Mary's Ballet Audition

     Mary just auditioned for a summer intensive ballet program.  The program is for one month this summer in NYC.  The audition, here in Dallas, was intense, but Mary was up for the task.  Who knows whether she will be admitted.  But it was a huge honor just to have her ballet teacher strongly encourage her to audition!  After years of struggling with ballet, Mary has finally found her stride. . . or pirouette!

Mothers as Ministers

   Recently I had a conversation with an acquaintance who is my elder.  She was trying to be very cordial.  We are both pro-life, and we broached that topic.  When I mentioned that I sometimes serve at our local crisis pregnancy center, she said, "Ooo!  My!  You are a minister!  You have a ministry!"
    Although I knew that she was trying to be kind, I was fuming inside.  I thought: "That's so wrong!  I do NOT have a ministry because I leave the four walls of my home and serve strangers a couple measly hours per month.  I AM a minister, indeed.  But I am a minister because I am a mother!  My ministry is within my home!"
    Catholic mothers are ministers.
    1) We give our lives as sacrificial offerings to other people, out of love.  This is to reflect the sacrificial love of Christ.  Reflecting Christ is to be a minister.
    2) We bear the image of Christ in the Eucharist.  Just as Christ feeds us with his body and blood, so, too, do mothers feed others with our bodies and blood, both carrying children in utero and nursing our children.  Only mothers bear Christ's image in this way.  Bearing the image of Christ is to be a minister.
    3) We are prophetic: we shine the saving light of Christ through family life.  Through our tending to our children, through rearing them and loving them, we say to the world, "Christian family life is a special path to God, an extraordinary way to heaven.  Come, follow Jesus."  Our regular lives of laundry, changing diapers and carpooling is a form of evangelism.  To be an evangelist is to be a minister.
    Yes, I am a minister.  So are all the other Catholic mothers in the world.  We have important ministries.  We not only minister to our children, husbands, and other family members, but we pour prayers, love, and holy labor into the world each and every day.  Even the most private of our chores, even the most mundane of our tasks, can be a ministry to the world.  I do have a ministry.  I offer my vocation for the salvation of the world.

San Francisco with Leah

   Mary, Clare, Leigh and I had a great visit to San Francisco to visit my sister Leah!  I had been wanting to visit her for the longest time to see her new hometown.  She suggested that I come last weekend, when she was throwing a ball!  That's right!  A ball!  So three of my girls and I went up for the festivities.
    We not only had a wonderful time at the party, but the whole weekend!   We saw the Golden Gate Bridge and the beach; we wound up in a pro-life march, and even a bit of another march that included Black Lives Matter!
    What a blast!  San Francisco is such a vibrant, active place.  We loved it.  Even more, of course, is how much we love LEAH.  What a wonderful sister she is to me.  What a wonderful person she is--a compassionate but fierce advocate of justice for all.  God bless Leah!!!!

Annie

This precious girl lost her front tooth!

     She recently read a 200 page Children's Bible cover to cover!  She did that on her own initiative.  Every day, she came home from school, plopped down on the couch, and picked up where she had left off the day before.  It was an amazing sight to behold!
     She begs and begs to receive her first Communion.  It is just heartwarming how faithful she is.
     God bless her always!  

Running the Race with Perseverance

     Running has become important to me: after eight pregnancies and six live births, it is time for a half marathon! 

     Here is a picture of me running the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day: 8 miles. 

     In two weeks, I am scheduled to run the Hot Chocolate: 9 miles.  

     In a month, I m-i-g-h-t run the Cowtown Half Marathon: 13 miles. 

     Being a mother requires physical achievement: growing them in utero, bringing them into the world, picking them up, rocking them, carrying them, feeding them, and chasing after them.  I consider these activities corporal acts of mercy!  

     I am excited for a new kind of physical achievement, which too signifies spiritual importance:

   "Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith" (Hebrews 12:1).

My Girl's Growing Up!

     For Leigh's tenth birthday, she asked for "layers."  

     What???!  This little girl??  She is so little, so precious, so young!  How could she be on the brink of being a pre-teen?  Just yesterday, she colored non-stop in coloring books and prayed our family's evening prayers with her high-pitched, squeaky voice.  I can hear it like it was yesterday.  

     Now she is growing up.  She knows all the words to some of her older sisters' pop music and she wears more fashionable clothes when she gets the chance.  She wanted a blue backpack this year instead of a pink one with a Disney character on it.  I get it.  She is getting older.  Well, okay.  Lucky pre-teens.  The get a fantastic, virtuous, compassionate, wise person to call their own.  One day, she will be a wonderful adult, brimming with humor and radiating joy.  I think she will be an artist.  She longs to do stained-glass work, which, as cunning and as talented as she is, I bet she will find a way to do.  So, adults will one day get a wonderful member of their set, a fantastic one to call their own.  

    But she will always be five years old to me, and I will always hold her dear, priceless heart in the deepest recesses of my own.     

My Worst Day Ever

     My worst day ever consisted in Sebastian throwing no less than ten all-out temper tantrums.  Additionally, the day was replete with him biting, scratching, and even licking me, pulling my hair, and basically acting like a ferrel animal!  He had been sick the previous two days, and although he registered no fever at this point, I can only assume he had some discomfort, ear ache, stomach ache, or some such irritation which caused this intense behavior. 

     It was one of those days throughout which I had to A) physically protect myself and B) remember, "This too shall pass!  Wherever you are, be love in that place!"  

     I was in bed by 8 pm!

Messing Up

   As Catholics, it is important that we learn how to mess up well.  In fact, I typically devote each year to cultivating a particular virtue, and one year I chose "Messing Up Well" as the virtue I most needed to work on.
   The reason why it is so important is that our faith is all about messing up.  A core dogma of the Church is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).  So, we should assume we are going to mess up, and then seek all the graces necessary to repent well, make amends well, restore well, and recover well.  Those things should get our best attention.  But when we mess up, it should be no surprise to us.  Furthermore, Jesus died on the cross, as a form of capital punishment.  Although he did not sin, he still endured tremendous shame, scorn, and humiliation.  Think of Mary, watching her son die in such an agonizing tragedy.  We Catholics should all be accustomed to humiliation, losses, and scorn.  It is part of, essential to, our faith.  
    The patron saint of messing up well, in my opinion, is St. Therese of Lisieux.  St. Therese says that everything that we do, so long as we do it with love, is of value.  So, if we make a huge mistake, but were acting in love, we are still on the right path.
    As moms, we mess up a lot.  We use the wrong discipline method--or forget to use one!--on our kids.  We let them whine too much.  We let them leave their room too messy.  We let them use the computer too much.  We raise kids who, once grown, break the rules, break our bank accounts, break our hearts.  Is that the end of the story?  Have we just failed, and that's it?  No.  Therese's message is: love your child in their failures.  Love them in their struggles.  Love them in your failures.  Love them in your struggles.  Love triumphs.  It triumphs over all.  It is not about the outcome.  It is about the love with which we live out each and every day.

Mary Mother of God

   The Feast of Mary Mother of God is one of my favorite days of the year.  To me, it is the true Mothers' Day.  It is a day in which the universal church celebrates the mother of Christ, who is himself True God and True Man in one Person.  It is a day in which we celebrate the shocking mystery that a humble, uneducated, simple woman from Palestine could be the mother, not just of Jesus, but of God.  To deny it would be to deny the hypostatic union.
    Sitting in the pew with all my children on Jan. 1, the feast day, was a joy for me.  Walking into church, I told my six year old, "I love this celebration of Mary and of all mothers.  Mothers are so important--they are among the most important people in the world.  They are a primary source of the security, comfort and peacefulness of many people.  They are a major force of peace on earth.  Mothers are really important."  My six kids were all listening.  They giggled and nodded: "It's true!"