Family
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5 Things I Learned in 5 Years of Parenting
I cannot believe my baby girl is turning 5 this week! It feels like just yesterday I was experiencing parenthood for the first time, from morning sickness, to childbirth, to toddler tantrums. I can’t say whether the last five years have flown by or lasted forever. Maybe that old adage is true “the days are long but the years are short.” But in these past five years, I’ve learned so much about myself, marriage, and parenthood. Some are things I heard my own parents say but couldn’t appreciate until I lived the experiences myself, some are things I’ve learned on my own, while some are silly and others are profound.…
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May You Find the Light in the Darkness
We found ourselves in the emergency room with our six week old. Our house was yet another casualty of RSV this season, and despite our best efforts to protect our six week old from it, we found ourselves rushing him to the hospital because we were concerned by his breathing that night. After getting him evaluated, he was given oxygen and his body found some rest and relief. And they wanted to admit him. An outcome I honestly wasn’t expecting when we took him in. As we sat in our dimmed room waiting for a hospital bed to be prepared for us, I contemplated the darkness of that moment. The…
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Pudgy Tummies and Tired Eyes? Not Through Childlike Eyes.
“Allow the children to come to me… for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” Luke 18:16 (NAB) I think small children see things through a God-like lens, as he would see the world. The childlike see with love and simplicity and purity. I think there’s a real reason why God says that the childlike are the ones who will inherit the kingdom. Yesterday morning I was getting ready to run. In a sleep-deprived daze, I put on my black joggers, long sleeve tee, running shoes, and threw my morning hair back in a big headband. I didn’t feel cute, I didn’t feel beautiful. I’m running mainly because…
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Are You Wasting Your Time on Your Children?
Our society is hyper-focused on productivity. I could see it in high school students who were in twenty different time-consuming activities while taking ten different high level courses all while trying to hold down a full time job. Alright, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but whether you’re a high school student trying to build the resume for college applications or parents trying to provide all the best opportunities for their children, there’s a high societal (and also internal) pressure to perform, to win, to be the best, to have the best, to do the best. I’m a stay at home mom with two little children. I often times feel…
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My Little Cloister
The cloister of Carmel is called by Claire Dwyer, author of This Present Paradise, “an inheritance of silence and solitude and perpetual prayer” and is one of many paths to holiness. Great saints and Doctors of the Church have arisen from this tradition. St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Therese of Lisieux, and the somewhat lesser known St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, to name a few. Family life is very different. And though many great saints have arisen from the tradition of silence and solitude, many great saints have arisen also from the great tradition of noise and chaos, of love and laughter, otherwise known as…
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The Hidden Holiness of Parenthood
Do you ever feel like being a parent isn’t “holy”? Some days I’m left feeling the monotony of parenthood. Other days I’m left feeling inadequate. Still, some days I feel as though I failed my children, whether it’s because I lost my temper again or spent too much time looking at my phone. Raise your hand if you can relate. When I was discerning back in college (and for several years after), I couldn’t shake the idea that being a religious sister was the holier option. Religious sisters get time built into their schedule every single day for mass, prayer, silence, and yet still more prayer and time to be…
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Receiving the Gift of Newborns
Pure gift… words I dared to utter about our new babe. We named him Nathanael, which means “gift of God” because, after all, after loss and waiting, it’s harder to take the gift for granted. The first time around, I was so overwhelmed by all the newness that it took awhile for the magnitude of the gift to really settle in. So, this time we are acutely aware of what has been given to us. Gifts can be funny though. Sometimes we receive gifts we don’t want or didn’t ask for. One year when I was teaching middle school religion, a family gifted every teacher with a bottle of wine…
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Nathanael’s Birth Story
It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so, hey! Hello! How have you been lately? Two months feels like an eternity and a few moments all at the same time. The reason for my hiatus, our bright spot of hope, arrived six weeks ago. And because I feel that more of these hopeful moments are needed in our world today, without further ado, here is his birth story. The Due Date Our first, Lucy, was born two full weeks before her due date. So when 38 weeks came and went with this pregnancy, I was entering uncharted territory. At 36 weeks I was ready to be done, at 38…
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My Domestic Church: Catholic Culture at Home
“The world is thy ship and not thy home.”-St. Therese of Lisieux These words are a stark reminder from a saint who knew this message all too well. Therese lost her beloved mother to cancer at the age of four. She lived knowing four of her siblings never made it past childhood or infancy. Finally, she watched her father lose his faculties to dementia after suffering a stroke. All from the confines of her cloister. “The world is thy ship and not thy home.” In other words, we are pilgrims, travelers, sojourners in a strange land. We are passing through to our heavenly home, don’t get too comfortable! In many ways,…
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My Domestic Church: Taking Your Children to Adoration
Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14 Take my children to adoration? Take my kids to sit in church? In silence? And pray? Are you kidding me?! Nope! Taking your children to adoration probably feels like a daunting task. However, Eucharistic Adoration is such a great gift to give to our children and something we shouldn’t avoid because it’s hard. Some time ago, I went to adoration and a grandmother came in with who I presumed to be her grandson, probably around 7 years old and full of energy. I had seen them…