Wedding Happiness

 

Wedding Happiness

 

Wedding Happiness

 

Wedding Happiness

 

Wedding Happiness

 

Labor Day Beach Day

A Wild Horse Sighting on Maryland's Eastern Shore

Labor Day Beach Day

 

Labor Day Beach Day

 

I Am Who I Am

I am who I am

-Popeye

I'm so blessed to go to CODA meetings and Carmel meetings. These two groups are like my little water wings as I bob weakly in a vast spiritual ocean. Tonight's meeting focused on the Popeye quote "I am who I am."

Humility is knowing myself. I need to recognize who I am. What are my strengths? What are my weakness? When do I need to met a challenge with courage? When do I need to bite my advice giving tongue and trust that God has a situation well in hand, without my controlling, care-taking self being involved.

It's pretty cool figuring out who I am at 38.

Homeschooling: A Few Tears is Normal For Us

I don't know if its CODA, low energy from this pregnancy or hitting the five year mark as a teacher--but I feel a new inner self confidence emerging. I'm so grateful for the change. Right now my 10 year old is in tears over her writing assignment. It's not fair to her that she has to write a full page while her younger brother only has to write three sentences.

Just a few weeks ago I would have panicked over her tears. The assignment I chose was too hard. Maybe she has an undiagnosed learning disability. There was crippling self doubt, "If school is hard for my kid, then I must be doing it wrong." There was a tendency to ease up and let her off the hook.

Today, I read out loud an  illustrated copy of Romeo and Juliet while my 10 year old and 8 year old work on their homework. It was really fun. We all love theater. Introducing them to the wit of Shakespeare is pure pleasure.

In the middle of our swimming homeschool day my daughter started crying. "I don't know what to write!" When any of my kids start to complain, especially with schoolwork, I feel instant panic. I think "I'm doing this wrong." I have this imaginary ideal of teaching in my head. I don't question myself in the same way if my kids refuse to eat vegetables or don't want to sit in time out after fighting with their sibling. Yet there is something insecure about teaching that has me often second-guessing myself based on my kids moment to moment reaction to our day.

Today, I felt calm enough to really listen to the reason for her tears. "I don't know what to write." My kid had written the first paragraph of a three paragraph essay and now had writers block. I'm a writer. I have writers block all the time. This was a familiar struggle. Instead of rescuing her with "Oh, 1/3 the assignment is fine today...." I acknowledged her pain. I emphasized with her. Then I walked her through some options. She could brainstorm ideas with me and Alex. Or she could skip to her Math homework and come back to the English work later.

For the first time today, I didn't give her the option of "not finishing her writing assignment." I also stayed out of the cycle of self-blame. (My assignments are too hard or something serious is wrong.) In fact, I gave myself a little pep talk. Writers block is common. It's good for my daughter to work through her tears, fears and doubts in the safety of our dining room. Getting emotional support during tough writing assignments is helpful to a future writer.

I'm realizing that every homeschool family is unique. I have given birth to 5 totally emotionally sensitive kids. We will have more tears than most folks during our homeschool lessons. That is our normal. We will also have more angry outbursts during run of the mill discipline days and more fear before a routine trip to the dentist. My kids are emotionally sensitive and so am I.

The best thing I can do for my kids, is heal my own inner self-critic. I'm learning to have trust in the decisions that I make. I'm learning how to be a Leader in my classroom. A wise Leader doesn't crumble the exact second dissent is raised from the ranks. A holy, calm homeschool teacher doesn't have to rewrite the whole semester syllabus on a dime. I can pause, take a breath, and see if a complaint is a momentary difficulty or a sign that adjustments may be needed.

For me, I realized that a few tears is normal for us.

The New TV

Five years ago, my young son cut our TV power cord with safety scissors. (Aren't Guardian Angels wonderful? Seriously, how does any male survive to adulthood without massive angelic intervention?) At the time we lost our only TV, TVs cost $50 at Target. While we were saving up to buy a replacement TV--the massive switch happened to HDTV/Digital. The Federal Government switched all the channels to Digital. Suddenly there were no more cheap TVs for sale at Target. I can't remember the price exactly, but I feel like the lowest end digital TV was $250 to $300. It was possible to buy a converter box for about $80, but while we were dithering about what to do, we experienced "Life without TV" for the first time as a family.

Jon and I grew up with cable TV. Jon's a visual artist, so TV shows are probably even more central to his childhood memories than mine. Yet I had the typical 1970s/1980s "TV as central to the home" too. I never imagined running my home without TV. There were huge, huge benefits.

We lost our TV at time when spiritually we were growing as new converts to the Catholic faith. Being detached from the mass entertainment really helped us make conscious choices about what type of family culture we wanted in our home. We have streaming video on Netflix and could watch current TV shows like Friday Night Lights online --so it wasn't like our "No TV" was a firm rule to boycott the industry entirely. However, it was a different experience. When I clicked on a TV show online, I made a more conscious decision about what "I could watch" or "what my kids could watch." TV became an active choice instead a passive one.

I also had a lot of natural "silence" in my life which helped me grow in prayer as a new Carmelite. TV is "noisy." The News Shows have loud vocal opinions that are different than reading the same thoughts in a Washington Post article. I really benefited from not having  a TV on at my house as I started out a new prayer routine.

Five years of benefit make it totally weird that last weekend, I bought a 32 inch flat screen for $229 at Target last Saturday. That's crazy, right? Winter is coming. We needed to buy more electric heaters for the house. I'm hand wringing my laundry because my ancient washer has an almost non-existent spin cycle. There are dozens of needs for my household but I decided I "needed" a TV.

I'm still trying to make peace with my decision. I felt total peace when I bought the new TV at Target (which is unusual. I get gripe of fear thinking "this is too much money to spend" when buying a normal amount of food at Aldi's.) I know that pregnancy is hard. Breastfeeding a newborn can be even harder. When my stomach feels sick. I like to lay in bed and watch TV. It's comforting to me, like drinking ginger ale.

While I nursed Baby Abigail Clare through colic eighteen months ago, I soothed myself by using the "free TV options." Netflix. Hulu. But for this new baby, I felt tired. I'd watched every episode of every interesting show on Hulu and Netflix. I felt ready for real TV again.

My husband and kids are ecstatic with our new TV, which scares me a little. It's awesome to connect our computer to the TV. We can now watch movies that we can all easily see at the same time, instead of fighting over a small laptop computer screen. I taught the kids the rules about Football, because they had never seen a game before.

After a few days of second guessing my decision, I think I'm developing a more moderate viewpoint of my Catholic religion. My family is not Amish. We've already elected a very radical decision to isolate ourselves by not attending public school. If I make blanket decisions like "All TV watching is bad, I should better spend that time in prayer," I'm really isolating us further. It's a delicate line, but I don't live in a convent. My family is supposed to be "out in the world." In my own head, "living in  the modern world as a Catholic" means some basic fluency in TV shows.

I'm hopeful we can come up with some TV guidelines that encourage moderation and responsible use of the media congruent with our strong values. Our house has enough coolness with origami, art projects, playful siblings, musical instruments, basketballs and an archery range. I'm trusting that cartoon watching time doesn't swamp all the other interesting things my kids do with their free time. If it does, we'll box up the TV and store it in the basement for a while.

That's the nice thing about having TV stripped away by poverty for five years. TV came come into my home now because I know for certain that we can all exist just fine if it ever needs to go out again.

St. Clare, patroness of TV, pray for us!

There's a Rumor

There's a rumor that we may be getting a new water heater this week. It's been four months without one. My husband and I take cold showers. Then I put three large stock pots on to boil for bath time for my kids. Between the cold showers, my clothes line, and my mini-fridge, we're rapidly become Amish. (One of these days I'm going to discover that writing with a quill is easier than typing online.)

We're getting a "point of source" water heater that should be easier to use with our a) large family and b) hard water. Nothing is simple in my house. Before we can install a new water heater, we have to change out our electric box which is an original 1950s model. The electrician is coming today. I'm hopeful this could be an easy fix, instead of a hard one.

There is so much in Carmel about the importance of "detaching from the senses." This very intense bachelor from my Carmel Community gave me a favorite quote. He was so intense and said "Every single day we should smell something unpleasant, we should touch something unpleasant...."

I started laughing so hard, I dropped my St. John of the Cross book on the floor.

He looked at me in sadness. He said "I'm serious. Every single day we should detach from our senses! It's critical for our spiritual well-being!"

I said "I'm a Mother. I change so many disgusting diapers every day all day. I've got the 'smell an unpleasant smell' thing covered. I've never thought of that as being a spiritual benefit before!"

Cold showers was another thing that my husband and I offered up for Jesus for the past few months. I'd done cold showers as penance before. It was a huge difference to have the "choice" of turning the shower to cold, while I knew hot water was available. It's a different level of penance to have a truly cold shower everyday. My husband nicknamed this "involuntary penance." It comes often in poverty and it's always a great gift.

(By the way, I'm shocked too that the "involuntary thing" seems to usually be temporary.  The penance lasts way longer that I'm comfort with, but it always ends. For example, we rode the bus for 2 years, but now we own 2 good cars. We rented a house for 5 years, but now we own a house. We went without a water heater for 4 months, but now it looks like we could get a really great one that can last for a longer time. I'm a little different that most thrifty families I know about we don't actively "save" while we do involuntary penance. Its more like if there seems to be a "necessity" we can't do, we try to be patient and little and loving while we wait for God to fix our problem).

I'll be happy to have quick and  plentiful hot water inside my house again. Yet I'm also grateful for this time of poverty. We're getting a much better hot water heater than we would had immediately charged a replacement to the Home Depo credit card when our original hot water heater failed. I  feel solidarity with people in the past. For four months we had a "cold water tap" home. It was a pain but it wasn't "awful." It wasn't unimaginably terrible to live without an easy access to hot water. There was just a built it 20 minute delay before taking a bath.

Update: We have hot water! It cost us $36 in materials and hours of my husband's labor. Yet all the hardened "gunk" from 20 years of hard water deposits is gone. Thank you St. Joseph!

Just Because You Feel Stuck, It Doesn't Mean You Are!

Yesterday, I had a dozy of a day. I had the worst homeschooling day in six years of teaching. The noisy dog next door woke me up from a soothing pregnancy nap. Then at 5 PM the chicken I'd spent 3 hours roasting ended up on the floor in some sort of bizarre accident and got jointly chewed on by my 1 year old baby, my dog, and my cat. I showed up at my weekly CODA meeting at 6:30 PM feeling rather gnawed on myself.

I'm shocked at how quickly God can turn me from hopeless into hopeful. He never, ever leaves me. His grace shows up in ordinary situations. The guy next to me said the affirmation "Just because you feel stuck, it doesn't mean you are!" at the end of my CODA meeting. I got this little internal nudge that said "Hey, that's me!"

Last night at 9 PM, as I walked my dog under the almost full moon, I felt so lighthearted and hopeful. I couldn't believe I felt so good after the awful day I had earlier. Praise God for good nights after hard days!

A Warning about Wanting Spiritual Pats on the Back from St. John of the Cross

Man, St. John of the Cross can be such a downer. I'm all confident I've started to get this Catholicism thing down. Then I work on my Carmel Reading Homework. Whoops! The gate to heaven is pretty narrow. St. John constantly reminds me not to get complacent in my prayer life.

So the king of penance talks about how bad it is for my spirit to get attached to worldly goods, riches or honor. No surprise there. But then St. John talks about getting attached to "moral goods." He warns that "because this harm is spiritual it is particularly ruinous." He says there are seven types of harm that comes from over-esteeming "moral goods" or "good works" --think volunteering for the Church's Soup Kitchen, giving a big tithe at church, or even being a mother to a large number of kids.

Harm One: Pride--We can over esteem our good works and boast about them to God.

Harm Two: "We think the deeds and works of others are not as good as our own."

Harm Three: We look for satisfaction in our works, and usually don't preform them unless we can see some gratification or some praise that will result from them.

Harm Four: We don't look for our reward in God since we wish to find in this life, "joy, comfort, honor or some other thing from the good work."

Harm Five: We fail to advance in the way of perfection since we are "attached to some satisfaction or consolation in our works."

Harm Six: We are mistaken "that the thought that the works that give satisfaction are better then those that do not."

Harm Seven: "We become more incapable of taking counsel and receiving reasonable instructions about the work they out to do." "Such people become very slack in charity towards God and neighbor for the self-love contained in their works makes them grow cold in charity."  (The Ascent of Mount Carmel, pgs 318 to 321.)

Ouch. That criticism struck me uncomfortably in the face. I'm guilty of all of those types of harm.

The remedy is to do good works "solely for the love of God." St. Teresa of Avila said that she would pick a straw up off the floor for the love of God. I think it is virtually impossible to purify my intentions on my own, however, I'm confident that if I pray for this grace of detachment and true generosity of spirit, God will hear my prayer.

In my Carmel group we talked about how hard our churches make it, ironically, to do"hidden things for the love of God." One women said that the first thing we do for volunteers is to have them all stand up in Mass and receive applause for their work. Or we boldly print their names in the church bulletin. It's easy to get a reputation for being a "good Christian" who volunteers often at church.  That can lull us into a false sense of security about our own spiritual progress and lead us into all sorts of pride, sin, and destruction.

I think it's really hard to not care about receiving praise for acts of service, the same way I'm not supposed to care about receiving insults as a result of my Catholic faith. Detachment from both praise and detachment from insults are the two sides of the same coin. Humility and hiddenness seem like such foreign concepts in our modern culture.

I love attending Carmel meetings because I'm always finding a higher peak on spiritual path. St. John of the Cross, pray for me.

Join a Friendly Mary Meetup: Read Edward Sri's "Walking With Mary"

As a former Protestant, I felt outside the Mary Fan Club for a long time. I didn’t get all the hoopla surrounding Mary, the Mother of God. She had all these fancy titles. She showed up in a thousand different ethnic identities all over the world. The Hail Mary prayer sounded a little weird to my ears. Mary was a plastic Nativity figure I pulled out of storage each Christmas and neatly packed away each New Year. Like an arrogant girl who believes that sipping Scotch on the rocks would dilute the flavor, I preferred to pray to Jesus, straight up. No intercessor necessary.

As a girl with a former “Mary block,” I was so pleased to read Edward Sri’s beautiful introduction to Our Blessed Mother in Walking with Mary: A Biblical Journey from Nazareth to the Cross. This slim book is a must read for any new Catholic. Sri’s prose is clean and his theology is easy to follow.

I appreciate how strictly Sri focuses on Mary as she's described in the New Testament. He highlights Mary's human qualities in order to make her more relatable. For example, Sri contrasts how Zechariah is approached by the Angel Gabriel to how Mary is approached by the same angel. Both holy people receive similar news of a future miraculous birth. Yet the circumstances that surrounded  their two visits with the same angel is vastly different.

“The Angel Gabriel visits Zechariah when he is in a sacred place--the Temple in Israel’s religious capital, Jerusalem. And Zechariah is a public figure holding a sacred office, serving as a Levitical priest. He is in the middle of performing a sacred function in the Temple liturgy when Gabriel appears to deliver the message that Zechariah’s barren wife, Elizabeth will conceive a child in her old age. Mary in contrast, is an unknown young woman, holding no official position, and apparently going about her ordinary daily life in the insignificant village of Nazareth when the angel speaks to her.”

Sri uses a light touch of historical context to bring a freshness to the familiar scriptures heard frequently in church. Any one of Sri’s paragraphs is a great jumping off point for private prayer. Who was Mary? Who is she to me? How can I be more like this model of Jesus’ first and most perfect disciple?

Sri's book, A Walk With Mary, is the perfect companion to a Rosary prayer. Hope you pick up a copy soon and join us in a timeless Meetup with Mary during her walk from Nazareth to the Cross.

Monsanto & Seed Patent Laws

Click on the link below for a belly laugh from the Daily Show's recent "anti-farming" skit.

Monsanto & Seed Patent Laws: Aasif Mandvi investigates the American heartland's war on biotech companies.


St. Isidore the Farmer, pray for us!

Idiocy, Humilty, and End of Life Issues

One of the cool things about my life in Carmel, is that by spending so much time in quiet prayer and I start to see some of the puzzling events of my life knit together in a new way.

My last year in Law School, I had a perfect job at my State's Elder Law Center. It was a prestigious internship. I got paid. I worked with great people. I had did interesting work at reasonable hours. It was the perfect segue into a great job. Yet I didn't even apply to interview for their permanent staff opening. I could have stayed in the city I loved and kept dating my cute boyfriend, Jon Benjamin. Instead, I moved 500 miles a way to start a harder public interest job, for less pay, in a city that was so depressed economically there were almost no 25 years in sight.

I couldn't explain to anyone why I didn't audition for this job that I really liked. I now recognize I was kept away from that job opening because all the End of Life Advocacy Work. I would have worked for a hidden evil I had not yet recognized.

In Law School, I drank the Kool-Aid. There was this scary court case, called Nancy Cruzen that we studied as part of Con Law I. Nancy suffered a traumatic brain injury after a serious car accident. She was in a "persistent vegetative state" of minimal brain activity for decades. Her family wanted to end her life support, the State of Missouri wanted "clear and convincing evidence" that Nancy herself wanted to die.

In Law School, they threw around this court case to terrorize us into signing Power of Attorney's for Health Care. They told us we 20 somethings were at most risk for spending decades of painful life confined to a hospital bed. If we had a brain injury, our healthy bodies could keep going for 30 years. To spare ourselves and our loved ones that trauma, we were supposed to immediately notarize a document saying clearly that we wanted to be pulled off life support if we were "brain dead."

I'm not an expert at Catholic moral law. I do think that our faith allows us to have a Power of Attorney for Health Care and lets us morally sign some types of Do Not Resuscitate Orders. My Catholic faith does not require me to undergo quadruple bypass surgery when I'm 98. I can choose to forgo extraordinary life saving measures if the cost seems too high, and die quietly in my own bed with my rosary around my wrist if I wish.

But my Catholic faith does forbid me from signing away my basic dignity as a human being, even if I'm old. Even if I'm "brain dead." My faith says that I do not have the right to sign a document that denies me basic needs like food and water. All humans will die without food and water. I don't suddenly have the right to deny myself food and water just because I become "useless" as a cripple or old person.

I wasn't Catholic when I made the decision not to take the Elder Law job. I didn't know about all the fine points of Catholic moral law. But God did! God knew that one day I'd become a Catholic. That I'd become strongly pro-life. So in the deepest recesses of my heart, God steered me away from a field of law that would be highly problematic to my still underdeveloped spiritual beliefs.

The Right to Life from conception to natural death is an issue that is close to my heart. At six days old, my three year old daughter Tess was diagnosed with a fatal birth defect in her small intestine. She could not digest or eliminate her food. Her birth defect was 100% fatal. A fairly minor surgery (if any six hour surgery on a tiny newborn can be called minor) had a 97% chance of curing her for life. As her parents, we gratefully chose surgery. On September 7, 2010, the doctors at Children's National Hospital in Washington, DC saved my daughter's life.

My daughter's birth defect often occurs in Down Syndrome patients. About thirty percent of the patients with duodenal atresia also have Down Syndrome. There are parents who chose to refuse the duodenal atresia surgery because their child has Down Syndrome. I can't read about those cases in the Washington Post without vomit coming up in my throat. I'm not judging them. I'm not trying to shove my Catholic morals down their throat. I just know exactly what a newborn baby looks like who hasn't digested food in six days. My daughter turned from a rosy cheeked newborn to a listless green skinned alien who was unresponsive to touch, or sound, or even painful spinal tap needles. It hurts my heart to imagine a baby dying of starvation when a common surgery could help her eat normally for the rest of her life.

We live in scary times. We have the right to kill our babies in utero if the mother deems them too "annoying." We live in a crazy time where relatives have the right to kill elderly people if they get too sick, too expensive or too "annoying." Worse yet, we encourage the elderly to "be responsible" and sign a legal form that consents in advance to their murder if life becomes too scary and too full of suffering.

I'm eager to read a new book called "Five Days at Memorial" by Sheri Fink. It's about the chaotic medical decisions hospitals made in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Apparently several doctors decided to euthanize 20 of the sickest patients who had Do Not Resuscitate orders, rather than evacuate them. Sometimes real life is far scary than any Science Fiction Move. Here is the book's link on NPR.

St. Teresa of Avila, you had a near death experience in a severe coma yourself. Please pray for all of us in America to Protect All Life.

Catch Homeschool Author Rebecca Frech on TV or the Internet!

I've raved over my friend Rebecca Frech's brilliant and cheerful new homeschooling book, "Teaching in Your Tiara." Now you can view her on Catholic TV. In one hour (11 AM Eastern Standard Time) she'll be a guest on The Gist. I'll be watching her on live streaming TV on my internet, so don't fear if you lack cable TV. Here is the connection info. Rebecca says that the show should stay up as a live link for 2 to 3 days after this morning's show. Check it out!

Happy Birthday Blessed Mother!

Nine months have passed since Dec. 8, when we celebrated the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (immaculate:  free of the “macula”/stain of original sin).  And so on Sept. 8 we celebrate the feast of her nativity or birth.  (This year, since Sept. 8 falls on a Sunday, the Sunday takes precedence in our liturgical calendar.)

The Church in both east and west has celebrated this feast since the 6th and 7th centuries.  We celebrate only three births liturgically:  the births of the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist both point toward the pivotal birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Indeed, the birth of the Virgin Mary can be seen as a link between the Old and New Covenants:  for she, the “Daughter of Zion,” is the personal culmination of the faith and holiness of the People of Israel; while at the same time her birth was the “daybreak of salvation” heralding the coming of the “sun of justice,” her Son, our Lord Jesus.

What can we do to celebrate her birthday?

• Make a birthday cake for her (perhaps with white frosting with blue touches)—which helps children of all ages to know her personal importance in their lives.
• Decorate a statue or image of her with flowers.
• Sing a favorite Marian hymn or song for her.
• Pray the Rosary, the Angelus, the Litany of Loreto, or other Marian prayers.

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!  Happy birthday to you.

 (By Father Dan Gallaugher)

Prayers for Peace in Syria

Pope Francis lead a prayer vigil for peace in Syria in Rome today. He asked Catholics around the world to pray and fast for Syria today. Here is a pretty good post about the Pope's prayer vigil.

I loved this description of why fasting is beneficial.

"Part of the role of prayer is that it can lead the mind to greater understanding and clarity. Since the world doesn’t see yet a clear and better solution, the Pope’s suggestion might actually lead to some successful options. Fasting is a means of detachment and a way of offering sacrifice for one’s own sins, for reconciliation, or for the good of others. It “expresses a conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others” (Catechism, 1434). That’s what we’re looking for: conversion. And part of conversion is to better understand the will of God. We know that his will is peace; we just don’t know yet which forms of justice we need to arrive at that peace."

Today, I went to confession for the first time since my anniversary weekend on June 2nd.  My 10 year old daughter asked me if I was scared inside the church as we waited for our turn in the confession line. I said "Oh yes!" in a whisper.

She looked confused. "Why are you here then?" She was in line because her parents dragged her to church. No parent had driven me to church and pointed me to the confession line.

I just said the first thing that came into my heart. "It's good to do hard things. Someday we'll be dead and dying is really hard. We'll be grateful then that we practiced doing hard things like going to confession when we were scared then."

I sort of proof read my words after the came out of my mouth. "What a weirdo, I am!" I thought critically. "What parent talks so normally about dying to their 10 year old kid? Someday someone is going to tell me I did a really bad job at raising my Catholic kids."

However, my 10 year old nodded as if that was the clearest and most reassuring advice ever heard. She stopped complaining and started focusing on her Examination of Conscience. Mother, Sister, Brother and Father all got through their Confession and did their penance. After we were finished, I remembered "we're supposed to be praying for Syria today!"

Sometimes it feels so overwhelming to belong to the Body of Christ. There are huge complicated problems in the world.It's really reassuring to have a Pope who tells us, "Now we are going to focus our prayers on this issue." It's beautiful to remember that by cleaning up my little soul, dragging my noisy toddlers and scared new communicants and my still uncertain Adult Convert Self to Confession, I contribute a small piece to a much greater goal.

We wait in trust that our joint prayers for peace will bear good fruit in Syria. God bless Syria. God bless America. Thank you Pope Francis. I love you!