My husband loves another woman

My husband talks to another woman every day.  
Not only that, he confides in her.  
What's more, he talks to her about me.

She is beautiful, graceful, patient, modest, courageous, and kind.  I suspect he loves her more than he loves me, and I am more than okay with that.

In fact, I encourage him to talk to her even more.   

Am I jealous?

No.

Am I afraid of losing him?

Absolutely not.

For in expressing his love for her and in seeking her counsel, he becomes a better husband to me.

How can I help but love her?   

Our Lord loves her and calls her, 

"Mommy".

It is still Christmas...until tomorrow!

If you had visited me during the weeks preceding Christmas Day, you would not have seen a Christmas tree or a single Christmas decoration or light anywhere in our house.  No, we were not feeling "scroogey".  Nor were we in any way "grinchy", though I think some people may have thought so, because even atheists decorate for Christmas.  They, not believing in the Birth of Christ, of course, prefer instead to focus on the family-oriented, gift-giving side of the holiday.  This is Ridiculous (Why yes, I did mean to capitalize that word, thank you!), because Christmas means NOTHING apart from the miracle of the Virgin Birth of God the Son, and the word family is meaningless without God, who is in Himself a family.

Contrary to what department stores and your local Target would have you believe, Christmastime does not begin the day after Halloween, nor even the day after Thanksgiving when bargain hunters everywhere forsake their warm beds to get the best deals at their favorite stores in the wee hours of the morning.  I am not saying this is evil, far from it.  In fact, I admire those women who can finish all of their Christmas shopping in one day and can then relax the rest of the time until Christmas.  I certainly do not have it in me to brave long lines, flying elbows, and freezing temperatures just to save a few bucks.  I would much rather snuggle in bed with a warm, sweet-smelling baby and order gifts online in my jammies.

Where was I?  Oh, yes!  Advent.  Advent is the period of time preceding Christmas.  We add straws representing good deeds to Baby Jesus' manger so as to make a soft bed for him, light our Advent candles as we sing "O Come, Emmanuel", and generally try to spend the season as quietly as we can, preparing our souls and our home for the coming of The King.  On the last Sunday of Advent, we put up our tree and the kids decorate it however they will.  This year, Princess Pea, now seven, took charge and told the younger kids where all the ornaments should go.  Obviously unsatisfied with their first attempt, Princess Pea rearranged the ornaments for several days in a row (making me wonder if my eyesight or my mind was going because the tree was different every time I looked at it) until she finally settled on an artistic arrangement which included all of the glass ball ornaments being displayed on the very bottom branches and several bird ornaments at the very top.  On Christmas Eve, we went to Mass earlier in the evening, because there was no Midnight Mass near us, and sang with joy for the coming of our Saviour.  Then we returned home for a light dinner and bed.

The next morning, we had four children in our bed before the sun came up, three of whom were excitedly jumping up and down in anticipation of seeing the tree all lit up with presents beneath and the Baby Jesus in his manger.  Indeed, they were not disappointed.  Each one gasped when first they saw it as they went downstairs.  Oh, what a joy it was to see their eyes alight on Christmas morning!   How much more does our Heavenly Father delight in giving gifts to His children, He being perfect and we mere mortals. 

Presents unwrapped and "thank yous" ringing (for the children know from whom every gift comes, as Good St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra brings them treats and trinkets on his feast day of December 6 and not on Christmas), we dress in our best and spend the day feasting.  That is the first day of Christmas.  The very last is tomorrow, the Feast of the Epiphany, in which we celebrate the coming of the Magi to the Christ Child.  I will tell you more about it in my post for tomorrow, but not here.  You will have to go to www.catholicsistas.com for that...

Merry Christmas!
 

Wordless Wednesday

Happy Third Birthday to my sweet, sassy, beautiful, brave girl!  Mama loves you, baby!

Theotokos

Merry Christmas!  Today is the tenth day of Christmas.  Is your tree still up?  Mine is!

Last Sunday, January the first, was the Octave of Christmas and the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God - a day in which we celebrate Mary's eternal motherhood.  She was born to be Mother - a vocation she attained by perfect obedience.  It is vitally important that we honor that motherhood which did not end when Christ died on the cross, but which transcends time.  Nowadays, human life is treated so cheaply.  Motherhood is too often perceived as a despised burden, one to be avoided at any cost rather than welcomed with joy and trust in our God.  We think we have it so tough, don't we?  But here is this girl who is humble and poor, and yet, God chose her before she was even born.   The King of the Universe chose her and set her apart for a holy purpose, preparing her for the choice she would one day be asked to make - Motherhood.  She chose to be the Mother of God's Son, with all the pain and suffering and joy that comes with that choice.  

Do you doubt that Mary is the Theotokos, the Mother of God?  Jesus the Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb.  She gave birth to Jesus.  Since a person cannot carry or give birth to a nature, but to a person, Mary is Jesus' mother.  So...

Mary is Jesus' mother.  

Jesus is God.  

Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God.  

Through Baptism, we are adopted into His family, thus becoming Jesus' brothers and sisters, sons and daughters of the Father, and sons and daughters of His Mother. Jesus Himself commanded us, "Behold your mother."  Our Lord was ever obedient to the law and honored His parents in every way.  When we do not honor His mother, our Mother, whom He LOVES, we disobey God's commandment. 

Why is this so important today?  I like the way G.K. Chesterton put it,

"Mary leads us to Christ, but Christ leads us back to His Mother, for without Mary's maternity, Jesus would become a mere abstraction to us."

God loves us, loves YOU so much that He gave His Only Begotten Son, born in a manger to a Virgin of the most humble nature.  His Love radiated in every miracle, culminating in the sacrifice on Calvary.  But He did not stop there!  Oh, no!  For God is a loving Father who cares for every need.  He did not leave us orphans, but gave us His Spirit to guide us and His Mother as our own.  His mommy is our mommy.

Mary's maternity is a gift from God, not just to her, but to all of us in every time.  Because of it, the coming of the Messiah is not an abstract idea, but a fact.  More than that, a person. 

God's Son.

Son of Mary.

Jesus Christ

Not so incidentally, today is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus.  Because of his humility and selfless obedience to God the Father, He was exalted and His name made above every name,

"...that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." 

- Phil 2:10-11

Mary is ever pointing toward her Son, saying, "Do whatever he tells you." 

I am blessed with a loving relationship with my earthly mother.  We talk nearly every day.  In the past few months we have become more than Mother and Daughter.  I see her as my friend, one of my very best friends.  I believe with my whole heart that this would not have been possible if I had not obeyed Our Lord and accepted His Mother as my own.  When I did that, I was able to pray for my mom in a whole new way.  I asked God to bless her in wonderful ways.  I asked Him to woo her back to the Mass.  I took all of my hurt and pride, laid it at the foot of the cross, and then went and cried on Mother Mary's knee.

My mother recently came back to the Church after being away for many, many years.  As she tells it, she was talking to her priest, the same one who presided over my husband and my Sacrament of Marriage nearly ten years ago.  She told the priest that she cried every time she was at Mass.  He told her that it was not surprising, for she was falling in love with Jesus all over again.     I know what he means, for I have wept in the presence of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament - tears of joy and of sorrow and of love - fully aware of the fact that I am unworthy that He should enter under my roof, but desiring Him all the same.  I am where I am because I obeyed Christ and love His Mother.  I am where I am because I love Mary and obey Her Son. 

Praise God for Mary's maternity, for my mother's maternity, and for my own!

Now, if it's not too much trouble, Lord, would you please get to work on my dad?

Today, I will...

A new year has dawned.  Yesterday is gone.

But today...


Today, I will store His Word in my heart.
Today, I will pray.
Today, I will bow my head in His Presence. 
Today, I will carry my cross.
Today, I will seek Him.

Today, I will take the narrow way.

Today, I will continue to run my race with the intent to win.

Today, I will show my children how to love God.

Today, I will read.  

Today, I will write.  

Today, I will sing.

Today, I will dance.

Today, I will enjoy nature.

 Today, I will teach my children how to praise God. 

Today, I will let God be God.

Today, I will not despair or be disquieted.

Today, I will not worry about tomorrow.  

Today, I will teach my children that God can be trusted.

Today, I will delight in my children.

Today, I will hold them and kiss them.  

Today, I will be slow to anger.

Today, I will love their father.

Today, I will speak softly.

Today, I will listen to them.

Today, I will bless them.

Today, I will allow them to live with the consequences of their choices. 

Today, I will gently and firmly correct them.  

Today, I will model God's love for them.

Today, I will forgive.

Today, I will listen with my heart.  

Today, I will seek to understand.

Today, I will give without counting the cost.  

Today, I will serve - cheerfully and with my whole heart.

Today, I will do little things with great love.  

Today, I will be a blessing.

Today, I will be thankful.  

Today, I will be teachable. 

Today, I will not take offence.

Today, I will repent.

Today, I will ask for forgiveness.
Today, I surrender to His will.

Today, I will come to the Father like a little child.

Today, I will be joyful. 

Today, I will be courageous.
Today, I will cherish every moment as a gift from the Lord.

Today, I will soar.  

Tomorrow, I will begin anew.  Blessings in this new year.  Merry Christmas!

Goodbye, 2011!

The year 2011 was the year of forgiveness and of trusting God.  This year...
I learned to see people as God sees them and to love them just as they are, faults and all.  I discovered I am braver and tougher than I thought I was.  I realized that if I want my children to be more obedient, I need to be obedient...and disciplined...and self-controlled.  I felt inspired.  I found my voice and found courage to share it.  I felt the miracle of another human life growing inside me and experienced God's grace and mercy in delivering him into the world.   I prayed.  I cried out to God.  I loved.  I laughed.  I wept.  I worshiped.  I let God be God.  I danced.  I sang.  I rejoiced.  I trusted God with my life.  I trusted Him with my heart.  I fell and God carried me.  I embraced My Lord's Mother as my own and fell in love with Jesus all over again.  I witnessed my earthly mother fall in love with Jesus all over again.  I hugged my children, a lot.

I forgave.  

I was forgiven.

I was loved. 

I have plans for this new year, but for now, here is a photo collage of this last day in 2011:

 

 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! Did you miss me?  I have been itching to write for a while, but every time I have sat down to do so, a certain little man demanded my undivided attention:

 Who could resist those beautiful blue eyes?   Not this mama!

I will be writing again tomorrow, but for now, I am going to go snuggle with my little man and my other babies:

I hope you are all having a great Christmas!  May God bless you!

Wordless Wednesday

Digging at the Duggars...again!

I am exhausted.  Today was not a good temper day for me.  I am never the best version of myself when I have had less than a certain number of hours of sleep.  It's my fault, I know.  I should not have stayed up, but there are Christmas letters to write and no time during the day in which to accomplish the task, so I stay up. I really should be in bed right now, but I read about the recent news on the Duggar Family and had to write.  A friend on the Catholic Sistas Blog posted on this back in November.  You may remember the uproar over the fact that this lady was pregnant for the twenty-first time (I think), with people saying and writing the most hateful things about a woman whom none of them had ever even met.  Words like overpopulation, walking uterus, and clown car were carelessly bandied about with no thought as to the humanity of not only Mrs. Duggar, but also her unborn child.  She was verbally assaulted with such vehemence that one would have thought she had committed some heinous crime.   And what would have been her crime?  She was guilty of treating her unborn child like the human person she was.  She trusted God and loved her child.  In our modern world, that is an unforgivable sin.

 According to various news sources, Michelle Duggar has miscarried her baby.  As a mother, my heart breaks for her.  Why is this news, you ask?  Maybe it's a slow news day and the media people are bleary-eyed with numb backsides as they try to flesh out the trickling of information out of Korea at dial-up-internet speed.  More probably, people are in awe that while many find it acceptable to abort a sixteen-week-old fetus, the Duggars are holding a memorial service to honor their daughter's life.  This little girl was never even born into this world before being born into heaven and she is loved.  Was it the memorial or the fact that the family passed out pictures of their child to those who attended that is so intolerable?  Both fly in the face of acceptable behavior nowadays.
 
You know, if I really think about it, of course people are upset.  Whenever a human person sins, the desire to hide it inevitably follows.  We know in our hearts that what we have done is wrong, and we don't want to be wrong, so we bury it - like Cain buried Abel in the field.  Or we rename it, hiding it behind the title of "Fairness", "Tolerance", or "Right".  We forget that calling something other than what it is does nothing to change its nature.  A rock is still a rock, even if you call it a sponge.  A bear is not a tree, and no matter how many times you call it that, it may still try to eat you.  Murder is murder.  One cannot erase one sin by committing another.  One cannot erase the value of a person by calling it a fetus or a clump of cells, because the reality remains that we cannot change the nature of something or someone.  We do not become human.  We are human.  From the very moment of conception when we are knit in our mother's womb,we are known by the Father who created us.  We are loved.  Just as Cain was unable to hide his sin, so are we unable to hide ours from a perfect God who desires our holiness.  So, you must ask yourself if the problem lies with the Duggars, or is it in the way we calculate the value of a human life?

We have blood on our hands.  The Good News is that Our Father gave us a way to clean it.

Sunday Sayings

Not posting on Sunday!  But here's a quote I really like:

"You have to respond to the will of God in the present moment. If God inspires you, you have to do it. Where most people go wrong is, they reason themselves out of what God wants, and they spoil what might have
been." - Mother Angelica

Don't you know what causes that?

When my husband and I were married over nine years ago, we received quite a bit of advice.  A lot of that advice had to do with children - should we have them, when, and how many?  We were told that it was best that we wait a few years before we had children so we could enjoy our lives, as children would most certainly put a strain on our marriage and cause us hardship.  That seemed reasonable to us.  Of course we should wait to have children until we could afford them.  Until we had spent at least two years together as a couple.  Until we were really ready.  And then, those well-meaning loved ones (and strangers!) learned we were going to practice Natural Family Planning.  Suddenly, we weren't so wise.  Some people asked what it was.  They had heard of the Rhythm Method (not the same at all!), but not NFP.  We explained that we wanted to be obedient to God's will so we were not going to use any artificial means to prevent pregnancy.  They laughed, shook their heads, and sagely predicted we would be pregnant immediately.
They were wrong.  

One year and a half later, we decided to have a baby and got pregnant right away.  The day I took the pregnancy test was the day after my godfather died.  There was immense joy in my family as in the midst of mourning for one life we were able to celebrate the beginning of another.  We welcomed our beautiful girl in November of that year.  I was sleep-deprived and sad a lot of the time for those first few months, but I cherished every second with my sweet little girl.  Two years passed and God blessed us with a son.  That was when the comments began, such as:

"You have two - one of each?  Oh, that is perfect.  Now you can stop!"

It bothered me a little that strangers were commenting on how many children I should have, but the comments seemed positive and they were said with a smile, so I just smiled back.  And then, I got pregnant with my third.

My husband and I were so happy to share our news, but we soon found that others weren't quite as happy.
Here are some of the comments we got:

"Are you crazy?"   Evidently

"Don't you know what causes that?"   No, please tell me.  

Ohhh, deployment baby (wink, wink)?    Excuse me?


"But you already have two!"    Well, math never was my strong suit. 


"Are you serious?!  When are you going to stop?"   When we get an ugly one.

"Oh, you poor little thing."   Ummm, thanks?    


"You just got thinner and now you are going to ruin your body again."   Gee thanks, Grandma. 


The only person in my family who was genuinely happy for us was my father.  So we gave our new beautiful girl his name as her middle name.
 
 After she was born, the comments only got worse.  People gave me pitying looks in the supermarket.  They would tell me, "You certainly have your hands full!"  I was continuously asked if I was "done" and when my husband was going to get "snipped".  I felt sad that most of the comments came from Christians.   I had come to realize that one is never truly "ready" for children.  That magical moment in which all stars align for the perfect time to have a child does not exist.  I ran into older people who told me that, knowing what they know now, they wished they had had "just one more".  I realized that people were afraid to trust God with their entire lives; I recognized that fear in myself.  What would happen if I lived as though I truly believed God's Word?  Could I trust God with Everything?  I decided to put it all in His hands, and on December 16 of last year, I knew in my heart I had been blessed again.  Our children rejoiced.  They could not wait to hold their new sibling.  We took a deep breath and told our families, though a part of me wanted to keep it a secret.  My heart broke over the fact that this precious child's life may not be as celebrated as my first.  But you know what?  It was.  God loved this child.  We and our other children loved and wanted this child.  That was all that mattered. 

So even though I hear "Are they all yours?" (No, I just love taking other people's kids to Walmart at the busiest time of day.) and "You sure have your hands full." (and my heart, too!) whenever I leave the house...even though strangers often stare wide-eyed at us (like when we went to Vegas) and occasionally look at us in disgust (Just smile back sweetly at them, children.)...even though my doctor at our first prenatal visit asked if I wanted my tubes tied when he delivered the baby because he was going to "be there anyway" (Only one of the many things wrong with him.  I fired his butt!)...even though I get asked "How do you do it?" on a daily basis (Lots of prayer and a little wine) and oftentimes am told "I couldn't do it" (Good thing it's not you, then, cupcake)...even though we have to hear "You're done, right?" (Only God knows.) over and over...even then, I adore my children.  God has entrusted me with precious lives and I feel the weight of that in every decision I make.  I know I am not so much raising them as allowing God to raise me through them.  God gave me each one of them for a purpose: to make me more like Jesus.  He is training my heart to not be full of fear, so that when my son looks around the table and says there are people missing because we have two empty chairs and only six people in our family and, therefore, we need two more babies...I can smile and tell him, "Pray about it, dear.  Trust God with your heart."  and not feel afraid of what God has in store for me.  

And for that (and many other things), I am truly thankful. 

I am, therefore I write.

I once heard a priest say, "You can't call yourself a golfer if you only golf once or twice a year."


He was talking about C&E Catholics, but his words have haunted me for another reason. You see, ever since I was old enough to write my name, I have known I am supposed to be a writer. For reasons I will later share, I never pursued that vocation. The hopeful longing in my heart became a just-before-weeping ache, which the years have only served to sharpen, not dull. I have referred to myself as an aspiring writer, but I cannot in all honesty call myself any kind of writer or even an aspiring one if I never write, can I?

So here I am, starting my own blog like thousands of others. The purpose for my blog is partly to help me in exercising my rusty instrument, partly to keep me accountable. It is much more difficult to make excuses when I am not the only one reading my work. And I do hope you read it. I hope you stick around to read it more than once, and not just because you may know me in real life, but because you may catch a glimpse of yourself in my writing. I will be writing from my heart: may it ever reach yours.

I may amuse you. I may make you feel uncomfortable. At times, my writing will be raw, as painful for you to read as it was for me to write. We will cry together. Bear with me and we will also laugh together.
One of my favorite quotes is by St. Catherine of Siena:

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

May my story inspire you to be who God meant you to be.

Let us set the world on fire together.