Panties, Untwisted<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Those of you who like bios and stuff can just go ahead and click over to my About Me page, but I'm a former English major and I like stories. So here we\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2012\/06\/panties-untwisted.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Panties, Untwisted\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Those of you who like bios and stuff can just go ahead and click over to my About Me page, but I'm a former English major and I like stories. So here we\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2012\/06\/panties-untwisted.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Barefoot and Pregnant\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-06-21T02:21:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-03-09T22:13:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/files\/2012\/06\/Calah.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Calah Alexander\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Calah Alexander\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2012\/06\/panties-untwisted.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2012\/06\/panties-untwisted.html\",\"name\":\"Panties, Untwisted\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-06-21T02:21:03+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-03-09T22:13:52+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/#\/schema\/person\/cbd5af11d9f73881b801bf2e07eb8757\"},\"description\":\"Those of you who like bios and stuff can just go ahead and click over to my About Me page, but I'm a former English major and I like stories. 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{"id":429,"date":"2012-06-20T20:21:03","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T02:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/?p=429"},"modified":"2017-03-09T17:13:52","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T22:13:52","slug":"panties-untwisted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/barefootandpregnant\/2012\/06\/panties-untwisted.html","title":{"rendered":"Panties, Untwisted"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Those of you who like bios and stuff can just go ahead and click over to my About Me page<\/a>, but I\u2019m a former English major and I like stories. So here we go.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, I was a brand-spanking-new convert who found myself yanked out of my Catholic cocoon in Irving, Texas and transplanted to the arid wasteland of Las Vegas. I had a three-year-old underfoot and belly-dweller under-ribcage, a husband venturing into the frightening recesses of academia, no family or friends near, and no solid Catholic community as far as the eye could see. Well, my eyes, at least.<\/p>\n

Desperate for a little Catholic interaction, I stumbled blindly into the blogosphere and began devouring the archives at Conversion Diary<\/a> and the new posts at I Have to Sit Down<\/a> until I began to feel slightly human again. There are Catholics like me out there still, <\/em>I told myself a little manically. There just might not be any here. <\/em><\/p>\n

Right about this time, my husband discovered the First Things <\/em>blogs in a similar way, starved as he was for reassurance that he wasn\u2019t the only white male conservative Catholic left alive, and he pointed me to The Anchoress.<\/a> I started reading her posts regularly as well, until one day, when she posted about the Wii Pray<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I did not find the video funny at all. In fact, I got my panties in such a twist that I posted my very first comment ever in a comment box. I was \u201cdeeply offended\u201d and even \u201cbetrayed.\u201d Then, feeling like I hadn\u2019t expressed my displeasure quite clearly enough, I emailed The Anchoress personally and proceeded to give her a lecture on how people had died for the Mass and the right to celebrate it, and she ought to know better than to take that lightly.<\/p>\n

The Anchoress, patient and long-suffering as she is, sent me back a detailed email explaining why she thought the parody was funny, why we ought to have a sense of humor, and sharing some concerns she had about our culture as a whole with its easily offended mentality, all while being extremely gracious and charitable.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t agree with her, but I appreciated the email and her kindness, so I let the matter lie. A year later, I finally worked up the chutzpah to start my own blog. After spending a few years in the blogosphere, I began to understand what she meant. I started to see \u201cCatholic kitsch\u201d for the first time and was stunned to realize that the grand, majestic Church I had converted to also had some crazy, silly, and even downright ridiculous elements. I gradually came to realize that the Church was <\/a>made up of people,<\/a> not just the wonderful Cistercians in Dallas and the University of Dallas campus<\/a>. Other people, people who sinned like me, people who gave the Church a bad name, people who gave the Church a good name, and people who really made me wonder if the CCD programs ought to be a little clearer on that whole \u201cwe don\u2019t actually worship these statues\u201d thing. Most of all, I found that all these disparate elements did not diminish my love for the Catholic Church. They made the Church I had converted to even more beautiful, and even more true.<\/p>\n

I kept following the Anchoress\u2019 blog and was delighted when she moved to Patheos, and when some of my favorite bloggers like the Crescat<\/a> and Bad Catholic<\/a> moved over as well. I\u2019ve learned a lot from the bloggers at Patheos about how to love others (even in a combox!), how to defend the faith without being defensive, and how to have a sense of humor when it seems like no one else does. I\u2019m thrilled to be joining them and I\u2019m really, really grateful that the Anchoress didn\u2019t take offense at my self-righteous combox castigation all those years ago.<\/p>\n

This\u2019ll be old news for my regular readers (who have hopefully followed me over here), but for any new readers who might be wondering, \u201cwhy barefoot and pregnant? Is it a joke? Is that your goal in life? Is that all you think women are good for?\u201d let me clarify.<\/p>\n

I was 8\u00a0 months pregnant and barefoot when I started my blog. I\u2019m 7 months pregnant and barefoot right-this-second. Given my past success rate with the mystifying methods of NFP, I\u2019m likely to be pregnant and barefoot for a good portion of my foreseeable future. And I didn\u2019t think that \u201cDrinking Too Much Wine and Going to Confession\u201d, which is what I do when I\u2019m not pregnant, was a great name for a blog.<\/p>\n

Mystery solved. Stick around! There\u2019s a lot more deep thinking where that came from. Occasionally I\u2019ll eke out the odd thoughtful<\/a> and <\/a>even profound post<\/a>, but usually I spent my days (both on and off the internet) up to my elbows in the insights that explode out of one end of a child\u2019s intestinal tract <\/a>or <\/a>the other<\/a>.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"