This Thanksgiving, I'm Thankful For Baby Tess

 

. . .and all the people who cared for her
. .. all the people who loved her
. . . and all the people who prayed for her!
Thank you!

Turkey Trot

 

After four years of resistence, this was the year that I finally brought my kids to my Sister Emily's favorite athletic event "The Turkey Trot." As my husband said, after my sister's heroic service to my family during Baby Tessy's illness "Give Aunt Emily anything she wants!" (My Sister is the one in the middle holding my daughter, Maria. She just finished running the Marine Corps Marathon last month.)

In previous years, I was rather smug about going to Mass in the morning and hosting Thanksgiving at my house in the afternoon. I felt like charity runs were a tad less important than eating Jesus himself. I ate humble pie when I realized this year that the food pantry which hosts this charity event, So Others Might Eat (SOME) was actually run by a Catholic priest.

I was totally shocked by the amount of money friends donated to this run. In one day, we raised what took 33 months for Jon and I to donate to the local Catholic food pantry from our own teeny pocketbook.

Thanks to my Protestant (and vegetarian!) Sister who found a way to combine charity on Thanksgiving Day with a super, yummy free-range Turkey from a local Amish farm.

 

Today My Archbishop Becomes a Cardinal!

EWTN is replaying the broadcast of the first ceremony at 12 noon today.

Also, for an adorable "techie" post on the reasons to prepare our hearts this Advent, check out this post on my Archdiocese Blog.

Why I Love My Husband- Part III

Because I like to give those Mission of Charity Sisters a run for their money . . .

A quote from Mother Teresa:

"I'll never forget my own mother. She used to be very busy the whole day, but as soon as the evening came, she used to move very fast to get ready to meet my father. At that time we didn't understand; we used to smile; we used to laugh; and we used to tease her; but now I remember what a tremendous, delicate love she had for him. Didn't matter what happened, but she was ready there with a smile to meet him.

I tell my Sisters, 'We must more and more fall in love with God. Let it not be said that one single woman in the world loves her husband better than we do Christ.'"

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us. Help us to greet our husbands with a loving smile this evening after a long, hard day!

Amnesia

So I was on the US Postal Service Website today to order nice stamps for our Christmas Cards, and I wondered how in the heck I missed the fun unveiling ceremony for the Mother Teresa stamp which was held in my own backyard at the National Basilica on September 5, 2010.

Then I remembered, "Oh yeah, on that day my Teresa was still dying at our local community hospital."

Guess that was a good reason to skip Mother Teresa's big party! :-)

On other news from the US Postal Service, did you catch that from 1978 to 2009 the "traditional" stamp has always honored the Madonna and Child. For some unexplained reason, in 2010 we've suddenly switched to honoring a generic angel? Anyone have any information on this? I like sending my Mom on my mail!

Send Beautiful Pictures this Holiday!

Just wanted to share that the Metropolitan Museum of Art Shop is having a buy one, get a second set 50% off on all of their exquisite Christmas Card sets. It's so hard to find cards that do Our Blessed Mother justice, but so many of these paintings are jaw-droppingly gorgeous!

Victory!

I just took 4 kids to Michael's (a local craft store) and they all were EXCELLENT! Wow!

Michael's isn't on the bus line, so we made a special trip today for the first time in almost 2 years. I can't believe the difference between taking a 7,6,3 and a newborn into the store, versus being there with a 5, 4, and 1 1/2 year old.

Michael's is "temptation to touch" city. But we did great!

Calling all knitters!

My husband would like to me to knit a tea cosy for our family for Christmas. I've found an easy looking pattern, but its from 1915!

Anyone an expert on antique knitting terms? What does "5-ply BEEHIVE Scotch Fingering" yarn or "No. 8 Celluloid Knitting Needles" mean?

Here's the link:
http://www.allfreecrafts.com/knitting/teacosy.shtml

Happy St. Elizabeth of Hungary Feast Day!

My seven year daughter introduced me to this wonderful saint.

My favorite St. Elizabeth of Hungary story is when the sweet queen ran out of room to house a sick leper in her castle, she decided to place him her own royal bed. Her husband was very "put out" and started to chide her for exposing him to infection. Just in the middle of the rant he looked over at their royal bed-- the leper transformed into an image of Jesus! Her husband stopped in mid-sentence, "Yes, Elizabeth, do what you will" and gave his consent.

I didn't get time to make these delicious looking rose cupcakes in honor of this saint today. Will try again on her "old feast day", November 19th.

St. Elizabeth of Hungary, pray for us!

ht: Catholic cuisine (a great site, scroll down to see St. Elizabeth of Hungry food ideas)

Surgery Today

 

My baby Tessy's buddy Miss Skylar Elizabeth is getting surgery at her NICU to repair a hernia either today or tomorrow. I'm planning to visit our little sweetheart tonight.

Can you please say a prayer today for Skylar?

11/17 Update: Got to hang out with my pretty princess friend last night. ADORABLE! Poor kid is currently on a fast for surgery right now and will come back tonight on a ventilator. There are just no easy days for a baby the NICU. Last hiccup before your homecoming Little Skylar, last hiccup before home!



ht: Artwork by Little Catholic Bubble

Real Love Stories

Miss Betty Beguiles is back online (HURRAH!) and she's got the cutest conversation going on her website while she unpacks her house. Stop by and leave a comment.

Her basic question: Was it love at first sight? How did you know he was the one?

Here's My Story:

At age 25, I broke down in tears over my sorry dating life in the middle of a tour of Notre Dame in Paris. I said my first Hail Mary (I was Protestant at the time) from a printed guidebook I picked up there in English. I told Jesus "Okay, I'm ready to date your way."

Nine days later I was back in the States having a Saturday night out on the town. My husband saw me from across a crowded bar and he fell in love at first sight.

Our first conversation that night was unusually easy. I didn't know that he'd be my husband, but I knew that I felt unusually comfortable talking to a stranger. I gave him my phone number--something I'd NEVER done to a strange boy before.

My husband was worried about freaking me out with his intensity, so we had a series of weird (to me) non-date meetings--walking his dog in the snow, talking in a coffee shop, etc.

Three weeks after we met it was Valentines Day. My husband showed up to attend Church with me. He left me a special Valentine message based on the movie "Mission Impossible." We were supposed to meet on a bridge overlooking our graduate school at 10 PM.

I went to the wrong bridge!

My husband had given up hope that I was coming. "I guess she doesn't like me," he thought. Just then, I showed up at the other side of the right bridge (in the middle of a snowstorm) carrying a red carnation.

When my husband saw the flower in my hand he said "I guess she does like me!"

Almost ten years into a sacramental Catholic marriage, I still do!

What Not to Send

(my apologies to What Not to Wear)

Just for fun here is a list of the worst gifts Jon and I have ever sent to our families:

1) Homemade Candles (which were packed incorrectly and became dangerous glass shards to all who opened them)

2) Homemade Flannel Pajama Bottoms (This was my first attempt to sew as an adult. I didn't know how to finish the bottoms properly and they all developed giant holes in the crotch after the first wash. Only my dear husband treasured the fraying robe that I made him for the next 7 year!)

3) Plastic Safari Animals in Paper Maiche Boxes (In college, I once got $5 gifts for my siblings to put under the tree with an attached promissory note to buy cooler gifts during my upcoming trip to South Africa two days later. My sibs have never let me live that one down).

4) A Homemade Christmas CD (with music illegally downloaded from the Internet)

And the Worse Gift EVER!

5) A Water buffalo
(from Heifer International. I remembered this project as a child and convinced my new husband to send all our gifts from this site. The reaction from every single gift recipient was horrible! My Sisters-in-Laws still call it "the Christmas we got gifts that were actually sent to someone else.")

Christmas Shopping

I love getting formed in Christ!

This year, I got inspired by the Holy Spirit to completely reverse my gift giving strategy. I just bought the "hardest to please" difficult people on my list FIRST with money from my husband's November paycheck.

I'm also spending money this month to get beautiful holy Holiday Cards this year. I'm even creating extra special pre-printed Spiritual Bouquet cards for all the priests and religious in our lives.

I told God that this year, for the first time, I'm not going to worry about my FOUR kids Christmas gifts. My own kids will get the last minute Target run with whatever money is left over from my grocery budget on December 23.

I just figured out finally that my kids are easy to please. They are with me all the time. They get almost everything they want every day. They've got Jesus in their heart already during this Christmas season.

I'd like to use most of our limited holiday budget to bring gifts of LOVE to other lonely people this year.

(In the past I've obsessed over buying my kids gifts first and then use the money left over to buy really lame other "obligation" gifts for other friends and family members.)

St. Nicholas, please pray for us!

Prayer Request

 

Please help Baby Tessy's NICU roommate make it home by her Mama's Birthday on Christmas Day.

Miss Skylar Elizabeth was born almost the same day as Baby Tess, but she was only at 27 weeks. She's growing like a bean in the NICU and getting more adorable each day.

Please beg St. Nicholas to send her home soon!

ht: Artwork by Little Catholic Bubble

Meet the Saints- St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

St. Frances is an example of a dream gracefully deferred for the good of the Church.

As a little girl, St. Frances had a burning desire to be a missionary in China. She invited a game of sailing paper boats in a stream by her house. She gave up candy because "she probably couldn't enjoy candy in China."

After overcoming many obstacles to her vocation to religious life, St. Frances found herself face to face with the Pope. She asked for the Pope's blessing to start her new order of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to evangelize China. This was the moment she dreamed of as a child.

The Pope said No!

What?

The Pope said, "Go West, not East." With tears in his eyes, the Pope told St. Frances about all the suffering Italian immigrants faced in America. They didn't know the language. Because of racism, Italian immigrants had trouble finding work or even receiving the sacraments from the Irish dominated American Catholic clergy. "Our country men are in grave danger of losing their faith, it weighs heavily on my heart. Won't you go to America and help them?" the Pope asked.

St. Frances shoved her childhood dream in a drawer and a said YES!

Once she got in America, St. France had a chilly welcome. As soon as she got off the boat, the Archbishop of New York said "Why are you here? Didn't you get my letter telling you and your Sisters aren't needed. We have Nuns enough in New York already!"

St. Frances said determinedly "Your excellency, the Pope sent me here and here I must stay!"

Since no one in New York City wanted them, no preparations had been made for the Sisters. Her first night in America, St. Frances and her companions spent a night in such a seedy hotel that the rats came out and daringly chewed on this Sister's petticoats. St. Frances was forced to arrange for the Sisters to sleep in shifts to take turns chasing away the brazen rats with a burning oil lamp.

St. Frances didn't let this cool reception deter her. She started at once helping the poor and the sick. She built hospitals, and schools and orphanages all over the United States. Near death in 1917, she roused herself from sickness to make sure that the children in the Chicago hospital that she had founded had candy for their Christmas stockings.

She became the first American citizen to be named a Saint in 1946.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini pray for us!

A Ring of Safety

I went rock-climbing for the first time at age 15.

This wasn't the modern, sissy attempt of climbing on a rock wall in a gym with safety harnesses and a soft mat at your feet.

This was rock climbing, old school. Me. A gigantic 100 feet slab of granite. And a safety harness I knotted myself and chiseled into fresh rock with a hammer.

I attended my first rock climbing expedition with my United Methodist Senior High Youth Group.

It was a typical "Abigail Tries to Hard to Meet Jesus" fiasco.

I bravely jumped into a rock climbing expedition solely because the sign-up sheet has "Jesus" in the title. Only in the middle of the weekend, I realize that I'm way over my head. I was one of three girls with 30 upperclassman boys who are so excited to be scaling "real Rock" that they blithely assure our guide that everyone in the group has tons of experience. The boys insist we skip over all the easy and intermediate climbs and dive right into "impossible."

Which is how I found myself rock climbing for the first time, after a brief 3 second lecture on technique and safety measures, a cliff rated "extremely difficult."

I started climbing -Extremely Slowly. I shook so much from fear that I made miniature rock slides under my feet and hands. Eventually, I got totally stuck. There was a sheer slab of rock without any toe holds or finger grips for the next 8 feet. I came to a stop and hugged the Mountain with my face in total fear.

"It's not so bad," a helpful male voice shouted up at me. "All you need to do is crouch down on your ankles, make a big jump and grab that shelf of rock above you with the tips of your fingers and haul yourself up higher!"

Did I mention that I'm short? Did I mention that I'm not athletic? Did I mention that expecting me to jump eight feet up a mountain is virtually impossible.

I don't know how long I hugged that mountain with my cheek debating with the nameless male voices behind me. "I can't do that."

"Yes, you can! It's closer than it looks. It will be easy."

"Not for me!" Eventually, my legs got tired. So I closed my eyes and

LEAPT . . .

. . . . .and I missed.

I scraped my cheek against the rock and started hurtling downward. . .

STOP

I opened my eyes.

I was swinging completely upside down fifteen feet from the ground, my back against the mountain, my feet over my head. As soon as I started falling, my spotter had yanked my safety harness closed. My safety harness had held.

I was safe.

Falling that morning turned something around inside of me. I feel in love with rock climbing, and repelling (which is when you come down off of a cliff). Once I knew that my safety harness worked and I could trust my spotter, I was fearless. Mountain climbing became fun.

I'm flashing back to that moment, because I feel the same way after coming out the NICU. I'm braver now. Life is more fun. I still have no idea "how to do" my vocation as a wife and mother. I don't know what Christmas gifts to buy this year or when my three year old is finally going to allow herself get potty trained. Those everyday fears don't bother me so much now.

Thanks to the NICU, I know that there is a "Ring of Safety" around myself. God's got my safety harness.

Doing His Will

I am yours Lord.
I was born for you.
What do you want of me? (St. Teresa of Avila's prayer)

Abigail's Current Prayer Proving that She's Far From Sainthood

Please Lord, please!
I've been SO good.
Can't I do ONE thing that I want to do when I want to do it?

Here's what I'm learning this week. It's not about me. What I want. What I'd like to accomplish in a day.

It's about doing God's will. Cheerfully.

Here's what I'd like to do tomorrow. Clean a kitchen that is currently infested with fruit flies. Order warm winter clothes from the internet. Teach a 2nd grader how to read. Bake banana bread. Write a batch of cheerful letters to priests and religious. Call some friends.

Here's what is most likely on God's agenda tomorrow.

None of the above.

Instead, based on my week so far

God would like me to
a) sit still

b) nurse a 2 month old baby who likes to eat slowly
VERY slowly.
(As in Tess is a baby girl who can rouse herself from a milk coma in order to keep nursing for a solid 2-3 hours at one time without stopping.)

c) work on not losing my patience with the newborn, or the toddler, or the first grader, or the second grader.

So far this week, I haven't mastered the doing God's will and not my own "cheerfully" thing. Will try again tomorrow.

He's on His Way

An adorable Keep Christ in Christmas Campaign from the English. Man, are those Brits on fire after the Holy Father's visit, or what?

After seeing all of those precious little babies in the NICU, this image gets me a little teary!

Opera Company of Philadelphia "Hallelujah!" Random Act of Culture

I'd really like all my 2010 Christmas Shopping to be like this!

Scaling the Tippy Top Bottom

Where are you on the rough Mountain Climb to Heaven?

In the middle?

Near the top?

Or Gleefully making it to the Tippy, Top Bottom?

(I'm only at the Tippy Top Bottom of Mount Carmel but I'm so happy to finally be climbing the right hill at age 35!)

(this link is to my friend in real life, Ordinary Time Maria. Her four kids are awesome. Her younger child, Jane who is only 2? (or 3?) is the one who made it to the top of the rock climbing wall. Go Baby Jane!).