Accepting Holy Week
Lent can be a strange liturgical season for mothers. There is much wisdom and tradition to impart, and also it’s pretty much impossible to make it to stations of the cross, because 7 PM is a time…
Coffee clicks: Passiontide
I can hardly believe we’re a week out from the Triduum. I was rattling off my liturgical wish list to Dave the other night saying how I really wanted to go to the Easter Vigil but, alas,…
The ache of the oldest child
This morning I took the 3 younger kids to Mass, and it was neither our best nor worst performance to date. Zelie squirmed and screamed and needed to be escorted out a couple times, and Luke too,…
Has motherhood changed your sense of style?
I just needed one thing from Whole Foods. I never go there for more than one thing; even with the Amazon subsidies, it’s still never the best price for anything. Except these wonderful/horrible grain free, dairy free,…
‘Back in February,’ an unexpected pregnancy led to unimaginable joy
“If you had asked me before this happened, ‘was I pro-life?’ I would have said yes. I was raised Catholic. We went to Mass. I even went to a March for Life in Chicago once. So, absolutely.…
Guide to making a great confession
Our eldest made his first confession last month, and I decided to avail myself of the opportunity to (finally) memorize my Act of Contrition. I figured at age 36 and with a moderate following on the internet…
The space between
Lately I’ve been making use of a previously overlooked and formerly unavailable slot of time in my life: the very early morning. I was lamenting to my best friend at the beginning of January my very slow…
A litany of thanks for ordinary time
This morning I followed an internet rabbit trail leading to an account of startling and sobering diagnosis of a stranger’s child. From a suggested blog on my feed reader to an ominous sounding “why I’ve been away”…
Big family minimalism + the life changing (yes, really!) magic of tidying up
(First in a series of essays this month on minimalism and its particular relevance to family life.) (Update 1/14/19: Once I got a few episodes into the show, they introduced storylines involving cohabitation and homosexuality, so consider…
Motherhood + Holiday Magic
I love this time of year more than any other. I look forward to this particular stretch for months, such that when it does finally arrive most years, I’ve perhaps overplayed my enthusiastic hand just a tad.…