baby, this one with some intentionality. Learn Marquette (monitor based method). Successfully postpone for 18 months. Conceive “operator error” Marquette baby. And here we are now, almost 9 years into marriage and coming up on baby number five’s 1st birthday next month.

In sum? We’ve learned – and trial and errored – our way through 3 different NFP methods at this point. Marquette is the clear winner for us, for my physiological makeup, for our circumstances, etc. etc. etc. But we had to keep trying, keep making adjustments, and most of all, keep seeking out help and additional education.

(*None of our children were “unplanned,” or “mistakes.” We are fully aware that the nature of sex is ordered to procreation. That even if all the signs and symptoms point to infertility during a particular time in my cycle, each time we enter into the marital act we do so prepared to welcome new life.)

Fertility awareness based methods of family planning are not for the faint of heart. They aren’t “Catholic contraception,” though as with any human endeavor in this earthly life, they can be used in selfishness.

But they are inherently morally sound.

They require communication, selflessness, patience, sacrifice, continuing education and, yes, chastity. Chastity which is the universal call of every Christian. Chastity which our Church so desperately needs a remedial course in. Chastity which frees us rather than oppressing us, opening up the cramped enclosures of our naturally selfish hearts to be more receptive to the other, to be able to see more clearly the value and dignity of the beloved.

It ain’t easy, that’s for sure. And if you grew up in a family where contraception was the norm, went to public school where the Planned Parenthood sponsored health curriculum was taught from 5th grade on, started taking hormonal birth control yourself as a young teen with “skin problems,” it can sometimes feel like living in an actual alternate reality.

I always like to point out when discussing the current situation of the Catholic Church in America that our pastors were raised in the same cultural milieu we were. If you’ve never heard of NFP until you’re a twenty-something doing mandatory engagement courses in one of the dioceses that actually require NFP instruction, what makes you think that your 60-something pastor who went to Holy Mountain of Mediocrity for seminary in the seventies has ever learned anything about it himself?

We may be starting from a broad baseline of ignorance, in many ways. And it’s good to acknowledge that, yes, the Church has largely failed to transmit this teaching. The Church in the sense of we, the laity, have largely failed to receive this teaching. And the ambient culture has certainly rejected this teaching.

So we have work to do. Let us begin to make progress in supporting the couples who take up the cross of monitoring and consenting to the reality which is their actual fertility, whether it be high, low, or non-existent.

Let us ask more from our pastors, from our bishops, and from the men in formation to become our future priests. Let us take it upon ourselves, as laywomen and men, to continue to delve into the teachings of the rich Christian tradition of marriage and to pray for greater understanding and greater unity with our spouses and with our Lord.

Fathers, we need to hear from the pulpit, in the confessional, and in passing conversation that you understand what the Church teaches about married love, and why.

That you have yourself a basic working knowledge of NFP. That you have resources for your flock, and if you don’t, that you are working to provide them: things like subsidized instruction, free meeting space on church grounds, regular invitations to certified method instructors (multiple methods, please!) to come in and give weekend seminars and postpartum refresher courses for your parishioners. Qualified and orthodox teachers to share the wisdom of Theology of the Body and a basic knowledge of Fertility Awareness with your teens and young adults. Low or no cost babysitting (safe environment certified care providers, of course) for couples who need to learn a new method, or who never learned any kind of NFP at all.

Being a priest in 2018 is, I imagine, no easy row to hoe. We know you’re overworked and underpaid and stretched too thin, and we are profoundly grateful for your yes to Jesus.

We also wish there were more of you.

Teaching Catholic parents about openness to life and the ongoing art of discernment of family size could be a real, practical way to address the vocations shortage in the long haul. It’s no panacea, but it would certainly help.

And hey, fathers? We’re rooting for you.

About Me, keto, large family, Living Humanae Vitae, motherhood, pregnancy, self care

Postpartum recovery: PT, hormones and keto

October 8, 2018

“9 months on, 9 months off” they say. Well, some of them say, anyway. I’ve found with each subsequent bebe those goalposts creep back a month or two, so let’s just say as Zelie rounds the bases to month 9 ex utero, I’m still looking and feeling much of the effort it took to bring Zelie earthside.

However, some vast improvements have been made. I want to record them here for posterity’s sake, and because in many ways I felt like I was charting my own course for recovery and healing, belonging as I do now to a rather exclusive club of moms of many.

Even my doctor, a nice pro-life guy who delivers plenty of babies a year and is comfortable around an NFP chart, was relatively clueless about what I could do to speed the healing process, to correct hormone imbalances, and to restore my body to a state of reasonable functionality.

What I’m about to share with you is my experience alone, and I’m not a doctor or any kind of medical professional, so grain of pink himalayan salt and all, okay?

First things first. I’ve had a contentious relationship with food since forever. If I could turn back the clock, I would have sworn off the Chic-fil-a milkshakes and the bags and bags of white cheddar popcorn I consumed this time around. I think Zelie is at least 30% popcorn cheese on a cellular level. Her pregnancy was a rough ride emotionally. We were living in a friend’s house for the first 6 months of it and commuting an hour each way to school. In my spare time I enjoyed meeting up with our realtor after a 55 mile drive with a carful of kids and looking at dozens and dozens of houses which for various reasons did not work out. 70, to be precise. So yes, I did a bit – a lot – of stress eating.

Having always gained massively with each baby, I figured weight was weight, whether or not I was working out and eating well. This premise proved faulty, as I would discover in the harsh hospital lighting on day one post delivery. I was at my all time highest weight, and had delivered a modest 7 pound peanut to show for it.

I waited the requisite 6 weeks postpartum and then started watching my calories, cutting back on sugar (more on this later), and began a swimming regimen that had me accumulating 400-500 laps a week. I kept this up until about 5 months postpartum at which point I had lost an additional (wait for it) … 3 pounds.

If you do the math you’ll realize that 7 pounds plus 3 pounds is 10, and having racked up something north of 60, I was…not doing great. I brought my concerns to one doctor who suggested that perhaps I was eating more than 1200 calories and just didn’t realize it, because “apps aren’t all that accurate” and suggested I could up my gym regimen to 7 days a week instead of 5.

Long story short, but I eventually ended up at a women’s health care clinic that specializes in whole woman care. They did some targeted hormone testing and identified a deficiency that was making it almost impossible to lose weight, and which also contributed to anxiety and depression.

I also found an incredible physical therapist who specializes in postpartum recovery and pelvic floor injuries, just from reaching out to my circle of local friends. As frustrating as it was to have to hunt and peck for the right doctors and the right diagnoses, I feel exceptionally blessed to live in a big city with a wide array of healthcare options, and to have good health insurance to be able to defray some of the cost. I do wish some of the less “mainstream” therapies were covered, but I’d be remiss to not acknowledge my privilege. Do I wish postpartum PT and hormone assessments were standard of care for new moms? You betcha. But for now I’m just glad to have found some good help!

The last piece of the puzzle for me has been diet. A lifelong yo-yo dieter, I’ve tried all the things. Atkins. South Beach. Weight Watchers. Whole 30. LightWeigh. Plant based. Low fat. You name it, I’ve done it. I had a pretty good handle on things by my mid 20s. I was exercising regularly, eating moderately, and had, well, the metabolism of a twentysomething who’d never been pregnant. I could kinda eat whatever I wanted, and I did. After spending ages 15-23 deep in the throes of an eating disorder, it was a relief to have a less fractious relationship with food.

Once we got married and the babies started coming fast and furious, I remember being shocked by how swiftly and with what vengence the eating-disordered thinking returned once the scale started moving north as I grew our babies.

Nobody had warned me how triggering it would be to see my weight skyrocket over those 9 months of pregnancy, and my provider at the time kind of waved my fears aside and encouraged me that eating intuitively and moderately was good for me and good for baby. If I could do things over again, I’d escort my 27 year-old-self straight to therapy as soon as that second pink line appeared, but hindsight is 20/20, and as it turns out, I’ve learned and grown tremendously not in spite of motherhood, but through it.

I can honestly say that today, at age 35, and still significantly heavier than I’d like to be, I am more at peace with my body than I have been since childhood.

I can see the goodness of my childrens’ existence, acknowledging the sacrificial love that motherhood requires (in whatever form it may take for each particular woman), and the devastating unhappiness so many women feel when confronted with the disparity between their actual bodies and the idealized image the culture projects on us.

For some of us, the sacrifice is excess weight we never wanted to gain and struggle mightily to lose. For others it might be a flaring autoimmune disease, an injury, a tragic loss, the burden of infertility. Motherhood is costly, at any rate, and none of us can predict the cost ahead of time.

But it’s so worth it. And as I’m discovering after this magical fifth baby, God heals on His timeline, not ours. As I find myself making peace with my body at long last and in spite of its many imperfections, I marvel at the worldly illogic of it, that having a larger than usual family would result in better body image and deep healing. In God’s economy, the numbers work differently.

But back to the recovery process. If you follow me on Instagram you know that the biggest win for me the past few months has been discovering and implementing the Keto diet. Again with the disclaimers, but I’m not a healthcare professional, so do your own research, etc.

In a nutshell, Keto is almost an inversion of the FDA food pyramid. It’s fat focused with moderate protein and low carbs. Under 20 grams per day is my goal, and most days I end up around there. It’s no grains, no sugar, and no starchy veggies or sugary fruits. It is lots of eggs, spinach, broccoli, asparagus, lettuce, avocados, bacon, sausage, steak, chicken, fish, shrimp, full fat dairy, and a little bit of nuts. If that sounds restrictive, I suppose it was for the first week, but when I looked at the scale and found 4 pounds missing after months of stubborn inactivity, I was hooked.

The best part for me has been the weight loss (22 pounds in 9 weeks so far) but the surprisingly close second has been a radical reorientation of my relationship with food. I no longer crave specific foods, nor do I struggle much resisting “off limits” foods. For a girl who loves to eat, this feels like a miracle.

And I do still enjoy food! But now I enjoy food that makes me feel good before, during, and after eating it. I have seen a 180 degree turnaround in my energy levels between meals. Hanger is gone. I feel satiated and content for long stretches between eating, and have even been able to incorporate a little bit of intermittent fasting for the last month. For someone who used to be faint and weak from hunger on Ash Wednesdays and Good Fridays, this feels huge.

Do I think everyone should eat this way? I really don’t know. I think it is a healthy and helpful way to eat for people who struggle with hormone issues and blood sugar and certain mental health conditions, but I also know people who feel great on the Whole 30, which is decidedly higher carb.

I have a working theory that perhaps there is no one “right” way to eat, and that there are all kinds of makes and models of human beings out there. Some run on gas and others on diesel. I feel like I’ve found my perfect fuel, and that makes me feel great. I don’t force my kids to eat this way – I’ll often make rice or beans or gf pasta to serve alongside whatever fat + protein + veggie we’re having for dinner, but overall it has tremendously cut sugar from our diets. And we’re seeing some great immune system benefits to that.

If you are interested in anything I’ve shared here today, feel free to message me privately over at IG or drop a comment or an email. I’m an open e-book, as always. And if you’re a mama trying to get your groove back after baby, give yourself plenty of time and grace. You’re doing God’s work, and He will not abandon you in it.

design + style, Fixer Upper, house reno, pregnancy, self care

Painted linoleum floors, postpartum PT, and learning to sit down

July 24, 2018

It has been tough to string more than couple of words together the past few weeks. The days are going by quickly and I’m shocked that we’re edging in on August, but around 3 pm every weekday, time seems to stand still, and there aren’t enough Otter Pops in the universe to hasten the coming of bedtime.

I am looking forward to a new school year, but my inner teenager shudders at store end-caps already filled with college ruled spiral notebooks and crayons. I wish for a carefree end to summer for my children’s sake, and I wish for a return to normalcy in schedule for my sake.

Both older boys have asked me in all earnestness at some point during the summer to homeschool them, and then reneged on the request when I explained that school at home would still, in fact, involve schoolwork.

I did consider the possibility for about 2 hours; I even got so far as to text a couple homeschooling friends, asking what their discernment process had been. Then Dave went out of town for the weekend and all thoughts of teaching my little darlings math and Latin were ejected from my brain by 48 hours of solo parenting.

We’ve had a good summer, and I’m glad we’ve been able to spend so much time together. I’m also glad I am not responsible for their mathematical development.

I’m trying to implement some better time management strategies to help realize some of my perennially-deferred goals. I’ve been waking up earlier than the kids most mornings and forcing myself to produce for 30 minutes or 1,000 words – whichever comes first. I’ve also strapped the trusty old FitBit back on to hit that 10k step count each day. All of the swimming and early morning gym-haunting has yet to result in any visible results to my postpartum return of form, but I do feel better when I move.

Oddly enough, my body seems to be responding better to gentler workouts. I think I am probably so depleted from back to back pregnancies that strenuous workouts were further taxing an already stressed system.

Gentle walking and stretching seem to be what my body craves, so I’m trying to honor that. The physical therapist I’ve been working with has indefinitely ruled out running, which I’m going to be honest, is actually a huge relief! It’s great to just let go of that part of my identity, for now, and embrace what is rather than lamenting for what once was. Not by slipping into depressed inactivity or anything, but by really embracing a period of physical recovery and rebuilding. And by spending a small fortune on vitamin and mineral supplements.

I’ve come to realize that I usually exert a lot of time and energy in the postpartum period beating myself up – mentally and physically – straining to “undo” something that can’t actually be undone. Whether from sheer exhaustion or just experienced maturity, I haven’t been able to cow my body into submission this time around. When I hit the wall, instead of redoubling my efforts and crashing through it, I curled up at the base of it and took a nap.

It has been pretty eye opening to be honest with myself about what my body needs, and about the tremendous personal cost of having a baby. I don’t “bounce back” physically, though when I was younger I could grit my teeth and sort of fake it.

At 35 I don’t seem to have that same resilience. But I do have a little more wisdom and lots more experience, which seems to me to be a fair tradeoff. So when the baby sleeps, I sit on the couch with a toddler and read a book, or stare vacantly into space, or sometimes do some dinner prep.

Mostly though, I’m sitting down a lot (always with intentional and improved posture!).

Stretching. Going for walks around the block with the bigger kids and not gritting my teeth in frustration that I can’t run the laps we’re making. Spending a decent amount of time and money going to therapy, and just generally investing in myself. It feels decadent. It also feels almost disastrously overdue. It feels a bit like I’m backing away from the edge of an abyss, step by faltering step, and reclaiming some ground that was (necessarily) ceded during the chaos of the past two years of home buying and selling and baby growing.

The real sign that I’m recovering and starting to get my head above water? My urge to paint has been restored.

Last weekend when Dave was gone I pulled the trigger on a long-desired flooring update and painted the linoleum in the kitchen and downstairs bathroom. I’d put the kids to bed and then creep downstairs each evening to tape and paint and after about 4 nights worth of effort (and 4 overnight drying periods) I’m just about finished with the whole project.

For around $60 bucks our lower level looks like a different house altogether, and I no longer feel like I’m peering bleakly into the mists of time while mopping spaghetti sauce off of hideous yellow linoleum. Time will tell how sturdy the “porch and floor” paint proves to be in an indoor application, but anything is better than our before pictures.

I’ll try to whip up a full tutorial one of these days for all my curious Instagram friends, but it was really one of the easier DIYs I’ve attempted.

For now, feast your eyes on the improvement:

What is the rest of your summer shaping up to look like? Are you eager for back to school time, or relishing in the last month of summer? My kids go back relatively late, as I understand, not resuming full classes until August 27th. I’ll have a second grader, a first grader, and a three day a week pre-K this year, which means I’ll be backing 13! lunches! a week! Come to think of it, summer can go ahead and stick around for a couple more weeks…

Bioethics, Catholics Do What?, Contraception, guest post, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, NFP, Parenting, pregnancy, Sex

Med school pregnancies and IUDs {living humanae vitae part 6}

June 25, 2018

This installment of the Living Humanae Vitae series is near and dear to my own desperate-to-be-in-control heart, and it represents a beautiful surrender to an awareness of God’s faithfulness and the sometimes nonsensical economy of grace. I can relate to the “this makes no sense-ness” of a seemingly unwise or imprudent action in the eyes of the world, only to have it end up being one of the preeminent blessings in your life.

K is a medical student, a future doctor, a mother, and a faithful Catholic. This is her story:

I am third-year medical school student and many of my classmates think I’m a bit nutty for being open to life in this season of life.

My husband works full-time and I’m a full-time student. I had our second child between my first and second year. Our third child is coming early next year.

Medical school is full of many driven and intelligent people. It’s only by the Lord’s grace (and my husband’s gentle reminders) that my drive to achieve and compete is tempered by keeping priorities in line.

For me, this means having open hands and an open heart and trust in the Lord’s faithfulness when I choose not to contracept. As human beings, we are both body and soul. As such, I know that the decision to insert an IUD has spiritual ramifications. Decision to obliterate a man’s vas deferens or to sever a woman’s normal and healthy fallopian tubes echo deeply into our souls.

We shut ourselves off from the Lord when we say “I am the master of my own fertility.”

Many of my classmates cling to their IUDs as if those little devices held the key to salvation itself.

The Lord gave me the tremendous gift of good catechesis, and as such I choose to live according to the wisdom of the Church and trust in the Lord’s providence in regard to my fertility. And even then, the effectiveness statistics between artificial birth control and NFP aren’t much different.

Now, one can absolutely live in death-gripping fear while using NFP. I was there during the postpartum period after our first baby was born and we were heading off to Virginia for medical school in a few months. I knew that if I got pregnant by accident and then was due in the middle of school year, that was it, and I just wasn’t going to be able to finish. I’ve never been so tempted by contraception. It was knowledge and trust in Magisterium of the church and my husband’s strength that held me back.

But I’ve learned time and again that the Lord is faithful. I know He doesn’t want me to live in fear or distrust. But I have to choose not to live there, which took effort at first. I became pregnant with our second baby in September of my first year, just when we were hoping to. We were trying and praying for a perfectly-timed baby. The only summer you get off during medical school is the first one. The break was only 6 weeks. We had one single cycle to make that narrow window. We tried for it.

In any given cycle, if everything is perfect- the egg is good, the sperm is good, the mucus is good and the passageway is clear, there’s only a 20-25 percent chance that you’ll conceive. With a precise due date in mind there’s always the two-week window on either side of the goal that is variable just due to cycle variation.

Emma was conceived during that cycle, and was due the day of my last final. She was born a few days after that – with enough time for me to catch up on some errands and house cleaning before she arrived. My OB-GYN didn’t think I would make it. All of my other babies were born before their due dates. But Emma patiently waited for the semester’s end to make her debut into the world. That’s really the story of her personality: she was one of the most serene and patient people in our house when she was an infant. She even slept through the night starting at two months.

I know some people’s stories with NFP are different, that babies come unexpectedly and are untimed, even despite diligent effort. Our story is not that story. Baby number three was timed for February so that my husband could have a birthday month buddy, so that baby didn’t arrive during study time for step two, so I wouldn’t have to haul a newborn around for audition rotations 4th year, and so that I wouldn’t be so pregnant over Christmas that we couldn’t travel to Minnesota.

The Lord blessed me with beautifully obvious fertility signs, as if my body just screams at me each month “I’M FERTILE!”

I believe it’s because the Lord always gives us what we need. He called me to medical school, He’s getting me through it, and He knows we needed precise timing for children. Time and again I come back to the passage from Romans 8:28 “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, according to his purpose.”

I try to live every day as if “this is exactly what the Lord has given to me, and I have everything I need.” There have been many nights before exams where children were awake or sick and I had to stay up with them. Those ended up being some of my highest exam scores. There were weekends before Monday morning tests that everyone else seemed to be madly studying and I felt like the Lord wanted to me take a day off to be with my family. It didn’t make sense at the time, but my studying was enough and I did well.

When I’m faithful to the Lord, rather than making a little god out good grades and studying, I do better in school. He has been so faithful and merciful, and I thank Him and praise him daily for beautiful little souls He has given me the privilege of bringing into the world.

Catholics Do What?, Contraception, guest post, large family, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, motherhood, NFP, pregnancy, Sex, Suffering

Alleged miracles, hyper fertility, and the Cross {Living Humanae Vitae Part 5}

June 18, 2018

You may already be familiar with Bonnie Engstrom’s story from her blog, “A Knotted Life.” If you are, then you know that her son, James Fulton, was stillborn. His allegedly miraculous return to life – through the intercession of Venerable Fulton Sheen, is the official alleged miracle for the beatification of that good bishop. Bonnie is a wonderful storyteller, a talented writer, and a mother of extraordinary courage. I’m privileged to have her here today to share her story as part of the ongoing Living Humanae Vitae series.

My husband and I entered our marriage knowing the Church’s teachings on sex, marriage, and family life. We were totally on board and completely gung-ho to use NFP to have all sorts of great sex while we spaced our four to five children every two to three years. This is what we were promised, people, and this is what we were going to get!

Our first baby was eagerly anticipated, but was sadly lost early in pregnancy. Our firstborn was an NFP success story; she was born a year after my miscarriage. Ecological breastfeeding isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and so our second baby came along twenty-one months later.

Twelve months and two weeks later our third baby was born, because it turns out you can get pregnant before your period returns. There were a variety of complications at his birth so he stayed in the NICU for seven weeks and spent the next year of his life with multiple therapy and doctor appointments each week. If you were to guess that having a two year old, a one year old, and a baby with medical needs is incredibly difficult, you would be correct. We abstained for nine months that first year of his life, knowing that we needed a break and having lost all faith in my ability to chart when my body was under so much stress.

But at the end of that first year my husband came home from work and said to me, “I want more children. Today I was looking at the pictures on our desk. Our wedding picture, you and Ell, Ell and Ben, and then the one of the three kids where Ell and Ben are holding JF.” He moved his hand horizontally, pausing it with each picture he described. “And I just knew I wanted another baby.”

Less than a year later we had another girl. Her labor and delivery were hard on me – emotionally I was reliving my son’s traumatic birth and physically I was birthing an eleven and a half pound baby with no medication. It took her a minute to breathe after her birth and my husband and I were at our wits’ end. With two traumatic births, four wonderful kids in our home, and one baby entrusted to Jesus we felt like we had done our bit. No more kids, we were done.

Yet it turns out that, all rookie mistakes aside, my husband and I are on the hyper end of the fertility spectrum and another surprise pregnancy came. Our son was born when his older siblings were 1, 2, 3, and 5.

But now we were really, truly done, done, done!

But we weren’t done with Natural Family Planning. Heavens no! NFP isn’t something to be used during the times when it would be okay to get pregnant even if I don’t really want to. NFP is what we’re supposed to use when we cannot get pregnant or do not want to, and sometimes, that means lots and lots of abstinence. This time we went a year without having sex. I won’t sugar coat it: it was hard and at times very hard. Were we tempted to use contraception? Probably. (I don’t remember!) But what does it profit a couple to gain all the sex they could want in their happy marriage but lose their souls?

I might have been afraid to have another kid but I was more afraid of eternal damnation. I know that will sound harsh and maybe even dumb to many of you, and so be it. I know what the Catholic Church teaches, why the Church teaches it, and I agree with Holy Mother Church – which is why I am still a Catholic. I appreciate and respect the consistency of the Church’s teachings on sex and marriage and I believe that if I am going to expect single people, unmarried couples, gay couples, the divorced, priests, and religious to follow Church teaching in their state of life then I should hold myself to the same standard. With those convictions firm, we found the postpartum time to be about faithfulness, trust, and obedience as an act of love.

After twelve months of abstinence we successfully used NFP for another eight months before I had another unplanned pregnancy.

By now I was scared and I was angry. I loved and enjoyed my kids but I was mad at every woman who could space her children with just breastfeeding or could afford things like new minivans, babysitters, and pizza delivery.

I resented women who talked about their contraception and sterilizations and I was embarrassed by how relieved they were when it was me pregnant and not them. And I lived in the daily fear that even if I did not miscarry our seventh child as I did our first, there was a good chance, based on two previous traumatic deliveries, that this baby would not survive birth.

Additionally, I was worried. My husband did not want any more kids, as the stress of providing for five small children and a wife on a public school teacher’s salary had been building. We had finally come to a good spot – a place where we had some wiggle room in our budget and I was on a medication that made a world of difference in my PPD – and we didn’t want to leave it.

I felt like NFP was a joke, and that I had let my husband down.

To make things even worse, I learned of an online forum that discussed how horrible it was that I, personally, was pregnant again. While it may be possible that some of the women were well-intentioned, it was a horrible sucker punch to read through a series of strangers talk about what a wreck my life was, and how it was too bad that there was a new little life growing in my womb.

Regardless of how anyone felt, my seventh baby was born and we love him to the moon and back. I’m so grateful to God for adding him to our family. Babies are gifts – only and always – even the ones we hadn’t planned for.

And of course now, after those rough nine months and a c-section, we were finally D O N E.

Except ten months later I had another unplanned pregnancy. It was another instance of my nursing and hyper fertility combining with my “best” efforts at charting, but this time as soon as I saw the positive pregnancy test I didn’t cry or worry. I beamed. I thanked God, I touched my tiny womb, and told my tiny baby how much I loved her. I was nervous to tell my husband – so nervous I laughed while telling him – but he smiled too. And we laughed for joy together. We laughed through progesterone shots in the first trimester and we laughed in the operating room when the doctor held up a beautiful, healthy baby girl. She is one this June and every day with her has been a gift and a joy, and we are so grateful.

Our family is bigger than most and smaller than some.

Using natural family planning has not always been easy, but I am grateful for this tool which first and foremost requires a trust in God and His goodness. We had seven kids in nine years and it has been hard at times, but Jesus has asked me to take up my cross and follow Him, promising me that the burden would be light.

I have good kids, a husband who loves his family, and a home filled with laughter and love. God is faithful and generous. Thanks be to God.

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, guest post, large family, Living Humanae Vitae, Marriage, motherhood, NFP, pregnancy, Suffering

Suffering, surrender, and seven boys: {Living Humanae Vitae part 2}

May 21, 2018

I’m honored to introduce you to these next contributions to the Humanae Vitae series – their story is both extraordinary and unusual, and has the potential to open a dialogue about a rarely-discussed aspect of NFP; namely, that NFP is optional.

Not optional as in “one of a variety of options for managing your fertility,” (as Catholics we believe that contraception is immoral – see CCC 239) but optional as in “there is no compulsion to practice NFP at all.”

In fact, some couples choose to place their fertility entirely in the hands of Providence and live out a radical openness to life. I’d like to introduce you to one such couple today.

When Morgan first contacted me about contributing to this series I was blown away, not because her story was “too intense,” as she told me many people have found it, but because it reminded me a bit of Sts. Zelie and Louis Martin. (Morgan disclosed that both she and her husband only ever wanted to enter religious life, but found that God was calling them to something else entirely.)

This is their story. Their story won’t be everybody’s story, and that’s okay. NFP is a beautiful discipline that, when used for right reasons in the right way, is completely in line with the Church’s teaching. I am immensely grateful to be able to avail myself of it. We are free to make discernments using NFP, and we are free to accept the gift of children coming as they may, according to our discernment of God’s call for us. Because every couple is unique, family stories can unfold in very different ways. This is a story, though, that gave me a lot to think about.

———–

My husband Joseph and I met while we were freshman at the University of Notre Dame and were married after our junior year. We knew from the start that NFP was just not for us and that we wanted to welcome children as they came.

Our oldest son, Thomas, was born right after our graduation at the end of our senior year. Our next son, John Patrick, was born a year and a half later, and our third son, Andrew, was born a year after that.

Andrew was born very sick, but no doctor was able to diagnose him. He relied on feeding tubes, had developmental delays, would turn blue with breathing trouble, and was the fussiest baby I had ever encountered. With three boys in three years and our closest family members a 10-hour drive away, we were lost and completely stressed out.

So many nights were spent holding a screaming baby that was turning blue while we would meditate together on the suffering of our Lord. Never have I felt closer to Our Lady of Sorrows than I did those nights at home or in the Pediatric ICU.

When Andrew was one, we found out we were expecting baby number four. Even though our life was seemingly filled to the brim with chaos, it never even crossed our minds to avoid a pregnancy, nor did we ever think to be afraid of welcoming more little souls into our family.

Boy number four, Philip, was born healthy. When he was six months old we found out we were pregnant with number five. Right before our fifth child was born, Andrew took a turn for the worse and was once again admitted into the ICU. The following week our fifth son, James, was born even sicker than Andrew, and two days after that Thomas, our eldest, lost the ability to walk.

In a span of 10 days we had one child in the ICU, a baby who was born with the expectation of needing life support within days, and now suddenly our oldest son was found to have a mass in the marrow of his femur.

James and Andrew ended up both being fed by feeding tubes, needing breathing assistance, and taking more medications than I can possibly remember.

Thomas ended up not having cancer, but still has to has scans every so often to check his leg. I always thought I would be in a convent being called to prayer by bells. Instead, I found myself cloistered with infants and being called to prayer by screams, alarming feeding pumps, machines alerting me that a child has stopped breathing, or nightly seizures.

I was not spending my days adoring Our Lord in the Eucharist, but I did and do get the beautiful chance to serve Him in these children and their many needs!

For the first time in our marriage, I told Joseph that maybe we should learn NFP and try to avoid getting pregnant just until I got the hang of taking care of two kids with severe medical needs, homeschooling, and life in general. We weren’t totally at peace with the thought of NFP,but decided we would go ahead and learn.

By that time James was seven months old, and right after we decided to learn NFP we found out baby number six was on the way.

In a way, another pregnancy was a relief. The idea of using NFP did not bring us peace at all, and surrendering to the will of God will always bring peace. At the same time, I was terrified that this baby would also be sick.

I wasn’t sure if I could handle everything, and I knew putting the kids in school was not an option because Andrew and James were just too susceptible to even the most minor things. We’ve had ambulance rides and ICU stays for the common cold, ear infections, and runny noses, etc; school and the germs that it brings was simply not an option for us.

Matthew was born healthy in the midst of so much chaos. James and Andrew had nearly 20 hospital trips that year, and it was during that year that we were given some hard news: no doctor in the world had ever seen the disease that the boys have, and therefore there was no treatment, no cure,and no research.

I distinctly remember getting that news in our front yard on the phone. The first thing I did was call my husband, and the next thing I did was put a frantic call in to our beloved pediatrician.

The pediatrician gave me words that I so needed to hear at that moment and would come to really shape our outlook. He told me that Our Lord is doing a beautiful thing in asking us to trust Him over and over again. What a gift that no one in this world can help us; we can do nothing but rely on the Divine Healer.

His words have become something that we have meditated on over and over again.

What does it really mean to trust in God and hand over our family to Him?

What does it look like to radically surrender completely to God?

Well, right now it means that baby number seven is on the way.

That is seven boys in eight years. We haven’t prayed for a healthy baby, even though we know there is a chance this baby will be sick. The only thing we have been praying for is that the will of God be done, and that we are open to all of His gifts and graces. God is so incredibly generous in His giving,if only we allow ourselves to receive them.

Our story would be different if there were financial concerns, health problems for one of the adults, or an inflexible work schedule. However, with our lives right now, the only way we have found that we can respond to our call for holiness and openness to life is to set aside our fears and give a “Fiat”.

Our children might not live as long as most, and they certainly take more care than most other children, but they have the same beautiful immortal souls and are made in the image of God.

Their lives are worth the sacrifice no matter how long or short they are— how can we not say yes to that?

For our family, being open to life means also being open to pain, suffering, and to death; but, really, it means that for everyone, just in different ways.

I asked Joseph if he had any input for our story and he said, “Well holiness requires a magnanimous soul. That is all we are doing, trying to give as generously as the God who gives to us.”Every day the Prayer of Generosity is prayed in our house; may God give all of us the grace to be generous to each other, our children, and to God Himself!

“Dearest Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve, to give and not count the cost, to fight and not heed the wounds, to toil and not seek for rest, to labor and not ask for reward save that of knowing I am doing your will” – St Ignatius

Catholic Spirituality, large family, Marriage, motherhood, pregnancy, self care, Theology of the Body

“His body, your body”

April 17, 2018

About a month ago I was talking with a priest friend on the phone, sharing some difficulties about this present season of life with a whole lotta babies and a really wrecked body. Wrecked not only in the sense of “I don’t like the way I look” (though, sure, there is that) but in the sense of “everything hurts when I walk down the stairs, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to run comfortably across a parking lot again, let alone a mile.”

Getting old is hell. But it sure beats the alternative! And I’m not really that old yet, at 35. I remind myself of this when I see a haggard specter of my former self peering back at me in the mirror pre coffee most mornings, startling at the stranger with the same colored eyes. It’s more the mileage, not the manufacturing date, at least in my case.

One baby was hard work. Two babies was nuts! (Hardest transition by far, from one to two. If you can push past that point you’ll be golden; you’re never in the position of doubling your workload again. Unless, I guess, twins?) Three was like, nbd we got this down. Four gave me a little pause for the first couple months. And five? Wrecked. Beleaguered. Losing my keys in the car door, putting my phone in the fridge, and still carrying around a good 40 extra pounds at almost 4 months postpartum.

Worth it, though. Worth it, worth it, worth it.

And yet still really, really hard.

It’s hard to lose yourself for the sake someone(s) you love, no matter what that looks like for you. For some people it will take the form of caring for a sick or dying parent or spouse. For others it could be a more literal application, like sharing a kidney or physically shielding someone from a deadly blow. For parents it often looks like death by a thousand night wakings. A slow trickle of self denial and stress that can carve away at solid rock as surely – albeit more slowly – as a raging river.

I was telling my friend, Fr. J, that the most difficult time for me by far in terms of how I’m feeling about myself is the 30 minutes before Sunday Mass once I’ve gotten the kids dressed (with lots of help from Dave) and I’m frantically trying on option after too-tight option, the discard pile rising on my closet floor along with my blood pressure. One Sunday, probably 7 weeks or so after little Z was born, this phenomenon came to a vicious head as I stared bleakly into the bathroom mirror, rejected outfit combos strewn about my feet.

I hate you. I seethed silently at my reflection. And then I jumped, physically startled by the vitriol of my self talk. Out loud I had the wherewithal (grace is real, y’all) to say out loud, “Jesus, that wasn’t from you. Help me. Show me how you see me.” and immediately the image of His battered body hanging on the cross sprang to mind.

This is how I see your body, dear one. A sacrifice of love.

I was floored. And, I wish I could add, also completely and irrevocably healed of my subpar self image. But … work in progress.

But it sure did help to reframe things that morning.

I shared this little experience with Fr. and he was quiet for a moment. A longish moment, actually, during which time I suspected – correctly – that he was praying. When he did speak again, it was to share the following beautiful image with me.

“Jesus is showing me His body in the Eucharist, and then pointing to your body. He seems to be saying ‘His body, your body…they are connected. You cannot worship the one while despising the other.”‘

I have never heard that particular connection made between our bodies and His, no matter how much lip service I’ve given to the notion of being a “temple of the Holy Spirit.” I guess I’d always mentally categorized that one into the “do not defile with sin” category, neglecting to acknowledge that it’s not enough to just refrain from defiling the temple…one must also approach the temple itself with a rightly ordered sense of awe and reverence.

I don’t know about you, but I typically do not revere my body in any way, shape, or form; from the negative self talk I engage in to the poor food choices I make to the self deprecating humor I frequently employ to mask the shame of feeling not enough.

I was quiet as I mulled over Fr.’s image, recognizing for the first time that it must not only be displeasing to Jesus to hear my negative self talk, but it actually hurts Him.

Before we hung up, Fr. encouraged me to make it to Mass to receive Holy Communion as frequently as I could manage, kids and all. “The Lord has specific graces He wants to pour out for your healing and wholeness each time you receive the Eucharist. Go as often as you can.”

Guess how many times I’ve made it to daily Mass since that conversation?

Yeah, zero.

Sure, I have a super little baby still and a double shot of preschoolers at home, but helloooooo priorities. Clearly I have work to do in that area.

However, on the Sundays between now and then, I have meditated on Fr.’s words before and after Communion, asking the Lord to really double down on those healing graces in between swipes to keep a toddler off the baby’s carseat and pulling someone’s dress down over her underwear. Again.

I can’t say whether it’s “working” yet in the sense that I’m feeling like high-fiving myself when I look in the mirror now, but it is foremost in my mind now to at least try – for Jesus’ sake – to see myself and the sacrifices of motherhood through new eyes.

I think this is probably a lesson I’m going to be learning for the rest of my life, and while I’m not going to stop begging Him to remove the thorn, neither will I refuse any help He wants to offer in tending the wound.

It’s funny, because it was the obvious beauty and truth of this very concept that so attracted me to JPII’s Theology of the Body – that our bodies are good and holy and that they speak to us of God’s heart, of His plan for our eternal union with Him. And then I entered into my vocation and began the purgative process of actually living out the Theology of the Body and whoa, nelly, is it a little tougher to believe that a fluffy, saggy mom bod speaks a language of truth, goodness, and beauty nearly as well as the body of a single young twenty-something does.

His body, your body. Unbelievably difficult to accept. But if it’s true, it changes everything. Calls to mind this quote from St. Teresa of Avila:

“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

coffee clicks, current events, pregnancy

Coffee clicks: December 15th

December 15, 2017

Even though it’s the shortest possible Advent, liturgically speaking, I’m still kind of feeling like things are craaaaawling by. Christmas is 10 days away, which is so soon. But when I stop to think I might still be pregnant 10 days from now…. well, yeah.

At any rate, it’ll be a magical sort of progression of time between now and then for our family, baby or no. Today is Evie’s 4^th birthday, which she marked by coming downstairs at 3 am to snuggle while I was up being a pseudo-productive insomniac. We cuddled for a while before I convinced her that it was, in fact, still nighttime, as evidenced by the Christmas lights glowing merrily out the window.

Tonight we have the Christmas program at school, and then tomorrow, the absolute highlight of Advent 2017: STAR WARS. Also my birthday celebration with my parents, all my adult siblings + spouses. If I ever doubted God’s love for me, that silly notion was laid to rest when Disney bought Lucasfilm and started cranking out a brand spanking new iteration of everyone’s favorite space opera every December for the past 4 years. Hashtag very blessed.

Next week the kids have just a few days of school, culminating in a half day on the 21^st, my 35^th birthday and the official starting point of the “advanced maternal age” portion of this pregnancy. It’s also the day of my brother’s rehearsal dinner, with his wedding to follow on the 22^nd. Then it’s basically the best day of the year, Christmas Adam, a brief extra-liturgical pause solemnly observed in my family of origin by watching Home Alone and singing karaoke and maybe cigars (though not his year) and perhaps getting the tree totally decorated before a blur of long Masses and joyous celebration…

And so help me, if I am still pregnant come Boxing Day (which, despite the flurry of activity this week is still a distinct possibility) I don’t know what stamina or motivation I will have left.

So that’s what my Google calendar looks like for the rest of December. Whew.

I have some great links this week, starting with a story that is close to home and utterly heartwarming:

I temporarily scrapped another, lighter-hearted piece (forthcoming early next week) while pondering the occasion of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s feast day earlier this week. I remembered how much she had helped me through Genevieve’s delivery, now 4 years ago, and since then have been asking her intercession as this current resident’s exit date draws near:

Maybe you don’t know this about me (though after that disclosure towards the beginning, it’s a little more obvious) but I’m probably the biggest female Star Wars fan you’ve ever met who is simultaneously living a normal looking life (no cosplay or card games or weird conventions). But find yourself signed up for a Jedi trivia night at your local neighborhood pub and missing a 4^th teammmate? You’re gonna want to call me. Or maybe Bishop Conley, if I’m not available.

“But yea though ewok through the valley of the shadow of death, Bishop Conley feared no evil, and found a fisherman brave enough to take his group of friends to the island, because Han-YOLO.”

Great news out of Ohio for anyone who claims to care about the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. It always puzzles me that, on the whole, culture warriors and social justice activists aren’t more impassioned about the rights of people with Down Syndrome. Seems the polar opposite of progressive.

This piece is a long but essential read. My parents have been calling abortion a “sacrament” of the secularist religion since I can first remember talking about it around the dinner table, and Eberstadt’s piece magnificently distills the tenants and dogmas of this brave new religion into non-academic sized bites. (But boy, when I read heavy hitting pieces that go past 2,000 words, I sure am aware of how much the internet and social media have weakened/destroyed my attention span…)

“All of the expressions of animosity now aimed against Christianity by this new secularist faith share a common denominator. They are rooted in secularist dogma about the sexual revolution”

Finally, did you catch this short (unaffiliated) video about harnassing the power of Amazon Prime Now for good? I was full on weeping by the end. Praying Amazon execs see it and take note.

Do you follow CNA on Instagram? You want to. Also, even Popes have that one school picture that will follow them around for ever.

Happy (belated) ordination anniversary, Papa!

Happiest last week plus a day of Advent! It’s not too late to jump back on the horse if you’ve fallen slack in your preparations and add in a little sacrifice or penence here or there as the Christmas countdown ticks down. I like to try to turn off the Christmas music between now and the 24^th to kind of reset my brain in preparation for celebration, and that will be especially necessary this year as I’ve been a little, ah, lax in my generally temperate pre-Christmas indulgence in James Taylor. Also planning to try to offer up the somewhat interminable nights of prodromal labor which seem temporarily here to stay, so please, if you have specific prayer intentions, please share them and I’ll remmber you while I’m not sleeping from 2-5 am for the next few weeks…

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