Oh What Fun!

    It is such fun to pack!  The house is SO CLEAN and ORGANIZED.  The bags are SO EFFICIENTLY used.  This is so much fun!!!

Joyful Anticipation!

      This family is bubbling over with excitement!  Every child has finished strong in school.  It's been an outstanding year, academically, across the board.  Now, after working hard, we play hard!  We are gearing up for a fantastic, joyful, blessed summer!

Learning Detachment

    My very favorite lesson these days in detachment.  I can suffer by my own fault, for being attached to people's opinions of me, their judgment, actions and words.
    I have come to a sharp realization that all this world will be consumed, with nothing left.  The only thing worth attaching oneself to is God and His mercy and His truth.
    I picture the consumption of the world, and attaching myself to God in whom my safety resides.
    In practical terms, getting older comes with a bit of clout.  A bit of gravitas.  Somehow it is easier to blow people off and not worry about everyone thinking you're perfect!  I'm working like mad to be the person God wants me to be.  That's enough for me.
   

Tennis

Jake and I played tennis today.
What a dream come true, to have a son who is adorable, gentile, fun, and good at tennis!  We had such a ball (no pun intended).
I can't believe I have a son who is taller than I am, and who can beat me.  Just 2-3 years ago, I was trying to teach him to hit the ball . . .

I am so, so blessed.

A Joyful May

    I have just completed my homeschool year.  The big news is that all four girls are going to school next year.  So at least for the time being, my tenure as a homeschool teacher is complete!
    Sadness overcame be about that for a short time.  But Jacob and Ron talked me to of it, saying that I have done something wonderful for each of these children.  They have a genuine engagement with education, a love for learning, and a confidence in their ability to conquer anything.  So, when the do go to school, they have what most teachers can't give them.  So, I am grateful and happy about our time homeschooling--of which there might be more time, just around the corner.
     I have completed four chapters plus the introduction to my book on Catholic motherhood.  I love, love, love these chapters!  David Letterman gave advise to Jerry Seinfeld as Seinfeld was just starting out: if you fail, be sure to do what you really wanted to do.  Now that's good advise!  So I'm writing my heart out.  If I fail, I will have written what I really wanted to say!
     Sebastian is nine months old.  He is happy, fat and adorable.  We are all thriving.  I'd say that things are better than I could have imagined!

Serving the Chosen Ones

     For me, it is easy to be in touch with God's calling for all of us Christians when I am living a day as a homeschooling mother of six.  The daily routine is so grueling, so exhausting, and yet so rich and glorious, that, to my mind, it has obvious resemblance to the death and resurrection of Christ.  From my "death to self" comes new life (in faith, behavior, virtue, and education) for my children and for my family as a whole.
     But when I engage in other activities for which I am trained--teaching at the university, writing a book--where is my identity as a follower of Christ and a daughter of the Father?
     Paul writes to the Ephesians: "He gave some as apostles, others as prophets, others as evangelists, others as pastors and teachers, to equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ," (4:10).
      God calls some of us to teach, to pastor and to evangelize in order that the holy ones can do their ministry!  "The holy ones" are the ones who are not teachers or pastors.  They are the faithful.  And their work, their calling, is the most important.  Those who teach and preach are servants to the faithful.  The faithful are the ones who have the true calling to do the work of God.
     So, as a teacher, what is my identity in Christ?  It is as a servant to the body of Christ.  It is in imitating Christ in the washing of the feet.  It is preparing, fueling, cleansing, and readying the Chosen Ones to do their work of bringing the Gospel to their family, friends, co-workers and all home they meet and for whom they labor and pray.
     Thank you, Jesus, for your example.  Thank you for your witness.  Please anoint me with your divine humility and build my identity in You and only You.

St. Faustina and Humility

    I have undergone a betrayal by a friend.  
    But I keep imagining St. Faustina, who was so humiliated, over and over!  That brings great comfort!
    What is actually important to me? My husband.  My children.  Oh, what wonderful relationships we have.  They are worth my all in all!  And my other good friends.  And my Mom, and my family.  I love them all so much.
    I have a friend, Anna, whom I love so dearly.  She puts up with all of me--all my complexity, all my weird circumstances, and she is still so faithful.  I appreciate her so much!!
     Most of all, my love for God.  I am amazed by how much He loves me, how much He gives to me.  I am the most blessed person on earth!

Sleep--FINALLY!

   It all just happened.  One night last week, I decided not to go get Sebastian when I heard him crying.  So many people had advised me to just let him cry himself back to sleep.  But I couldn't do that, with him waking so many times, I thought.
    But this one night, I did.  And I was awake the whole time, and I listened to him taper off, and the go back to sleep.  That was the only time he awoke all night.  I was elated.
    Well, Ron and I made a pact to build on that night.  So each night since then, we hear him wake up, and cry a bit.  But he is not hysterical.  Just calling out for us.  Then he puts himself back to sleep.  Once a night, each night.
   Last night, for the first time EVER in his almost nine months, he did not wake up!  He cried at 7 AM, as though to say, "Good morning!"
    Finally!!  

Joy

    Having had a hard few weeks, it has been such a pleasure that my joy has returned!
    It was yesterday, when we had our homeschool May Crowning in the park.  Being around the other families, somehow, God's grace descended upon me.  I felt so happy with the choices I've made, spending so much of my adult life with my children.  I felt such peace, knowing that I am doing every, single, possible thing I can to give my children justice when they are wronged, mercy when they are wrong, and love no matter who they are or what they do.  
   Somehow, being at the May Crowning was like a mirror being held up, and I was able to see God looking at me and saying, "Keep going!  You can do it!"

Contemplation and the Existence of God

   I have been reading, We Have Been Friends Together, by Raissa Maritain, a French, personalist philosopher.  She gives an account of her conversion from atheism to Catholicism.
    To my great surprise, it is an envy of contemplatives that was a turning point for her.  She found herself reading a book on contemplation, and she reports that it was "the only [way] capable of dealing with the inner life, of awakening that life dormant within each of us, of making us really alive and human in our spirit as well as in all our acts..."  But she became aware that this rich, interior life comes only through grace.  And so, feeling the desire for her inner heart to be awakened and enlivened, she says, "It was necessary, then, to believe in God."  (p. 153-4).
    I desire union with God, and so I must believe in God!  How fascinating!  I would never think a person would come to God that way.
    But this shows me wrong.  And rightly so--why wouldn't the beauty of the faith attract a smart woman?

Wisdom

Here is wisdom: God saying to our hearts, "I am who am.  You are she who is not," (Catherine of Siena).
    I think the bedrock of wisdom is knowing that, despite our ego-centric tendencies, and our inclinations to see ourselves at the center of our universes, it is actually God who is the center of the universe, and that we are just a speck on His horizon.
   This insight helps us let go of our hurts, or humiliations.  For, if God's good is being accomplished, and it is at the expense of the promotion of our egos, then we can still say, "Let it be so!"  We can give our "Amen."
     If God's good is beyond our vision, and we cannot see what He is doing, we can remember that His ways are high above our ways, and then we can say, "Let it be so!"  We can give our Amen.
    We cannot be wise without faith in God.  Without this proper displacement of ourselves out of the center of our universes, we fight for our egos, we fight for our comforts, we fight for our self-promotion, and everything is deemed good only insofar as it is fostering these things.  But these things are faulty and worthless, leaving the greater good as a distant afterthought.  We need a faith-based humility to get it right.