family life – Page 4 – Mama Needs Coffee

About Me, Family Life, motherhood, Parenting, reality check

Life in the HOV lane

June 22, 2017

(Thanks a million for the outpouring of kindness yesterday. Undeserved and overwhelming.)

Since my vehicle is almost always highly occupied, I enjoy the perk of the far left lane when cruising some of Denver’s increasingly congested major highways, a privilege I can thank my numerous children for.

This morning found me boldly venturing to the nearby splash pad with zero snacks or sunscreen (which I applied before we left the house and will be patting myself on the back for all day long), the full crew clad only in swimsuits and sandals and no thought for the return trip home because I live on the edge, where I proceeded to only mildly helicopter from a bench perch while the splashing commenced. I had some time to reflect on how different mothering a larger family looks and how much more sustainable, if only based on sheer exhaustion, this version of me is. I made a mental note of this as I changed a filthy diaper in eyeshot of the woman sharing my picnic table perch who beat a hasty retreat to an adjoining bench, realizing that perhaps my standards, in some categories, have slipped too far.

Here are things I no longer do as a mom.

I don’t worry about structured play time/crafts/activities. I was never super into this to begin with, but there were definitely a few ill fated Pinterest crafting sessions when my older boys were toddlers that ended in glittery tears. I don’t even buy art supplies any more, save for the requisite twice yearly crayon and marker restocking. Maybe this makes me a monster. Maybe it makes me a genius. But when my kids want to get artistic, they have to make do with paper and crayola and that’s about it. It’s amazing the things my especially artful 5 year old has crafted from scotch tape, tin foil, and ziplock bags. Life finds a way.

I also don’t really do activities yet. Library story time, sports, lessons, etc. It’s just not the right time for us yet, and nobody is clamoring for it, so why rock the boat? We’ve had a couple rounds of swimming lessons so some people are approaching water competency, but apart from that I can’t think of a compelling reason to further complicate our schedule until it’s necessary.

Cook real meals. Sort of. 80% of the time it’s some chicken/veggie/starch encore or breakfast for dinner. Lunch is turkey, hummus, pb&j and carrot sticks. Breakfast is oatmeal or bacon and eggs. Nobody’s hair is falling out yet.

I realized a couple years into motherhood and marriage that I actually don’t enjoy cooking, and even less so when half the crew is rejecting the entree night after night. So I perfected a dozen menus that I can cook from memory and with zero motivation (chili, soup, curry, chicken parm, burgers, korean beef, fajitas, etc.) and I just…make those. Over and over again. I honestly prefer laundry to cooking and would rather be folding clothes than working on a new recipe, so I figured until I get an aspiring Julia Childs coming to me wanting to test their wings, our cuisine will be simple and our evenings will be more peaceful.

Let my kids play with screens. I have more street cred here (and they have definitely noticed) with my dumbed down smart phone, and they know there’s nothing interesting on there but maps and the camera. We don’t have a tablet and we have a strict no video game policy until further notice. Our 6.5 year old would happily play 4 hours of Minecraft a day, he has let me know in no uncertain terms, but not in my house, buddy. I don’t care if I’m socially hamstringing them (fairly confident I’m doing the exact opposite) or if it’s just delaying the inevitable addiction that humanity is now all but doomed to (but at least their brains will develop for a few years first), or if every other kid on the block has their own iPad.

They get an hour or so of tv most days, but they’re limited to PBS kids or maybe something on Netflix if mommy is willing to lend the laptop. It’s been a good transition to scheduled programming via PBS where they have one choice during any given time slot, because if it’s not a show they like, they just don’t watch it. The grownups in the house only watch tv/movies once or twice a week, so it’s easier to enforce behavior we’re already modeling. It’s not that we’re particularly virtuous is this area, it’s just that without Downton Abbey or Madam Secretary to look forward to on Sunday nights, we don’t actually find anything worth watching. Football season is another story, however.

Care about what other people think. My tolerance to this was already pretty high when we moved back from Rome, because after navigating the city bus system with two toddlers I felt like I could pretty much handle anything. And since I’m home most of the day by myself, if I cared what a circus parade we look like when we’re out and about, I’d basically be a hermit. But I don’t care. And when Dave is home at night or I get to go out by myself, the last thing I want to do is grocery shop. Let all of Costco stare, I don’t care. I’m too distracted by the hunt for where they moved the La Croix to this week to notice if anyone is looking at us anyway. And when the “you’ve got your hands full” comments start coming, I just respond blandly and mildly with “yep.” or “Sure do.” and maybe since it’s Denver and there are plenty of free spirited weirdos around, nobody really seems all that gobsmacked honestly. Or maybe I’ve reached the magical number of no comment.

Feel bad about making siblings share/play together/serve each other. As an oldest child I am mindful of not wanting to burden my firstborn overly much, but as he is a sanguine boy and not an overachieving choleric female, I think we’re in safer territory. We frequently ask the kids to do things for us to help serve a younger sibling, whether it’s running for a diaper, reading a book to someone, or pointedly including your sister in your game because you can’t say “no girls allowed” when she’s the only girl, punk. But nice try.

They also share rooms and toys and clothes (gender permitting) and have few truly personal possessions. There are a coterie of stuffed lovies which are true private property and thus sacrosanct, but otherwise, the booty is communal, and must be respected as such. When birthdays or Christmas roll around, the new gift is given with a 48 hour grace period before sharing will commence. Usually they void the 48 hours on their own accord and freely offer their new treasure to their siblings to experience as well, because (I tell myself) they like to share. Or they’re at least very used to it.

I can think of a handful of other less virtuous achievements, mostly involving not requiring people to get fully dressed most days (ahem, Luke) and cleaning lots of things using diaper wipes, but I think you get the idea. More kids is more work, but it’s also more streamlined. There is less stress (most days), more joy, and there are much, much dirtier floors.

What standards have you found “adjusting” as you’ve grown into your motherhood gig? Does anyone else let their one year old eat cold hot dogs straight from the fridge? Asking for a friend.

benedict option, Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Evangelization, Family Life, motherhood, prayer, spiritual warfare

Make America good again (with Mary)

June 6, 2017

Lately (as in the past 6 months or so) I’ve been feeling nudged?shoved?pushed? to start praying a daily rosary as a family. I have a whole laundry list of reasons why this is a terrible idea, but then again, most days I have an hour long Netflix or PBS kids playlist I can refer to and see that yes, my children do possess an attention span capable of sustained engagement – albeit perhaps formal spoken prayer being less fascinating to the toddler brain than Curious George.

But. We have to try. I look around at the increasing violence in the world, whether on the news or just on Netflix, at the seemingly endless human appetite for cruelty and vice, and I look at four small faces turned up at me, asking “why are you sad, Mommy?” when I gasp out loud at a text from a sister announcing (another) terror attack somewhere not so far away in the world.

I’m sad because I won’t always be there, baby. I’m sad because no matter the sweat and effort and grace and plain old fashioned hard work I put into forming your little minds and souls, I can’t guarantee a good outcome. I’m sad because free will, and sin, and hatred, and racism, and abortion, and honor killing, and suicide bombings, and fanatical gender ideologies.

I’m sad because I’m handing you over to a broken world, and that I can’t protect you from what’s out there. The clock is ticking down to the moment you’ll walk out the door and the shot will cut to your dad and me and the golden retriever on the front steps, heartbroken and hoping for the best like a good Subaru commercial. (But we are never getting a dog.)

I worry a lot about the future. It’s part of the reason I’m in the line of work I’m in, because it’s important to tell the truth to a world that would pretend it is only a construct, and because it’s worth the time it takes (even sometimes time away from my kids) to proclaim the Gospel, whether on the digital page or up on a stage, or just in a restaurant over cocktails with a friend.

But all the worry in the world can’t save this weary world. And all my efforts and all my good works are nothing in the face of that fantastic and mysterious force that is human free will. We make the best choices we can with our kids and work to lay a foundation of truth, goodness, and beauty…and they are free to walk away. They are free to turn around one day and look us dead in the eye and say “I hate you. I don’t believe any of this. I’m leaving.”

As we are free to do the same to God.

So, as a mother prone to natural anxiety to begin with, the only rational thing for me seems to be to entrust these little people who are en route to adulthood to the maternal care of a mother who will always be there. I picked up this book, “The Rosary: Your weapon for spiritual warfare,” more than a month ago and flipped through the introduction. Then, a couple weeks ago, I picked it up again and actually got down to the business of reading it. And all those little nudges in my heart to pray it more often and more faithfully coalesced in an upwelling of desire, strengthening my resolve to actually just start doing it.

I won’t always be there for my kids. But Mary will.

I can’t always be able to come when they call me. But she can.

I’m not able to soothe away some of the pain that this world will inflict on them. But Her Son will.

The further our culture – and the rest of the West with it – veers off the rails of the crazy train, the more convicted I become that the only thing I can actually do is change my own heart. Is beg God to change it for me.

It is our own personal holiness that matters. Not the way we vote, or the boycotts we participate in, or the arguments we win. Those things have a place, but in the grand scheme of things, it is conversion that matters, that makes real progress in this sin wearied world. Conversion leading to compassion. To conviction. To a desire to suffer out of love for the other. Even the stranger. Even the enemy.

And I can think of no greater aid to the process of conversion than spending time in conversation with the Mother of God.

Our school had a motto this past year, a quote from Mary to St. Dominic: “One day, through the Rosary and the scapular, I will save the world.”

When I saw it on the little prayer cards at the beginning of the academic term I thought it was cool. I also thought maybe a bit of an overstatement? But then again, if Mary wants to use these small, tangible acts of faith and humility to bring us to her Son, who am I to question her methodology? Surely we’ve proven ourselves (repeatedly) to be fairly incompetent in larger matters.

After reading about the Battle of Lepanto in the opening chapter of this book, I think that just maybe, Mary wasn’t messing around when she said those words. And when I think back to my lost college years – the few leading up to my reversion in particular – and the improbability that I would ever come to my senses and return to myself, I can’t help but think of the hundreds of rosaries my mom prayed for me, the nights she must have spent worrying over my soul, crying over my terrible choices, wondering why God was seemingly deaf to her prayers.

And I am grateful.

So we will pray the rosary. We will arm ourselves for battle and engage in the tedious, inglorious, and often strenuously resisted practice of tithing a small portion of our day to God. Praying not as we’d always prefer personally, perhaps, but as His mother has asked. Repeatedly. In this 100th anniversary year of the apparitions of Fatima, it seems only right that we take up our weapons and engage in battle.

However much wearied and however many whining toddlers we must persevere in the face of.

The rosary isn’t magical, but it is powerful. And it’s a bet I’m willing to make, staking my own selfish heart and my personal preferences on the hope that this faithfulness in small matters will transform our hearts and plant seeds in the hearts of our children that will blossom in eternity.

Let’s make America good again. How about the whole world, while we’re at it?

Let’s pray the rosary.

benedict option, Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, Evangelization, Family Life, feast days, liturgical living

The Franciscan Option

May 8, 2017

(By Franciscan I’m referring to Franciscan University of Steubenville and not the venerable religious order, about which I know less.)

It looks a little like the Benedict Option, actually. Could also probably be called “The FOCUS option” or “The Christendom Option” or “The TAC option.”

But, in reading the endless criticisms and assessments of Rod Dreher’s book, I’ve had a nagging thought just at the back of my brain that only came to the forefront last night while reading Fr. Dwight Longnecker’s astute take on the matter.

And the thought suddenly crystalized in a laughably obvious realization: we’re already living this.

While I’m not participating in any kind of urban gardening or cow sharing scheme (though one can never predict the future. Okay yes, in this case, one can: I will never raise chickens.) we’ve already made a lot of the choices he outlines, very organically and with little fanfare.

We have a vibrant community of other Catholic families with whom we regularly celebrate the liturgical year, feasting and fasting as the season proscribes. We support each other spiritually, rejoicing over baptisms and new births, and we grieve over losses and illnesses. There is financial support when a job is lost or a medical bill is insurmountable. Childcare offered and received in times of need. There is fellowship and community united not by geographic proximity but by common love and shared belief. So we drive from all over the city and from our vastly different places of employment and we share our lives together, and it looks less like withdrawing form the world and more like building a solid, enduring edifice against worldliness and loneliness and faithlessness.

And it is not insular. This community, organic and widely spread as it is, is constantly welcoming in new members. New families moving in from out of state, singles and just marrieds and those with kids starting college. The common thread is a desire to grow in holiness, to present our children with an attractive and living Catholicism to fall in love with, and a desire to transform the culture from the inside out.

And the other common thread? Many of us, at least in this community of several dozens of families, went to FUS. Most of us are also tied into the life of a religious order founded there and now thriving here in Denver, and are able to partake in the beauty of the liturgical year as lived out by an active/contemplative religious community.

I know of many more communities like ours, sprinkled across the city and the state and around the country. Some are gathered in actual proximity to Catholic colleges; others are bulwarked by a strong alumni presence from one of those schools in cities nationwide. Some are centered around a thriving parish or school, and others are built around places of employment, whether a parish or an apostolate, where a healthy integration of work and faith are encouraged and nourished.

But what none of these communities have in common, at least in my experience, is withdrawal from society.

Not, at least, in the sense that most BenOp critics seem to mean. In our own community there are those of us who work for the Church or various Catholic apostolates, but there are probably 4 times as many who work in IT. Who are school teachers and physical therapists, nurses and physicians assistants, CPAs and engineers and stay at home moms and photographers and every other occupation in between.

In short, there are families who are living and making a living very much in the world, but who are striving to raise their families and foster their marriages in a way that is not of the world.

My husband and I are a hybrid product of FOCUS, FUS, and the Augustine Institute, a veritable trifecta of Catholic culture shapers in the New Evangelization. And our work and studies in all three cultures was shot through with a common thread: be salt and light. Carry this out into the world. Form and protect and inspire your families to become witnesses to the Gospel.

Be not afraid, but also be not stupid.

This means we don’t send our kids to schools where our values are going to be confounded or our parental authority dismantled by what they hear in the classroom. We don’t accept media carte blanche as a benign or neutral presence in our home. We don’t adhere to the broader culture’s standards for what constitutes appropriate technology use or sexual ethics.

And that’s where Fr. Longnecker’s assessment comes in. That the conversation has already ceased, to a certain extent, and that no further dialogue is possible in terms of changing minds with logic, reasoning, or sound arguments. The only compelling argument we have left is a lived example.

So in that sense there is a “withdrawal,” an opting out even while continuing to live in the midst of. There is no self sustaining monastery and WiFi free zone where we hoe rows of non GMO corn, but neither is there an unchallenged going with the flow of the larger culture of which we are a part.

And if that looks radical, it’s only because the larger culture is deteriorating at a rapid clip and too many parents are ceding their God-given responsibilities to be disciple makers and to become disciples themselves.

And I happen to think that discipleship is at the heart of the message of the Benedict Option.

A call for Christians to arise from our worldly slumber, take a look at the surrounding culture, and have a literal come to Jesus as we realize that we are living in a post Christian era and under an increasingly aggressive threat of secularization, and our response can only and always be love.

We can’t live out that love if we are not first being nourished by His love.

We can’t answer the culture’s questions about the meaning of life without discovering it first for ourselves, and deeply.

And we can’t hope to become effective witnesses for joy if we are not deeply rooted in a faith that is living and active and sustained and, yes, removed from the world around us.

But not for the sake of escape. For the sake of helping others escape.

Not for the sake of insular rejection, but for joyful inclusion.

Not for the sake of fear, but for the great hope we have in Christ.

As Christians we have always been asked by our God to be fools for His sake, to live in the world but not of it. And to let our lives – broken and complicated and imperfect as they are – reflect the beauty of His redemptive love to a broken and weary world.

We don’t reject the culture because it is broken, we beckon the culture into the effervescent freshness of the Gospel.

And we can’t live what we do not first posses.

That is the heart of the Benedict Option, from what I can tell. That the goodness and beauty of the faith is worth persevering precisely so that the doors can be flung open wide, so that something worth possessing can be offered to a world in desperate need.

Find your community. Build your community. And let’s help each other get to Heaven. It’s not enough to ride along on autopilot any more, hoping the ambient culture or the parochial school you’re shelling out for will do the trick. It won’t. It can’t.

We have to fight for our families, for our marriages, and for our own identities in Christ. We have to be willing to do radical, inconvenient and perhaps incomprehensible things, to the outside observer.

It’s time to stop criticizing and and intellectually dissecting the thing and to start living it. Call up a family you know and invite them over for a bbq this weekend. Pray a rosary after dinner and then let the kids play in the backyard while the grownups drink beer around the fire pit and talk theology and philosophy. Find a parent in your circle of friends with a background in sacred music and ask if they’d be willing to give an informal presentation or a performance at a party you organize for your kids and their group of friends. Find a few couples who you trust to discuss the finer points of living out the Church’s teachings on sex and marriage. Agree to meet every other month with wine and dessert, and split up by sexes once in a while to enable more frank discussion. Ask your priest to go hiking with you and group of kids this summer ala Karol Wojtyla, if he can spare a couple hours on a Tuesday. Ask a local seminarian if he can’t.

Do something.

The time is now. Whether or not the Lord returns during our lifetimes or a thousand years from now, we have one job as Christians, and it is to live out the gospel in the circumstances of our actual lives.

We have various options. Failure is not one of them.

Catholic Spirituality, Evangelization, Family Life, feast days, guest post

A father’s anger, a father’s love {guest post}

May 1, 2017

On this feast of St. Joseph the worker, I wanted to feature something written by another Joseph, a friend and father whom I admire greatly. He shepherds his growing little flock on the domestic front, and he also helps keep our streets safe in his heroic line of duty. St. Joseph, patron of fathers, workers, and the universal Church, pray for us!

Recently I spoke with my spiritual director about a movement in my heart to discern how I could suffer with and for the Lord, out of love for Him and to increase my love for all mankind. Many great saints have made victims of themselves in order to not only love the Lord, but to Love with Him. To not just love Him but to also love those whom He loves for His and their sake. So I told Fr. John how I desired to suffer greatly and silently for sinners, in order to know the Lord more intimately and to be perfected by it.

Sounds good right?

Well, less than 48 hours later, I found myself running late, on my knees at the bottom of our shoe closet with far too many pairs of shoes inside, It is also filled with other things that don’t belong in it.

I reached in with a single blind hand to inefficiently search for one shoe, and then the other. It is actually a sick game of patience testing because the odds of actually finding two shoes of your choosing in the timeframe allotted for someone running late are worse than those faced by people who play the lottery. For those who like fishing, it can sometimes turn into a sport of shoe catch and release.

As the anger boiled up in me, my son was nearby and he asked a simple question, a legitimate question and he got a rude, distracted, and uninterested answer.

In prayer sometime after that. It struck me how hypocritical I was. I first had spoken in spiritual direction about wanting to love the Lord at any cost, and then the Lord invited me to Love my son and be patient at the bottom of a shoe closet, and I failed.

I had professed a jump in front of a bullet type of love, and the Lord was calling me to a patient, gentle, like the dewfall, type of sacrifice and love.

Like Peter, I professed that I loved the Lord heroically and that I would die for Him, but I denied even knowing Him at the bottom of that shoe closet, I denied letting His love convert me by the way I communicated with my son.

So what did I do? I stepped into the domestic confessional and asked forgiveness of my son like we all find need to do.

I have learned learned that especially in domestic family life, God gives us countless little and gentle opportunities of grace and conversion. Barely even recognizable, like the dew fall, but if we let it, it can saturate us, and keep us alive. We all face great, and significant challenges where God certainly knocks us off a horse or two, but a bulk of God’s invitations to love Him and with Him come like the dew fall.

Now that we have talked my imperfect anger, let’s talk about God’s anger. We speak of God as Father and us as His sons and daughters, for indeed we are. But in describing our relationship with Him in human ways, we can at times attribute fallen human behavior to God. I believe this can become unhealthy with regard to a traditional understanding of anger. We do not face an angry Father, at least not as the world understands anger. Bishop Robert Barron speaks of God’s love as a force for correction, a force that brings us back into right relationship with God.

It is not an un-tempered emotional response of indignation. We, His children in need of conversion, do face an angry Father, but because God is immutable, His love and anger must not just co-exist, but co-exist in harmony.

So God’s anger is at work for our conversion.

My fellow fathers, I wonder if our children will say the same for us? Will they say, “My father’s anger and his love worked for my good, to bring me into and keep me in right relationship.” I hope so.

Since we are not perfect, we will certainly experience both God’s sanctifying love and anger in our lifetimes. One of my favorite passages in the Gospels is when Christ saw, and did something about, the unjust use of the temple that got in the way of the daily conversion he intended for His people by getting in the way of their right worship – their right relationship with Him and His Father.

Since our bodies and souls are temples where right worship should take place, we need to feel the Lord’s anger when we have gone astray.

He seeks to overturn the tables of our worldly affections, correct our empty sacrifice and transform it into right worship.

Let us contemplate the ways the Lord sanctifies us through His unique love language to us.

Let this contemplation lead to conversion, which is right relationship manifested in right worship. Let us begin living right worship today. This action will draw us in line with the perfection of our beginning as well as the life we will live in eternity.

This is an evil time in our country and world. But where sin increases, grace hyper-abounds. Let us beg God to convert us into great saints, our world and our children need it.

Praised be Jesus Christ – now and forever.

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

Lately, in random bullet points

March 15, 2017

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

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

Let them dissect my broken blowdryer. Very STEM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Into the desert that is your actual life

February 28, 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But only just.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are your plans for Lent this year?

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

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

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, deliverance, Evangelization, Family Life, prayer, sin, spiritual warfare

Spiritual Warfare 101: prayers of protection

February 6, 2017

Before our biggest little people scurry out the door on school mornings, there is a prayer we gather to pray as a family apart from the morning offering and the basic “love you, be safe.” We started doing some version of this about a year ago, praying specifically and intentionally for protection from harm – be it physical, spiritual, or emotional – over each other and over the kids at the beginning of each day. Some days we drop the ball, other days one of us might remember later in the morning and a quick phone call will accomplish the feat. But we have noticed a significant difference between the days we pray this way and the days we don’t.

A few things before I get deeper into this. First, praying this way is not magical. Asking God to protect you from accidents, injuries, curses, etc. is not like waving a verbal wand over the 12 hour expanse of day stretched out ahead of you and rendering it “safe.” These prayers focus on staying in the safest place possible: the center of God’s will. And His will is mysterious, sometimes more so than others. So we pray this way with clear eyes and the expectation that God will hear our prayer and apply our petitions in the ways that will accomplish our greatest good, from His perspective.

So we pray with faith, sometimes more distracted than other times, but always with the expectation that as long as we are seeking God’s will and really trying to live it, He is going to do His part for our greatest good and for His greatest glory.

Acknowledging that sometimes God’s plans look nothing like ours, and can even be excruciatingly painful at times, when experienced in a vacuum, has helped me to let go of the magical thinking that goes something like “Well, I asked God for this and I was really specific with Him, and He didn’t deliver. Guess He doesn’t care/isn’t there/isn’t omnipotent.” (Maybe you’re holier than me, or more well-formed, and you never think that way. But just in case there are any other mediocre Christians out there reading this, I thought I’d include it as a pertinent detail.)

I also wrestled a bit with the idea that we would be giving the enemy – satan, you know the guy – too much credibility by praying in a way that was overtly acknowledging his existence and specifically rejecting him. Like, would that make our kids nuts? Do they need to hear us engaging in verbal warfare with an unseen force for evil who is actively seeking to harm them and disrupt their path to holiness?

Then I thought about the renewal of baptism prayer and the St. Michael prayer, and I got over myself. After all, one of satan’s most effective weapons in the modern age is that while the culture is utterly fascinated with witchcraft, dark magic, occult practices and gnosticism, many Christians – can I go so far as to say most? – are ashamed to admit any belief in a person who is evil incarnate and who works tireless for our eternal damnation. LOL JOKE’S ON THEM, he’s got to be thinking.

CS Lewis said as much in The Screwtape Letters, cackling deliciously as Uncle Screwtape over the coup of the century, to hoodwink the world into an oblivious skepticism of real evil, dismissible as fairy tales and ghost stories and utterly not serious and not suitable for contemplation by intelligent people with rational minds. Brilliant strategy, as these things go.

And we now have two big problems on our hands: First, an inability to trust that God has our best interests at heart (isn’t that the oldest one on the books?) and second, a disbelief – or at least a hearty skepticism – that there is anyOne out there who is truly our enemy, and who is actively seeking to destroy us.

It’s a pretty effective recipe for disaster.

Enter the protection prayers, which I consider spiritual warfare 101. After all, the first step is admitting that we have a problem. And Houston, we have a problem. The culture is in full on meltdown mode, and as parents, we’re tasked with doing our best to navigate the waters we dwell in and get these kids home safe, taking as many other people as possible with us.

So, as a first step into this perhaps unfamiliar realm, may I recommend starting your day with a simple prayer of protection.

We have two versions we’ve used. We like this shorter version a priest friend shared with us best, and I think it’s pretty all-encompassing. We printed it out and taped it to our fridge where we would see it every day, and it has proven to be a convenient mechanism for reminding us to actually do it. I suggest you do the same with your spouse and kids, if they’re old enough to read along and pay attention. Some days I’ll pray it again if I’m feeling particularly besieged by what feels like demonic interference, or if I realize we’d forgotten to do it that morning.

Spiritual Protection of the Home

Dear Lord Jesus, please surround me (my family/friends/home) with a perimeter of Your Love and Protection throughout the day today and every day a hundred yards in all directions.

Lord Jesus, render any demons that are here, or should try to come, deaf, dumb, and blind. Strop them of all weapons, illusions, armor, power, and authority. Disable them from communicating or interacting in any way. Bind, sever, and separate them, sending them directly to the foot of Your Cross, without manifestation or harm, to us or to anyone, to be dealt with by you Jesus as you see fit.

May Your Precious Blood cover us, the Holy Spirit fill us, Mary’s mantle of love and protection surround us, St. Joseph guide us, the Holy Angels and Saints guard and protect us from all unfortunate events. Protect us from fire, theft, vandalism, flood, storms, ailments and accidents of every sort, distress, hardship, curse, and all untoward things. I ask this all in your Name Jesus, through Mary’s intercession, now. Amen!

Bottom line? This stuff is real. And even though it marks you out as crazy cakes to start talking about it, it’s even crazier to pretend it isn’t happening.

We are spiritual beings as well as flesh and blood, and as Ephesian 6:12 promises, “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

St. Michael, St. Joseph, St. Padre Pio, St. John Paul II, and Mother Mary, pray for us!

About Me, Catholic Spirituality, Family Life, mental health, motherhood

Winter Survival List

February 2, 2017

I wanted to participate in Modern Mrs Darcy’s “What’s Saving My Life Right Now” reflection exercise, but I just couldn’t bring myself to actually title a post … that.

Buuuut, I do have a little curated collection of practices, products, and habits that are indeed keeping me mostly afloat during a challenging season, which I will identify as having begun the day after Halloween with the first round of vomiting and has basically stretched into an almost interminable succession of viral assaults. I know, having kids in school changes everything and I know, having little kids with limited – nay, zero – hygiene is mostly to blame, but we have been hammered by Thor himself this winter, and woe mightily unto the next classmate who shows up at school with RSV/rotovirus/pink eye/croup. Woe, I say.

But the list.

The reason I’m not bald and completely insane yet, I think, is that I’ve been making some respectable efforts in the self care/spiritual care department, and it’s helping keep things limping along.

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Reading for pleasure. I had been remiss in falling out of a good reading habit and letting the social media dragon creep stealthily back into the driver’s seat during my daily time pockets, but about 3 weeks ago when felled by the first round of croup, I forced myself to make a digital hold list and slowly but surely, my Kindle started to fill up with new titles from the library.

So far since January I’ve read The Shoemaker’s Wife (loved), Everyone Brave is Forgiven (loved), Before We Visit the Goddess (meh), The Magnolia Story (LOVED), Falling Free (moderately enjoyed), Simply Tuesday (meh), and Resisting Happiness (decent). I got well into the Neapolitan Trilogy and while the writing was simply top notch and the character development was deep and fantastic, the subject matter and the gruesome, detailed accounts of sexual violence had me clicking “return.” I told the well-read friend who’d recommended them with that very caveat that she was not wrong, but that I’m particularly sensitive to what I read, because I pretty much never forget something once I’ve read it. Downfall of a visual learner, I guess.

The punchline to all this is, look how much reading I was able to accomplish when I left my phone on my desk (sorry, friends who I forgot to text back) and forced myself to sit without “real time” entertainment. It’s kind of scary that sometimes I’ll click on my Kindle and start instinctively trying to “scroll” through it and then experience a pang of disappointment that no, I won’t be getting a dopamine hit from this particular electronic device. I need so much self control when it comes to the internet. Work in progress.

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Which brings me to my next practice: not engaging in inflammatory political discourse on the internet. The Women’s March and the March for Life aside, I’ve been assiduously avoiding engaging in any overtly political discourse with strangers or friends via social media. It is not helpful. It does not bring me joy. It does not cultivate depth or growth between myself and those digital friends with whom I am in true relationship. I am watching the news with one eye, checking headlines every day or so, but not consuming piece after piece dictating to me what I should think about what is going on in the world and in our country right now.

My particular role is to continue working in my own wheelhouse, which has always been women’s issues and life issues and the profound beauty of human sexuality. Any noise I could add to the national “conversation” (if you can call this … that) would be exactly that: noise.

I can pray for justice and I can make acts of sacrifice and self denial and offer those up for the Lord to use as He sees fit. I can donate money to charities that serve and protect refugees. I can continue praying and working and writing for a greater awareness of the sanctity of human life and the beauty of marriage. And I can pray for our President, our leaders, and those whose beliefs I don’t share, and teach my children to do the same. Screaming profanities or click-baiting friends from middle school on Facebook has never and will never advance a single cause. (Nor will, say, lighting cars on fire or pepper spraying people you disagree with.)

The world is a crude, coarse, and common place right now. Don’t contribute to the noise. If the noise is directed at you, forgive and turn away, and don’t engage in escalating violence even when it’s merely violent rhetoric. Flip the magazine covers over. Unfollow the unhinged social media ranter. Say a prayer, offer a smile, buy a stranger in line a cup of coffee, and do your little part to bring beauty into a world that is starved for it. Small acts of kindness are not incidental, they are essential to the survival of culture and desperately necessary to civilize and invigorate a culture that is losing hope and coming ever more off it’s moorings.

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This probiotic is probably what saved us from round 11 of the stomach flu last month. Two separate friends recommended it and most of my kids drink it happily (one gags and surrenders only under extreme duress). I quite like it, it reminds me of a pina colada 🙂

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A cleaning service. I found a fantastic deal on a bi-weekly housecleaning service and even though we’re in a belt-tightening season as we work on this house and prepare to sell, it has been a literal investment in my sanity and general sense of wellbeing. The kids are benefiting from it too, as I no longer faint dead away when somebody pees on the floor I just mopped, but instead wipe it down with clorox spray and look forward to next Thursday. We achieved this life-long dream of mine (at least since motherhood began) by shifting around some budget items, planning a couple simpler dinners that are vegetarian, and letting go of buying certain things organic. I realize it’s a privilege to even have the option to do this, but if there is even a possibility of getting some kind of domestic help when you work at home, whether it’s sending out laundry, having a cleaner come even once a month, or paying a neighborhood kid to do yard or snow work, I am a hearty endorser. We wear a lot of hats, whether it’s homeschooling, working part time or full time, or being all-hands on deck the only adult in charge of multiple small humans all day long. When I found we could make it work with our budget, I cut myself some slack and made it happen.

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Non-negotiable nap times. When my 2 little ones are the only one’s home Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, I have become militant about nap time. 3 year old Evie thinks she’s ready to drop hers, but come 5 pm she is borderline feral without one, so I’ve finally become the iron-willed mommy who escorts her to her room with a stack of books, a sippy cup of water, and strictest instructions to stay for a minimum of 2 hours. And then I go downstairs and turn on the stove exhaust fan, and …. ahhh, blissful white noise-masking silence. I can get everything done in those 2 hours. Everything. Like sitting around writing, or staring vacantly out the window at a flock of geese, or praying a rosary or looking at the wall that really needs to be repainted.

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Fresh flowers and lighting all the candles. Appropriate, since today is Candlemas (confession: I don’t actually know what that means), but I’ve been burning candles with wild abandon all of January and now into February and it is so comforting to have them shining during the day. I’ve also made it a point to grab a bunch of flowers from Trader Joe’s when I’m there ever week or 2, and they last so long that sometimes I’ve enjoyed uninterrupted fresh flowers for a month straight, for less than $5 a bunch.

I also started picking up a bundle of eucalyptus branches when I’m shopping once a month or so, which I break up and distribute in mason jars or vases throughout the house and especially in all the bathrooms. They look and smell so good, and they last for months. If I’m going to be working from home, working in my home, and just generally doing life within these 4 walls day in and day out, it helps my mood tremendously to have little touches of “luxury” and beauty around me. I think it makes the kids more chill, too.

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Compounded progesterone. About 2 months ago I had some labs done for some weird hormone stuff that has been going on, and while it’s not fully resolved, my doctor did suggest switching to this specific preparation of bioidentical progesterone called a troche which dissolves in the side of your cheek and is supposed to be more readily absorbed into your bloodstream. I only take it for the last 10 days of each cycle, essentially, and I have noticed a big improvement in mood and a modest improvement in the ability to stay asleep (which had been killing me). Now if only I could fall asleep before midnight.

I heard someone say that most people figure out their health “stuff,” be it mental or physical, in their mid 30s. I don’t know if that’s because you start falling apart at that point, or because you start to have some of the necessary headspace and resources to look more deeply into things, but that has certainly proven to be the case for me. (shovels another handful of supplements and vitamins into mouth.)

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Daily Mass and Adoration. I’ve been making it to one or the other (or sometimes both) at least once a week, vomiting kids notwithstanding, and it really is the game-changer. Maybe I should have listed it first? But really, when the opportunity arises, I’ve been trying to train myself into a place of “don’t think too long about it, just do it,” and as a result, I’ve been able to spend more time with Jesus. Yesterday, for example, I had to drive drop off to school while Dave met with a contractor, so I trotted next door to 8 am Mass after dropping the boys and even though Luke was in his footie pajamas and Evie was really, really naughty for the first 3 minutes, it was so worth it. Later in the day I had the thought “I could stop into the Adoration chapel” while driving near our parish and instead of caving to the 1000 things that seemed more important and interesting in that moment, I made myself pull over and go inside “just for 5 minutes” and ended up staying for 20. And it was amazing. I can’t hold down a regular holy hour during this season of life, nor can I commit to daily Mass in a literal application, but I can go – and I should – when the inspiration strikes and the circumstances allow.

So, what’s on your list right now? What are you doing that is saving your life during what can be a hard season, or even a really great season? I’d love to hear about it.

(And if you want to join the larger linkup, you can hop over to MMD and share there.)

Catholic Spirituality, Family Life, motherhood, Parenting

I will peel your oranges

January 18, 2017

The longer I’m at this gig the more humbling it is to find oneself falling far, far short of the mark, not only of housekeeping and public decency, but of basic charity.

Half my kids are sick today. Croup, fevers, tummy aches, the works. The other half are teetering on the brink and all I can think is “how inconvenient. How frustrating. How terribly short my sleep was cut last night.”

But I have to plug in the humidifier. I have to sit on the couch and hold and comfort and apply tissues and administer charity of a general sort, and it is hard.

I am more moved by the beautiful moments of motherhood than the hard ones. Seeing my firstborn son turn a technically perfect backstroke, flipping around to catch the edge of the pool and flash me a hundred watt grin. Those moments enlarge my heart with pride, bringing an easy smile to the surface. As I’ve beaten to death on these pages recently, the harder moments are the ones that bring massive deviations from the planned schedule and derail productivity to zero.

I think that in the upside down kingdom of God, those dull, inconvenient moments are probably more important. Simon of Cyrene stooping his shoulder to bear the weight of the Cross, if only for a few minutes. Veronica pushing past the crowds to wipe a battered brow with her own garments, responding not to a perfectly planned day running errands and being productive, but meeting Christ in the street, as she actually encountered Him, bloodied and repulsive. Needy. Probably not as she’d hoped or expected to.

I desperately love my children, and yet there are days – too many – when I spend massive amounts of energy and time trying to devise ways to escape their neediness, if only mentally. Flip on a show (today there are so many shows, necessary to the illness at hand, there is a time and a place for Netflix), toss a snack, distract with a toy pulled up from the basement. All in the name of buying myself, what, a few minutes to finish an important email or a phone call with a stranger working out some all important bureaucracy? Mailing the energy bill on time? Putting on mascara.

Okay, that last one is important. But you see my point?

I will peel your oranges today. I will set aside my agenda and purge my schedule and watch the dirt grow on the floor and sit with you, and I will respond not to the Christ who comes conveniently in quiet prayer times with lit candles and silent, dark living rooms but in the distressing disguise of the child, coughing into my ill-timed and opened mouth when I stoop to lift him into my arms, needing not the possible plans I’d made for myself today, but my very self.

About Me, Catholic Spirituality, Family Life, feast days

We wish you a Merry Christmas

December 24, 2016

…And we’ll see you in the New Year!

Some of my favorite Christmas carols (and one surprising modern addition) for a blessed Christmas weekend to you and yours. May the peace of the newborn Jesus, frail and cold and surprisingly, astoundingly one of us, wedded to humanity, wrapped in Mary’s flesh and born into a manger, fill our hearts, our homes, our families, and this weary world.

Adeste Fidelis – Andrea Bocelli (you may cry)

In the Bleak Midwinter – James Taylor (this version of this song is Christmas, to me)

O Come O Come Emmanuel – Pentatonix (even after the loooongest possible Advent, this version is still my jam)

Santa Claus is Coming to Town – Bruce Springsteen (the Boss)

O Holy Night – Josh Groban (I love a male voice on this song. Whitney Houston’s is very good, too, if you prefer a female vocalist)

Glorious – For King and Country (new Christmas favorite this year)

Silent Night – Jackie Evancho and the Irish Tenors (And with that, I’m out. Happy birthday baby Jesus)

20161222_154508 — The Elf, the Unsure, The Flirt, and the Godfather pose.

p.s. Don’t forget to track Santa tonight using NORAD’s Santa Tracker! (Looks like St. Nick is currently headed into Van, Turkey, as of 12:53 pm MST. Close to his hometown, amiright?)

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