Delicious Encouragement for Mothers from Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity

(Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity is a Carmelite nun who was a contemporary of the Little Flower. While the Little Flower perfected the "little way" of service to God, Blessed Elizabeth grasped this notion that the Trinity dwells within us. So we don't just have the "Holy Spirit" after baptism, the Trinity is so interconnected that we can look inside our soul in "contemplation" and gaze upon the Holy Spirit, Jesus the son, and God the Father in heaven. Whew! Heady Stuff.

Unlike the Little Flower whose sisters all became nuns like herself, Elizabeth's only sister married. Elizabeth loved the vocation of marriage. She respected her sister. She was really committed to teaching her how to reach the similar heights of prayer as herself within her daily duties as a mother of infant children. I love that about Elizabeth. She's such a cheerleader for those of us trying to pray better within the vocation of marriage.)

Here is a letter written August 13, 1905 (L 239, pg 214 in vol 2 of Elizabeth's Letters)

My dear little sister,

Today is Sunday, the most blessed of days, because I spend it before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the oratory, except for the time when I'm at the turn. while carrying out my duties as Portress. I'm coming have a chat with you in the sight of Him we love. I have taken a large sheet of paper, for when I am with my Guite, there are so many things to say....

First of all, thanks for your nice long letter; you can imagine my joy when I recognized your handwriting, and that joy doubled when I felt how thick it was. I said to myself: "In all that, surely she will peak to me a little bit about her soul," for you know I love it so much when you allow me to enter your Heaven that the Holy Spirit creates in you.

Dear little mama, how worried you must have been about Sabeth! But a beautiful Angel was watching over her, and he was guarding her from all evil for you. I hope she won't cause you any more of that anxiety. We must see all that in the light of God and say "thank you" to Him just the same and always. I know from one of Mama's letters that you are tired, and I beg you to be very wise and sleep well, you need that so much. Do you remember how I knew how to take care of you? I think that I've always been a little like a mother with you, and I hope your two angels may be as united as we; it would be impossible for them to be more so, wouldn't it? I have just been reading in Saint Paul some splendid things on the mystery of divine adoption. Naturally--I thought of you--It would have been quite extraordinary if I hadn't, for you are a mother and know what depths of love God has placed in your heart for your children, so you can grasp the grandeur of this mystery to be children of God, my Guite, doesn't that thrill you? Listen to what my dear Saint Paul says: "God chose us in Him, before creation. He predestined us to be the adoption of children in order to make the glory of His grace blaze forth," which means that in His omnipotence He seems to have been able to do nothing greater. And then listen again: "If we are children, we are heirs as well." And what is that inheritance? "God has made us worthy of having a share in the inheritance of the saints in light." And then, as if to tell us that this is not off in some distant future, the Apostle adds "You are therefore no longer guests or strangers, but you belong to the city of saints and the House of God." And again" Our life is in Heaven." Of! my Guite, this Heaven, this house of our Father, is in the "center of our soul." As you will see in Saint John of the Cross, when we are in our deepest center, we are in God. Isn't that simple, isn't it consoling? Through everything, in the midst of your cares as a mother, while you give yourself to your little angels, you can withdraw into this solitude to surrender yourself to the Holy Spirit so He can transform you in God and imprint in your soul the Image of the divine Beauty, so the Father bending over you lovingly, will see only HIs Christ and say "This is my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased." Oh little sister, in Heaven I will rejoice to see my most beautiful Christ in your soul; I won't be jealous, but with a mother's pride I will say to Him: It is I, poor wretch, who have brought forth this soul to your life. This is how Saint Paul spoke of his followers, and I am quite presumptuous enough to want to imitate him; what do you think? While waiting, "Let us elieve in love," with Sain John, and since we posses Him within us, what does it matter if nights oscure the heaven; if Jesus seems to be asleep, oh, let us rest near Him, let us be very calm and silent; let us not wake Him but wait in faith. When Sabeth and Odette are in their dear mama's arms, I doubt if they worry much about whether there is sunshine or rain; le us imitate the dear little ones and live in the arms of God with the same simplicity.

I received a letter for Mama when she arrived. She seems very happy about her stay, but she tells me her stomach is bothering her; I hope she is doing better. you are really going to miss her, but I agree with you that she will rest better there, and I wrote to her that she shouldn't have any second thoughts. And you, my Guite, your big park attracts me; solitude is so good, and I know your dear little soul can appreciate it. Would you like to join me on a month-long retreat until September 14? Our Mother is giving me a little vacation from the turn; I won't have to talk or think any more, and I am going to buy myself in the dept of my soul, that is, in God. Do you want to follow me in this very simple movement? When you're distracted by your many duties, I will try to compensate, and if you like, in order to recollect yourself, every hour when you think of it (and if you forget it doesn't matter) you can enter into the center of your soul where the Divine Guest dwells; you could think of those beautiful words I told you: "Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells within you." .... and those from the Master: "Remain in me, and I in you"... It is said that Saint Catherine of Sienna always lived in a cell, even though in the midst of the world; that was because she lived in that inner dwelling place where my Guite too knows how to live! A Dieu, little sister. I can't stop myself. I've written a journal! I've written it at several sittings which explains my delay. I'm sending a kiss for all three of you, as I love you. Your big sister and little mother.

Sr. E. of the Trinity, r.c.i.

For All the Secondary Infertile Ladies Among My Readers

(TMI for all others)

Okay, so today was my first period in my new house. I got miraculously pregnant with Abigail the very week we moved. So 9 months of pregnancy plus 11 months of nursing a little imp with chronic infant reflux equals me trying to find the tampons at my new neighborhood Target a full year and half after our move.


They put the tampons next to the pregnancy tests.

Smack!

It was like a fist punch to the heart. You didn't get the answer you wanted to see two weeks ago, so now you are here--in the depressing feminine hygiene aisle. Next to all those people using Trojan condoms that are also stuck out at your eye level.

Oh, and Abigail has a cold and is teething and is not looking her best after getting up with me 5 times last night--and she's staring at me sort of greenish from my shopping cart and I think

"WAA WAA I will never be able to wake up multiple times with a baby ever again. She's my last one".

(Isn't that stupid? Like I'm so not enjoying waking up in the middle of the night with the toddler and the one year old that I have right now. But if I think about never getting a chance to suffer like this with a new baby, I could start to tear up.)

Yeah. Secondary infertility. It blows.

(clarification: I suffered from unexplained secondary infertility from 2007 to 2010. I'm not suggesting I qualify for secondary infertility in this moment, I'm only surprised that I'm so fearful of it coming back despite giving birth to two beautiful daughters within the past 2 1/2 years. That secondary infertility pain is deep. It still lingers. It still shows up at unexpected times)

SEMINARIAN app

This is an incredible video. It talks about becoming a "whole person" in service of Jesus Christ. This video reminds us to pray for seminarians (future Catholic priests) but it also inspires us to "do better" in our vocation as married spouses. Being a wife and a mother--it's such a demanding mission--it forces me to develop my "whole person." I want to replay this again and again during Lent. This time isn't just about fasting to show off, its fasting for a purpose! It's making me more fitted for my unique mission on earth.

Prayer to St Valentine

A PRAYER TO ST. VALENTINE
Dear Saint and glorious martyr; Teach us to love unselfishly and to find great joy in giving. Enable all true lovers to bring out the best in each other in God and in God in each other.
LOVE
Love is Patient and Kind,
It doesn't envy or Boast and it's never proud,
Love is not rude or selfish,
It doesn't get angry easily or keep track of wrongs.
Love doesn't delight in bad things
But it rejoices in the truth.
Love always protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres.
Love never fails.
--- St. Paul to the Corinthians


(h/t Rebecca of Shoved to them)
(PS I know St Val is no longer on the church calendar but I still love him)

Ash Wednesday--The Start of Lent

Hopefully, off my blog for a lot longer than 24 hours on Ash Wednesday. Have a Happy & Holy Lent everyone!

The Right to Life For Special Needs Babies

A woman died from a late-term abortion a few blocks from my old apartment last week. She died at Shady Grove Memorial Hospital--the place where I used to take my kids for their ER trips.

I know we don't have all the facts yet, and there is a multiple issues to be concerned about--but here are the facts that I do have. Jennifer Morbelli was in her late 20s. Married to her college sweetheart. She was 33 weeks pregnant with her daughter named Madison Leigh. She lived in New Rochelle, NY. According to sources this was a "wanted pregnancy" and one blog linked to her a baby registry in her name at Babies R Us.

She came to Maryland with her husband and her parents to get a late-term abortion after learning that her daughter suffered from "fetal anomalies."

After receiving the abortion, her abortionist left the state. She suffered complications, couldn't reach him by telephone and then was taken to the local hospital ER. She died at 10 AM in the morning.

There is a lot of concern. I think even the lax abortion laws in the State of Maryland were broken in this case. I hope the State Attorney's Office will find justice in this matter.

I want to talk about something underneath the alleged crime. I want to talk about the social morals in our country.

In our Society right now, it is "okay" to have an abortion as a married woman. It's is "okay" to have an abortion when your baby has special needs.

Now, I have no idea what health problems baby Madison had, and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if that baby was going to die inside the womb, or 2 hours outside of it. It doesn't matter if they suspected that she would live with horrible suffering for years.

I am the mother of a NICU child.

I am NOT saying that watching your baby die in front of you is easy. I'm NOT saying that a Children's Hospitals is where you want to be.

But having been sent by God into that field of spiritual battle, I wish more of us parents of sick children said "having a baby with a serious risk of death" is NOT the end of the world.

With Christ, all things are possible. EVERY Mom with Jesus Christ has the grace to love her child through an early infant death.

EVERY MOM

There's not "some special Moms" who were made to be the Mothers of Special Needs Kids.

Every Mom can do it.

And I'm really sorry that Baby Madison died in an abortion --instead of in a hospital room surrounded by doctors who tried to save her life and gave her Mommy and Daddy tissues, and hugs,  and silent support.

And I'm really sorry that Jennifer died. I don't blame her. I know that I was scared to DEATH to have a special needs infant. I didn't think I could do it. The only reason I did it was because I didn't have a choice. My Roman Catholic Faith took away my "choice" to abort my child and I'm so grateful. Because some choices don't belong on the table --ever--especially 2 weeks after a horrible pre-natal medical diagnosis when all a Mother sees is the bad news and she haven't had a chance yet to meet her baby girl.

It makes me sad that this scared Mother didn't hide her abortion. She did it within the presence of her husband and her parents. That hurts.

I have sat in the room multiple times where (mostly nurses, not doctors) but where medical people have told me that I had to "abort" due to negative pre-natal diagnosis. It is solely by the grace of God that I have conceived my children after becoming Catholic. In those scary moments, I had the backing of my entire Faith to fight to get my "choice" to remain a Mother of my child respected.  There is nothing I can do to say thank you to the Lord my God, but to hug my babies every day and pray for others.

Mary, the Mother of God, pray for us. We commend Baby Madison's soul to your care and pray for her Mother's soul. We also pray for the healing of the hearts of the baby's father and her grandparents.


***
article on a family that chose life despite a severe pre-natal diagnosis

Are people really "afraid"?

Our Pope resigned yesterday.

I'm sad, and happy, and hopeful all at the same time. I just really trust him. He's my Papa. The first Pope I got to see with my own two eyes. Only my second Pope I've served under willingly as a converted Roman Catholic. He's my Dad.

And I trust him. If he says that he can't serve anymore as Pope because of sickness--and he made that announcement on Our Lady of Lourdes, on the World Day of the Sick-- there is a "rightness about that decision." It bring me rock solid confidence in my own life. We obey Christ. He tells us what to do. Papa Benedict's act of trust and humility--it's inspiring. It's Hope. If he can act with boldness, trust, and humility--I can act that way more often too.

I stayed off the blogs and secular media storm yesterday. So my info is coming all second hand from my husband who listens to 4 hours of Catholic radio during his Daily Commute and one of my blogger friends who I prayed with this morning.

Yet is that true? Some Catholics are describing themselves as "feeling afraid?"

We will have a new Pope. We will all pray he is a good one. The right man for the time. We will pray that the Holy Spirit guides the conclave and that the new Pope feels Wisdom and Guidance, and Hope--when the announcement is made, instead of fear.

For the first time since 1461, we'll have our current Pope --on earth-- praying with all his heart for his new successor to feel always like a Beloved, Cherished Son of God.

That seems like a good combo to me. All the prayers of the Faithful, all the prayers of the Cardinals, plus the prayers of Pope Benedict himself.

How can this fail? It's the Seat of Peter, the head of the Roman Catholic Church!

Pre-Lent Prayer Routine Questions?

I'm about to close up this blog for Lent.

I have all these runner friends on Facebook. They have these cool apps like "the Daily Mile" to share their running stats and gain encouragement from other. Ah! Won't it be great to have a "Daily Prayer Mile" app?

Lent is the time to kick it up a notch, baby!

So my basic advice for anyone starting a new prayer routine is "easy does it" "don't expect to much from yourself too soon!' and "regularity of a prayer routine is more important than length." For example, in my little opinion, working in 10 minutes of prayer every single day for 30 days is far more effective than a few hours of prayer on the weekends.

Anyone else have prayer advice for novice prayers this Lenten Season?

Rebecca from Shoved to Them Writes about Her Experiences with Poverty

Check out When We Were Poor.

Rebecca is an awesome writer. I recently became In Real Time Telephone Prayer Friends with her this past Advent after drooling over the insights in her blog for years.

Check out her blog, Shoved to Them, if you haven't yet. (The title is from her Nana's saying "you either pray on your knees now or wait until God shoves you to them!") Say a prayer for her. She's got a calm, reassuring, happy, heartfelt homeschool book that is shopping for a publisher right now.

We could all use more "happy" in our lives right now. Go writers!

Start an Easy Novena to St. Valentine for Your Spouse Today!

I said a prayer in the early morning over the telephone with Rebecca from Shoved to Them today. Come read her post and join us too!

Then laughed when I read, I read Lauds this Morning--


and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride *
so shall your God rejoice in you.

Canticle: Isaiah 61:10-62:5
The prophet’s joy in the vision of a new Jerusalem

(today's Daily Reading)

"Space Babies" 2014 Kia Sorento Big Game Ad

We're advertising gurus around here. My husband is in marketing, and it runs in the genes. So the tradition in our home is on Super Bowl Monday the kids and I all gather around the computer and watch all the Super Bowl Ads together while taking a break from homework.

My kids adored this commercial. We kept repeating this one.

Then my son said "Mom, why was the Dad embarrassed to answer the question about where babies come from?"

I started explaining this cultural tradition about embarrassment about the "where do babies come from" question, and 3 kids under the age of ten look at me with complete puzzlement. "Why?"

Then I start thinking, "Why is it embarrassing?" And then "the kid looks old and his baby sibling looks young, so what--he didn't notice his Mom's tummy getting bigger for 9 months."

It's like in these moments I realize how weird our American culture is sometimes. My kids hit these common cultural references and suddenly they don't get it.

My husband and I are still having babies--so all of my kids above age 2 know where babies come from--Mommy's tummy. My older 2 know that "Mom and Dad's have a special hug" where the ova and the sperm meet. Now they don't know the fine mechanics of the hug---and I'm fine with them not learning the profane names for this act---so if they ran into a dirty minded kid on the playground, they probably would be just as dumbfounded as the kid in the video.

All the same,  my three kids ages 9 to 5, still don't get the punchline to this video. Why is the kid's natural question about human biology so embarrassing that his Dad needs a distracting song to change the subject? My husband calmly answers the "where do babies come from" question all of the time.

Thank you Jon for being a great Dad!

Dodge -- "God Made a Farmer"

Milk Mustache Campaign Super Bowl XLVII TV Commercial

Audi 2013 Big Game Commercial - "Prom"

Meet A Saint: Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity

If you want an experience of reading the tender and insightful "blog" of a Carmelite Nun--check out the collection of letters of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity. Elizabeth had a younger sister who chose married life. She wrote so many encouraging things to her sister and all of her many friends outside the convent. She's a great cheerleader for me. Make her yours too!

Writing Help Need--Topic: Exploring Voluntary Poverty as a Modern American Family

Dear readers,

The blog is going to be messy for a while. I'm working on a writing project. Sometimes hazy unfinished sketches help me get better clarity for my writing. Thanks in advance for your patience.

 If you love these last few posts--I'd like to know your questions. What are you afraid of? What encourages you? How to you feel to be out-of-sync with your neighbors, your extended families and even other Catholic friends? What helps you? What hurts you?

Basically everything.

I used to make peppermint tea in my dorm room at Smith and invite new people to come talk to me.


So this is an interesting topic to you, come chat over tea! (All emails are confidential)

To: You

From: Me

An invite to tea and email. (Tea is critical to good conversation of the heart. Go brew a cup before you start writing to me).

abigail dot b dot benjamin at gmail dot com

Ode to First World Problems, Part 2

(why I got the way am I about the virtue of poverty)

The story I saw often in Law School was bright, creative people choosing to go into a very boring job they hated in order to get paid well. It seemed strange to me in my twenties because I actually liked Law School and I thought I'd really enjoy practicing law.

One type of conversation I had with fellow students was so common, I nicknamed it the "Wistful Dream." As a 1 L (as we first year law students were called), I had a conversation in the library with a 3 L. He mentioned something about not liking Law School. "Oh, its really not that bad, surely" I said. "You're a 3 L, your past all the hard stuff and you've already got your job offer in hand," I said the wide-eyed innocence of a newcomer.

I remember this man's face. He was tall, and handsome and a strong, self-confident African-American. I'd never seen this guy falter before. His voice got all choked up. "You don't understand Abby. You don't understand what I had before I came here." He told me that he had a full ride scholarship to Princeton to get a Masters in Economics.

Now, I'm a daughter of an academic. It was completely inconceivable to me why someone who had a full scholarship to study Economics at Princeton would be a State Law School in Wisconsin when he didn't want to be. So I rudely started asking questions--even though I barely knew this guy who sort of floated above us 1 Ls on a cloud. The most I got from him as an explanation was that his Mom wanted him to be a lawyer so that he could get a job. He had to be able to "make money."

That was an answer that left me even more confused. I mean, this guy wanted to study Economics. I totally understand that English Lit and History were seen as "impractical fields," but Econ? Econ seemed like a sure thing--especially in the late 1990s when banking was a hot industry.

The more the guy talked, the more mystified I became. At the same time, I could see real emotional pain. It was horrible. I left the library that day feeling so flummoxed.

Another conversation that was really sad, happened on the way home from Moot Court. This was an elite program where students in their second year got to practice arguing a mock case in front of real Judges. In my 3rd year, I served as a coach. My team did really well. We were driving home from some Law School in Chicago, and our spirits where high. We won! This was a really big deal because it was something tangible to brag about in a job interview and theoretically was proof we "made it" into a great Law Firm job.

In the middle of this happy car ride home, the guy I tutored started a "Wistful Dream" conversation. He was a natural in Law School. Great grades, Moot Court and Law Review. Yet all he really wanted to do was be a high school history teacher in his small home town of Wisconsin. This guy is maybe 24, and his whole life is already "over." He kept talking about how great it would have been to be a history teacher and "if only I could do that."

I was in the passenger seat, and at one point I turned around in my seat and stopped making eye contact. "Sheesh," I thought. "If its really that important you. Drop out of here. Go teach. Teachers are important and they make decent money. You're smart and social. You can get a job in your home town. Why are you set to drift off to the big cities of Milwaukee or Chicago as a Big Firm Lawyer if you're going to be so miserable there?"

So I ran into some pretty depressed people in my ride through Academia. It really put into my heart the start of a love for poverty. I was going to get detached from my love for wealth. Or at least, I wasn't going to NOT chose the career of my dreams just because I wasn't sure at the start how to  cover my rent and my law school loans. I saw to many people give up before the start of their jobs. I just felt "they might all be right. This might be totally impossible to find a public interest law job that will cover my rent. Those jobs might really be only reserved for those rich students' with no debt and large trust funds. All the same, I'm going to try my hardest to just see what is possible, before I quit on my dream and "drop out" into a well-paying but very boring garden variety law job."

At the start of my Law School, my class of 300 had tons of people who wanted to do interesting things with their Law Degree. Three years later, 97 % of my class had a job lined up before graduation. (Those were the days, huh). But only 3 of us, had a public interest job. That just seemed crazy to me. Public Interest counted as everything--working as a District Attorney, a Public Defender--very common legal jobs that I knew a lot of my classmates wanted their first and second year in school. Yet, my school was a feeder into the Big Law Firms of Chicago. They just came in mass--we had massive, massive rounds of job interviews during second and third year. At the end, there were inside my jaded head "there are only three of us left standing."

Oh, and my starting salary that was "pathetic" in my classmates minds was $32,000 for a Legal Service job in rural Ohio in 2000. In my graduation year, the starting salary for new associates broke $100,000 for the first time because of competition in Silcon Valley with the tech bubble lawyers. So there were a few classmates who at a $110,000 to $120,000 job in Chicago or New York. Most other new lawyers started at $80,000 in Milwaukee. A regular job for a new lawyer would be $50,000.

This "don't let the money cloud your dream" has just always been there inside my heart. Jon jokes that I took small starting salary as a new lawyer because "that was the door closest to the exit." He is so funny. He started dating me my last semester of my last year in law school. He got a Masters of Fine Art after we met. People at his Grad School were always like "Oh, your wife's a lawyer! She must be so smart." He'd joke back "I was smart enough NOT to go to Law School." I love him! He's so perfect for me.

Ode to First World Problems, Part 1

(for Jon)

I was a very good student. I was raised on an Achievement Model where I kept moving seamlessly up the educational ladder.

The stuff I saw in college was very heartbreaking. I went to Smith College from 1993-1997, an all women's college in western Massachusetts. These were really "high achiever" girls. Hillary Clinton was a Wellesley College Girl, our rival college--but you sort of get the idea. A Smith Girl was super smart, super tough--and a little independent. She might want to be a VP at Bank America but she could also want to teach Yoga in Fiji. I loved it there. I felt at home. I felt challenged. I felt accepted.

But it was also heartbreaking. I was one of three kids from West Virginia in my entire college of 2,000. I used to joke that there were more women from Kenya at Smith than West Virginia. Because I was from West Virginia-- or because I already had a Carmelite Soul--I had a certain closeness to Christ. I wasn't ashamed to call myself a Christian when I came to college because that label was acceptable inside my hometown. Inside my heart--there was a certain "something" that the college culture around me couldn't touch--at least for the first two years until I fell into mortal sin.

 So for my freshman and sophomore years, I watched these beautiful, beautiful women--girls that had everything smarts and looks and talent and the easy of coming from serious money--I watched them self-destruct in front of me. It was awful. At 18, I wasn't really clear that it was "Christ" who protected me. I just knew something was different. At the time, I thought it was because of my high school.

In my class, I was only one of handful of girls that came from a true public school. Moreover, in the middle of West Virginia, the pre-college crowd was not the most important or catered to group in high school. Yet most of the other girls in my Freshmen Dorm came from private high schools, or a serious public 'magnet" school such as Boston Latin.

These "good girls" just exploded with rebellion our freshman year. They told me the pressure to get into college was intense, now they deserved to "live a little." By October, I was the only one who still completed all assigned reading for our giant GOV 100 class in my 80 person dorm. By November, I was the only one who still went regularly to class. I remember hearing stories about how awful prep school was. I was grateful that I "only" went to a normal public school in West Virginia because I wasn't burnt out before college had even started.

Stuff was going badly behind the scenes in our Dorm all the time. For example, there were girls who would throw up in the trash can at our dorm from bulima. Then the announcement at the House Meeting would be "Don't throw up in the trash can. That is so gross. That is so disrespectful to the maids that change our trashbags. Respect low-income workers! Go throw up in the toilet. Please people!"

(I'm serious, I am not making that up.) So that announcement would be made at a House Meeting, everyone would nod there heads and go on to the next agenda item. I'd get this little pit in my stomach. "Shouldn't we care why someone is throwing up at all night after night? That doesn't seem heathy."

This stuff --the stuff of hidden emotional pain underneath a exterior that seems fine--happened often. There was the bulmia girls. There were the cutting girls. There were the alcoholic girls. There were the drug using girls. There were the girls that had sex lives that even in the 1990s seemed crazy excessive and dangerous.

To this all there was this certain WASP culture like "well, sure she's a little wild on the weekends but as long as she wears her pearls when Daddy visits and maintains a 3.0 grade point average things are fine. Her little problem really can't be that dangerous. It's not like its hurting her career aspirations or anything."

That was the only line in the sand for addictions that we has as classmates. We'd only "intervene" if someones problems hurt her grades. It didn't matter if the girl was unhappy. I didn't matter if she lost her spark--or her way--or her mind with her choice of some of the men she brought home to her dorm room--as long as she could post a B+ or A- essay every three weeks--she was doing fine.

I seriously can't tell you how crazy some of the stuff that happened inside my Dorms. (Tangent example, during my second semester, freshman year a girl moved a homeless man into our dorms. She met a homeless man in the streets of Northampton. Took him to our dorm room. Had sex with him. Pronounced him her boyfriend. And he lived inside our dorm. Our all girl, all female college dorm.

When some of my classmates complained to about sharing a bathroom/shower room our Head of House (another student, not an adult) she said there was nothing she could do. Because we were all allowed to have overnight guests for 30 days. 30 DAYS. So they let the guy live in our Dorm for a month. Only, the decided that only the nights he spent inside the Dorm counted against the rule.  So he would go and spend some nights away from the dorm, and then come back to shower and sleep with his woman.

This went on for months. There would be this rumor among the halls-- "The Man is here again, he's taking a shower right now. Be careful how to dress to go brush your teeth for the next few days." This is how we lived. I remember a girl saying "I'm just really afraid to run into him in our shower room because you don't know him at all. It feels like there's a stranger in our bathroom."

This poor girl --who was probably totally co-dependent, bless her heart--would say "I know I don't know him. But he just doesn't have any other place to go. I'm all he has. I can't kick him out. Beside he seems really nice. He's never been mean to me--so I think he's safe." Instead of being reassured, the bold girl who confronted sin (Dude, not me--I was a people pleasing mouse back them) would slink away and say "Well, if its truly an emergency...." (There was this unspoken WASP guilt, like oh we're so privileged to be here in a warm dorm room studying at college. Not everyone is lucky enough to have this. Who am I to demand that we kick out a homeless guy). So the girls argument always shut everyone up. Except for me--in my heart--who would review these exchanges and think "If this guy truly has no where else to go, that is a bad sign. I'm even more afraid to meet up with him alone in our bathroom at night).

I revisit this teenage memory as an adult and think "WHERE WERE THE ADULTS?" As an 18 year old kid, I thought this was normal. "Oh everyone has to figure out these epic issues of class in their life." I'm not blaming the girl either. I get how it could have been totally overwhelming to feel total guilt that you have a pretty life in college while another, equally smart 20 year old male--didn't get the picked for the golden college ticket. So my question at age 38, instead of 18, is "where were the adults." This was a huge public problem in my dorm. Lots of people knew about it. Why did it took the housing authorities 3 to 4 months to tell a male, non-student "you can't live in our Dorms?"

Another Dorm Memory--

One of the things I remember my Dorm (we call them a House at Smith) had this crazy party. At 4 PM on a Friday, the young women in my dorm were so nutty drunk that they scared the entire Harvard Croquet Club out of our dorm. Like the Harvard guys had come over to play some sort of special co-ed match with our Smith Club on Saturday, and they were supposed to sleep in our Dorm on Friday night.

All these handsome men came with their little white v-neck sweaters. It looked right out of a J Crew Ad. They say the insane behavior of my Dorm Mates and they turned around and ran away. They refused to spend the night in our Dorm. That sort of became a benchmark for me. "Oh my, we scared away the Harvard Croquet team at 4 PM in the afternoon. Things are sort of bad."

Then I went to Law School. The weird thing for me was that I think there were only 2 or 3 girls from my entire class of 650 at Smith who went right into Law School. Most people it seemed like were sort of burnt out by their senior year--they took sort of like a Gap Year where they did something cool like study wood carving in Brazil. So these were smart girls who could go to Law School (or whatever Grad school they wanted) but they were sort of vague and floating in their career plans by age 22. It was a freaky feeling Spring Semester of my Senior Year. Like I was okay that I didn't know exactly what I was doing in my life, but I was super scared that no one around me seemed to have notion of what was happening to them in May, other than they were packing their bags and driving home with Mom and Dad. (Many members of my class eventually attend Law School & Grad School between 25 to 30. So it was a temporary thing, but it felt weird at the time.)

All of my professors were totally cool with their extremely talented students saying things "I'm just going to chill out in the sun in Belize next year, maybe teach some scuba diving." I don't remember a prof saying "Oh, let me get that Grad rec written up now, while you're work is fresh in my mind." Or "Are you sure you don't want to apply to Art School at Yale, just to see if you get in, and then decide to defer for a year?"

At the time, I pretended this was normal. I even delighted in the fact that my college was so laid back and diverse. "Do whatever you want, but be the best." Be happy with your life! But now as an adult, I question this passivity sometimes. Our professors were mostly male, and they were so passive towards us. If I were to just look at this situation from the outside--a sudden loss of all career goals for many women during Senior Year would be a sign of Mass Depression. It's just too weird, that this wasn't a few quirky girls who decided to stop pursuing the career goals that were so important a few months earlier to them. So now things that defined my college experience, things that seemed so great, so Smith, suddenly look a little weird in hindsight.

(okay, gotta go feed the Benjamin clan. Next up--the widespread despair among Law School Students. And you thought that was just hyperbole in the movie The Paper Chase).

St Teresa of Avila and Me

One of the coolest things about my bff St. Teresa of Avila is that she faced very similar cultural circumstances that we do in 21st Century America. In the 1500s, Spain was the world super power. They had tremendous, tremendous wealth. New wealth from Spain's new colonies flooded the country.  The colonies were the hot "tech stocks" of the age. Two of Teresa's brothers ended up going to Brazil or somewhere and coming home with huge amounts of cash.

Teresa was an aristocrat. It's hard for my modern mind to even comprehend what the title "Lady" meant--even to a 40 year old nun inside a cloister. When she stripped that off and wrote a simple "Teresa of Jesus" on her entry form to her first Reformed Carmelite Convent--that huge. That really meant something tangible about her growth in Faith.

Teresa lived in a time when she felt like the Roman Catholic church was being ripped apart from the inside out. Again, it's hard for me to imagine what life was like when every single Christian was either a Roman Catholic or an Orthodox Catholic. She was a contemporary of the first Lutherans and she's just furious of what she called "the heretics!" (Now the Catholic Church doesn't feel like that about the Lutherans today--in fact we're happily building new bridges with this Protestant Faith. But many readers can relate to shaking their fist with total frustration at the Yahoo News Reader and thinking "that statement is so untrue and a heresy against our joint Catholic Faith. Stop confusing people!")

During the time Teresa is forming her convents, Germany is actually at war--between the German Catholics and the German Lutherans. Teresa made such comments as "I wish I was a man so I could go fight for my Church. Alas, I'm only a woman." Because she was "only a woman" she decided to go back to the deep penitential rites of Carmel. Poverty, in the manner of the desert fathers was chosen so she could pray better. Her Carmelite prayers were for the protection of the Roman Catholic Church. I always like that irony because here she was so frustrated that as a "mere woman I can't do anything important." Meanwhile God is using the lance of her prayer life to shape his course of history.

So you can see how a nerdy historian like me could fall in love with this Saint. She's so right on. Her stuff is so counter-cultural. It's like she inverting the entire culture of Spain in the 1500s. She did the impossible.

It just seems to me that this poverty thread its not "accidental." It's a special sort of key to unlock the materialism and spiritual apathy of my Gen X generation.

Now the deal is --I don't know how to do this as a Third Order, and especially not how to do this as a Mother of Dependent Children. I'd be foolish Teresa's example in a literal sense. For example, I'm not going to try to shoe my kids in her famous "rope sandals" or sew our dresses out of course wool fabric that was intended to be used for horse blankets. But it's cool to read these electric passages and ask Jesus "How does this apply to me? What do you want from me?"

A Pep Talk from Kid President to You

To my husband, Jon. This is so "us" and our marriage!

(h/t Bonnie)