liturgical living – Page 2 – Mama Needs Coffee

Catholic Spirituality, liturgical living, Marriage, motherhood

Silver linings of a small budget Christmas

December 7, 2016

All around us there is a rushing, frenetic, pulsing energy that seems to gather steam as the weekends roll by. In kid-time, 3.5 weeks out from Christmas is basically an eternity, still. In parent-time, however, it might as well be December 23rd.

Last night I cooked dinner in my beloved cast iron skillet, now the single pan I own. The other two were finally scrapped the week of Thanksgiving in a perhaps ill-considered fit of sadominimalism. (n. the practice of getting rid of something that is objectively awful, ill-fitting, or broken only to find that actually, you were kind of stuck with it until you replaced it.) I had to time things so that I could cook both the sweet potatoes and the salmon cakes (would you believe my pickiest eaters will gobble these happily, with ketchup? Cheap, too.) since both wanted a pan. I suppose I could have roasted the sweet potatoes in the oven, were the oven still performing its required domestic duties.

I told Dave later that evening that I felt very Ma Ingalls about the whole thing, cooking my dinner over an ~~open fire~~ electric range (thankfully still functional) in a single pan, taking 35 minutes to accomplish what could have been done in 10.

The thing is, we’re extraordinarily wealthy by almost any measure. We have a house with 4 toilets in it, which makes us literally royalty according to some cultural standards. I know this because last week I spent 20 minutes at a cell phone recycling kiosk recycling some of my growing collection of outdated smartphones for pennies on the dollar, and was forced to enjoy such mental stimulation flashing across the screen as “did you know more people in the world own a smartphone than have a toilet?” to which I had to confess, no. No I did not.

And the reason we’re having a tighter than usual end to the fiscal year in the first place is precisely because we purchased a toilet-encrusted castle of our very own, which is an extravagant privilege in and of itself. Broken ovens, leaking showers, rotted sheetrock, and all.

I’ve felt a little frustration watching the contents of my Amazon cart appreciate in value, waiting for a forthcoming payday to be liberated, but surprisingly, I think it’s helped keep the focus on Advent laser sharp. Removing the possibility of getting all the shopping done ahead of time or throwing in last minute impulse buys has been a freeing mental experience. And in lieu of expensive outings and dinners out, we’re having simpler, slower nights at home. Candles, books, board games, Netflix episodes. I don’t want to give the false impression it was all bottle service and velvet ropes in years past, but certainly, life is different now. Fuller in some ways, leaner in others.

The leanness has filled out Advent beautifully, though. Because I’m such a planner and anticipator by nature, it has been a hard stop for the cycle of buying, wrapping, hiding, preparing, impulsing, indulging, etc. etc. And I guess I’m grateful for that. Last night I slipped away at bedtime (St. David of Denver: coming soon to a liturgy near you in 2087) and ended up dropping by our parish’s perpetual adoration chapel for a half hour. The snow was just starting to flurry around the darkened windows but the chapel was warm and bathed in light, heated by the radiators and a half dozen or so of my fellow parishioners. As I was walking to my car I dug around for my keys and counted out the quarters in the bottom of my purse, collecting enough for a hot chocolate from the coffee shop on the way home. A luxury! And I don’t know that I would have seen it that way a year or two ago.

We’re incredibly blessed, even in tighter financial times. And praise God the times are tight because of blessings, not because of the burden of a job lost, a medical battle fought, or a relationship broken. But the tightness is showing me areas of real flab that were kind of perpetually being glossed over or taken for granted as “normal,” when in fact it isn’t normal to be so frantic, so caught up in planning and executing and getting it just right (and on time) that the holidays go off without a hitch.

We don’t do Christmas. Christmas comes to us, whether we’re ready or not. Whether we bought a single gift, or have to work an overnight shift, or can’t imagine facing the day alone without the person whose absence is a gaping hole in our heart. Whether our kids are getting 4 presents based on a rhyme we saw on Pinterest, or 42 because their grandparents all live out of state and have a Fisher Price addiction. Or no presents at all, but maybe an extra nice dinner with enough for everyone to have seconds, because that’s what’s realistic this year, and thank God there’s enough.

And maybe Christmas comes and there isn’t enough. Maybe it doesn’t wrap up poetically like a Dicken’s novel or a Hallmark movie, and there are still broken hearts and empty cupboards, or a pile of wrapping paper mounted to the ceiling but cold, cheerless revelers dissatisfied with their loot.

He comes to us at Christmas. Whether we are ready to receive Him or not. Whether we’re open or not. Whether we’re tired or busy or angry or broken or deaf to His newborn cries. He comes. And for the next 3 and a half weeks, I can choose to focus on that imminent deadline and continually redirect my distractible nature to the reality of the season. He is coming. Gifts are great and giving is beautiful, but gifts are periphery to the bigger event at hand: He is coming. I forgot to buy something for my son’s teacher and I need a Starbucks gift card. He is coming. We haven’t bought a tree yet. He is coming. I haven’t been to Confession in X months. He is coming. We can’t swing the plane tickets to visit X in X. He is coming.

There is still time to prepare. There is time to do what is essential. And when the essentials are covered, the peripheral seems to fall more gracefully into place. I have to constantly remind myself of this. That my sweet, round-faced children will neither know nor care (thankfully, still so true at tender ages) whether they get the hottest new toys or have an impeccably decorated house to relax in wearing coordinating Christmas outfits. They squealed with delight over their Dollar Tree ornaments and the candy canes they found in their shoes yesterday morning. They fight over who gets to light the advent candle every night at dinnertime. It is enough. It is enough. It is more than enough.

And if I can present to them a well-prepared and spiritually nourished mother come Christmas morning, how much more powerful will their experience of the deep, true meaning of Christmas be?

But, you know, no pressure.

(Also, let this be a lesson to us all to temper our KonMari-ing to a reasonable pace, lest you too end up with salmon-scented sweet potatoes.)

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Evangelization, Family Life, feast days, liturgical living, Parenting

Raising saints {with a little help}

October 18, 2016

The other Friday night I helped shovel lackluster chicken nuggets (GF so no surprise there) and carrot sticks into the mouths of my young before we jumped in the car to head downtown, fighting wrong way rush hour traffic into the city. (I don’t know what constitutes a good Friday night for you, but I’ll just leave that on the table for your next date night consideration.)

Our destination was the basement of Denver’s beautiful cathedral, where we met up with dozens of our friends, several more dozens of their children, and a handful of our favorite priests and religious brothers, members of a relatively young religious order, the Servants of Christ Jesus.

I’ve written about them before because they’ve been around just a little bit longer than we have, as a family. (I even had the privilege of teasing out some of the common threads between our two vocations in a piece I wrote synthesizing the master thesis penned by their newest ordained priest.) And because they are actually a pretty significant component of what we’re trying to do, as a family.

We’re trying to raise saints.

I first heard Fr. John Ignatius use that phrase in a talk by the same name, given in a parish hall to a handful of young couples with brand new babies and toddlers. I had one baby in arms and one in utero at that time, and I remember looking a little disbelievingly at the squirming blonde head on my lap and wondering when – if ever – the stuff he was talking about would apply to us.

One line in particular stood out to me in particular, perhaps because you can take the girl out of the party scene but you can’t, well, you know… but it was this: Catholics throw the best parties. The biggest feasts. You want your children to grow up knowing this… recognizing it from what they have lived and seen played out in your family and in the larger community you’re building around them.

I’m paraphrasing because it was at least 5 years ago, but the concept of our Faith being incarnate and tangible, not only in the liturgy and in the way we worship together, but also in the way we recreate and celebrate together, touched me deeply. And it thrilled me to think that I could help my children understand the richness and the beauty of Catholicism by throwing great parties.

I’m not talking here about cake toppers and printables, or about elaborate tables with perfectly-seasoned ethnic food representing whomever’s feast day it might be (though if you’ve got a Hobby Lobby loyalty card and you aren’t afraid to use it, power to you!)

I’m talking here more about cultivating a deeply-rooted and life-giving community of like minded families and friends, and of freely welcoming people into that profound experience of belonging.

Of having your kids excited about so-and-so’s birthday party, yes, but also knowing that we’re going to be praying over that child as a community before the candles are blown out on the cake.

To have had the experience at least once (I’m told it becomes more possible – not easier, but more possible – when they’re a little older) of watching the candlelit sanctuary explode into light with the rising strains of the Alleluia during the Easter Vigil Mass, and then spilling out into the parking lot with plastic cups of champagne (or apple cider) and streamers and platters and platters of cookies and celebrating because He is Risen. And of not only intellectually knowing that, but also feeling it in their hearts and in their imaginations.

And oh, how I want them to remember the hours we spent around the dinner table with men in white collars and black habits, (and sisters too! though we haven’t found our nun niche quite yet) sharing stories and plates of spaghetti and highlights from our week, bantering over politics and sports and news and life. And woven throughout it all, an awareness of the Lord’s presence, an unconscious sprinkling of theology that has nothing to do with lectures and classrooms and everything to do with a living witness of the Faith.

So that’s why we made our way into the basement of the Cathedral that evening, stepping into what could have easily been mistaken for a preschool co-op with dozens of children scattered in rows of seats and dotting the center aisle.

Guitar chords rang out as Br. Peter led the group in praise and worship, and then deep toddler reverence (which is louder and more, ah, intense than regular reverence) fell upon our little group as Fr. John processed in with Jesus in the monstrance.

While Fr. knelt at the end of our time of Adoration to sing the Divine Praises, little knees bent around him (and some full body toddler sprawling was also in play, because it might have been bedtime or maybe just some really charismatic 2 year olds), and somebody captured this:

That’s what we’re trying to do here. Point them to Him.

And these good men are helping lead us along the way, pointing us towards Jesus, bringing Him to us in the sacraments, and knitting our community together in worship and play.

If any of us do, in fact, succeed at raising saints, it will only be by the grace of God.

Thankfully, He hasn’t left us totally to our own devices. I am so grateful for our community here in Denver, and I am also painfully aware that it is all too unique. My prayer is that as the New Evangelization grows and matures, and as the first line of those of us who were formed in it go out into the world and the larger Church to serve, this will not be a crazy, off-the-beaten path thing. That other cities around the world will have this kind of community, even while society is secularizing all around us.

That we would find one another, grasp hands, and then invite someone in. And then do it agin. And again.

May we be bold enough to attempt raising saints. (And may God grant us ALL the graces and the resources we need to make at least a good college try.)

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Evangelization, feast days, Italy pilgrimage, liturgical living

Defend us in battle

September 29, 2016

Today is Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael, the archangel, and actually of the rest of the archangels, too. I’m not building my kids a satan piñata to smash or baking anything with blackberries, but those are both tradition things that people do, and sound cool. Probably we’ll pray the St. Michael prayer with candles around the dinner table and talk a little bit about kicking the devil’s butt, which is a favorite expression of my eldest.

I took the two littlest to mass with me this morning. We walked in during the Psalm, and we sat contentedly on our bottoms in the foyer, not even attempting the sanctuary itself. Some days you’ve just gotta do what’s easy. I let Evie walk laps around me and bring a backpack full of stuffed animals along for the ride, and Luke cruised contentedly up and down the dividing wall of glass and doors, occasionally slamming his fists and blowing raspberries against the panes. I sat cross legged on the floor with pleasantly low blood pressure and let the need to perfect their pew habits slide, for the morning, and it was nice.

It’s better for me to be at daily Mass, when I can manage it, then to miss out. And sometimes it’s better to be doing what is easiest and least painful for all parties involved. Sometimes solo pew wrangling sessions leave me so frazzled and angry that I hardly feel properly disposed to receive Communion, which is kind of the whole point, so I’m trying to balance expectations with reality and not just survive this season of littleness with gritted teeth. Already I feel the years slipping through my fingers. I watched a young mom only a few years behind me swaying with her newborn in a wrap, reprimanding a renegade toddler while her preschooler sat politely in the pew, and my heart clenched a little to remember that just 2 year ago nobody was in school full time, and my days of alltogetherallthetime are in the rearview mirror. I was telling my little sister the same thing later and starting to get tears in my eyes when she helpfully deadpanned that summer would be here again, and with it the very, very together-centric months of long hot boredness that we’d only just recently escaped by the skin of our teeth, lest I’d forgotten.

Oh, yeah.

Sometimes it’s hard to be part melancholic.

But anyway, back to St. Michael. I’ve had a particular devotion to him since college, back right around the time my conversion/reversion kicked into high gear. I remember having a dream about him one night where we met on a battle field and he took his cloak (because angels totally wear human clothing) off his back and put it on me, and gave me a sword. I was kneeling before him and the whole thing had a very Joan of Arc air about it. Anyway, I love St. Michael. And yet I struggle a bit with the practical implications of a relationship with an invisible, non-human entity. Angels are decidedly outside the realm of skeptical realism. I mean yes, they’re in the Bible. Yes, they’re kind of big time players in the story of salvation history, popping into the narrative of the Gospels at key moments and helping move the story along. Where would Sting be without the Angel Gabriel?

But it’s hard to explain what they are, exactly. And who they are.

It’s almost easier to talk about what they aren’t.

They aren’t dead babies, reincarnated as disembodied heads with wings. They aren’t your dead grandma Margaret, who finally got her angel wings after a years-long battle with breast cancer. Angels are distinct, non-human beings created by God before humans were. The devil, Lucifer, was the most powerful and beautiful angel in the hierarchy. His non-servium, his refusal to participate in the Creator’s cockamamie plan to redeem lowly humanity by deigning to become small and poor and one of us and then to suffer and die for us, was a kind of pre-emptive “Fall before the Fall.”

God already knew we would fall when He made us. And He did it anyway. The angels, who live outside of space and time, were also privy to that knowledge. And upon receiving it, a third of them followed suit with Lucifer, issuing a resounding “hell no” and exiting stage south. They chose to reject God rather than serve us.

But Michael did not.

The great and glorious battle captain of the heavenly hosts chose to bend his fierce knee and bow his fiery head before the vast, helpless expanse of humanity stretching out from creation to the completion of the world and he gave his consent to serve. To defend. To protect us in battle.

And make no mistake, we are in a battle. A war rages for souls, and the same revulsion for God’s plan of redemption still animates our great enemy, the devil. Remember the piece about time and space being a uniquely human construct? The devil is still just as angry today as he was the moment he rejected God.

And Michael and the other archangels and angels and all the heavenly host are still just as resolute to defend us.

The most powerful moment of my pilgrimage to Italy came in a small village called Monte Sant’Angelo. In this small, isolated mountain town in southern Italy, not far from San Giovanni Rotondo, there is a church built around an ancient cave. It’s actually the oldest pilgrimage site in western Europe, and has been visited by such heavy hitters as St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Brigid of Sweden, St. Thomas Aquinas, and even St. Francis of Assisi (though he deemed himself unworthy to enter and remained outside to pray. Which begs the question, the h was I doing walking inside.)

The church itself is pretty on the outside, but small and kind of unremarkable in a European setting. Here, it would probably still be the most beautiful building in town, but I digress.

I don’t have any pictures from the interior because they were strictly discouraging (and severely shushing and gesturing to) photographers. But even if I’d been allowed to snap a shot, I don’t think I would have had the wherewithal. After descending some 300 feet underground down shallow marble stairs that twisted into the earth, we emerged before a kind of second exterior of a church, and upon entering, we found ourselves inside a basilica that was comprised on one side of cave walls and the others of white marble. The atmosphere was thick with electric candlelight and damp, heavy subterranean air. We made our way to a pew near the statue of St. Michael in the grotto, commemorating the spot where he’d appeared 3 times over the years.

If you have ever been to Assisi, you know the deep, all-encompassing peace of which I am about to speak. The holy heaviness of the air there. The way the spirit of St. Francis himself imbues the town even to this day, his presence thick in the air and on the streets.

This place was like that. The same heaviness. The air of expectancy, of presence, of otherness.

I sank to my knees in front of my pew and watched as a family of small children accompanied their mother up to the rail and recited together a consecration prayer to St. Michael. They were speaking German and as the unfamiliar cadence floated back through the semi dark and flowed over my ears I started to weep. I was struck with a profound and certain conviction that St. Michael loves us. That he loved me, specifically. And that he was ready and willing and able to protect and defend my children more effectively than I could ever hope to. As that had been the persistent cry of my heart this entire trip, I found myself unable to stop the flow of tears for several minutes as the peace and conviction of this knowledge of Michael and his protection flowed over me and filled my heart.

I do not have a particularly emotional faith. I am not prone to tears (contrary to pretty much the entirety of out pilgrimage), but I was a snotty mess by the time we left the grotto.

Before we reluctantly (at least for my part. Luke was pretty much vv ready to peace out upon arrival, thanks for the baby wearing, Dave) parted from the place, I knelt at the altar rails and read that same consecration prayer I’d heard the German family reciting, reading the words in English from the prayer card I’d been handed at the entrance. I sighed in relief as I entrusted our children and their vocations to St. Michael, begging for and believing in his powerful intercession, and knowing with a deep certainty that he could and he wanted to protect them. That he loved them even better than I could.

I know it sounds nuts. There’s so much about this piece that is making me wince internally because it’s so personal and so…out there. But it was one of the most profoundly real things I’ve ever experienced, and so today, on the feast of St. Michael and the Archangels, I felt compared to share it with you.

“St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou oh prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.”

About Me, Catholic Spirituality, Evangelization, Family Life, liturgical living, Parenting

Do you have a family liturgy?

August 16, 2016

These past several days, trying to carve some semblance of tranquility amidst a million flattened boxes, carpets that smell like dogs and cottonwood seeds blowing so thickly that they’re being sucked into our new house by the box fans that adorn every window (no AC. Bye bye, luxury), I’ve been totally overwhelmed by the lack of order to our lives. Life with 4 kids is always a little on the chaotic end of the spectrum, but throw big life changes into the mix and it very much feels like the inmate are running the asylum, and they’re not even particularly well fed inmates.

I scooted away this afternoon for my 1000th trip to Lowe’s and some internet time and I left our babysitter the following items on the counter: 8 baby carrots, half a bag of corn tortillas, 2 oz of nacho cheese Doritos and a jar of peanut butter.

Good luck, family.

I was thinking today that part of why our days are so hectic, aside from the obvious physical chaos of a move and a new home, is because we lack a basic rhythm to our daily lives. I alluded to as much on Facebook last week when I let slip how eager I was for the routine of school to be upon us, because as deeply as I love my children and as sincerely as I respect my homeschooling friends, the reading, writing and ‘rithmetic are being unabashedly outsourced in this family.

But I can’t outsource it all. For sure we’re still responsible for forming little consciences and catechizing little hearts. I guess I’m just poking my head up out of survival mode after the longest summer on record and, with a newly-minted one year old still the reigning baby in the house (#Marquettemethodforthewin) I’m feeling ready to start implementing some smallish steps towards sanity.

So what do you guys do? What does your “family liturgy” look like? By this I mean the liturgical rhythm to your days and weeks, and I’m not talking Sacred heart of Jesus cupcakes or St. Juan Diego piñatas, but the regular Scripture study with your kids, the daily Mass attendance (or not), the family Rosary or decade, the morning offering, the recited litanies.

Do you start your day with family prayer? Dave and I pray an offering together and invoke our special patron saints, and we pray again a gratitude list and a protection prayer at night, but the in between parts are where I’m struggling to fill in the blanks.

I want us to be the ones who introduce our kids to personal prayer, who help them understand their fundamental identities as sons and daughters of the King. I want them to learn to spend time in Scripture every day, and to follow along with the liturgical cadence of the Church year, attuned to the seasons we celebrate as a Catholic family.

I want to raise Saints. But I am a decidedly unsaintly mother 98% of the time. I struggle with my temper, with patience, with wanting to steamroll them in the name of efficiency and productivity. And I am, quite frankly, usually d-o-n-e by bedtime, which is when our current daily prayer time takes place.

So, I humbly turn to you, dear readers, and I ask first and foremost for your prayers but also for your suggestions, your best practices, and I welcome your stories of solidarity. How do you “Catholic” in your house? What does it look like in practical terms, and what are some age-appropriate steps I can take with my crew, current ages nearly 6, 4.5, 2.5 and 1?

Thanks in advance. I have to go spackle something now.

The pirate nun wants *you* to raise ’em right

Catholic Spirituality, Family Life, liturgical living, Marriage, motherhood, reading, sin, Suffering

A liturgy of laundry

May 27, 2016

Last week in my rantings about impersonal social media and the vile temptation to permascroll, I may have insufficiency highlighted the upside. But the upside of the digital age – and there are substantial benefits – is that I do have honest to goodness friends I’ve only met once, or never, from all over the world.

Take my friend Christy, who hails from the wilds of Canada. Sure, we did meet once in real life summers long ago in Texas at Edel: ground zero. But besides that it’s been all Voxes and emails. And one, thoughtful Amazon-flung package of amazing lipstick and one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. And which I would perhaps never, ever have picked up but for Christy’s urging.

I’ve found myself in tears, agonizing over this or that character’s backstory, and flipping eager pages well past an appropriate hour in the night, just to see what the girls would do next.

And, wait for it…It’s about nuns. Cloistered Benedictines in 1960’s England, to be exact. Sounds riveting, right? But oh, it is. Such poignant studies of human nature, such incisive observations on sin, on personality, on life and politics. If you can sleuth a copy on Amazon or eBay, you’d be a lucky dog with the first good read of the summer in your paws.

Speaking of summer, today’s the last day of school here, and it’s 53 degrees and raining, which means indoor children and indoor problems and I’ve got 99 of each.

I was thinking abut the good sisters of Brede while I was folding the one millionth pile of laundry for the week this morning, and I was so done.

Even after a fresh purge, spurred by this week’s conversation about decluttering and spartan living. Grumpily I folded an especially ratty t-shirt, imagining that it would probably still be a house favorite when boy #3 is old enough to have opinions about wearing something with a guinea pig dressed up as Spider Man morning noon and night. Also, it should be noted, Peru lacks any apparent licensing or copyright law. But “Spider Cuy” is a beloved wardrobe staple (thanks, Uncle Handro!) and shall remain so, I supposed, until my back goes out for good and my hands are crippled from decades of careful folding.

It doesn’t help anything that my kids are still basically incompetent at household chores, groused I. And the downward spiral descendeth. Never mind that my friend’s little boy is in the hospital awaiting his first round of chemo, or that a fellow Catholic blogger buried his tiny son this morning. I was going to be disgruntled over laundry.

But there’s so much of it. And while I can weep in solidarity and offer small, pitiful sacrifices in the hard nighttime hours of wakings and rocking and fetching water, it’s harder to see the beauty in the beast(ly) grind of housework.

While Sister Colette thrilled to the task of mending and creating rich vestments to suit the liturgical seasons, marveling over how her work kept her tied to the rhythm of that “great wheel of prayer” that is the liturgical year of the Church, I was – am – less than enthusiastic about the dishwasher I just unloaded. The freshly-mopped floor splattered with applesauce. The decomposing (I wish this were hyperbole) lunchmeat I fished out of the coach section of the mini van this morning.

But couldn’t I be just as connected, in contentment, to my daily work and the constant offering-up and offering back as a kind of prayer?

If marriage is really a vocation, and I believe that it is, then there are day to day responsibilities that aren’t just annoyingly “there” as the result of it, but maybe they’re actually for it; the means of continual sanctification and for sure mortification, by which I perfect my selfish and supremely-irritated-by-poop-on-the-floor soul.

Maybe.

Or maybe it’s less meta than that. But it definitely got me thinking.

“Benedictae!” the “waker of the week” would intone, rapping on the cell door and swinging it open at like 4:30 am. I doubt the sister on the receiving end of the salutation would growl “GET OUT GET BACK IN THE BASEMENT” in a terrifying rat growl in response.

Instead, no matter how exhausted, how overwhelmed, how chilly, how overburdened…she’d probably swing her legs over the side of her cot and get up. Because 4:30m am wakeup calls are part of what she signed up for.

I did not. At least, I didn’t know I did. I didn’t think a lot about sleepless nights, discipline heartbreaks, behavioral issues, traumas, and tantrums. When I was a besotted fiance planning my wedding and eagerly anticipating a Hawaiian honeymoon, I figured children would turn up within the year or so. But even after growing up in a family with 6 younger siblings, I found myself arrestingly unprepared for the ravages of sleep deprivation. And incessant touching.

I think it’s probably my fault if it’s anyone’s “fault,” per se, because I was an exquisitely selfish teenager and must have been blind to my own parent’s sufferings in this realm. But, whatever the case may be, here I find myself elbows-deep in a vocation I’m ill suited for at best, spectacularly unqualified for at worst.

And yet, it’s mine. And these kids and their tears and tantrums and smiles and sticky sticky so so so sticky fingers and their tiny souls begging for love and formation and security…are mine. And this daily litany of laundry and diapers and filthy floors and another – yes, another! – load in the dishwasher or the sink, is mine.

I don’t hear bells tolling at Nones, at Sext, at Matins. I hear screaming from the basement at 1 am. I don’t practice “The Great Silence” (AS ATTRACTIVE AS THAT SOUNDS, HINT HINT FOR NXT MOTHER’S DAY), but I can still my frantic pace for a divine mercy chaplet at 3, or for the Angelus at noon.

And I don’t lovingly lay out vestments in a candlelit sanctuary before an early morning Mass, peacefully arranging flowers and flipping open the missal to the right pages. But I pack lunches. I scrub the same disappointingly-aroma’d bathroom … at times. Which will remain unspoken. I change an astonishing number of dirty diapers in a day. And none of that need be surprising to me.

I mean, it really shouldn’t be.

And I’m really hoping this entire essay isn’t reading as some sanctimonious my vocation is love story. Because while I adore St. Therese enough to name my daughter for her, and while my vocation is, indeed, love, I’m kind of a mess still. And I’m sure Jenny in the future will look back on present day Jenny’s whining over dirty laundry (literally), she’ll maybe smile in compassion or recognition and remember how hard it is to get unselfish. Especially when the desire to do so isn’t terribly strong most days.

Ding, dong. Maybe that’s what I’ll hear when the 4 year old is in my room at 11 tonight, weaving me a tale of bedtime woes. Time to get up and serve my vocation. That’s my call to prayer.

Or maybe I’ll roll over and let daddy deal with it. The flesh is particularly weak on Friday of the last week of school.

Catholic Spirituality, Family Life, feast days, liturgical living, Marriage, motherhood, Suffering

You’re dragging me to Calvary

March 21, 2016

I was sipping an herbal tea in the chilly and confused Colorado sunshine yesterday afternoon with a girlfriend, recounting an actual conversation I’d had with my 5 year old, and I laid the (slightly) hyperbolic one-liner on her as an example of how hard the last week has been: croup, stomach virus round 2 million, traveling daddy, poop exploring toddler.

“You’re dragging me to Calvary!!”

I did, actually, yell that across the house as the naughty child in question scampered down to his basement lair after hitting his brother in the head with a butterfly net-turned-lightsaber.

“Wow,” said she, laughing and setting down her chai, “you’re dragging me to Calgary! That’s intense.”

So close.

(And yet, no offense to Canadian winters, but I presume they’re not quite on par with the Crucifixion.)

Still, it made us both laugh, because her verbal misstep was funny and because I was being a little bit ridiculous. But I was also being a little bit honest.

This Lent has been different, because I didn’t prep for it, not in the way I’ve done in years past, starching my sackcloth and making DIY ashes out of ambitious New Year’s Resolutions thinly disguised as piety.

Nope, this year I just threw in the haircloth towel at the outset and let the sacrifices present themselves to me as they came, not in spite of my marital and motherly vocation, but right from the very heart of it.

And come they did.

I was amazed, not by how difficult things were, but by how many opportunities I have every single day to cast my heart heavenward and utter an internal “fiat.”

(Fiat can sound a little bit like a swear word sometimes.)

What has been most surprising has been that the opportunities to suffer appear to have increased over the past 5 weeks, with a multiplication of minor illnesses and naughtinesses and stresses and tensions.

But my anger and frustration have not increased. My sense of feeling assaulted by the fruit of my own womb or of being abandoned by God in difficult moments have not increased.

So to recap: things are harder, but they feel lighter. Lighter because I’m more aware I’m not in it alone, and because grace is real and effective.

It’s transformative not of the suffering, but of the sufferer.

That’s what I’ve never understood about heroic virtue and the saints and all my holy friends whose lives appear, at least to the outside observer, to be horrifyingly difficult.

How can anyone want to get close to you, Lord? St. Teresa of Avila had it right when she questioned Your relationship skills, I’d muse privately, observing some heroic soul undergoing yet another trial, enduring yet another setback.

But this little liturgical season of abandonment to Divine Providence, (ish. I’d say I’ve had moments of light abandonment. Work in progress.) I’ve had little glimpses of insight into the heart of God, into the economy of His grace.

And it’s really is sufficient, it turns out.

All the times I haven’t felt that to be true in the past, I think, had more to do with my unwillingness to let him shoulder the load with me.

I’ve got to allow myself to be dragged up that hill, right up to the Cross. And this vocation provides ample opportunities for growth in holiness.

My stubborn (and frankly, quite stupid) insistence that I got this, I can do this through gritted metaphorical teeth usually ended up with me licking my wounds and sulking in an adolescent pique of temper, knowing full well that I shouldn’t have moved that heavy dresser by myself, so to speak. And now my back ached and it was stuck in the middle of the room, even uglier and more obvious than before.

Am I losing you with the home decor metaphors? Mea culpa, moving furniture around is (one of) my love languages.

My prayer is that this Lenten discipline doesn’t burn out in the bright splendor of Eastertide, that I don’t both gleefully stuff my face with delicate Trader Joe’s chocolate and return to a shrewish, self reliant position of git er done-ness that leaves me exhausted and puddlish at the end of a weekday and wondering why I signed up for this marathon in the first place.

Because when I let Him run alongside me, when I don’t shove Him away and sprint for the finish line under my own power, the miles are easier. The shin splints might still come, and the ice might still be necessary, but the endorphins are flowing, too.

I think I’ll close here, since I’ve now referenced most of my personal leisure activities and tried to connect them to the spiritual life. Though if pressed, I think I could make a decent case for how sitting on the couch in sweatpants drinking wine with your beloved while rain falls outside the darkened windows and the children sleep peacefully in their beds at 8:55 pm on a Tuesday evening while you enjoy an uninterrupted episode of Madame Secretary is a fleeting foretaste of Heaven.

I could.

About Me, Catholic Spirituality, liturgical living, Marriage, motherhood

When God picks your Lent

February 10, 2016

I’m sneaking away from a feverish baby + toddler set to bang out a couple thoughts before duty crows for more Tylenol, but the irony (divine coincidence?) of spending the vigil of Mardi Gras first eating Texas sheet cake washed down with a lovely IPA and then popping out of bed to soothe fevered brows all night long was not lost on me.

Most of the time it would be.

I’m grateful for the grace inherent in this season of penance that disposes my otherwise incredibly blind and determined heart to receive the grace specific to my vocation, custom-fitted to make me holy.

Usually I resist it. Almost always.

The night wakings. The projectile vomiting. The discipline issues, the domestic quarrels, the dishes piled in the sink and the 17 different food groups collecting on the floor under the kitchen table.

Last week when I get to thinking about what I’m going to give up this year, I was kind of at a loss. I figured it would be alcohol or sugar, or that I’d make a commitment to getting up at a specific ungodly hour (my own personal hell). But nothing was sticking as “yes, this is it, this should be your focus this year.” I realized that Lent, for me, is always about self improvement, self denial, self mastery, self, self self.

Oddly enough, (and by that I mean not at all), I think focusing overly on my sacrifice of choice has really hamstrung most of my lenten practices in the past. Because it becomes just another endurance event where I pit my will against the calendar and grit my teeth and git er done.

At least it has the potential to. And frequently in the past I’ve found myself 4 Sundays deep and no closer to the One I’m trying to follow into the desert. But maybe I’d have lost some weight.

I’m not saying I shouldn’t give up chocolate or wine or sweets or Netflix or one of the many earthly comforts I cling to. By no means! But as I rolled groggily out of bed this morning still unsure of what my penance of choice would be for the 2016 heart rending season, I realized that even if I did nothing “extra,” I had a pretty sweet custom opportunity at hand to simply accept what He had for me today.

And then do it again tomorrow.

And the day after that.

Back in January I chose a “theme” for 2016, or maybe it was chosen for me: Acceptance with joy.

I think that can be adapted to Lent.

In fact, I think it’s specifically intended to be, at least for me.

Kids up all night and you feel dead? Acceptance with joy.

House trashed after hours of hardcore parenting and work and life and it’s 9:48 pm and you’re staring down a pile of dishes in the sink? Acceptance with joy.

Somebody summons you to their bedchambers in the dark of night with the horrifying sound of retching? Acceptance with joy.

Can’t add half and half to your coffee because the baby will make you repent of it with every fiber of your being if you ingest a microscopic particle of dairy? Acceptance with joy.

It sounds ridiculous because there are people who live like this every day. They calmly accept what life throws at them and handle it with grace and charity.

I’m not one of them. Especially when it comes to sleep deprivation. I don’t naturally bounce back, coffee cup in hand, from a night in the house of horrors.

I’m also not keen on my own plans being, well, let’s say rerouted by family dynamics and life with unpredictable and explosive toddlers. Wouldn’t you know though, I’ve got a house overflowing with opportunities for frustration.

Or for grace.

This year I’m choosing grace. I’m acknowledging the possibility that maybe God knows better than I do what I need from Him for Lent. And I’m open to giving over the reins and seeing where He wants to go.

A wiser and more experienced mom told me when I had my first baby “there’s a reason, aside from the physical practicalities, why pregnant and nursing women are exempt from fasting. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to sacrifice and suffer.”

Silly me, I didn’t really understand her until now.

I wanted to prove my toughness, picking this or that to make the point that I could still self deny with the best of them, meanwhile kicking and screaming (at least internally) over the slight injustices visited upon my poor stretched out body before breakfast.

So here’s hoping. That He’s got a bigger and better plan, and that it might just be intimately connected with my state in life, rather than barely achievable in spite of it. I don’t want another year of failed and half-cocked ideas about how tough I can be and how much I can accomplish.

I just want Him.

What about you guys? Lent got off to a sluggish or unexpected start in your house? I had every intention of being at 8 am Mass with the under school aged crew, but instead I’m typing this in my activewear and watching Batman eat a cheesestick through the hole in his mask while the baby sleeps off his fever.

Join the conversation over on Facebook and share what you’re doing – or not doing – this year.

Catholic Spirituality, Evangelization, Family Life, feast days, liturgical living, saint days

St. Nicholas lives at the North Pole

December 5, 2014

We do a kind of liturgical/secular mashup in this house come Advent, both in reverence for the all-but-invisible-in-America season in the Church year and in concession to, well, the same thing.

We can’t shield our children from the life-sized Santa Claus and Nativity displays at Costco come October, and, frankly, why would we want to? I’m glad there’s something meaningful to distract them while I’m frantically shoveling bulk meat products and cases of black beans into my double wide cart.

But Advent.

My husband was raised in a more, shall we say, liturgically rigorous household, and so it was not uncommon for a tree to be procured as late as Christmas Eve itself.

My side of the tracks? We pop out both fake trees the first or second week of November and the halls are fully decked by the time the Thanksgiving turkey is on the table.

So we’ve had to compromise, coming together to create a meaningful and realistic celebration of this most joyous time of year, respecting the austerity and recollection of Advent while at the same time acknowledging that we live in 21st century America, and our kids are going to hear Silent Night once or 233 times between now and December 25th.

Enter St. Nicholas.

He’s the perfect vehicle to bridge the gap between the secular and the religious, and he is a very cool saint in his own right, too. Whether you identify more with the tenderhearted bishop who paid off the dowry for a young family of sisters, saving them from sexual slavery, or the righteous zealot who punched a heretic in the face while defending the divinity of Christ, there really is something for everyone.

Plus, the guy is everywhere come November.

We use St. Nicholas and Santa Claus interchangeably, and it works out great. All over town, all over Target, and all over tv there are images of the jolly saint in red, helping to remind us to prepare our hearts for the great mystery of the Incarnation: the Nativity of Jesus.

On the evening of December 5th, our kids place letters they’ve written to St. Nicholas in their shoes, arranged under the Christmas tree. The letters are a truly bizarre mashup of prayer requests, toy lists, and messages of gratitude for the blessings of the past year. But the morning of December 6th, the feast of St. Nicholas, our kids find that St. Nicholas has retrieved his letters in the night and left shoes full of chocolate coins – or this year Dollar Spot Nutcrackers and new winter jammmies along with my favorite CCC of America movie of all time (because chocolate before Mass has burned us before. Burned us real good) – to remind them how sweet it is to prepare our hearts and home for the coming of baby Jesus.

Best of all? St. Nicholas pens a letter to them in return, encouraging them to keep Advent filled with good deeds and obedience and that if they do their best, he’ll be back on Christmas Eve.

Simple, meaningful, and an easy translation to connect Santa Claus to Jesus Christ. And it saves the trip to the post office to send letters off to the North Pole.

May your Advent season be marked by childlike wonder, and may your hearts be opened to the miraculous reality of Jesus Christ made man, lying in a manger, defended by a sturdy bishop named Nicholas.

(Cross posted at Catholic Exchange)

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