I almost titled this post a midsummer night’s scream so, you’re welcome.

The “baby” did wake up about eleventy times last night, however, so I would have been justified in so doing.

Also, hi, hello. I’ve all but forgotten how to log into my wordpress account but that’s life these days. I’ve recently been stopped by two lovely, perfect strangers out and about who kindly shared how much they enjoyed and missed my blogging, and it was exactly as encouraging and awkward as you can admit. One of them asked if I was too busy to write these days and I sort of glazed over and gazed off into the distance just over her shoulder for probably too many seconds of silence before shaking my head and saying something profound like “um, oh, yes, a little bit.”

But I’m not like, super busy. It’s more like I’m just wandering around all day putting in load after load of laundry in and spraying people with sunscreen and poking at half frozen meat thawing into a probably dangerous puddle on the counter and then bam! It’s like 9 pm. Does that make sense?

Ok, good. I didn’t want to give anyone the impression I was over here writing the next great American novel or anything.

I’m just pleasantly motoring along through the middle years of motherhood, I think. It’s still very hard some nights (cringes inwardly over last night’s shenanigans) but mostly it’s just … busy.

We’re on a good rotation with visits to the pool down the street and I’ve finally cracked the swimming lesson code: either pay for back to back weeks of lessons and then go to the pool a lot, to reinforce what is actually learned and ensure the skills get baked in, or just … go to the pool a lot.

We’ve opted for plan B this summer, and it’s great. If you’d asked me a year ago would I ever take 6 kids 10 and under to the pool by myself, I probably would have told you to go wash your mouth out with soap. But I’ve been doing it! And it’s mostly great! There was one dark day where I forgot my own swimsuit and things did not go well from there, but provided I remember all the goggles and puddle jumpers, it really has been a sea change for our summer routine. Also, the resident 3 year old sleeps great after a day in the sun.

We’re one two (see, this is why I can’t blog anymore) week(s) into a long-awaited kitchen renovation and it is unbelievably exciting and also a bit like indoor camping, minus the part where you don’t sleep in a real bed. Thank God, there is a real bed. We’ve been saving up and DIY-ing temporary fixes and updates since we bought this house 4 years ago, but the moment for a more long term solution is here.

Is it one million times more expensive and more disruptive than I’d envisioned in my wildest, HGTV-fueled dreams? Yes, yes it is. But I’m gratefully leaning into this season of temporary chaos for a space that will better serve our family and allow us to host our extended clan more comfortably. (Or at least, will fit all 8 of us around the dinner table without hitting the walls.)

Back in the spring of 2020 a couple of months into lockdown, my sister was over one day and I was lamenting our 12×10 cramped dining/school/office room when a gleam came into her eye and we somehow managed to hulk my massive dining table sideways through the entrance into the formal dining room and out into the living room, where we plopped it unceremoniously onto the carpet and thus it has remained for lo these many months since. I did dress it up at one point by sitting it atop a stylishly and pathologically stupidly placed jute rug, but once you’ve scrapped old salmon and refried beans out of jute fibers, you learn pretty quick that toddlers and jute don’t mix. Ahem.

This is what our new “dining room” looked like, styled up and moderately functional these past 15 months:

And this is what it looked like last week:

But wait! It has actually looked worse. Behold, the original view from our first year in this house, complete with extremely-pregnant-with-Zelie me:

And here’s where we’re sitting today – well, not sitting, per se, since there are no surfaces upon which to perch. But, progress!

Tomorrow morning, if all goes well, the cabinets will show up. Crossing my fingers and toes since I’ve only been waiting for them since March. It’s a long, sordid tale involving, believe it or not, the Suez Canal. But I won’t bore you with the details.

I’ll be sure to include some action shots and final “afters” after it’s all said and done. In the meantime, I’ve got to get busy meal planning for another back-to-back-to-back week of alternating hot dogs and grilled frozen pizza (!!!)

Missed you,

Jenny

Every time I’ve thought about sitting down to write – which hasn’t been all that frequently, truth be told – I’ve been deterred by the most germane of happenings. An overly full diaper. A vacuum needing to be tediously disassembled, scrubbed clean, and aired out in the sun like a high maintenance house plant.

But more than any of that, a nagging, dragging ennui that pervades almost all things outside of the “household services” category for me, lately. At first I blamed postpartum. Then lockdown. Then the slow-moving-train-wreck of wokeism, which I beheld with a mixture of fascination and disgust as writers and other figures whom I’ve admired and even collaborated with in the past seemed at once, en masse, to lose their ever loving minds, stumbling over each other to denounce whatever “-ism” of the day presented itself on social media, holding hostage platforms until Everyone’s Explicit Expert Opinion was duly recorded in the great digital notebook of obedient citizenship in the cloud.

I shook the digital dust from my feet, glad I’d given up social media just as Covid hysteria reached its apparent (L to the O L. Not even close.) inflection point back in April of last year.

Well, reckoned I, it was as ideal a time as any to bow out of the marketplace of opinion. And so I bowed. And, heavy with the burdens of motherhood and the myriad family and social responsibilities which multiplied exponentially in 2020 and 2021, I’ve yet to fully look up from that bow. My psyche feels permanently cramped, my vision narrowed not quite to the point of tunnel, but something very near it.

Ordinary tasks became, and remain, extraordinarily demanding. Laundry is legion. I haul another supersized load up from the basement and begin the meditative process of sorting and folding, staring into the abyss and thinking about listening to a podcast but never actually getting around to it. In truth I relish the silence and the mindlessness that feels like mindfulness. Smooth, fold, toss, repeat.

I am good at many things, but I am very good at laundry. And lately I find myself needing deeply to play to my strengths. I take joy in a scoured and shining countertop, aware that one hour and one school pickup from now will render it almost unrecognizably filthy. I’ve embraced my domestic duties on a deeper level, acknowledging after more than a decade that because things do not stay clean and tidy does not mean one surrenders. The circle of life takes on microscopic detail in the expansion and contraction of the refrigerator’s contents. I cook, they eat, we clean, and tomorrow we begin again.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and so I vacuum.

I wonder from time to time what an old friend or acquaintance is up to. Generally a few taps will bring me to their latest book/project/position, and I smile with detached pleasure or disinterest over their exploits. I don’t know if the competitive or achievement-seeking part of me is broken or gone forever, but it feels like freedom, to not care. To have put the comparison chart aside and broken the measuring stick over my knee, and to lay down for a nap when the opportunity arises. I do miss parts of my old identity, but I miss them the way a snake might, if snakes could, miss its shed skin. I thank her for her service to me, this older and outgrown version of myself, but harbor no desire to squeeze back in.

I’m infinitely happier than I was one or two or five years ago, but it’s a unassuming and sedate sort of happiness. It’s probably something closer to joy; it isn’t an absence of suffering, if anything the longer I mother and the older my children grow, the more suffering we seem to welcome into our lives.

But there is peace.

I see a battery of doctors and health experts in a year’s time, trying to get a handle on a fatigue so profound that it feels like my soul itself is weary. A new antidepressant is trialed and discarded, the cure being worse than the illness in this case. Maybe I need to walk more? Increased mileage breaks down body parts not fully recovered from pregnancy and childbirth. I pop entire fistfuls of supplements, make physical therapy appointments, and take more naps. One doctor is sure it’s reactivated Epstein Barr, “likely you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and your adrenals are shot.” She is confidant that she can help me for a $5,000 annual fee. I appreciate her confidence, but demure her services not only over the pricetag, but over the specter of months of driving to appointments, hundreds of dollars of new supplements, cutting out every food group that isn’t vegetables. I’ve never seen her before, but I’ve seen her at least dozen times over the years.

I crawl into bed at night exhausted, but not in despair. I relish the slower pace that my health demands, while simultaneously wondering if I’m perhaps missing the very thing I’ve been put here to do. Most days, home with the kids and trying – and failing – to meet their needs with generosity and charity, I think that I’m probably exactly where I’m supposed to be. But being sure of the rightness of one’s position can’t banish all regret. There is a sorrow in letting go of responsibilities and privileges that once came easily to a younger me, but there is also such a freedom in admitting my littleness and my limitations. It feels so damn good not to hustle. Hustling is bullshit. I’m telling you right now, you can only slay all day for so long until something breaks down. And not all broken parts of people can be repaired to factory condition.

We all know this, but us moms, especially, we pretend it’s not real. We grind from sunup to sundown and turn it into a cute hashtag and then cry hysterically in the shower.

The profound privilege of aging, of growing older in a body that is starting to fail – on an infinitesimally small level – is a daily struggle of acceptance and gratitude. Acceptance for the dysfunctions and illnesses I’d rather be delivered from, and gratitude for the weakness that makes me humiliatingly dependent on my husband, on my God.

I buy gift cards rather than cooking meals for new moms. We eat from paper plates 7 nights a week right now, and it’s not great, but it’s good enough. On paper, my stepping back form the workforce is a terrible decision. In practice though, our family life has never been better. And there is still a lot of yelling.

Life is hard, it’s sweet, and it’s backbreaking. Strangers ask at least once a week “are you done?” and I look at them like someone on mile 16 of a marathon, so far from the finish line that it’s actually sadistic to bring it up, but also so deep into the thing that it’s too late, far too late, to turn back.

“I…don’t know.” I answer, causing eyes to widen and smiles to drop.

But I can’t answer any differently. Who could know a thing like that? I think both less and also more about my fertility than ever before. We reevaluate how we’re using NFP, and why. I lose my passion for writing about it and teaching it, not for any other reason than I’m fairly sure I’ve said all that can be said. We’re truly in uncharted territory here, joining the quiet, mysterious ranks of couples who run out the clock on their natural fertility, no fixed expiration date to offer to strangers. It makes people uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable! I’ll be 39 years old in 6 months time, and I’m still looking around wondering when I’m going to feel like an adult.

My baseboards are filthy. The crumbling entropy of keeping a physical house draws sloth and selfishness from my soul like anti-venom pulling poison from a wound. It is so satisfying to do small, invisible work. It’s maddening, too. I read books on the art and science of homemaking, shaking my head in wonder that there are people out there who have schedules for cleaning. Realizing that I need to become one of them. My natural disdain for tasks I don’t excel at gives way to the practical necessity of needing to know how to disassemble and deep clean the parts of a dishwasher.

I doubt many people could look at my life right now and possibly want to trade places. From the outside, it probably looks like there’s nothing much doing, apart from loads of laundry and yard work and hemorrhaging grocery money.

And yet…I feel a little bit like I’ve discovered the secret to happiness. But it’s such a deep secret that it’s possible no one will believe me. It’s this, though, in case you were wondering: give your life away.

That’s it. that’s the whole answer. You probably knew it already. I’m a slow learner. And really I should reiterate, it’s not happiness so much as it is joy.

But still, I’m really freaking tired.

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

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

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

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

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

Pia the long-suffering and resigned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wishing you a beautiful and blessed Triduum and Holy Week!

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

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

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

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

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

They’ll probably move in time, Thought I.

Spoiler alert: they did not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And contentment seems mighty hard to come by these days.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Subtle differences, but significant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Moving on.

1.

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

2.

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

I love this guy.

3.

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

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

4.

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

5.

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

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

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

6.

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

7.

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve missed you guys!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, indeed.

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