Going Home

My mom announced a surprise twist in the sleeping assignments during our visit to grandma's house this past weekend. "Abby, you and Jon have your old room tonight."

When I turned 14, my father changed jobs and I moved into this drab bedroom in a new town. I promptly painted the room electric blue, with a white ceiling border and a teal ceiling. After I left for college, my little brother and later my maternal grandfather both took over "the blue bedroom." I hadn't even looked inside this room for over 15 years.

In the middle of the night, I touched the wall by my childhood bed. There was a jagged crack in the plaster and actual cobwebs flitting on the ceiling rail. I flashed back to being 14 again, filled with loneliness and loathing in a strange place. How times did I stare out the widow at an unfamiliar apple tree and wish that I could go back home?

It was overwhelming to know that every moment I sat filled with loneliness in my bedroom, an angel sat with me. My guardian angel, Angela. The one who I chitchat with all the time now. The angel who points out dropped pacifiers and reminds me about doctors appointments. The angel who swats away those nasty distractions during my Holy Hour and keeps me chugging up a long Mount Carmel.

That same angel was with me in my lonely bedroom. Only at that time I was a Protestant and didn't believe in all that "silly stuff" so I didn't talk to her.

There was a time in my life, before I had named my guardian angel. A time before I talked to Our Blessed Mother in a rosary. A time before I read the Lives of the Saints or poured out my troubles to a priest or took tea breaks with Catholic friends.

And so, during my freshman year it was just me and the Holy Trinity. Slogging it out. In my blue bedroom.

I hated the place God had moved me. I wanted my high school experience to be about theater auditions, and choir songs, and writing new poems and lots of fun parties. Instead my assignment was xenophobia, extreme poverty, and classmates who spit wads of chewing tobacco into the school water fountains.

God wanted to hollow out a giant empty space for prayer and contemplation, in a giggly, social fourteen year old girl.

The amazing part, was that God heard every prayer of complaint and answered it graciously. Twenty years later, I was back in that room, with a husband, three babies, a new faith and a full heart.

Night of the Senses

It's hard to write much, because I'm in such a weird place. It feels like depression, but it's not. I'm slow moving and my head is in a pea-soup fog, yet inside there is this small piece of pure light. I don't feel morose, as in real depression. I do feel agitated, afflicted and restless.

None of the old comfort tricks work one me anymore. There's no looking forward to movies, or bowls of ice-cream, or reading books or dreaming about the pristine leather couches I'd get from IKEA if only we had the money.

Instead, there is a lot of drudgery. I wash cloth diapers twice a day. I pick up legos. I cook "unfun" food from the cheapest ingredients possible. I conduct AP Socialization for 4 year olds, as in "please don't hit either sister or the dog, even if everyone unfairly swiped the last pretzels from your plate."

And I celebrate the Mass. I adore at Adoration. I struggle through Morning, Evening and Night Prayers of the Daily Hours. I say my rosary without my old enthusiasm.

There are brilliant moments during every day that are beautiful.

Then there is much dampness. There's the daily drudgery. My endless complaints of "this is not the life I ever wanted. Why is it so hard?"

On Sunday night, as I walked my dog, I complained yet again about my life to God. I imagined writing him a letter. My "assignment" as a young mother in suburbia seemed as foreign and difficult as a missionary post in a tropical climate. "Conditions are so hard here," I thought. "I'm not having any fun here. I must be working on the wrong assignment."

Then I felt this gentle hug and a picture of my dearest saints, the ones who went through hard times interiorarily came to mind. I thought about Mother Theresa and St. Therese. "You're sisters didn't have fun in their assignments either . . . The fact that you're not having fun means that your one the right assignment."

He speaks the truth to our hearts. The truth is usually not what we want to hear. I want to hear that my suffering is almost over, that material aid and comfort is around the corner. Instead I keep stumbling upon passages like this:

"For true Eucharistic devotion, the Pope calls for a total detachment from all earthly values and austere attachment to the Word of God. St. John of the Cross teaches that one can come to the vision of the Holy Trinity only by entering into a two-fold night; the night of the senses and the night of faith. He explains the spiritual poverty required of the night of the senses: "To reach satisfaction in all, desire statisfaction in nothing. To come to possess all, desire to possess nothing. To be all, desire to be nothing." (pg. 26)

Reassuring that I'm on the spiritual path up Mount Carmel, yet not reassuring that my requests for new contact lens or a house with three bedrooms are going to be answered any time soon.

My prayers are with all of you!

For my dear friend who worries that she spends to much time writing about the Eucharist

"How many Catholics have walked away from the Church and never come back because they really didn't know what they are losing They really do not understand the grace, the wonder, the power, the beauty, the love in that piece of bread that has become the body of the Living God and that cup of wine that has become His blood offered up for us in sacrifice."

His Eminence Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, Homily at 2004 Congress of the Eucharist.

We Passed Kindergarten!

Many thanks for all of my friends and blog readers who listened to my pitiful complaints during this first year of homeschooling. I took a teeny portfolio and Hannah herself to our second semester review session. We passed! The reviewer actually said "You did the right thing by keeping her home this year. Look at her!" How is that for Holy Spirit confirmation?

I must have read 10,000 articles on "how to homeschool" in the past year. Not one had this suggestion, "pray fervently to Saint Anne and Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton to give you a sympathetic reviewer." Yet, that is the advice I want to hand out. Having a public school employee who is encouraging and helpful makes all the difference for the faint of heart.

We I got pregnant with Hannah seven years ago, I did not dream about entering into a homeschool adventure. In fact, I looked forward to many parent-teacher conferences happening in uncomfortably small chairs. Many thanks to God who knew me better than I knew myself.

If God wants you to do something that is clearly impossible, do it. As the priest said on my Catholic retreat. "Get out of the boat! God didn't call you to walk on water because you were already a saint. He called you because he wanted to do something beautiful in your life."

There are so many benefits of homeschooling, but one that I like best is that it develops perseverance.

"We should be grateful to the Lord our God, for putting us to the test, as he did our forefathers. Recall how he dealt with Abraham, and how he tried Isaac, and all that happened to Jacob in Syrian Mesopotamia while he was tending the flocks for Laban, his mother's brother. Not for vengeance did the Lord put them in the crucible to try their hearts, nor has he done so with us. it is by way of admonition that he chastises those who are close to him." Judith 8:25-27 (from today's daily hours)

This first year of teaching has been a "crucible of the heart."I look forward to many more years of "heart crucibles" to follow.

The Worms of Vanity & Lust

The worms of vanity and lust bit me with my first kiss.

I balanced a blackboard on my shoulder in line with three other female cast members of “Our Miss Brooks”. Our assignment was to carry a chalk board from a second floor English classroom onto our first floor middle school stage in preparation for that night’s dress rehearsal. My eyelids were lined with thick black pencil-- the kohl corners stuck out beyond the edges of my brown glasses. A silk Chinese gown minced my steps. The blackboard pulled heavily on my shoulder.

I worried about tearing my Shangri-La costume before Opening night, so I flipped my arm positions. I used my left hand to brace the unsteady chalk board while my right arm made a giant L shape to try to save my blue silk sleeve.

It was in this awkward pose, with both hands busy with work and my shy cheek shoved against green slate, that I received my first kiss.

I don’t know whose bright idea it was for the four skinny armed seventh grade girls to carry the chalk board while the two Captains of the Boys Track team held open doors and hollered unhelpful instructions, yet that was the situation that presented itself. Amy, Molly S, Bonnie and I held grimly onto the chalk board, while Ryan and Troy critiqued our efforts. The conversation quickly changed from which girl wasn’t holding her end up evenly to which girl could be deemed worth of a kiss.

“That Abby is so tiny, she’s too short to kiss!” said Troy as he helpfully pointed out that my short stature and wimpy arm muscles made it virtually impossible to lift my end of the chalk board down the narrow auditorium steps.

“Look at her, she’s turning red. You’re so little Abby, I bet you’ve never been kissed. Have you, Abby? Has anyone ever stooped to kiss you?”

I shoved my face against my section of the chalk board in a futile attempt to hide my blushing cheeks. “Just ignore that boy, “ I thought. “Just ignore him!” The status of which girls had made it past first base and which girls had “lost their cherry’ was a maddeningly popular topic among middle school boys in public school.

“I’d kiss Abby” Ryan said.

If it was possible to dissolve completely into a blackboard, I wished hard for that super power. Ryan was open to kissing me? Ryan? The male lead in the middle school play? The head celloist in Jones Junior High Orchestra?

Ryan was a year older than me and from a different academic cluster. I first met him as the lead in our Winter Class Play. Since that first rehearsal, I saw him everywhere. As the Boys Track Team Captain. A soloist in the School Choir. Somehow the harsh ranking of acting talent from the casting list filtered down into my head. I was only Dolores, a character with a measly seven and half lines. Ryan was the lead. If there was any dating relationships that came out of the middle school play, “going together” as we quaintly coined the term, I assumed it was between people with equal acting parts. As a result, I hadn’t said more than four words to Ryan during four months of rehearsals.

‘You wouldn’t!” Troy through down the dare.

“Yes, I would!” Ryan replied.

“Do it right now! So I can see it.”

Ryan walked over a few steps and kissed me on the cheek. I had my eyes clenched so tightly that my cheek felt like a hard squash ball.

The next day, I gleefully yanked my best friend Shannon into the girl’s bathroom in order to share my new secret. “I got kissed for the first time last night!” Once the few details were shared, Shannon lost some of her original wonder

“You were holding a chalk board and he just walked up and kissed you? In front of everyone?” Shannon said. “That doesn’t sound very good.” Shannon was first violinist in our school Orchestra and spoke with the voice of authority: “That doesn’t sound like Ryan.”

“Well the point isn’t that the exact circumstances that my first kiss happened were less than ideal,” I said defensively. “The point is that now we know he likes me. And I got kissed. None of our other friends can say that.”

I remember Shannon looked sort of wearily at me. I stopped meeting her gaze and started focusing on the smeary pink tiles behind her head. “Our bathroom is certainly dirty” I thought distractedly. The girls bathroom smelled of stale cigarette smoke, rotten bananas, and strong disinfectant.

“This wasn’t the setting I’d imagined for sharing the good news of my first kiss,” I thought. Shannon and I had been friends forever. Since we were babies in third grade we imagined our first kiss would happen and how we’d feel afterwards. A bathroom never figured into our romantic notions. “This conversation about Ryan would be so much better beneath the cherry trees outside. To bad it’s raining today.” Yes that was the reason I felt all weird inside. The setting of the dirty pink girl’s bathroom. “This wasn’t the setting I imaged sharing my first kiss.” I thought.

When I reimagine the chalkboard kiss scene in the present day, Mother Mary is with me. She cloaks my head in her mystical blue veil. “Stay away from my daughter!” she says sternly when the boy’s teasing begin. No one would dare steal an unkind, unchaste kiss from a holy daughter with Mary around. No one would sully a writer’s memory with a green chalk board, a mincing silk costume, a stinky bathroom or a crowd of witnesses.

She was there beside me at the time of my first kiss, but I didn’t know her yet. I didn’t know that I was a Catholic. I knew her son Jesus in a vague “we go to Methodist Church an hour a week” sort of way. I didn’t haven prayer on a moment-by-moment basis back then. So I didn’t pray after that kiss. I didn’t ask for help or guidance. Instead, I focused on being happy that someone thought I was kissable despite by horn-rimmed glasses and shy cheeks. I hoped I could have a coveted eighth grade boyfriend, especially one who was smart, ran track and played the cello.

At the cast party five days later, Ryan motioned for me to sit on his lap when we ran out of chairs at the cast party. I sat with my knees primly posed together and crossed my ankles. One hand rested in my lap. Yet, I didn’t know where to put my other hand. I worried it would be too forward if I rested it on his shoulders or accidentally touched his back. So I sat for twenty minutes with my arm ridged at a 45-degree angle, my hand curled in a fist. I didn’t want to look like I was hugging him. I didn’t want to assume anything before he spoke of dating me.

Ryan asked me to “go with him” that night. He kissed me again. Track practice started. I was a hurdler and I was awful. I had a persistent anxiety that I would slam my kneecap into a hurdle, so I would over jump the hurdle by a good three inches. That mistake added seconds to my time. After forty minutes of my frustrated coach yelling “Lower Abby, lower,” our extra events practice would end.

I wait for Ryan to finish relay hand-off practice with freshly bruised shins and sore feet. My boyfriend, the Track Captain ran the anchor leg for the 4 x 800 relay. Then he’d walk me home.

We lived in completely opposite directions. Ryan lived a mile Northeast of our middle school and I lived a mile south. Yet he’d always start me off on my walk home. As the weeks past, we start taking crazier and crazier routes home in order to spend more time together. Each day I measured the distance he walked out of his way with pleasure. One day he walked all the way to his front door. “You added an extra two miles to my commute home,” he said with a laugh. I felt like I’d finally ribboned in a great race.

Only a few weeks after this great event, I heard a school rumor that he actually liked a fellow eighth grade artist named Kit, who happened to be my next door neighbor. Kitt was a loner in our sunny suburban middle school. She wore black berets and talked insatiably about running away to drama school in NYC.

“Do you like Kit? Would you rather be dating her?” I asked one day, with my useless clarinet case banging against a shaking leg.

“Don’t be silly, Abby. We’re fine. Besides, Kit would never date me. She’s into high school boys.” That wasn’t the reassuring message I’d hoped to hear. I cried all during my private clarinet lesson that afternoon, which made my reed all wet and squeaky.

“This is useless,” my clarinet teacher rolled her eyes in disgust at my sentimental middle school behavior and sent me home early. I didn’t tell my surprised Mother why I was leaving early.

Yet that night, I asked God in my own quiet way. I curled up in tears under the reassuring presence of my desk. On nights that I couldn’t sleep, I’d pull my pillow and bedspread under my study desk and listen to the reassuring lisp of the air conditioning vent.

That night I dreamed about sailing. My favorite summer activity each July was to sail my grandfather’s rainbow Sunfish out to the sandy Isthmus on Crooked Lake. Alone with the wind was my favorite time to think. In my dream that night, I’d made it all across the lake to Graham Point. There was a huge party on the beach and all of my favorite friends were roasting marshmallows on a bonfire. “You made it!” they called. I stood on tiptoe looking through the crowd of happy greeters, but Ryan couldn’t be found. “He isn’t here” I said.

I woke up crying. I knew that that dream meant. By July, Ryan and I wouldn’t be dating anymore.

“It’s just a dream,” I told myself. “The whole thing doesn’t make any sense. Ryan doesn’t live anywhere near Crooked Lake. Why would I expect to see him after a Sunfish race?”

Yet I knew the truth in my heart. I was used to “seeing things” in my dreams.

Ryan and I kept dating months after the ruined clarinet lesson. Yet I knew it was only a manner of time. One sunny June day I ran into him at the middle school swimming pool. I was so happy to see him. He was playing catch with some boys in the shallow end. I was heading to the snack bar to buy some treats for my baby brother. He waved at me and jumped out of the pool. I felt so grand standing there in my slick Speedo swimsuit with a pink whale towel wrapped confidentially around my waist.

“I’m going into high school now, “Ryan told me all wet & shiny in the summer sun. ‘It’s nothing personal. I just can’t date an eighth grader when I’m in ninth grade. I’ll catch up with you this time next year.” I remember focusing on his perfectly formed runners feet. It hurt so much to see something so beautiful that I couldn’t touch.

“I’ll get him back next year. I just have to wait a while” I told myself and I threw myself into activities during the next school year. I tried out for Show Choir and Musical Theater. I joined service clubs and finally got perfect scores on my Spanish Exams. I dated several nice guys. One guy named Andy brought me carnations on Valentines Day and talked to me about his science fair project of hydroaquadric tomatoes. He got his Mom to drive us to “The Fly.” I dumped him after he quit the Track team. “We never see each other anymore,” I said. Everything I did had a tiny check mark beside it. I was still “Ryan’s girl” at heart.

Two weeks before I was supposed to enter ninth grade at the coveted Upper Arlington High School, we moved 300 miles away. Even thought we returned to Columbus often to visit family, I never had the courage to call Ryan. I made some vague hints to mutual friends, yet I never found out where he attended college.

Yet four years after our pool side break-up, one of the first things I thought when I decided to try out for the Smith College Debate Team was "maybe I'll see Ryan again." For years I would show up at random East Coast Colleges with hope. Yale, Princeton, Bowdon, Swarthmore. I kept expecting to run into Ryan on a foreign campus as I walked jauntily to a debate round with my pretty shoes and tidy scarves. “Oh, fancy seeing you again. I didn’t know you went to school here!” I practiced in front of lonely college dorm mirrors with my best actress inflection.

Yet I never saw Ryan again. Despite years of prayer, God never gave me the chance to win him back.

My grandmother Jean married the first boy she kissed. She and my Grandfather George remained happily married for fifty-seven years. Grandma Virginia married a neighbor boy who walked her to their first grade class. She and Grandpa Bob made it to year sixty-three. I married at age 26 to kiss number twenty. The world says it’s better my way. Yet I have to think that Jesus prefers my grandmothers' pace.

If I had it to do over again the ending would be the same. I'd still choose to never meet up with Ryan on a college campus filled with vivid fall colors. Yet my beginning would be totally different.

In my imagination, I would hold onto that chalk board and pray to dear Mother Mary to hide myself in the purity of her heart. I'd ask her to prevent my first kiss from happening at all. I ask her to let me save my first real kiss for Jon.

A Blog Fast

"He has won you for himself . . . and you must proclaim what he has done for you: he has called you out of darkness into his own wonderful light." (1 Peter 2:9)

I'm taking a Lenten break from blogging in order to focus my energy on working on a Catholic writing project. My husband & I joined a Catholic artist guild recently. Jon shocked me by putting on his smock and setting up a new studio on our patio this week. Between a new, hard job & three kids, my husband hasn't held a paintbrush in his hand for three years. All those rosary intention prayers for Catholic artists must be working!

I'm so hopeful about joining him in the art life again.

Please pray for us. It takes courage to create new art from scratch. It's also a test of fortitude to find regular time to "do art" as the parents of young children.

Yet the Lord is the one who gave us our talents and creativity. If I can write one awkward sentence praising Him for calling me out of the darkness, I'll be happy.

Hannah's 6th Birthday

A prayer request:

Today my oldest kiddo is 6. She cut her foot badly on some broken glass yesterday and needed 15 stitches. She'll be fine. The two weeks of enforced bed rest, however, is already driving both of us crazy. Hannah is my athletic ballet dancer who hates to sit still. Please pray for her speedy recovery.

I'll have to post some funny pictures of the "golf club crutches" Jon rigged up for her last night.

Mercy

There's an incredible story of forgiveness in the Washington Post today. A father forgives the adult neighbor who shot and killed his 17 year old son after the boy accidentally set off the neighbor's car alarm while playing basketball. Here's the report of the parole hearing 13 years after the initial murder.

(Bernard is the father, Norman is the neighbor)


"Bernard looks at Abramson, who nods her head, encouraging. Bernard opens the small piece of paper he has folded into eighths and creased and unfolded and refolded 20 times in the last two hours. He reads haltingly at first, as he explains that he has met with Norman twice in the past, but his voice grows stronger as he continues. "I asked him about his feelings about taking my son's life, and he expressed remorse."

The commissioners look stunned.

Bernard hesitates only a fraction of a second before affirming that he believes Norman to be sincerely sorry. "So it is my intention to ask that Mr. Norman be granted parole and release today," he says. "I hope the board takes this into consideration and grants my family and Mr. Norman some relief."

Minutes later, as Bernard and Abramson are ushered out of the room, the speaker is turned off, and the two commissioners lean their heads in to talk to each other. When Norman comes into the room to sit where Bernard had been sitting, the commissioners flip on the speaker. "Can everyone hear?" they ask Bernard and Abramson, who are now sitting outside the room watching the proceedings through a glass window.

The commissioners grill Norman about the night of the crime, whether he had been drinking, whether he had ever done drugs, whether he had used drugs in prison, whether he had taken classes in prison, whether he had a place to stay if they released him, whether he thought he could get a job with the plumbing certificate he had earned, why he had shot at the kids.

Why?

Norman says what he has said all along, that he only meant to scare them by firing into the sky, that the window blind crashed down on his gun, that he lost control of his weapon, that it was an accident, that he never meant to hurt anybody. He was angry, he says, but he never should have reacted the way he did, and he is sorry.

The commissioners, still reeling from Bernard's statement, point out that the victim supports his parole. "I'm just about ready to pass out on the table," Blount says. "I've been here 19 years and have only heard a victim say this once before."

"This man has shown incredible mercy to you today," Commissioner Perry Sfikas says. "I don't know how you pay this back in the future." He shakes his head.

What if your roles were reversed, and he had shot your daughter? Blount demands. "Do you think you would be able to say the same thing?"

Norman is paralyzed by the question. Would he? Could he? Will his answers affect his chances of parole? He tries to imagine. Finally, he gives up, shaking his head and looking down at the cuffed hands in his lap: "Honestly, I don't know."

The commissioners send him out of the room. Three minutes later, they announce their decision: William Norman will be granted "delayed release," parole that will be granted in the next 18 months, after attendance at some required classes and six months of active work release.

"This concludes the parole hearing," Blount says.

As Norman leans forward to sign the parole document the commissioners have given him -- one hand awkwardly dragging its cuffed partner along the page -- he looks out through the booth's soundproof glass seeking Bernard's face.

"Thank you," he mouths.

Bernard gives a barely perceptible nod. And leaves the room.

Downstairs, the friendly corrections officer at the front desk, who had signed Bernard in and knew he was a victim testifying at a parole hearing, waves him out the door with a smile. "Hope everything went your way," she says.

"It did," Bernard says, snapped out of his reverie. And then again, more firmly, "It did."

Read the whole article "here.,"

A Love Letter From Jesus

I'd written a funny post in my head about hosting my six year old's birthday party made up of members of her ballet class. It ended up being a surprise Marian event. There were nine, "surprise to us," Catholics and one Koren Presbyterian.

I spilled out all the grace from that event, however, by complaining about my hostess duties to my husband after the event was over.

I crawled off to Saturday Vigil Mass like a deflated balloon. The weekends are usually my "recovery" time. Instead, I spent all Friday tracking down a formal gown, baking a cake and cleaning our teeny apartment. Saturday was spent extending hospitality to mostly strangers. Our kids skipped their afternoon naps after the excitement of visitors and too much pinata candy.

I walked up the church stairs at 5:30 feeling exhausted and grumpy. I dreaded another day alone spent shuttling kids to two sets of babysitters and myself back and forth from Jon's all day Knight Event in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Then I walked into the church. I saw the happy signs of Welcome in Spanish, French, and Vietnamese. I sprinkled myself with Holy Water. There in the first pew was my fellow Carmelite, Mary Rice, with her ailing father. I'd prayed for this man for four months and I finally got to meet him at Church. (Mary's Dad has severe heart failure and it was a rare event for him to feel well enough to attend Mass.) I said hello to the lady's whose Adoration shift I covered last Sunday. Even at an unfamiliar Mass time, the church felt familiar and filled with friends.

I sang. I listened to Scripture. I heard Father Avelino's homily on St. Paul where he thumped his Bible and announced "WAKE UP Dead Man!" Then it was time to be fed at the Table of the Eucharist.

Now this is a completely unfamiliar part of Mass for me again. (Baby Maria has been going through a phase where she insists on exiting the family pew and running madly TOWARDS the alter. I think it's been a solid six weeks since I've actually got to Celebrate this Holy part of Mass inside the church, rather than pacing the narthex with a wiggly almost two year old in my arms.)

During this novel experience of actually focusing on the raising of the Host, I noticed vividly that something was different.

Most priest hold the broken Host vertically over the Chalice.

This time Father Avelino held the Host horizontally.

The curve of the half moon Host lined up perfectly with the bottom curve of the Chalice cup. The flat line of the broken Host mirrored the flat edge of the Chalice.

"It's one thing" is what my heart thought. The Body and the Blood of Christ, the Host and the Chalice, it's one, unified event.

Just as a started to lose myself in the contemplation of that thought, Jesus flashed me a little love letter.

Father picked up MY purificator as he started to distribute communion.

That purificator is unique in our parish. All of our other purificators are white linen "napkins" embroidered with a sedate red cross. This purificator also has a three inch square embroidery of Jesus heart pierced with thorns united with Mary's heart pierced by a sword.

Hannah had drawn my attention to the "pretty one" when we did Jesus's laundry together on Tuesday afternoon. She had washed it clean of the Sacred Blood. I carefully insured no drops landed in the carpet. Together we had a procession to the front yard where we poured out the "now Holy water" onto some Tree Roots. Alex squirted Spray 'n Wash on the fuchsia lipstick stains. I ran that exact purificator through the wash and fussed over the tricky ironing process.

A few days ago, that purificator was in our house. We cared for it and returned it promptly to church. Now my work was in the priests hands, in Jesus's hands.

I felt this little love note to my soul from Jesus:

"I use everything you do, no matter now modest or how hidden."

It's all important. My trips to Target to figure out the exact right pinata. My hurried invitations to the "ballet girls." My emergency trip to Alexandria to borrow a friend's black tie worthy gown for Jon's Knight Dinner. All of these hidden duties are as important to the building of Christ's kingdom as doing Jesus's laundry before the rush of multiple Lenten Masses.

Thank you Jesus! May our hearts always be united to you through our gracious Mother Mary.

My Sir Knight

It's official. My husband got his 4th Degree at the Knights of Columbus knighting ceremony last night. I got to wear a fancy ball gown and have "Lady Abigail" on my name tag. There were 135 new knights from 5 states at the dinner. I got to met all kinds of wonderful Catholic families.

The best advice I received on how to raise kids Catholics was "have Catholic friends." A wife of a retired Coast Guard member told me that one summer a neighbor invited them to visit their beach house. On the trip down, her oldest daughter gave the mom a big speech. "Now, Mom DON'T embarrass us by asking about Sunday Mass! If our friends want to skip this weekend, that's fine. Let's not make a big deal about it. We really don't need to go either if its to much trouble." The Coast Guard Mom held her tongue and said a prayer. When they got to the beach house the friend's house, the other mother met them at the door. The first thing she said was 'Now lets figure out which Sunday Mass we're going to attend and we can figure out the rest our weekend plans around Mass!" The Coast Guard wife told me, "having other friends who take their faith seriously is such a help. Your kids won't feel so alone or so weird."

After a rare night alone, my husband told me something so sweet. "You are my whole world. You and your children. Everything else I care about is in heaven!"

I love marriage so much. Things get so much better with time, and ours was a great marriage at the start!

Reed of God Quote

Because He is in the little house of our being, we will learn to control our minds, to gather our thoughts to silence, and to crown them with peace, just as we learn to control our voices and to move softly when a child is asleep in the house of bricks and mortar.

We know by faith that Christ is in our own family; it is He whom we foster in our children. When you tell your child a story, you play a game with your little son, you tell a story, you play a game with the Christ Child. . . .

A woman too weary for articulate prayer will find that for her the best of all prayer is the unspoken act of faith in Christ in her children. When she knows that she is setting the table and baking a cake for the Christ Child, her soul will be at rest.

The Reed of God, by Caryll Houselander, pg. 150

You Are A Chalice

A big theme on my recent retreat was the fact that we Catholics are “consecrated”. We are chosen, set apart from the world, reserved for sacred things. The short hand for this concept became the tag line “you are a chalice.”

Father Dan Leary explained further “What happens if a chalice doesn’t know it’s a chalice? If it doesn’t know that it’s job is to hold the sacred blood of Christ?

A chalice might think it’s just another cup. It could let itself be fill up with beer or Coke.

How to you differentiate between a Chalice and a plastic cup. A plastic cup gets thrown into the trashcan when the party is done. A Chalice is reverently cleaned and placed in a safe place until the next Mass”

Somehow the image of a chalice letting itself get filled up with beer really struck my soul. I had this visual image of a silver chalice showing up at a frat party and getting stuck in some pretty profane activities.

That’s what happened to me in college & grad school. I swam in the pigsty.

And so my conversion isn’t so much, “oh once I was a drunken fornicator and now I’m a chaste Catholic.” I was always a chalice. I was always intended to hold the wedding wine of Cana. I was always Jon’s wife.

There was just this period of time from my first kiss age 12 until I figured out the details of Theology of the Body at age 28, when I had no idea that I was really a Chalice intended always for the Lord’s use.

Prayer: Dearest Mother, this Lent let all Catholic women remember that they are Holy Chalices which hold your dear Son’s Presence at all times. Remind us to “Do whatever He tells us.”

Ways to Know Your Child Might Have a Vocation to Religious Life

Hannah: Mom for my 6th birthday I want

1) a horse pinata with junior mint candy

2) a birthday party at Chuckie Cheese &

3) A Jesus is Resurrected Birthday Cake.

Me: What is a Jesus is Resurrected Birthday Cake?

Hannah: You know, you go and get some rocks. You wash them. You make a cave on top of the cake. Then you make sure the cave is empty. Because, Jesus isn't there anymore.

Some Lenten Comic Relief

I opened up a letter from our apartment complex with the ominous subject heading "Violation of Community Policies."

We have received several complaints from your neighbors . . .

regarding a boat that you have presently parked in the community parking area.

A boat? Seriously? We have three kids in one of the most expensive metropolitan cities in the States. I don't even own a second car!

The Imitation of Mary

God wants of us a continuous series of little actions, while you want to do some great ones. The only result, if you follow your own way, is that you will do neither the small nor the great well. pg. 167

Vanity

A little excerpt from my retreat packet which illuminated my mind yesterday:

"Reform of Life: Deepening your examination of conscience, look at the recurring sins in your life. Which kind of pride is at the root?

Selfishness (valuing yourself most?)
Vanity (valuing others' opinions most?)
Sensuality (valuing comforts most?)

Ask Christ for humility to apply the opposite virtue:

Charity (serving others first)
Fidelity (valuing Christ's love foremost)
Discipline (accepting your crosses)"

From "How to pray a Holy Hour", Faith & Family Magazine

I had a "falling off my horse" St. Paul moment when I read this yesterday. I thought I was completely immune to vanity since I own one tube of lipstick that has so far lasted me five years. I had no idea that the sin of vanity isn't limited to endless mirror primping, it's caring about other people's opinions more than Christ's love. Man does that sin acts as a cancer in my soul.

The same for "sensuality". I thought that meant craving expensive massages and rose petals baths. But instead that sin "craving comforts most." So that is why the torn IKEA couch cover drives me crazy everyday! I like my treats. I like madelines with my tea, and pretty church shoes for my kids, and new DVDs from Redbox on Wednesday nights. If the opposite virtue is "discipline" how little of that do I possess? I feel every pea under my mattress and complain loudly about it during my time as a Princess in the Lord's Kingdom.

During our St. Patrick's Mass yesterday, I said contrition for my toxic cancer of people pleasing vanity sins and my "must have my creature comforts" sensuality sins. Then I asked for the Lord to bring me "fidelity" for my communion intention.

A few hours later I was late dropping Hannah off to her religion class. "What must her teachers think of me?" I cringed as I looked at the clock as Hannah skipped out of the car. "Oh, I can't think that way anymore" I told myself.

I drove home elated. I'm looking at regaining hours of free time after fully ridding myself of the vanity curse. Worrying about what other people think, worrying about making people mad, worrying about doing something "wrong." Those thoughts have taken up hours of my life. They make me feel crazy. They make me depressed. Now it's about pleasing one guy, who also happens to be Truth Itself and Eternally Consistent.

What joyful, pleasant work!

Love Song From Jesus

When the rain is blowing in your face
And the whole world is on your case
I could offer you a warm embrace
To make you feel my love

When evening shadows and the stars appear
And there is no one there to dry your tears
I could hold you for a million years
To make you feel my love

I know you haven't made your mind up yet
But I would never do you wrong
I've known it from the moment that we met
No doubt in my mind where you belong

I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blue
I'd go crawling down the avenue
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
To make you feel my love

The storms are raging on the rollin' sea
And on the highway of regret
The winds of change are blowing wild and free
You ain't seen nothing like me yet

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true
Nothing that I wouldn't do
Go to the ends of the earth for you
To make you feel my love

"To Make You Feel My Love", by Garth Brooks


I came home Sunday night after my Adoration Hour and had a lovely slow dance with Jesus to this song when it came on my daughter's radio. Tonight I'm alone again and sick in bed. Jon left for a Knights Meeting and I absently flipped through the TV channels trying not to mind my sick tummy. This song just came on American Idol! I guess this will be my reflection for Lent.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day

What a great Catholic bishop who was so helpful getting me "straightened out" as a new member of the Catholic Church. My trip to Ireland in late May 2002, only weeks after my confirmation at Easter Vigil made my new found Catholic faith feel "shiny and electric." Our trip to Catholic Ireland inspired us to start following all the rules. Hannah's conception happened days later and her due date was March 17th. We spent my whole pregnancy thanking St. Patrick and hoping that Hannah would get free green beers for life. (Instead, Hannah decided to stay put until March 26th.) All the same, Saint Patrick is Hannah's special saint and a dear friend of our family.


Christ shield me this day:
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every person
who thinks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.”

— “The Breastplate of St. Patrick”

Losing Carmel

During my retreat, I had this incredible experience in confession. I go to confession a lot. My priest offers confession immediately after Daily Mass and there's nothing like the Eucharist & motherhood to immediately expose most of my shortcomings on a daily basis.

So needless to say, I've become a little blaze about receiving this sacrament. I mean I'm thankful always, but sort of in the "it's nice to have a newly washed car" type of way. I rarely get the "Wow there is something seriously wrong with your soul's engine and it needs immediate repair" type of surprise.

This confession was so "weird." I was in the middle of Adoration when I felt this strong pull to go immediately to confession with the director of our retreat. I felt confused, because confession was "scheduled" later in the retreat when more than 5 extra priests would hear confessions on Saturday afternoon. One of the things I most looked forward on my retreat was making a leisurely catalogue of my sins without the immediate neediness of three young bodies. So the fact that I was "hurrying" to confession, seemed a waste of my opportunity this weekend.

The thing about Adoration is that these "pulls" happen in a very tangible way in your soul. So without even knowing why, I got up and stood in line for a rushed confession before the start of Morning Mass.

While I stood in line, again reviewing why this action was so foolish, I looked up. There was a luminous stain glass window of St. Yves. I was so shocked. St. Yves is the patron saint of lawyers. He was the first guy I prayed to in RCIA class when I first starting opening up to the whole "communion of the saints thing." I'd stopped practicing law soon after converting to the faith and promptly forgot all about him. St. Yves isn't a popular saint, and I've never even see a prayer card made out to him. To see a main window dedicated to him immediately off the central alter, seemed incredible.

I didn't have much time to contemplate what this meant, because it was my turn.

I started out the same "Bless me Father for I have sinned, it's been two weeks since my last confession...." I've said those words countless times in the last six months.

But this time WHAM!

This sacrament was so intense.

I even got called over from behind the screen to get my head prayed over at the end of confession. That's has never happened to me before.

So in the middle of all of intension confession and advice, I heard this really hard truth.

"You know, becoming a lay Carmelite is a lot for a mother of young children to handle."

I'm losing Carmel? It hurt so much, I couldn't breath.

The priest went on to say "I'm not saying that you can't participate in the charism. It's just that you've got to be sure that this is God's will. You can't get caught in checking off things just because you like to check off boxes."

Every word that he said hurt my heart. I still couldn't catch my breath.

The priest went on to say "You're the one who said you had a problem with perfectionism. I'm just talking about things that you've already brought up."

I nodded. I still couldn't talk. Then we went on to talk about my other sins.

That conversation happened three weeks ago. This Sunday I'm not going to my regular Carmel meeting. I've taken a break from trying to squeeze in Daily Mass, two Litany of the Hours, a rosary and a 1/2 hour of quiet prayer each day. With the exception of my rosary & my St. Louis de Monfort prayers, I catch the rest when I can. My prayer life is much better. But it still feels weird. My husband does most of these prayers each day, and it still feels weird to not join him in the Litergy of the Hours or a full 1/2 hour of quiet prayer.

A Catholic friend of mine asked me "what do you mean it hurt when the priest said this might not be time to become a lay Carmelite?" I couldn't describe it really.

It just hurts.

Carmel is home. Carmel is the place where my life makes sense. Where all my character defects are suddenly not "stupid" or "wrong." I liked having a place. I liked belonging to an order. I liked having an intimacy with Theresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross and all the other Carmelite saints. Maybe that's just my pride and selfishness.

What's the big deal about waiting?

This waiting for my kids to grow up doesn't have an "end date." I'm hoping to have more children. It feels weird to have this excuse of motherhood when the other mothers in my group have 5, 6, and 10 children.

But the truth is, I'm still little. 90 minutes of prayer every night after my kids go to bed at 8 PM hurts. It makes me resentful. I went into confession just thinking that "I was the problem." I came out confused that something so "right" could still be not in God's plan for me right now.

In the middle of my retreat, when I hurt so badly after that confession I felt the comforting presence of the Little Flower. Saint Theresa wanted to go to Carmel at age 12, when her beloved older sister joined the order. She hurt so much she got sick. I felt comforted that at least this awful "waiting" period was still part of the Carmel experience.

Today, as I struggled to figure out how to tell my Aspirant class leaders that I was missing class on Sunday, I opened the "Story of the Soul" for comfort. Immediately I saw this passage concerning St. Theresa's request to enter Carmel at age 15, "Come come" the Holy Father said "if it's God's will you will enter."

Comforting words on a hard, Lenten Friday.

My Yoke is Easy

So the opposite of the whole "if you plant tomatoes without God's blessing you only get a crop of messy bugs" is the "my yoke is easy, my burden is light."

My expansive pride still has me spending most of my day in "my life is so DIFFICULT" conversation with Jesus, but I wanted to share this amazing event that happened on Monday.

So Monday is Ballet lesson day. In in a series of freak events, Jon comes home from work early & dinner is actually cooked by 5:30, which means Hannie and I have a leisurely drive to her Ballet class at 5:45. I planned to drop her off at class and spent an hour frantically hunting around Whole Foods & Giant for the ever elusive bread flour which seems to be always missing from my regular grocery store's shelves.

"Don't forget to get Alexandra's phone number so we can invite her to your birthday party" I call out as she unbuckles her seat belt.

"Mom, I can't. You have to do it."

I look at her serious face. I think about the realistic possibility of a kindergartener getting all ten digits in the correct order. (City kids need to know the area code of their friends as well as the full regular number.) I sigh and park the car.

My vanity is sticking me in the eye. I broke my eyeglasses, (actually they were snapped off in an awkward place by an inquisitive 2 year old), just before my flight to Florida last week. My husband did an emergency patch job with half a chop stick and two bright red hair bands.

I felt the total Christian trooper during our trip among strangers. Now that we were home, and the reality of circumstances meaning no new glasses until late March, I was feeling very self-conscious. I didn't want to get out of the car and face Alexandra's mom looking so foolish.

Yet what can you do? You've got to do what God wants you to do, and not hide in your car outside of Ballet class.

So I go and get the phone number. Alexandra's mom ends up being a total sweetheart. I chat happily with a grandmother of another classmate and discover that Farsi and not Arabic is the language spoken in Iran. I feel so happy. This is why I love living in a city. You hang outside the community rec Ballet program and learn interesting things about far off cultures.

So all flush with my recent success, I decide to forgo the immediate plan to see if Whole Food carries bread flour, and instead enjoy a rare moment to watch Hannah at dance class without her younger siblings pulling me in 800 different directions.

I crumbled down on the floor because my feet hurt from being sun burnt. I started talking to Alexa's mother (a different child, and yet another reminder that I'm so happy Jon didn't insist that our Alex's legal name be the gorgeous masculine Russian name "Alexei", since all the girls of his age group in America seem to be Alexa, Alexis or Alexandra.)

This mom and I struck up a friendly conversation. We're talking about pre-school and home schooling. It turns out that the little girl in Hannah's class is her youngest. The mom has two older boys one in college and one in high school. I asked the question "how does your older son find it to practice his faith in college?" The mom had mentioned that she went to Catholic school as a child and I'm always curious about that university experience is going to work out for my kids.

Alexa's mom turns a different shade of white and says "Actually my husband is Jewish and my oldest son identifies himself more as a Jew than as a Christian." Now you all know how dear the Jewish faith is to my soul. So for the next fifteen minutes we have the super fascinating talk about Judaism and living in an inter-faith marriage.

I'm so excited. The lady is sitting on the side of me that has the broken glasses, but I've stopped caring. I'm so interested in what she has to say about her Life story.

Suddenly, and it was so random, I can't even remember how it dropped into the conversation, the lady says "You know the Archbishop has this welcome home invite campaign going on and I think he means me."

I felt this full weight of heavenly silence come over my soul. Everything excited and animated in me stopped. I listened to her with my whole soul.

Our Archbishop of Washington D.C. has printed invitations for each parishioner to invite a fallen away Catholic home for Easter. There are beautiful engraved invitations which say "Your Catholic family misses you. Please come back to the church" outside every doorway in every church in our diocese.

For someone to say that "I think this campaign means me," means something profound.

Out came this story, in the middle of a normal middle school hallway, of this woman who married her college sweetheart and stopped receiving the Eucharist 23 years ago.

She mentioned that "someone said that it would be easy to get approval for my marriage to a Jewish man."

I nodded.

The lady immediately got all agitated. "I believe that rules are rules. I don't take the Eucharist lightly. I don't just want to shop around with various priests and find one who will say what I want to hear."

I smiled. That's exactly the answer the church longs to hear. At the same time, as a former prodigal daughter myself, I also know how simple the "rules" are to convalidate marriages and how much God is the father longing to hug a returning prodigal daughter.

I didn't speak much out loud. I just made a mental note to grab one of those Archbishop invitations at church, jot down my parish's priest's email address, and bring it with me next Monday to Ballet class.

Outside in the cold, I asked her to give me her phone number. I thought Hannie could use an extra friend at her upcoming birthday party. While she jotted down a phone number on the back of a gas receipt, I asked if I could have the name of her friend who had recently died. A young mother who leaves an 8 year old and 12 year old boys behind. "Can you write down your friend's name so I can say a rosary for her."

This woman looked at me with utter shock. It was like I handed her a jewel. She was stunned.

Our girls were skipping around in their leotards in the cold, so we hurried away to get them into our respective cars.

I thought about that moment of beauty, which God just handed me. I can't tell you how many prayers from this woman's Catholic family members must have gone into her slipping out a hidden story in the middle of a school hallway. How I was directly in the middle of my reconsecration to Mary. How my parish priest happens to have recently studied under rabbis in Israel. How much our Archbishop must have prayed before launching this simple idea of printing invitations asking people to come home to the Catholic faith.

For the small price of overcoming my vanity about some broken glasses, I get to carry an invitation from my Archbishop to a new friend in Hannah's ballet class on Monday.

Please pray for her. Please pray for my in-laws and all of our dear friends who count themselves as "fallen away Catholics."