Footprints on the Fridge

Looking Him in the Eye

In this post, I wrote that after digging to deep to find the root cause of the lack of intimacy I was feeling in prayer life, I realized that I was harboring fear, anger, blame, doubt and a host of other stony emotions deep in my heart.   And so I was coming into the presence of God the way a little child who has been wounded by an adult she trusts does: needy for attention, yet eyes cast down, afraid to meet His gaze, afraid to let Him love me, because I had experienced the deep pain love can cause, and I didn't think I could hurt any more.

This is the part where I must confess that much of the wisdom that guided me through this process came from the help of a compassionate, wise spiritual director.  I can't encourage you enough to find competent spiritual direction.  In a tender mercy so deep I cannot fathom, the Lord saw fit to put me under the direction of a wife and mother who, I found out after Bryce's death, also has a little saint in heaven who died peacefully in his sleep as an infant.  I know. Go ahead. Tear up.

Anyway, her consistent focus for me was to get back to the heart of meditative prayer and to really seek to see how deeply I was loved by my God.  I struggled.  I went to comfortable places in prayer.  The Liturgy of the Hours. The Psalms.  It was prayer.  It kept me in the daily discipline of sitting quietly.  It was reflective.  But it was sterile.  It was like the dating over the phone.  I was making contact with my Savior and Redeemer, but there was a healthy distance that kept me safe.  He couldn't see my deepest wounds from where I sat.  And I didn't have to feel the pain of having them ripped open in order for them to be healed.

The direction kept coming to go deeper, think more, respond more, communicate more with Christ, who loves me.  I knew where I needed to go.  It is in His Gospels that we see our Savior, that we hear Him speak to us, that the stories play themselves out for us to delve deeply into.  I thought of love, and I thought of St. John, always speaking of God as love, them being one and the same.  And so I tentatively began a journey of opening my Bible to the Gospel of St. John every morning and meeting my Savior there.

If you are struggling to reignite a passionate relationship with the Heavenly Father, go through the Son.  I have often struggled to come up with an appropriate mental image of God the Father, struggled to know how to communicate with such a one so mighty, so ambiguous, so mystical.  And yet, Jesus, God made man, the form of God we can see and hear and know, says over and over again in the Gospels that anyone who wants to know the Father, should go through Him whom the Father sent.  I know it may sound silly, but it was a great relief to me to know that I wasn't short-changing my relationship with my Heavenly Father by focusing exclusively on the Son.  There's this weird dynamic to my people-pleasing tendencies that makes me feel it necessary to not let any member of the Holy Trinity feel left out when I pray.  I know. I'm laughing at myself as I type it.  Why does it sound so reasonable when you think it, yet so totally irrational when you type it?

And so, free to seek the face on my Father in the life of His Son, I began to dig deep into the pages of the Gospel.  And I began to search out this Savior.  This Jesus.  This God man.  And I began to turn His words over in my mind and ask myself what He wanted to say to me today as He spoke again, timeless in His existence and in his proclamations.  And as my mind tumbled the words over, the roughness smoothed, their sharp edges ceased to prick those tender spots I was so afraid would be hurt again.  Yes, Jesus challenges us.  Yes, He says things that are hard to hear and harder yet to live.  Yes, He does things that demand a response that we may wonder if we're ready to give.  But none of what He asks wounds us in the way human love wounds us.  Nothing He offers is on the condition of accepting brokenness, weakness, sin, and even death.  Jesus offers to wound us with a perfect love. A love so deep, so pure, and so true, that our heart bleeds, not for the hurt it has caused us, but for all that we've held back from Him. 

In walking with Jesus through the Gospel of John, slowly, sometimes for days at a time, turning over the events and the sermons and the relationships of my God made to look like one of us, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, I came to a new place.  And in that place, I began to understand the love again.  And in that understanding, my heart began to pulse once again with the joy of being loved, with the certainty that I wanted to hold nothing back from He who loves perfectly, with the assurance that it was not pain that awaited me in accepting the fullness of God's love, but joy and mercy and healing. 

Finally, I raised my head, looked my Savior in the eye, and melted in His gaze. For what I found there was nothing to be afraid of.  What I found was love.

Digging in to Dig Out

After I posted a little bit about my struggle with dryness in prayer and learning to be lonely, a few people asked me what the remedy was to such dryness.  The truth is, that is a tough question to answer in general terms, because it is entirely dependent on circumstances, temperament, and the action of a Sovereign Lord.  That's a lot of variables to try to explain.  But I have spent a lot of time thinking about my spiritual journey as I sought to learn to walk again after the devastating blows of the last year.

I think when you are experiencing what people call spiritual dryness, where suddenly prayer is unproductive, you see no forward progress in your spiritual life, and you feel distant from God, you have to dig deep to the root causes of what is happening spiritually.  Periods of dryness in prayer are often quite normal and just the Holy Spirit disciplining our Spirits and asking us to persevere.  But sometimes, when a period of dryness seems to grow longer, go deeper, and feel heavier than a simple test of perseverance, we sense that something is wrong.  We feel suddenly awkward in a relationship with a Savior we've known and loved many times over.  We fumble through prayer frustrated with the lack of intimacy because we are hungry and desperate and we need Him and He seems far away.

That is where I found myself as I journeyed through my grief process and the weeks wore to months and we added suffering to suffering in our lives.  Suddenly the God I had known and loved deeply since my early teen years seemed a stranger to me, and prayer, the language of our romance, was awkward and stilted and frustrating.

The solution to that special brand of dryness alluded me for a long while until I dug deep enough to hit the nerve center of what was going on.  I knew that grief had changed me in ways both expected and unexpected.  I knew that it had changed my relationship with God.  While my faith had brought grace upon grace, tender mercy upon tender mercy as I grieved, it had also been dealt a blow, a challenge that knocked the wind out of me and left me gasping for breath. And there were many times I felt I was a spiritual feather weight placed in the ring with the heavy weight champion of the world. 

When I began to try to recover from the near depression that stalked me for much of the early summer, I began to try to trace this dryness, this lack of intimacy, back to its roots.  I read the prayer journal that I began in the weeks after Bryce's death from its beginning to the present.  I could see the progression, the slow changes in my conversation with my Savior, but I couldn't really pin point what had happened.

I said in this post that Eucharistic adoration was the short answer to the question of how I recovered.  In June, as uncertainty swooped in and added another death-defying plunge to our life's roller coaster, Greg and I made a commitment that one or the other of us or all of us as a family would be in front of the Eucharist daily, either in Adoration or in attendance at Holy Mass.  I confess, this was a new level of commitment to me.  Getting to holy hour on a regular basis was a habitual spiritual failure on my part.  I know well it is because the very dominant Martha in me is scared to death to have to play Mary for a whole hour, sitting and listening.  And yet I also know well, it is the better part.

And so I began a regular routine of sitting silently in the presence of my God.  Outwardly silent, anyway.  It is a struggle for me to quiet myself inwardly, and often takes me half of the hour just to settle in, but as I practice more, it comes more easily.

In that continual practice of stillness before the True Presence of my Living Savior, a flashlight shone into my soul.  The deepest, quietest spaces that I had missed in all my searching were lit in His presence.  And what I began to see in those corners of my heart were stones.  Far back, way deep down, the heart that had once loved a Savior so joyfully, so zealously, was atrophied and cold.  It was normal in all the visible places that others could see.  It was normal enough that I could function spiritually on one level.  But its symptoms were plaguing me, and I knew that if I left this condition undiagnosed much longer it was going to progress rapidly.

There in the safety of the presence of Christ the King, I was able to own the lack of trust I had developed, the anger and the blame I had placed on His shoulders, and the unwillingness I had developed to let Him go certain places in my heart.  I found the places where I was digging in my heals and saying "no" to questions He had not yet asked.  I found my fear. These were not the early, obvious wounds of grief, which had already been recognized and treated with healing balms.  These were deeper, hidden wounds that even I had not really been able to articulate.

But it was in digging very deep and feeling out the cold stony places in the darkened recesses of my soul that I was able to come face to face with God again.  And realize that His gaze frightened me.

That was the beginning.  And it happened in His Eucharistic presence, where stillness and grace and tangible Divinity became the expert medical team that found what I had been unable to find on my own.

The Fast of Loneliness and the Feast of Friendship

In the past few weeks, our lives have slowed from the busy pace of late spring with its baseball and work schedules and the final push of the school routine.  Things are slower around here.  And I am working my way back to normal on so many levels after a rough stretch.  And we are praying for new direction in our lives, praying to understand God's will for us, praying to know the way.

That combination of happenings has led me to really focus on getting my prayer life back in order.  To focus on rebuilding intimacy with God.  I have spent so much time hurting in the last nine months, clinging to God for my very breath at times, weeping all my bitterness out onto His wounded feet, it's hard to imagine how I could have lost a sense of intimacy with Him.  But lose I did.  My Scripture reading, my meditation, all just dry.  Prayer has been like eating Saltine crackers lately.  I want to fall in love with Jesus all over again.  I want to be young and fresh and zealous all over again.  I want to trust and hope and sing His praise with unabashed joy once again.  In light of where I've been, this may look a little different than when I first fell in love with Him, but it's possible.  It's what He wants for me. It's how He loves me, fully, zealously, joyfully.  And it's how He wants me to love Him in return.

It is no new discovery that silence is a necessary component for building a fruitful prayer life.  Catholic saints and more recently, Catholic bloggers, have written eloquently on the subject.  And I agreed wholeheartedly with their assessments.  I just didn't exactly get what the Lord was trying to tell me right away.  I'm like that sometimes, a little dense with the Lord.

But as I've put my focus on building an intimate prayer life, I've come to see that silence is not just about creating quiet pockets for prayer throughout my day.  Silence is not only about guarding my time from the screen noise that can overtake me at times.  Silence is not only about limiting online conversation.  Silence in an intentional, purposeful fast.  Silence is letting yourself be lonely.

My husband had to spend some time out of town in the last few weeks.  His being gone fills me with a sense of his absence, with a sense that someone is missing.  And that sense makes me lonely.  He wasn't as available to me as he usually is when he's away and so that sense of his absence was all the more acute.

My natural reaction to feeling "alone" is to look for other voices to fill that sense of absence, of loneliness--to call friends or sisters or nieces--to chat away the time so that I barely notice he's gone.  To chat up.  To barely notice.  He's gone.  Oh. So not good.  This time around I finally got a glimpse of what God was trying to say.  My husband is my beloved.  I'm supposed to notice he's gone.  I'm supposed to feel lonely without him. 

And so I felt the Lord calling me to fast while my husband was away.  To intentionally put the phone back down and not dial.  To desire conversation, and to feel the hunger, but not to feed it.  To desire affirmation, to thirst for recognition, and to stay thirsty for a while.  To feel the human longing for intimacy and to fill it, not with humanity, but with Him.  To silence not the noise others make, but the noise I make. In my own head.  In my own heart.  To fast from even good, fruitful conversations with holy, like-minded friends.  To fast from their encouragement.

Why? Because in our loneliness, we see our neediness.  We begin to see just how clingy we are.  Like little babies who are feverish and miserable cling tightly to you, begging you with clutching fingers and whimpering voices to assure them that they are okay.  I whimper. I cling.  Someone tell me I'm okay.

I don't like to see my neediness.  It's shockingly embarrassing to realize how much I look to others to validate, affirm.  When my confidence is waning, when sloth is lurking, when fatigue makes joyful service feel impossible, I look for a quick fix, a word of love, a little laugh, an "atta-girl".  None of these things are bad in and of themselves.  But what I realized is that they are like feeding myself a steady diet of cup cakes.  I feel full right after, but the fullness doesn't last long.  And the bottom out makes me feel worse than before and I need more cupcakes to feel full the next time around. 

But in the fasting, I felt the hunger.  And I waited.  And I felt the humility of how much hunger there was.  And I waited. I got so hungry, I cried.  And I waited.  And sometimes night fell and the darkness felt very dark and very lonely.  And I waited.  And I called out to Him to fill me.  And I laid my scared, tired, feverish little girl self in His lap.  And I drank living water and I consumed living Bread.  And in time,  I fell in love again. 

I fell in love with the husband I missed so much, and I desired his company more than I have in a long time.  And I fell in love with my God again.  The God that feeds my hunger and isn't critical of my neediness.  The God that created me to need.  To hunger. To thirst.  In the depths of my soul.  The God who knows how badly I need to be loved.  And who wants to rush in and fill me. 

And all I have to do is let myself be empty.  Be lonely.  Be hungry.  And He will come to fill me with the kind of friendship that makes me strong and healthy, full and satisfied.  So that friendship cupcakes taste ever sweeter because I am not expecting them to feed a hunger they were never meant to feed.

I am still learning.  I still reach for conversation when it might be better to wait.  I still tend to think of screen time and chat time first when I feel myself begin to tire, begin to get hungry throughout the day.  And I don't always wait when I should.  But I am working.  And I am learning to be lonely. And to see the reality of neediness.  And to fill it with love worth waiting for.

How to Be an Alleluia

It's still Easter.  Do you feel it? Is the wonder of the empty tomb still fresh? Is the shout for joy still rising up, welling over, spilling out? Are you still feeling the relief of the proclamation: "ALLELUIA"?

St. Augustine proclaimed that "The Christian should be an Alleluia from head to foot" and John Paul the Great enjoined us not to despair because "we are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song."

I've been tumbling the thought of what it means to be an Alleluia over and over in my mind this Easter season.  I really, really want to get this one right. Fifty days can seem such a long time at the beginning of a resolve, but it sways by quickly in the passing of days from spring to summer, on the wings of baseball games and long days and icy treats.  Before you know it, Pentecost will be waving its red banner high and I don't want to get there and be disappointed that I never quite figured it out, that I never did have my Alleluia AHA!

I need Easter badly this year. I need the hope of resurrection, the end of death's sting, and the glory of Christ risen.  I need to dig down deep into the well of supernatural life that was given to me as pure gift at baptism and I need to cling with all my might to the grace of the moment. And I need to know, really know, how, despite the horror of the cross that still hangs heavy in the air, to live as an Alleluia. 

I think it will take a bit of fumbling on my part. I'll undoubtedly mess it up more often than I get it right. But if by chance, desire and will and grace all happen to collide somewhere in these next few weeks, I might just get a glimpse of what it all means, the breaking of the chains that bind, the freeing of the bonds of sin and death, the healing of the wounds, and the rising, the glory of the rebirth. And a glimpse would be good. But the hope, and the challenge, that the church in Her wisdom lays out for us is to take the gift of that glimpse and turn into the spiritual work of the everyday.  Mary Magdalen onl saw that angel briefly. It transformed her into an Alleluia. Thomas got to touch the heart of the Savior for only a moment. He was forevermore an Alleluia. The light shone in Saul's face for just a few minutes, but it was enough.  Enough to transform, to create, to heal, to quicken the heart with the reality of the Resurrection. And then it became their life's work to live in light of that reality.

This is our life's work.  It is the work of a grieving mother learning to find peace and joy in where life has her now.  It is the work of a woman's heart learning to abide in grace and hope rather than fear and anxiety.  It is the refusal to drink the dregs of the cup of bitterness and instead to fill the cup of gratitude to overflowing.

I've been composing a list in my prayer journal this Easter of things that make someone an "Alleluia".  These are the dispositions of spirit, the heart tone I will try to set for the rest of this season, and for the rest of my sojourn on this earth.  It is with purpose that I march to this wildly beating Alleluia song, it is so that I know the tune when it's my turn to sing it in chorus with all the angels and all the saints, with my saints, who wait for me in that place where Glory reigns and Alleluia is its anthem.

Alleluias laugh.

We had an incident in our house this Easter season that about made me come undone.  It involved a kitten we brought home from my brother's house and a band of over-exuberant toddlers.  Suffice it to say that the myth that cats always land on their feet is NOT true, but that whole nine lives thing, oh so true.

Here's the thing: in the moment, it was an agonizing crisis, with children crying and a mom on the verge of a panic attack and a dad sure he could not cope with one more thing.  Even after it was said and done and the outcome was decidedly more cheerful than we had anticipated, I swore I would never tell anyone that story. 

Less than a week later, I found myself standing in a group of homeschooling mommies who were riveted to my lively retelling of the tale of LuLu the Resurrection Kitty, and I marveled as we laughed together--as I laughed. 

The crisis has passed.  The moment is gone.  The reality is that everything is just fine. And the sheer relief of it all is a wellspring of joy that bubbles with laughter.

Alleluias laugh at things that once were not laughable.  Alleluias laugh at themselves and the sheer silliness of their own lack of faith when the truth is finally revealed.  Alleluias laugh, like Sarah did, when God does something better than they could've asked or imagined. Alleluias laugh as I'm sure David did when he danced before the Lord.  Alleluias laugh as I'm sure the Apostles did the evening of Pentecost when their tongues quieted and their hearts swelled.

Alleluias laugh because it is well with their souls.

Alleluias rejoice in victory rather than admitting defeat.

Today I chatted with a friend as I mopped my kitchen floor.  This was one of those I've-waited-entirely-too-long kind of moppings that was testing the mettle of both me and the steam mop I was using. All the while I was mopping, my internal dialogue was me fussing at myself for being such a slob, for not working harder, for not getting the job done. I huffed into the phone as I lifted the mop to change the pad for the third time, "What does it say about my kitchen floor that I'm changing the pad on the mop for the third time?"

The voice on the other end was the voice of a friend. It was the voice of an Alleluia, and it replied, "It says that you're cleaning it."

The internal dialogue changed for the rest of that mopping session, I stopped berating myself and starting enjoying the small success of a clean floor. I worked with purpose and found satisfaction in each cleansing swipe. And I reminded myself that Jesus is a victorious Savior.

We are sinners, each of us. We each have a laundry list of failures we go to bed with each night. We examine our consciences and find ample need for mercy. But we should look to the failure list only long enough to ask and receive forgiveness. The most important moment in the day is not the fall, but the decision to rise again.

And Alleluias rise to try again. And they take with them a fresh supply of grace and mercy. And in the trying, they chant the chant of victories won and enemies slain, not the lament of defeat.

Alleluias let themselves heal.

I am facing a season in my life I have never faced before. For the first time I will have a three year old without a baby here for me to tend. It is an awful, heartbreaking truth that I wish away with great regularity. But somewhere this Easter has come the grace to embrace this season, to look forward to a summer at the pool where I can actually teach my toddler to swim, to look forward to being able to watch the whole baseball game, and to a break from diapers.

Each time I tell someone close to me about looking forward to this time I feel the need to qualify the statement, to tell them that, of course, it is not without heartache that I accept this joy.  As if somehow they would actually think I was glad I didn't have my babies here.  As if somehow I am betraying my little saints by enjoying the now.

Today, as I expressed that sentiment to my husband, I realized how silly I sounded trying to explain away my peace.  After all, isn't peace and healing what we have prayed for, begged for? Is this gift not the promise fulfilled, the healing of my brokenness begun?

And so I have resolved to be okay with the fact that I am okay most of the time.  I have resolved to allow myself to heal, and not to apologize for it.  I have resolved to witness to the power of hope and faith and Resurrection, because not to do so is to cease to be an Alleluia.

Alleluias know they are beautiful now.

I spent a lot of time in my rose garden this week and it had its fair share of lessons to teach.  One afternoon as I stood admiring buds and anticipating the beautiful flourish of foliage they would soon bring, I turned to find Kolbe plucking a plump red bud from its stem.  "Oh Kolbe," I cried, "we have to leave the roses on the bush so they can get beautiful"  Confused, he looked at the deep red encased in delicate green sepals that his hand held gently and he said, "But Momma, it is boofull, now."

The Lord spent that afternoon reminding me that while He does in fact love and desire all the potential I have for beauty and perfection and sanctity, He loves me now.  Just as I am. A bud that is beautiful to His eyes right now, even still encased in all that she might become.

We find the grace to live John Paul II's exhortation to "become what (we) are" not by looking at all we were meant to be and thinking that once we get there someone will finally love us.  "No, no," reminds the Shepherd who brings the little bud to bloom, it is knowing that you are loved now that you are able to ring out the Alleluia cry, and in that cry is the becoming, the opening, the flowering of your beloved soul.

Alleluias sing.

Oh, how we sing. With all the power of the heavens joining in the song.

And the song goes like this:

Soul Sisters

I spent some time in my rose garden yesterday afternoon, tearing away a year's worth of overgrowth and revealing the hint of gorgeous color still encased in green buds.  I draped tendril up lattice and guided their climbing.  I pulled away the ugliness of weeds and drew attention to the beauty planted there. And I didn't wear gloves.

I couldn't have told you why beforehand or even have told you what, but I was compelled to feel every prick and scrapy scratch those thorns could mete out.  Something in me needed to feel their sting and process this whole relationship, the beauty in the rose and the prick of the thorn and their coexistence and the way that that relationship goes relatively unnoticed until I stick my hands in there to tend them, guide them, free them from entanglements.

And of course you know why. I had spent the weekend away. I had embraced a long time friend who had stood by my side from afar in my darkest hours.  As is our nature, we had spent the weekend telling tales and laughing, entertaining ourselves and those around us. I had made new friends this weekend, progressing from texting across the room to locate one another to standing talking for hours about everything from kittens to poop to schooling a dyslexic child.  I had shared lunch with a group of amazingly talented women whose sincerity, geniality and intelligence were refreshing and renewing to me. And I had joy. Most of these women had a peripheral awareness of all that has transpired in my life in the last eight months. I spoke my little one's name often and easily. Sweet Bryce. I accepted condolences and soft, tender embraces that spoke volumes and moved on.  This weekend was a weekend of joy.

And yet in the midst of all that joy, grief lives ever-present.  I have come to accept that. I have given up the faulty notion that one day I will heal and grief will be gone.  I will heal.  But grief is a permanent resident in my home.  Like my roses and their thorns, grief and joy inhabit my soul as sisters.  Each needs her moment in the sun, each needs tending, each barges in unexpectedly and catches me off guard.  For the most part, I have learned to let them dance their sisterly dance with acceptance and resignation. I would not have ever wished for this reality, but it is mine, and I have always held firm to the conviction that we are happier people when we just accept that we are who we are. I am a naturally joyful, funny, thoughtful, articulate grieving mother.  And all those adjectives inhabit the garden of my soul relatively peacefully.  Until the gardener steps in to do His work.

I needed to feel those thorn's pricks yesterday because it gave tangible reality to my experience this weekend and everyday.  I find a way to move forward each day, to take the next step, embracing who I am in the His perfect will for me. I know there are thorns.  But there are roses too, and they are reason enough to keep the garden going.  And then, in a most unexpected moment, there is the prick.  The stabbing, intense heart pain I did not expect.  And then its sting, the burn that lingers while I wipe back tears and try to refocus.  And sometimes there is blood, a little piece of me, of the life within me, leaked out in the agony.  These are humbling moments.  They come when I don't know they are coming.  They cause me to lose track of the conversation I was having or suddenly walk away from something purposeful I was doing.  They leave me raw and unsteady in the midst of an ordinary activity.  And they make me grieve when I want to be joyful--for someone else's pregnancy announcement or the birth of a sweet pink bundle to a momma of all boys, for someone's photographs of a gorgeous, growing babe and the siblings all smiles. 

The pricks humble me.  They make me realize how much grief has changed me, how much, like my experience raising siblings shows to be true, her sister joy is different because of grief's birth in my soul.  And sometimes I am angry with her for her prickly ways, for the way she scratches at me for attention when I am reaching to embrace her sister.  Sometimes I wish she hadn't come at all, or that she could be different from who she is.

But yesterday in that garden, in the quiet processing of the weekend and the weeks and the months and the days since grief's birth, I realized that she has been given to me, like the gift of a child.  We don't get to determine the temperament of the baby we bring home. Our Heavenly Father examines us in His full knowledge and determines whether we need the baby who sleeps the day away contentedly or the one who must be held 23 1/2 of each day's 24 hours.  We are all quite sure we need the former, but rarely do we get that baby.  I am quite sure I'd rather the gift of joy, that she is a better companion for my soul, she who blooms in beauty and opens in color and wafts sweet scents that soothe.  But the Heavenly Father, in a wisdom I cannot claim to understand, has determined that joy shall have a sister and her name shall be grief.  And for the most part, she will be a quiet companion. 

And then there will be those moments, when the Good Gardener reaches in to tend my soul garden, to cut away the overgrowth of fear and anxiety, to pull the weeds of sin, and to guide my growing in the right direction.  And in those moments, grief's thorns prick. They sting, They tear.  But yesterday reminded me that those moments, humbling as they may be, are the way the Tender One makes room.  The sisters need guidance, they are small and sometimes unruly, and often unaware of whose turn it is.  So the Merciful Lord reaches in, allows the thorn to prick and the beauty to bloom all at the same time, sweet sisters dancing their dance of intimacy in my soul, so that He can make way for their mother. 

She comes to guide them, to show them how to take turns and be gracious and hospitable to one another.  She comes to show them each their unique gift and to console the less desirable sister, dear grief, and remind her that she too is a worthy and noble gift, noble enough to inhabit the heart of the Savior, beautiful enough to live in the soul of His Most Pure Mother.

And I am grateful for her coming, this mother whose name is GRACE.

Good Shepherd's Garden Party Week 1

Early on in the week, as I still tried to recover from my Easter haze, I realized that given the week that lie ahead of us, one large tea party wasn't a likely option for this week.  That realization was followed shortly by the realization that I was at the park, my husband was due home shortly, and I had no dinner plan.  These anxious thoughts combined into a quick brain storm that led to Shepherd's Pie and Shepherd's Crook bread sticks for dinner that night, which in turn led to reading the accompanying Scripture verse at the table and a lively discussion about Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

I seasoned the ground beef with onions and powdered seasonings, added jack cheese and spread it in the bottom of the pan.  Then added a layer of corn (we have always used corn in Shepherd's Pie as my kids don't eat cooked carrots) then I layered a bag of hash browns and covered that in cheese.  It was a hit.

The next evening was family movie night, which gave us the perfect opportunity to pop popcorn and talk about the sheepfold.

The day we made our ram and ewe cupcakes we were invited for a spur of the moment visit with friends, so we got to bring them to share.  It was fun, but in the craziness, I forgot to take a picture. To be honest, they weren't that photo worthy anyway.  But the kids enjoyed them and it was nice to share our Easter joy.

I knew that as the weekend rolled around we were unlikely to get to any more special treats. We had a 9th birthday to celebrate on Saturday in our own family and Sunday included Mass, a church fair, and a birthday celebration for my nephew. 

So instead I brainstormed a little game that we played with Daddy.  His arms were the sheep fold and one child was the lamb.  Someone else was the wolf.  The lamb had to try to get around the wolf and safely into Daddy's arms, while the wolf tried to catch him.  It was good, rough and tumble boy fun and it worked well in this house. We had great discussions all week about the Scriptures and Jesus' role as the Good Shepherd.

I want to remember next year to include our 23rd Psalm picture books in the Easter book basket to read during this week.  There are so many lovely versions and it would fit nicely.

We are using Charlotte's print outs for our calendar and I had hoped to end this post with a photo of it with the week's symbols added, but the camera left for work with Daddy before I remembered, so I'll have to come back and add it later.

We are really enjoying our Easter celebration and can't wait to see what this week brings.

Check out everyone else's Garden parties at Catholic Cuisine!

Marking the Easter Journey

We are rejoicing because He has risen!

These were plain wooden letters that were on sale with the Easter items at a local craft store. I decided to use them to mark out the major focal points of the fifty days of Easter.

This one celebrates the Octave of Easter...an empty tomb and the words "He is Risen."

This one celebrates each Sunday as a mini Easter...on the road to Emmaeus, they recognized Him in the breaking of the bread.

Divine Mercy Sunday

 

May, the month of Mary

Ascension Thursday

Pentecost

On the mantle with this year's stained glass ALLELUIA, the two little nests await a blue bird in May (for Mary) and a dove on the Feast of Pentecost, the little scene on the end depicts this week's Garden of the Good Shepherd theme.

And the angels guard our Divine Mercy novena roses.

(sorry, I have no patience for flipping pictures this morning...there is Easter grass everywhere that needs to be swept up!)

All in all the gentle Holy Week crafting turned out quite nicely and we really did have a lovely celebration of the Triduum and lots of Easter joy.

Here's our crop of decorated wooden eggs...some done stained glass style and others painted.  The boys had not enough patience to go back and create the Pysansky style look as I had planned, but I think they are quite lovely anyway, don't you?

And this year's crop of Easter boys.

Beauty in the Ashes

Lenten mantle reminder: Forty Days in the Desert

As we approach Holy Week this year, I am having to rethink the way in which I would normally do things.  Most years, the effort of Holy Week in this house is to find age appropriate ways to make the reality of the Passion of Christ real for my children, so that they may truly experience the joyful exultation of Easter.  This year, real life has changed the perspective a bit. And it's hard.

To be honest, I wish we had needed this Lent.  I wish that all the superficial reminders that we are dust were necessary.  I wish the reality of suffering and death were far removed from our lives and we needed a wake up call. But the truth is we've been living life on the Via Dolorosa for some time now.  Death's sting is palpable in this house. The transient nature of the world is all too real.  The reality that the only eternal joy is in heaven is unfairly ours.  And the deep, desperate hope of Resurrection is the rallying cry of our spirits.  It alone makes us rise each day and begin again. My kids know the horror of death more than I ever imagined they would at such tender ages.  They know what it means to close up the tomb and wait. And they don't need any further reminders.

Lenten Mantle: the Pieta and the Three Pillars of Lent

What they need this Holy Week are gentle ways to live the liturgy, to see the beauty in the ashes. The hope of Sunday's reality needs to be sweet and joyful and tangible, but the references to death and its sting need to be quiet and gentle.  So my regular rotation of Stations of the Cross and watching the second half of Jesus of Nazareth in the evenings and attending the very realistic Living Way of the Cross at the local university are put on hold this year.  There will be Mass and Confession at some point.  There will be Eucharistic Adoration and the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary.  But mostly, there will be gentle beauty and quiet, hopeful healing for little hearts (and bigger ones too, I suppose).

Each day this week, we'll let a lovely picture book sharpen our focus and lead us through this week's reflections with gentleness and beauty.  Then we'll quietly create something lovely, another gentle reminder of the beauty in the ashes. 

Holy Week at Home 2010:

The Legend of the Easter Egg, Easter Eggs for Anya, and Rechenka's Eggs: We'll read these books and do a more age appropriate version of Pysanky here.  Using wooden eggs with a flattened out bottom (so they stand on their own), the kids will pencil draw a design, then trace over it a Sharpie marker.  Then they'll paint in the design with craft paint.  When that layer of paint is dry, they will go over their marker lines with puff paint to create a raised design.  I'm hoping the effect will be quite nice and the process rewarding for them.

The Little Rose of Sharon: We'll read this one and then make red and white ribbon roses.  We'll tie on day's prayer of the Divine Mercy novena to each of nine roses and put them in a vase on the mantle. We'll untie each prayer as we pray it and put it away.  On Divine Mercy Sunday, I'll put the ribbon roses away until next year and replace them with real ones.

The Tale of Three Trees: We'll follow this one up with a spring walk in the woods and pretzel making for Good Friday. 

Fiona French's Easter: This book, which contains the words of the Easter story from the King James Bible and beautiful stained glass illustrations will be our Easter Saturday read aloud. Afterwards, we'll make our own stained glass windows by coloring printed coloring pages of Easter scenes (not the bunny kind, the Jesus kind) and then covering the edges with coloring tissue paper glued down, and oiling the backside with baby oil on a cotton ball.  When they are dry, we frame them in black paper frames and hang them in the windows as Easter decorations.  We'll make a new Alleluia to hang across the mantle using the same technique.

I hope you all find some inspiration for bringing Holy Week to life in your home.  We will carry you with us in prayer this week and can't wait to celebrate the joy of the Resurrection with you.

Still

I have watched my facebook page update itself so many times in the last twenty-four hours with people bidding goodbye to 2009 with great relief and looking forward to 2010 with renewed joy and hope.  I have received countless "Happy New Year" messages for people that let me know they're praying for a better year in the year to come.  The truth is, I'm not sure how to say goodbye to this year and exactly what to hope for in 2010.

I don't really bid goodbye to 2009 all that easily, for it is the year we lived the anticipation of our wee one, it is the year of a little life that lasted only the span of a summer.  It is the year of Bryce.  And while there is so much sorrow in its dates, there is much joy that only the days of this year will know.  It's hard to feel relief in its passing.  A part of me wanted the world to stop with me in 2009 and not take one more step forward--ever.  But eternity demands that time progress, and 2009 also transformed into a woman willing to accept whatever the hope of eternity demands.  And I know well that to stand still in those days is deny that Lord's promise of "a future full of hope" is true.  And I'm all about holding on to the Lord's promises these days.  And not to move forward means not to heal.  We, even in the midst of the season of Christmas, are an Easter people.  We believe all that is dead in us bears hope of resurrection.  It is for this reason I am able to let go of 2009.  It's not, as some might have guessed, with a huge sigh of relief.  It is yet another painful goodbye that I only find the strength to say because of who He says He is.

We have ever so much to hope for in 2010.  There a lot of painful dates to walk through to reach that hope, to touch its face.  And there is a lot of vulnerability to surrender, fear and dread to let go of.  Do I hope for "better" year in 2010? I'm not so sure.  From an annual perspective, that may be easy to say, but from an eternal perspective, what could have been better than the year of Bryce, the year we birthed a saint into heaven?  Believe me, everything in me hopes we don't know ever know the sorrow of this year again.  But everything in me also knows, I walk a path determined not by calendar dates but by God love.  And my heart knows well He holds my tears in a vial that I hope to one day wear as crown of glory.  So I will walk in sorrow again this year, a new sorrow, a different sorrow.  And I will walk in hope again this year, a new hope, a different hope.  And I will fight the temptation to walk in fear and I will surrender the feeling of nakedness 2009 has left me with to Him who clothes me in radiant splendor. 

No, I don't hope for a better year in 2010.  I hope for a year in which the life I live honors 2009.  I hope for a year in which my faith, my hope, my love reflects the eternal perspective I gained when the world stopped turning in 2009.  I hope for a year in which a family full of hope rejoices in two new lives, one eternal and one anticipated. 

There is a bit of a trend lately for people to pick a word or a motto for the New Year.  Often it reflects a virtue they want to grow in or a habit they want to cultivate.  For some, the Spirit demands a a new answer to His ever-present question.  I have spent an awful lot of time in 2009 telling the Lord "I can't do this."  And then doing it anyway.  I have spent many a painful hour realizing that jump-starting one's life after it comes to a screeching halt is really hard.  I have stomped in fury at how stupid bills and taxes and paperwork seem in the midst of eternal realities.  I have resented the stuff life demands of me--errands and groceries and social outings, when all my heart desired was to curl up in a ball and never move again.    And I sat in fearful silence at the call to love again, to call to open my wounded heart afresh.  And every time I have said "I  can't do this" and waited for His voice to boom back in impatient insistence, I have hear Him quietly whisper, "I know, but I can.  Sit. Be still. Let me move." 

I am not rushing headlong in 2010 with a new lists of hopes and dreams tied to my back, a weight to heavy for my body, worn from this year's walk.  No.  And I'm not idling casually into 2010 without a care in the world either.  I'm sitting right here on its threshold, my finger tips still rubbing the edges of 2009 one last time, and I'm waiting.  I am still.  I am letting Him move.  That is my word -- STILL.  Still as in "be still" and still as in "I am still who you know that I am" and still as in "Bryce is still your wee one" and still as in "I wait in joyful hope still".  STILL.  I seek Him in the stillness and He is still there and He loves me still and He still has plans for my welfare and not for my woe and there is a whole eternity that awaits me still. 

And so I dedicate this solemnity, on which we honor Mary, the Mother of God, to the prayer to know her stillness.  To be a woman who ponders the great spiritual mysteries of this life and the next in my heart.  And I place this year in her hands, open, waiting.  Dearest Mother, make my like unto Thine.  Lover of my soul, be still this beating heart, that it may never be moved from You.

. 

Advent's Final Moments

The candles have all been lit.

The story of salvation has been told.

The saints of the season have been celebrated.

All the verses of the waiting song have been sung.

And we wait with joyful anticipation for Advent's grand and glorious finale.

May the final moments of Advent prepare you richly for Emmanuel, God With Us!

Blessings to you all this Christmas.