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First Sunday of Advent: Bearing Life into the World
Nine months pregnant. Aching back and feet. Exhaustion. And on top of it, traveling by donkey for three whole days in order to fulfill a command from a far-off governor to count the inhabitants of Bethlehem. Yet – Mary never claimed exemption because of her circumstances. I probably would have tried to claim exemption. I have claimed an exemption for jury duty for much less than three days on a donkey at my due date. Why didn’t she refuse to go or claim an exemption? Why didn’t she make it easier for herself? Caryll Houselander puts it in hauntingly simple terms: “...Mary never claimed exemption from the common lot, from…
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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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The World is Thy Ship and Not Thy Home
After college, I moved to a new city with a new job and a new car. I didn’t know too many people, but I made good friends and found new roommates. The trouble was each time I found a new roommate, they would inevitably get engaged soon after and usually after about a year of living together, they’d move out and get married. Thus forcing me to repeat the process of finding a new roommate and/or a new place to live. I wasn’t in a financial position to afford rent without someone to split it with. I longed deeply for stability and permanence, and, quite frankly, to find my vocation.…
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Embrace Your Suffering
This has been an exhausting year full of suffering for so many. Our world is as divisive as ever. There are so many things to capture our attention and upset our peace. And in the time between writing and posting this, the world has been flipped upside down with war in Ukraine. Winter brings its own host of issues with cold weather, short days, and illness. Lots of illness this year. And regardless of what is going on in the world around us, our own lives carry on as usual, with all of its demands and stresses. It can feel overwhelming. For our family, illness has been rampant this winter,…
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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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To all the Sorrowful Mothers
As Mother’s Day rolls around again, to all those sorrowful mothers out there – you are on my heart. As I delve deeper into motherhood myself, it is not lost on me that it is a double edged sword of joy and sorrow. And for some in particular, the sorrow is especially acute. And, after all, as a friend once told me, the trouble with being open to life (and thus motherhood) is that you’re also open to death. Life and death, joy and sorrow, light and dark. Life isn’t all joy all the time. We live in the vale of tears right now, longing for our heavenly home. But…
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Living Hope.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you…” 1 Peter 1:3-4 I have grappled long and hard with hope. What is it, really? How do I hope? Why do I even need to hope? Last year felt hopeless and difficult. I felt like my prayers were useless. My sentiment was generally “Why do I even pray if I’m not going to get what I so deeply desire?” In my heart,…
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When Easter Doesn’t Feel like Easter
I have spent far too much of my time lately lamenting many things – no mass, no confession, no perpetual adoration. I feel, like many others, spiritually parched and wishing for some sense of normality again. I wish it would feel like Holy Week. I wish Easter would feel like Easter with celebrating at mass, with family, fun and good food. But this has left me thinking and praying a lot. What do we do when Easter doesn’t feel like Easter? When the holiest week of the year feels anything but the holiest week of the year? Do we “skip” it? Pretend it didn’t happen this year and chalk it…
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Rest and Receive
One week into social distancing and I got the bright idea to potty train the two year old. I figured, hey, if we can’t leave the house, we may as well get her out of diapers, right? Now we are one week into potty training and we have realized that the gratification of being out of diapers is not instantaneous. It’s a lot of work and rather exhausting getting there. But it is important to note the power of one chocolate chip. It is enough to lure a toddler to do almost anything, including pee on a potty. Two chocolate chips still isn’t enough to lure this toddler to do…