Lent – Mama Needs Coffee

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, deliverance, Evangelization, Lent

Guide to making a great confession

February 26, 2019

Our eldest made his first confession last month, and I decided to avail myself of the opportunity to (finally) memorize my Act of Contrition. I figured at age 36 and with a moderate following on the internet of people coming to me to read about Catholic Things, I should perhaps be prepared to recite this basic prayer I’ve been saying at least a dozen times a year, on average, since childhood.

If you’ve spent any time in the confessional then you are perhaps acquainted with the existential terror that can fill one’s soul when the moment is drawing nigh: Fr. is winding down his “advice and accompany” section of the Sacrament and you’re about to go onstage, so to speak. With sweating palms your eyes dart right and then left, looking for the laminated card kept on hand, I suppose, for 8 year olds and people coming home after a couple decades away from the box. (Because surely everyone else has memorized this thing by now.)

Sometimes you find the card, and other times you maybe fumble through something fresh and original like “O my God I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee who are so good and I firmly intend to avoid the near occasion of sin and MY GOD JESUS WHO DIED ON THE CROSS HAVE MERCY ON ME.”

Now dripping with sweat and performance anxiety, you make eye contact with your bewildered confessor and smile uncomfortably trying to telegraph that you are, in fact, done now. And he may or may not stretch out that awkward pause trying to figure out if he just heard your act of contrition or some original spoken word poetry and then you get your penance and you’re done.

Anyway, as we worked alongside our school to prepare Joey for his first confession, I availed myself of the copied print out he brought home to memorize. Before he turned off his reading light each night we’d say it together, at first using the paper and eventually, sooner than I’d have guessed, reciting it on our own.

Who knew how quick it would go, memorizing it? Not I, who recited some garbled approximation of it with increasing panic during each confession of my adult life.

This experience got me to thinking, what other tweaks could I make to best avail myself of this precious Sacrament of healing?

1. Go frequently

I love going to Confession. That wasn’t always the case, but about 5 years ago, right around the time we moved back from Rome, I started going once a month. Not a huge increase in frequency, but enough that it became both easier to examine my conscience and recall my sins and also more comfortable – joyful, even – to make my confession.

According to canon law one is obliged to confess only once a year, and only mortal (grave matter, full knowledge of the gravity, and willful intent to commit) sin at that. Frequent confession is permitted and even, it seems to me, encouraged, in this section here:

Can. 988

1. A member of the Christian faithful is obliged to confess in kind and number all grave sins committed after baptism and not yet remitted directly through the keys of the Church nor acknowledged in individual confession, of which the person has knowledge after diligent examination of conscience.

2. It is recommended to the Christian faithful that they also confess venial sins.

If I’m confessing venial (not grave moral matter, not premeditated) sins, which comprise the bulk of my sins these days, thanks be to God, then the more frequently I confess, the more venial sins I unload – because I’m guessing I rack up a couple dozen a day. Or so. Maybe more on Mondays.

I have found that the more I practice examining my conscience, the more sensitive my conscience becomes, funny that.

I’m still not up to a regular, daily examination, though I would like to get there eventually. It helps to take more frequent inventory, though, and brings failures and acts of cruelty and anger to the forefront of my mind so I can file them away for next time. I want to compare it to going grocery shopping without being home to look in the fridge or pantry first. You have a general sense of what to put on the list, but it might surprise you to know how exactly how little milk is left in the fridge.

2. Find a regular confessor, or try to go to the same priest every time, if multiple options are available.

Having a regular priest with whom to practice this sacrament can be a tremendous source of spiritual progress. Maybe confession isn’t readily available in your area, and if so, you’re not alone. I firmly believe that the supply has to rise in response to the demand, and that if more Catholics start turning out for Confession, the parishes and dioceses will have to reform the availability to meet the need. If a line of 20 souls, or even 10, are routinely turned away over the course of a month of Saturday afternoons, perhaps it will occur to Father to extend access beyond that single 40 minute time slot. If it does not occur to him and if polite requests are not well received, perhaps you can communicate yourself best in a letter or an email, signed from all of his confession-desiring parishioners.

If all else fails you can always contact your bishop and respectfully (kindness goes a long way, too) inquire whether there might be a way to increase access to the sacrament in your diocese. It would be a tremendous motivation to (most) bishops to hear this from their flocks.

If you do have good access to the sacrament already, consider having a standing arrangement, either formally or informally, to confess to the same priest each time. Better yet if you can, make your confessor your spiritual director; to be able to receive this sacrament of healing in the context of spiritual direction is a tremendous gift.

3. Make it a (family) habit

In my research into other moms’ best practices for raising Catholic kids, many of them seem to be working from the same playbook. Have a regular day each month for family confessions, and make it opt-out rather than opt-in. Just assume your kids all need to go, as you do, every month, and make a regular appointment out of it.

Extra credit points for taking them for ice cream or hot chocolate afterwards to emphasize the sweet taste of forgiveness.

4. Write it down

We encouraged our son to do this for his second confession after he’d revealed that it was awfully hard to remember more than one sin. He especially liked the possibility of burning the paper afterwards, though I think we ended up just tearing it up and tossing it out.

It’s helpful to get things down on paper sometimes, and can be useful in looking for patterns and occasions of sin, etc. Having things listed out with dispassionate objectivity can really help dispel any shame or anxiety around saying the thing you’re dreading having to confess.

Spoiler alert: if he has been hearing confessions for even a month’s time, the priest has heard it all. Seriously, all. My friend told me just 5 weeks after his ordination he had already heard every possible existing sin confessed at least once in his second month of priesthood.

You won’t shock him, trust me on this one.

5. Find a good examination of conscience

(and commit yourself to making a frank and regular assessment)

This is the best examination of conscience I’ve found, and it helped me to identify some bad habits that, frankly, I was failing see as sin and therefore failing to confess. For example, I’d seen my habit of working on Sundays as more of a minor shortcoming because #reallife.

Now I’m recognizing more and more that when I seek out big house projects to work on, take big shopping trips beyond what is absolutely necessary, and toss in load after load of not-technically-essential laundry on Sundays, I’m failing to set aside the Lord’s day both to worship the Lord and to enter into His rest, trusting that He will make up the difference. I realized that no, I didn’t trust God to make up for lost time on Sundays. That maybe other people could take that day to worship and relax and recharge, but that I could have used an 8th day of the week, frankly, and so used Sunday more or less as a second Saturday + Mass tacked on.

Finally, maybe this one is obvious, but invite the Holy Spirit to come into your heart and illuminate your sins when you are preparing to confess. It is to Him that we are seeking to be reconciled, and it is Him to whom are hearts are most fully known.

And it is also to Him whom we confess.

Father is the open phone line, the email server, the wifi router to heaven. He is there to receive contrition and to transmit grace and forgiveness and freedom, in return. He is not the source but the conduit of grace. And his is not the power to absolve, but Christ’s alone, entrusted through the ministry of the Church to His faithful servants, His priests.

It bears pointing out that even bad priests can hear confessions, and that even wicked men can say the Mass and confect the Eucharist and, in the name of Christ, absolve us of our sins. It is a profound mystery that Christ would entrust His treasury of graces to fallen human beings, and would extend these saving graces to us through other broken, fallible human beings equally in need of salvation.

Lent will be here in a little more than a week. Perhaps the Lord is calling you to make time for confession this year, perhaps for the first time in many years. A priest gave us his number one tip for confession at a retreat I attended last weekend: just chill out. And come.

He is waiting for you.

About Me, blessed is she, Family Life, house reno, Lent, social media, Trim Healthy Mama

Lately, in random bullet points

March 15, 2017

It’s full-blown spring here today. Blossoms about to pop into bloom, temperatures creeping up past the mid 70s, and so much wind. A month from now we’ll be buried in 22 inches of snow, I predict, so I try to keep my expectations low this time of year, because for every margarita-on-the-patio kind of afternoon Denver hands out in March, she predictably levies a devastating penalty in the form of spring blizzards come April and May. And sometimes (gulp) June.

But, it’s lovely. It’s lovely to be able to kick the kids outside after school, and to run around with them barefoot with a soccer ball. And oh, speaking of backyards, here’s a little glimpse of our new one:

Let them dissect my broken blowdryer. Very STEM.

That’s right, we moved. #again. It’s a temporary stint in a town north of Denver, in the home of some friends who are living oversees right now, whilst our pristine, staged and mostly packed home sits on the market (hopefully not for much longer, c’mon St. Joseph!) and we search for a new one.

The short version of the “why in the name of all that is good and reasonable would you move twice in 7 months with 4 children” is that our house, a fixer upper if ever the term were applicable, has been fixed. To the level of our competence, and then some. About 2 months ago, after a major construction project in the basement necessitating lots of professionals and lot$$$s of drywall and electrical work, we kinda threw our hands up and were like, um, what are we doing?

We are not handy people. Painting, laying flooring, some light caulking? Sure. We can handle that. But when walls started having to come down, it turned out we’d gotten in over our heads. Happily for us, the market is white hot here in the Denver metro area, and so when we finished up the last bit of work in the basement in February, we made the call to list it, because hey, we don’t love it. And we didn’t relish the notion of spending the next 4 years of weekends at Home Depot. We have had so much peace (after the initial “wth are we actually thinking about doing this???), and it was very providential the way the dominos all fell, including having this amazing home to stay in while we sell it, thanks to the generous hospitality of friends.

So, this whole situation may seem a little crazy to some people, but we’re okay with that. We’ve done plenty of things in the short 7.5 years we’ve been married that have been conventionally crazy. We figured, why stay in a house that doesn’t work for our family while we’re in the business of raising that family? We’d rather get into something smaller, if necessary, if it means we can have our nights and weekends back and can actually spend time together when we’re home. The house was less than ideal before the cascade of interventions, and so this time, we’ll look smarter at things that really do matter with a larger family, like a sleepy street with less traffic, a more suburban location, and a better floorpan that allows for common areas where the 6 of us (plus our large extended families) can gather.

Come on, St. Joseph. You’ve got 5 more days.

Looks good without people living there, doesn’t it?

There are some bonuses about this extended staycation situation we’ve entered into, including living in a totally different part of our area that we’d never spend time in otherwise (new parks, friends we don’t usually see, a new parish) and it’s interesting and fun and inconvenient all rolled into one. It has been fun to see familiar faces we only get to see at holiday events or big parties, and it is interesting to see life in a different parish, and to feel both welcomed and totally, totally off our game because our kids are struggling with the layout/lack of grandparent support/different Mass times. It’s given me a deep appreciation for how wonderful our parish really is, and how much of it we take for granted. Also? The drive. OMG THE DRIVING. We didn’t pull the kids out of school because we knew the commute was possible (the family whose home we’re borrowing were also students in our school) but hot damn, going from a leisurely 7 am wakeup and out-the-door-with-daddy by 7:40 am to reveille at still-dark thirty and a frantic scrambling of eggs, cinching of belts, making of lunches and slurping of espressos – and all before 7 am – has been shocking. I know that most grown ups live this way. I just never wanted to be one of them.

“Let’s all go grocery shopping in the snow at 4 pm, it’ll be great!”

My Lenten practice has been to get up early and pray before the kids, which means something starting with a 5. This is not a happy reality for me, but surprisingly, my internal clock has adjusted and I have been waking up on my own around 5:40 most mornings. I have to go to be no later than 10 now, but I should be doing that anyway because, adulthood. It’s been a good practice in self discipline, which I sorely lack. But boy, by 7pm every night, I am d.o.n.e. with parenting, dishes, mopping, answering emails, all of it. So the standards of cleanliness are relaxing, and my need to sit and chill with the kids at night is taking precedence over the need to shine that empty sink or get one more hour or writing squeezed in.

Probably it’s a better way to live. But it has been hard. It’s like I was still coasting on the fumes of survival mode mothering and now I’ve been thrust into the bigger-leagues of “you no longer have any free time during the day unless you guard that 45 minutes of quiet time like a prison sergeant,” because without predictable nap times (hello, crazy school pickup commute and car naps) and without my beloved mother’s helper who is now a good 45 minutes south of us, I’ve been boots on the ground in it in a way I have become unaccustomed to. In some ways it reminds me of our year in Rome, minus the good coffee, the beautiful churches, and the astonishing loneliness. I guess it just reminds me of having to be more self-sufficient and learning to navigate a strange new place (but still, Target. And a mini van.) and not being able to call a friend or sister 5 minutes down the road for some back up babysitting or a quick La Croix.

And, speaking of La Croix. I have a problem.

Next week I’ll be doing a live teaching event for Blessed is She and I’m kind of nervous. I’ve got plenty of speaking experience under my belt from various mom’s groups, conferences, and retreats I’ve participated in over the years, but for some reason doing it remotely behind a computer screen has me a little more jittery. I mean, I don’t love public speaking to begin with, but I can do it. And afterwards there’s inevitably the huge smile and endorphin rush “I can’t believe I did that!” Anyway, if you want to follow along, you can resister here (and with a Blessed is She membership you have access to all this content, which is so good. I’ve listened to a couple amazing talks this month while I’ve been preparing mine – this one is especially good) and tune in next Wednesday night, 3/22, at 9 pm EST for “Grocery Store Evangelization: engaging in the missionary apostolate of your ordinary life”

I’ve spent the past year and some change experimenting with various dietary restrictions, having blood work and hormone levels checked, and adding different combinations of supplements to the mix. It seems like I might have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (I have been hypothyroid since my teens, and on thyroid meds) which is an autoimmune thyroid disease, and is a little overwhelming in terms of the lifestyle changes it demands, but, happily, for lots of people, it can be treated really effectively that way.

I’ve been gluten free for about a year (minus the inevitable gluten exposure from restaurant eating) and it has helped a lot, and now it seems that cutting out dairy is the next step. Which is …. uggggggggh. Just ugh. I love cheese and ranch. But not so much that I want to keep feeling like crap.

So, gosh, that aspirational stuff about God choosing your Lent and all that. Yes. (Did I mention that wine seems to be a terrible culprit too. 5 months off the mommy juice now, and missing it still.) Tequila and vodka seem to be tolerable, in small and occasional amounts, but I’m getting to be a really, really lame happy hour buddy. I have some girlfriends who are also exploring health problems right now and the persistent joke among us has been “welcome to your 30s, when everything falls apart.”

I’ve also crashed and burned with THM and have been trying to reincorporate the most helpful pieces of it (namely, the stable blood sugar levels that it delivers) but haven’t been following it religiously by any means. And that’s starting to show up on the scale. Or it’s stress that is showing up. But regardless, trying to get back in the habit of balancing out my meals with protein and separating fats and carbs by several hours. It really does help prevent crashy afternoon syndrome, and I still have about 18 stubborn “baby” (read: cool ranch dorito) pounds to shed.

Anything else missing from this novella? Oh, yes, I’m back on Instagram. It’s much more addictive than I remember, so I’m trying to only use it certain days of the week, and to resist the pull of the stoplight/carline scroll. It’s hard!

Finally, any good reading recommendations that don’t involve World War II? I’m a little burnt out on the genre after a slew of fantastic reads, and I’d like to get into some other fiction. Currently reading THM (again), this fantastic book Ignatius sent me to review, and something about some guy in Moscow that Kindle recommended to me that I do not love, at least not enough to recall the title.

Happy hump day, may yours be filled with daffodils and spicy water.

Catholic Spirituality, Family Life, Lent, liturgical living, prayer

Into the desert that is your actual life

February 28, 2017

Lent is upon us. A cursory social media scroll reveals the imminence of this penitential season, even as the shamrocks and easter eggs lining my supermarket shelves insist otherwise. “Nothing to see here, grab an armful of those 70% off valentines and gear up for the next holiday buying cycle.” (this is not a commentary on those wise parents who stock up ahead of time, or even a year in advance. You are smart people. This is merely a cynical eye roll at the frenetic urgings that YOU NEED TO THINK ABOUT THIS NEXT ESSENTIAL THING RIGHT NOW c/o the mass retailers of the world. Get behind me, easter bunny. Your day will come.)

Anyway, Lent. I have my ideas, and I’ve heard my people’s ideas via an informal roundtable discussion at the dinner table last weekend, during which certain members were not fully clothed and other members were hysterical. I will leave the specifics to the imagination.

I decided to spring for a princely portion of humility by querying the children as to what mommy’s good practice taken up (with the intent of continuing on beyond Lent) ought to be, and imagine my delight when 3 out of 4 (the dissenter being nonverbal-ish) unanimously ratified the motion that I “stop yelling all the time” with mere moments of deliberation. Would that the Supreme Court could achieve such concise unity.

I read something great last week about how as parents, we are our children’s spiritual directors, and so I figured it would be a good practice to encourage my directees to make some recommendations of their own for me, for transparency’s sake. I was not wrong.

Imagine my surprise, though, when my much-holier-than-me husband (not even a slight hint of sarcasm there, as anyone who knows Dave irl can attest to) remarked during our powwow that he wasn’t adding anything for Lent, because his – our – present circumstances are plenty penitential as is. And better to lean into that suffering and bear it well than to pile on top of it.

My choleric list making side was indignant, because what is Lent for – I mean, aside from the Church’s proscribed prayer, fasting, and almsgiving – if not embarking on ambitious purgatorial self improvement strategies?

I’m being only a little facetious. My understanding of Lent has graduated ever so slightly from liturgically-observant weight loss program so something, most years, a little more focused on Him and a little less focused on what’s in it for me.

But only just.

As I sat with Dave’s declaration rolling around in my brain later that evening, I realized how much wisdom and holiness it contained. There is some real merit to the idea of leaning into the sufferings already present in your life, whether it be a difficult season – and maybe a long one – in your marriage, a sick child, a defiant toddler, a sleepless newborn, a move, an illness, a loss, a frustrating “no” when yes was so desperately sought after… And maybe in leaning into that suffering of the life that God has actually given you, not the life you’re praying and longing for, but the life you’re living in this moment, there would be abundant grace not only to bear it, but to bear it with the potential for great fruitfulness.

I can definitely make time for more spiritual reading and less social media scrolling during these next 40 days. And I can stop yelling at my kids. And that one? That is a worthy and appropriate resolution because, yeah, I have 4 kids ages 6 and under. Very few people sleep all the hours all the nights, and diapers and pull-ups still abound. There are messes and chaos and endless cries for needs that I routinely fail to meet with charity, without grumbling, without resenting and seething and mentally counting down the hours till bedtime. And maybe in leaning into those long, hard afternoons, I can offer the Lord a more pleasing sacrifice than forgoing chocolate or coffee or the occasional nightcap.

So I guess this is the least inspiring and least proscriptive Lent-post ever. Because we are in a hard season – not the hardest, but one that stretches and pulls and wearies – and I know that a dozen tiny fiats to another load of laundry, another meal prepared, another moving box packed, another bag of trash to carry out, another hour spent reading bedtime stories and rubbing backs when I want to be watching an episode of something or reading my own book – I know that those are the gold nuggets in the mine of motherhood where I currently labor.

So that’s my Lenten plan. Stop complaining about everything, even interiorly. Especially interiorly?

Because they aren’t going to sleep reliably. Somebody is always sick – this week, it’s me. There will always be an unexpected bill, an unforeseen scheduling conflict, a frustrating door slamming shut, a toy room wrecked and a minivan wrecked-er. And God knows that. Gosh, it’s almost like He custom tailored it just for me. So Lord, here’s to a Lent of Your design and not my own.

That being said, I do have a couple external aids in place, should the REM cycles align and allow me some free time in the evenings or early mornings.

I had the chance to review an advance copy of this book by Heidi Hess Saxton on the spirituality of Mother Teresa, and I really, really love it. I normally don’t prefer books of the “day-by-day” variety, but maybe because Mama T is so rich in profound simplicity, these little readings stand on their own, and I find myself returning to them throughout the day, and skipping defiantly ahead to the next day. I am hoping to go back and read it day by day during Lent, as it was designed, probably first thing in the morning, maybe even before coffee because that seems like a super MC move.

I also preordered the gorgeous Blessed Is She Lenten journal “Put on Love” and am dying to get into it, and have in fact given myself absolution from writing in my normal journal at all during Lent to try to drive my own mental traffic there. (I pretty much have to be exclusive with one journal at a time, which is why prayer journals usually fail me, but this one is so beautiful and the layout is so good that I think I can do it.)

I just happened to have this succulent lying around to incorporate into this otherwise completely natural and unstaged photo.

What are your plans for Lent this year?

What are the Lord’s plans for your Lent, this year?

If they’re already synched up, then you’re golden. If this post threw you for a loop like Dave’s pronouncement did for me the other night, well, then you’ve got a solid day or so to better align the two. Good luck.