Think about organizing the closet. Think about reading. Think about writing. Clear out summer clothes from drawers. Wish you didn’t have Covid because if you didn’t, you would take down the Christmas tree. Think about grading. Ponder exercising in your room. None of these things will happen, we will simply consider that we could be doing this, but we’re not. Covid is basically a stay in one place until it’s better sentencing that leaves one longing to do... Read more
Runners run, chefs cook, writers write. I’ve been off my writer’s game since before Christmas. I used to write 500 words a day, no excuses, no exceptions. However, cancer pulled me into wanting to just sit, and not try to carve out words. Additionally, I felt dried up. Now some people think, “Hey, writers block. Take a break.” However I believe there’s writers’ will, and there’s writers’ won’t. Block is a place holder, a convenient way to excuse not pushing... Read more
Cancer like any suffering, offers the opportunity to go “deeper and deeper in.” For me, I’ve found myself struggling with being unwilling to plunge. Skipping along the surface of my faith in prayer, in practice not because I do not believe, but because everything takes effort. The general fatigue that accompanies my treatment, enables the withdraw from service to seem reasonable, and that in turn allows the soul to presume as it rests, that it is somehow okay to become... Read more
Advent reminds us, the reality of life is not death, not pain, not trauma but joy. That was the purpose of our original existence, to rejoice in the love of our Creator. It’s why when the world through sin asserts otherwise, we respond with such raw emotion, as indicated in the video of the original attack on the Christmas parade. We know and our hearts cry out to Heaven for what should be as versus what is. Evil doesn’t... Read more
It’s December 15th, I’m Flunking Advent and Christmas and Let’s Add New Year’s While We’re at It. I put off shopping for Christmas.. I have great aspirations. I make lists. I make plans. The store and I never converge until we get to the eleventh hour. I realize, I am at the eleventh hour. I also am still procrastinating. So as a result, you get to read something. Yay. When people meet me and find out I have ten children,... Read more
When we clean for the holidays, we suddenly discover all the ways in which we’ve blinded ourselves to the surrounding clutter. It takes new eyes or being willing to look at our lives with new eyes, to see what needs doing. This happens when we organize. It happens when we plan a diet or a budget. It happens when we propose remodeling something. The newness of the new reveals the broken nature of what we’ve ignored, and so the project... Read more
So yesterday, we celebrated the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. In light of a mid week obligation in the evening after school for teenagers, I opted for the overt bribe of Five Guys afterwards…because sometimes donuts don’t do it. However, I treated myself to a midday mass alone and felt the oddness of only having to quiet my own brain for the mass. My brain both reveled and wrestled with the liturgy. What struck me is, this week I’ve been... Read more
The second week of Advent is when my sixth child received his name. We’d gone to mass. We were in the choir loft, where we could see and still keep containment on five children ranging in age from eleven to two. We could also watch the oldest serve at the mass. The reading came from the Gospel of Luke, when Zechariah motions for a tablet and writes, “His name is John.” I knew in that moment, this would be our... Read more
In the parking lot after the first Sunday of Advent, my teen saw a car with a bumper sticker, “Blue lives matter.” He immediately announced he wouldn’t want to know them. Proposing that the person might love someone who is in law enforcement did not change his opinion about the bumper sticker or the unworthiness of those people –and this was right after mass. Would we decide someone was unworthy of knowing for having a Pro-choice sticker? For a politician... Read more
One of the joys of Chemo is the unpredictability of sleep. I both need tons and can’t on demand. Hence, this 3:23 AM writing contribution. My blog said thank you. The rest of me does not. Being grateful requires we recognize there is so much more to life than what we put into it, and so much of it is a gift we didn’t even ask for. The delight in a home made pie is more because we see the... Read more
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