She knew from my face. A good friend of mine, who happens to be a nurse, gave me some healthy love the other day. She asked, “How much do you have on your plate?” She already knew the answer, “too much.” “Take some of it off.” she said. “What?” My brain spun…how could I, I mean I could list all that was in my life, in my head but it would cause an explosion of exposition and I didn’t want... Read more
Truckie Day is coming! We’re preparing for “Truckie” day. I first created this tradition of every few years, renting a truck, filling it with all the broken stuff and hauling it to the dump. It’s always a Saturday and we feast after having cleaned out the home of broken and outgrown things. We plan for one trip to donate and one trip to toss before we return Truckie. The kids often give the truck a grateful pat when it departs... Read more
You already have the gifts of courage, listening, understanding, humor, intellect and kindness. You show it every day with how you navigate the many personalities that live under this roof, including your parents. Choosing the Angel Gabriel is a reminder to us, of how you are a message of good news, and always have been. You also constantly teach us how to love more deeply, and that love is first and foremost and always, a choice to will the good... Read more
My favorite thing to do with my children as a parent, is read them stories. Those moments felt like perfect motherhood. They were throwbacks to rocking them to sleep, to simply enjoying their presence without any other purpose. Reading aloud, I could do nothing else but be present to them. They all know my favorite saying, “Whoever multi-tasks does two things poorly.” They also know mom perpetually multi-tasks. It means a lot of what I do…is not quite fully what... Read more
As a freelancer, I write for many different publications and am as a result, a member of the Women of New Evangelization, W.I.N.E. It’s a lovely acronym, accurate and biblical, and memorable. Over the year of Corona, we watched all seven seasons of Agents of Shield, and even now, I still need to look up Strategic Homeland Intervetion Enforcement and Logistics Division. But WINE, I remember easily. I bring up this little bit of trivia from my brain for two... Read more
I wrote the title before I wrote the piece, and didn’t know quite what it meant except that there’s a tremendous amount of discussion online and at committees and with speakers and religious directors, laity, Catholic media and people who know such things about the reality of our church as a religious organization, and the absence of people from the pews. We have been scattered, by sin, by scandal, by Covid, by fealty to whatever part of Catholic teaching one... Read more
She is preparing for confirmation this year. Thirteen years ago…She was born on Friday the 13th. We weren’t expecting to have a daughter in our hands for another three weeks. But then, we weren’t expecting an emergency c-section either. I didn’t know I’d even had her until they whisked her by in a blanket, all cleaned up and capped. It all seemed so unreal. One minute we were hooked up to the IV and getting that drip that makes contractions... Read more
Saint Therese of Lisieux talks about becoming like a little child to become a saint, with the wisdom, “God wouldn’t inspire us with ambitions that can’t be realized.” jumping out at me because I’d been asking, why did I take on this project of a devotional with the Doctors of the Church. I’d also seen in a Facebook feed the quote, “Today, do what love demands.” attributed to her. I did a quick google search but did not find this... Read more
We’ve been watching old movies and I’ve discovered, movies I loved, now feel dull, and I wonder at how charmed I was then. For instance (unpopular Catholic blog opinion time), I loved, loved, loved, loved Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Ring series. We watched it over and over again. We watched it with the extended versions and in some cases, with elvish subtitles. Now, I found myself distracted, some how unable to quite see why I found it so engrossing... Read more
We’ve completed the Holiest week, the high week of our faith, and now we have these eight days to celebrate the Easter Octave…but how? WE’VE HAD A PLAN FOR THE PAST FEW MONTHS, NOW, WHAT DO WE DO? We’ve spent fourty days (more or less), wrestling with our Lenten promises and discovering (at least in my case), my will is weaker than my flesh, and my flesh, likes fighting more than my will does. Easter came and is, and I... Read more
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