family life – Page 2 – it is making me

the advent of Advent

Advent is a heart that is awake and ready.
Fr. Alfred Delp

Advent is a season of preparation, but in these last few days preceding Advent, I am in a period of preparing for the preparation by uncovering boxes in the garage that house the Advent wreath, candles, Jesse Tree and ornaments, books, etc. It’s much like that excitement I felt as a child in preparing for Christmas Eve after winter break had begun and Christmas seemed palpably near. The whole season is different for me now as an adult, and as a Catholic, but that stirring of the heart in anticipation of something mysterious and beautiful is familiar and comforting. Advent is my favorite season, even more so than Christmas.

I remember somewhere in adolescence when the magic of Christmas had waned. It was depressing. I tried to drum up the feelings of Christmas, whatever that means, the kind of sentimental nonsense I absorbed from department stores and Christmas movies, or something. But after entrenching myself in the liturgical year as a Catholic, the magical quality of Christmas was restored, but not just as a sense of wonder, but as reverence, a holy awe at the prophecies of Christ’s coming and the mystery of the Incarnation. Suddenly, life comes to a point; the purpose of everything is narrowed down to an incomprehensible moment when God becomes man. Yet, it’s not just about a sweet little God-man baby, but about the final coming of Christ. We see that our whole existence is one great Advent, a brief preparation for uniting with God.

Over the years, we’ve developed family traditions during Advent. We’ve added on, stolen ideas from other families, altered them, and every year is a little bit different. But our kids have come to depend on these little feasts and practices to make the waiting bearable:

the Advent wreath- candle lighting, reading, and/or hymns
the Jesse tree, its ornaments and stories
the Créche
feast of St. Nicholas
feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
feast of St. Lucia
feast of St. John of the Cross
feast of St. Hildegard of Bingen
books!!! so. many. books… for Children and Adults
{There are a great many worthwhile books to read during Advent, several of which are on my List of Books I Will Read Someday In A House By The Sea When My Kids Are Grown, but follow the links to my personal favorites}

My aim in describing what we do as a family is to demonstrate that it doesn’t need to be perfect. It really can be thrown together. I’ve been surprised that scrambling for a little celebration one year is expected the following year as an established tradition. These little traditions provide a drumbeat on the march toward Bethlehem.

a deciduous life

I’m sitting in our hobbit-ranch home on the edge of a small Oregon town which is bordered by farms, and beyond that the Chehalem mountains which are aglow this time of year with autumn hues and evergreens. Up to this moment today, the sky has been a clear, glorious blue, which makes the large maple outside our window look like a sacred flame. Rather suddenly the weather has turned. There are bursts of wind, from which there is no shield, coming off of the flat farmland; the sky is a bright gray, like one large flat rain cloud. I’ve opened the window just a little, even though the air is bitingly cold, because I love the sound of the wind in the trees. It’s one of those moments that touches all human senses and places me in the realm of the beyond, remembering God as Creator, and myself at the mercy of His touch.

In just a half-hour of wind, the giant red maple is a third barer than it was earlier today. I feel a kinship with that tree, as it gets tossed about in this unforgiving weather. It reminds me of a conversation I had years ago. I had a smoking buddy in college. After studying all afternoon and into the evening, we’d meet up and walk around the small college town talking about everything and nothing, smoking our cigarettes. We both had ghosts in our pasts, and we never talked about any of that—we kept conversation pretty light and nonsensical, and yet a lot was said in all that was unsaid. A couple times I tried to bring up something real—like faith or love—and I knew right away by his body language that he didn’t want to go there. So I quietly agreed to this arrangement, like smoking without inhaling.

It was the end of fall and the ground was littered with fall muck—the muddy mixture of rotting leaves and pine needles and standing rain water. The trees were mostly bare. I looked down at my shoes a lot during those walks, and I remember seeing the wet leaves matted to my boots. He asked me, “If you could be a tree, what would you be—coniferous or deciduous?” He half-smirked, as though he knew it was a silly question. It was the kind of question one might be asked the first day of an orientation, a dumb get-to-know-you question; it’s ridiculous, but still reveals something about the person’s character.

“Deciduous,” I replied, without pausing. I’d thought of it before. I’d rather be beautiful and glorious for a short season, than the same for all time. At 20, that’s all I’d been doing my whole life, changing and moving and growing. I was intimidated by constancy. Having a career sounded daunting, marriage sounded terrifying, living in the same town for the rest of my life sounded like a prison sentence. I was thrilled and delighted by changeable things, and everything that celebrated it—fashion, art, film, etc—in the way a moth is to a flame, stupidly and thoughtlessly drawn. Of course, that kind of changeableness is exhausting and ultimately unfulfilling.

It strikes me as ironic, as I sit here, looking out at the calm after the short-lived storm, that though my life has been quite different than what I imagined at 20, I have in fact lived a deciduous life. It’s been ever-changing and shifting, but not from my own choosing. Everything about me—shape, color, fruitfulness, bareness—has shifted and moved from season to season. I feel more like a weathered tree, like the maple outside with the tips of its branches exposed. I’m only 37, but I am a bit worn and weary. I often think of Bilbo Baggins describing his weariness as “butter scraped over too much bread”. Exactly. At 20, when I imagined my “deciduous” life, I imagined it changing with adventure, travel, relationships, artistic endeavors; in short, a selfish existence where I called the shots, marked the seasons, changed when I willed. Of course, that never would have come to pass, even if I hadn’t had a conversion, hadn’t met someone that anchored me and helped me be a better human, hadn’t promptly started having babies and pouring myself out. Even if all that hadn’t happened, I would have eventually grown disillusioned, or frustrated with the many changes out of my control, even in a supposed self-driven life.

When I was 20, I didn’t really think about the tree’s seasonable bareness, just its ravishing beauty. But of course now, I see the cycle in its wholeness. I know this period I’m in of child-rearing and successive tasks is just a season. Another season is coming, with its own beauty and hardships. Even though I am weary and feel a bit physically ransacked, I have no regrets—this is the best way I can think of to spend my life. If we as humans are intended to spend ourselves, it’s best to embrace the deciduous nature of human existence; to embrace the seasons with trust in the Creator.

I am with you, for I have called you by name; your labor is not in vain.

O, Happy Festival

or, The Day My Daughter Went All Verruca-Salt On Me

The other day, my four-year-old daughter heard the word “festival” and grew very excited. She said, “Do you remember the Tulip Festival?!! That was SO FUN!”

Do I remember the Tulip Festival? Yes. Yes, do I ever. It was the day my daughter turned Verruca-Salt on me. This is how I remember it:

The local tulip festival is an annual celebration lasting a few weeks during peak tulip-blooming season. We’ve gone a handful of times and I have beautiful photographs of my children at various ages amongst the brightly hued flowers. And this was The Perfect Day for Tulip-Admiring: the sky was clear and blue, it was sunny (yes, in April!), and the tulips were at their peak. It was a rainbow-hued horizon with Mt. Hood in the background to boot.

And that’s when it started. The Biggest Tantrum That Ever Was. Well, I know it probably wasn’t the biggest of all time, but this was the worst I’d ever experienced as a mother.

Mind you, I am a seasoned children-under-five-mom at this point, and my four-year-old (here I call her Blossom) and three-year-old (here I call him Buck) were thoroughly watered, rested, and fed before we even set foot on festival grounds. Usually that guarantees a good two-hour chunk of fit-free-fun. But not on this ill-fated day. I want to blame the festival. Before we even reached the tulips, we had to pass a mini-carnival of bouncy houses and hay-slides. Almost immediately Blossom and Buck were complaining—“When are we going to the bouncy house?” “I want to go on the slide!” “Maybe later,” I replied, without really meaning it, “but we’re here for the tulips.” I was patient at first, but less and less the more this carried on.

Buck started taking off, running through the rows of tulips, the top of his head disappearing beneath the tall stalks. Blossom followed suit. Weighed down with my mom-junk (you know, the big mom purse, water bottles, camera, not to mention the 20 extra pounds of life-giving child-bearing weight), I tried desperately to rally them. They’d hold my hands for a short time, then take off again. I felt helpless.

Sweaty and exhausted, I rallied the troops and we started the long walk back to the parking lot. I had stupidly said in one of my desperate attempts to get them to listen that maybe we could get some ice cream. Feeling I should make good on my promise, I slowed down at the ice cream stand to realize there would be no way I could afford everyone ice cream if we were going to eat dinner for the rest of the week. I kept walking past the ice cream, hoping Buck and Blossom wouldn’t notice, but Blossom started in with the demand that would become her war-cry for the next solid hour: “I want an icey-cone! I want an icey-cone! I want an icey-cone!” If we were at home and this happened, after being asked to stop, she would eventually be sent to her room where she could have her little fit without disturbing the rest of us. But what to do when one is out in public?

I asked her to please stop. I pulled her aside to try and talk sensibly with her. I promised her a treat for later if she would calm down. It only made things worse. “I want an icey-cone!” And now Buck had started in. We slowly inched our way through the festival to the parking lot. It was a long, long walk of humiliation. By that point I had two hysterical children, one on each hand, screaming, “I want an icey cone!” People started to stare. Blossom threw herself onto the gravel and screamed. People started walking around us like we had an imaginary perimeter, but definitely slowed down to stare, like when everyone slows down traffic to leer at the fool that just got pulled over for a traffic violation. Some people tried to be encouraging, others made smart-ass quips. It was like an out-of-body experience. I could see myself, standing in the middle of a gravel parking lot with four befuddled older children behind me as a buffer while two otherwise normal toddlers laid in the dirt screaming. It’s almost funny.

We finally got to the car and I could hardly buckle Blossom, her body was writhing in expert tantrum form. Buck soon calmed down, clearly exhausted. For the first 20 minutes of the drive, Blossom kept going (truly remarkable stamina). My older four kids reached a state of stupor and no longer heard anything. I was so impressed with their saintly patience, I decided that as soon as Blossom fell asleep (which is inevitable, right?) I would go through a drive-thru and get smoothies for my normal, sane children. At last she did, mid-sob, and the car was finally quiet. I pulled into the drive-thru and practically whispered an order to the attendant. Not even kidding you, Blossom woke up, and started right where she left off. “I want an icey-cone!”

There was a lot of good that came from this day. I probably sweat off at least five pounds. Blossom learned a lesson: she did not get a smoothie that day because of her fit, and she brought it up a few times the next few days: “I’m sad because I didn’t get a smoothie.” Me: “Do you remember why?” Blossom: “Yes. Because I threw a fit.” Win.

I also saw my older four children exercise heroic patience. Win.

But I definitely do not remember the tulip festival as “so much fun”, as Blossom does. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, the fact that she doesn’t remember how miserable she was that day, and how miserable she made everyone else. Somehow in her memory all she sees are the beautiful tulips. In her mind, that was a good day, while the rest of us remember a hot sweaty mess.

Yet this is humorously similar to my own recollection of life. There are periods of time in my adult life that I remember fondly, even if they were incredibly difficult. I look back now and I am amazed at God’s hand through it all, but when I really think about it, I was a big stinker during those periods of time too. I was needy, whiny, and I pitched some pretty good fits. But I like to recall all the beauty, the work of God’s hand that I see in retrospect.

I’ve been trying to meditate more on God’s Fatherhood—that He is my Father, I am His Child, and He loves me. Simple, but sometimes difficult to wrap my heart around and truly believe. This isn’t the first time God has used my own experience in parenting to show me His Heart: He holds His ground through my own fits of tunnel-vision and stubbornness with patience and wisdom, and maybe with a little smirk of amusement, is happy when, at long last, I can see the beauty, and have grown a little through the dirt and tears.

hands to work, hearts to God

The Garden (the first year)

Over the past several years, whenever I eye the berries in the grocery store, I imagine how quickly they’ll be eaten—it’s like watching a ten dollar bill disintegrate within minutes. The expense of berries is one of those notches in my grouch-meter, one of the things I briefly mumble about as I roll onwards towards the more appropriately priced enormous bag of carrots. Consequently, berries are an occasional, feast-day type of treat, even less frequent than cookies or brownies.

The price of berries is one reason I’ve dreamed of gardening. There was a brief time we lived somewhere with five well-established blueberry bushes, and for nearly a month in late summer, my children would go out and eat the berries for breakfast. I knew then that one day, God-willing, I would have a snacky garden so I could say, “You’re hungry, eh? Go pick yourself some [insert seasonal fruit or vegetable here].”

When the time came for us to buy a home, we landed in an older house on a third of an acre with a leaky roof and lots of character. The front yard was pleasant with hearty, beautiful rose bushes and a camellia tree. It also had a well-established apple tree that my husband began to care for with the same precision as Mr. Miyagi with his bonsai trees, resulting in a few seasons of satisfying apple harvests. Looking around the house, under the overgrown brush, it was clear an owner of the past had been an avid gardener.

However, the backyard was overrun with blackberries. That might sound lovely, but these blackberries are—and I’m not kidding—the curse of the Fall. These were the kinds of plants God was talking about when he said to Adam, “Thorns and thistles it shall bear for you.” I seriously feel like I’m doing some natural form of penance by digging out these impenetrable roots. They have infiltrated this part of Oregon and they’re impossible to get rid of with Oregon’s fertile amount of rain and sun. In various sections of the yard, it took us years to get to the point where we were ahead of the game, digging out the little sprouts one at a time. Poison also works. If we were incapacitated for just one summer, we’d be nearly over-run again with those vicious, thorny, delicious plants.

This winter, my in-laws surprised me with the best birthday gift: garden boxes. I believe this was all orchestrated by my sweet sister-in-law who has a beautiful side-yard garden where for many summers I have wistfully sat, just a wee bit jealous. So I immediately set to work with the help of my children. We dug out a 15 x 20 foot plot right off our patio. My brother-in-law and his wife, as well as my parents-in-law, came over to do a heroic amount of yard work and build six beautiful raised beds. Then we filled in the paths with pea gravel (because, you know, that’s what the French do).

I figured this year would be a bit experimental. At dinner one night, we all threw in our suggestions for what to plant. Berries—you guessed it—was at the top of my list, as well as sugar snap peas, carrots, kale, broccoli, and tomatoes—vegetables that my kids would snack on. I did my research, planted complimentary things together with complimentary flowers. In another area of the yard, we tilled and planted corn, pole-beans, and pumpkins using a Native American method (“Three Sisters”) that my eldest daughter really wanted to try. And then we waited. I cared for that garden like it was my seventh child. I practically sang to it. I almost got weird about it.

And then it actually started to grow. It seems like magic—you stick it in the ground, it rains, it’s sunny, then little green sprouts really do come out of the ground. Life, in all its form, is awe-inspiring. The only intruders we have to do deal with are birds, who devoured the first round of corn sprouts. We now have an owl statue, which was named Alistair Apple by my toddlers, and shiny ribbon to ward off those wingéd pests. Within weeks, the garden was teeming with green.

Here are some things this ignorant, first-time gardener has realized:

It tastes better. Fresh vegetables and fruit really do just taste better. It’s tarter, or sweeter, or crisper—whatever it’s supposed to be, it’s more of that.

It looks different. So carrots aren’t always shaped the same. In fact, they can come up crazy. But that makes it more fun.

The amount we produce and consume don’t balance out, in the end. I’d have to have a pretty major garden to feed our family (something I’m pondering for next year). The sugar snap pea patch might provide an afternoon snack every several days, but it definitely doesn’t provide a daily option. Strawberries, same deal—we might get a few every day and the kids take turns who eats them (but they’re SO GOOD). Because of this new awareness, I now appreciate more just how much we do consume and maybe aren’t as thoughtful about. A big bag of peas and container of berries from Costco go like hot cakes at our house—now of course I’m thinking more about who grows them, who harvests them, etc.

It is intensely satisfying to observe and enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of one’s labor. I grew up in an educational system that had all but thrown out classes that made you work with your hands. I learn so much better by doing. I’ve written about this before more in-depth, but it was a challenge learning to work within the home and all that entails. It was in familiarizing myself with monastic life that I was able to understand family home life: “He who labors as he prays lifts his heart to God with his hands” (St. Benedict). There is something serene about a garden—time stops, and it’s as though God as Creator and Provider directly touches your heart as you care for all that will sustain you. (I realize career-farmers have a lot more at stake—and we’re literally surrounded by those where we live, hats off to you.)

It is a thing of beauty. Even though I loved perusing Pinterest (darn you, Pinterest) for garden photos, my conscious aim was to get ideas, but subconsciously I was admiring the beauty, color and form. As soon as our family garden came into bloom, I wanted to be in and around it. The teeming life and color was exhilarating and comforting.

I realize I’m joining this program already in progress—gardening is ancient, and a lot of people have gardens, a lot of people are gardening experts. I’m not writing to share any gardening wisdom or know-how (though I’d welcome it!). I’m in awe of how important it’s been, how much six little raised beds have provided for us—not necessarily in nourishment to our bodies, though that has been wonderful, but in the way it’s brought joy, beauty, and purpose to the family.

totus tuus: knowledge of Mary

knowledge through suffering

Our move to the opposite coast was a feast in many ways: we lived in a wealthy area just north of Boston only a half-mile walk from the beach. We lived near many beautiful Catholic churches, historical landmarks, cultural hubs, and natural beauty. We had few friends, but they were amazing people. I assumed we would stay there—in the area, at least, maybe further south in Rhode Island where it was a little more our pace. The house and job north of Boston was supposed to be temporary; God would open a door somewhere else.

My husband and I also refer to this 3-year period as The Years of NO. The doors just wouldn’t open, try as we might, pray as we did. We needed to change our situation, but kept getting no’s from job possibilities and alternate housing. We felt like we were living under a cloud of confusion. What did God want us to do? At times I was angry—I felt like we’d been faithful, made sacrifices—where was the pay-off? I was starting to worry that our entire married life would be this: uncertainty, jumping from one job to another, uprooting our family every few years, barely scraping by. The first several years of it were an adventure. But it was growing tiresome.

In December of 2013, my kids had the stomach flu. In a moment of reprieve from nursing and laundry, I decided I would take a break from sitcoms and watch The Song of Bernadette. It was surprisingly fruitful: I realized I didn’t understand the implications of the Immaculate Conception. I also began to think about the real poverty of Bernadette’s family, and how Our Lady had told St. Bernadette, “I cannot promise to make you happy in this life, but in the next.” What right did I have to expect the right job, the right house, the right conditions—to feel obligated to have a comfortable life, as though that were the goal? I realized one of my biggest hang-ups was my perspective: I was so focused on what we didn’t have and hadn’t succeeded at, that I was lacking basic gratitude, which was the real cause for the loss of my joy. I felt pretty rotten, and resolved to change.

Lucky me, I came down with the stomach flu the next day, and in that moment over the toilet bowl I knew I needed to draw closer to Mary if I really wanted to understand joy in suffering.

In January of 2014, I started the five first Saturdays devotion to learn more from Mary’s Immaculate heart (read more about that here). A lot happened in those five months: I found out I was pregnant with our fifth child; my grandmother came to visit and I had, what would be, my last conversations with her; my cousin and her two babies died tragically in a fire; then my grandmother passed away on Mother’s day. Over this five-month period, while growing new life inside of me and grappling with death in my family, things became clearer. The knot in our lives had more to do with our own pride over what we would have willed for our family, not what God willed. We needed to be completely open to any possibility, not look for answers within the limits of our own understanding. And, man, were we lucky to just be alive and have each other.

Slowly over time, it became clear to my husband and I that if, for three years, the doors on the east coast kept closing (and in strange ways), then maybe we should move back to the west coast where we had more connections and more of a support structure. But it sounded impossible—where would we live? Where would we work? Oh, and I was very pregnant?? And yet, we needed to move somewhere, our time was running out.

In the end, my grandmother paid our way home, posthumously. It was a beautiful final gift. So at 7 ½ months pregnant—I had to get a permission letter from my midwife—I boarded a plane with my incredible mother (who had helped me pack boxes, insisting I elevate my tree-trunk ankles) and four other children while my husband drove a moving truck from one side of the country to the other.

My in-laws graciously lent us their basement. In we piled, the kids crammed into one room (which they actually loved), cement floors, a woodstove, a sink, a griddle, a microwave, and mini-frig. My husband did not yet have a job, though he was frantically re-connecting with former colleagues and friends. There were times I was really stressed out—I mean, how long were we going to be living in a basement? And every time I lamented about having to bring my newborn baby home to a drafty basement, I thought of the Holy Family in the stable and had to shut myself up. If the God of the universe could be laid in a manger, my baby would be fine in a fully plumbed basement. And I tried to keep up the practice of counting our blessings instead of our losses.

Our fifth child, a little girl whom I call Blossom here, was born on September 8, Our Lady’s birthday. I knew she was Mary’s baby, not just because of her birthday, but because of all that had quietly transpired between Mary and I during that nine-month period.

We spent the fall in the basement, learning patience and trust, embracing temporary poverty, learning compassion for those stuck in poverty, and why hope is a virtue. One of the gifts of my husband’s temporary unemployment was how much time we all spent together. And our kids reminisce about that time as though it was a great adventure: “Remember when the basement flooded? That was so cool!” (Um, guys, no it wasn’t.)

My husband started his new job the following February, on the feast of the Presentation, a little reminder that everything is a gift and good in God’s time. THAT was cool.

{I also want to recommend two books which were very helpful during this time: Perseverance in Trials: Reflections on Job by Carlo Maria Martini, and Happy Are You Poor: The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedom by Thomas Dubay.}

totus tuus: knowledge of Mary

knowledge through motherhood

The steps I have taken towards Mary over the course of my conversion as a Catholic have been baby steps. I’ve inched my way along, past the discomfort to indifference, then past indifference to comfort, then beyond comfort into affection.

Therese, the film, was released in October of 2004, just a few months after I got married. I was on tour much of that year promoting the film with interviews and appearances at Catholic conferences. Several times I was told that I should portray Mary, “Mary should be your next role”. I remember one such time that it struck me how true that might be—that motherhood might be the next “role” I take on. The thought was terrifying and thrilling, but I had no plan to have a baby any time soon. We were going to wait a few years, see where my career went, prep my husband for graduate school—get our life in order.

By Thanksgiving of that same year, I was pregnant.

The trajectory of my life, as I perceived it, suddenly shifted. My career was my face and my body, which was morphing into something unrecognizable. My focus became increasingly interior as I retreated into the mystery that was growing inside of me. Even though I, of course, wanted and welcomed this child, I marveled at how subconscious baby-forming was; I wasn’t consciously telling my body to do anything. In fact, it was doing the opposite of what I wanted: nausea, weight gain, fatigue. I had been taken over by an alien force. I felt myself shrinking back into the shadows of my life, retreating to a more interior existence, but with more joy and purpose than I could have imagined.

I was naturally attracted to Mary, drawn to her maternal image, wondered with new imaginative material what it would have been like to carry Christ. And through arduous labor, that intense spending of self and blood-shed, I glimpsed the sorrow of motherhood. I remember lying in bed, light-headed and weak from hemorrhaging, watching family marvel at this new life that had, miraculously and at long-last, passed through me. I felt satisfied. I also felt like my body was going to dissolve into the hospital bed and disappear. But in a good way: I had spent myself for life, done something really purposeful with my body, and would have faded away happily. I didn’t, thank God, and the days that followed were much more difficult than I imagined, but that is another story.

It was babies, babies, babies in the years that followed. In the back of my head I thought I’d go back to acting one day, like I’d seen many of my female acting instructors do. But my husband and I were consumed with just keeping our heads above water. He was in graduate school and working full time; we were on food-stamps and state health. I felt humiliated and discouraged much of the time, both with our economic situation and a general feeling of failure as a mother. I wasn’t the kind of mother I had hoped to be. I felt worn out, often befuddled about how to deal with difficulties, bored a lot of the time… and guilty for feeling all those things.

And then we got pregnant. Again. Number four. I was so embarrassed to tell people, dreading all the stupid comments like, “Don’t you guys know how to use a condom?” and, “Don’t you guys know how that happens?” (To which I enjoyed replying, “Yeah, do you?”) I didn’t want to care what other people thought, but I did.

At my lowest point, I was sitting in the bathtub, crying, feeling sorry for myself, but also worrying about how we were going to provide for this child. I was full of resentment towards the Church and NFP; I felt like we’d been tricked into pro-creating. Suddenly—I do not doubt directed by the Holy Spirit—I recalled a homily I had heard years before (let that give you hope, dear priests, we are listening!). Father had said that we ask for many things in prayer, and God may not answer to our liking based off of what is best for us, but there is one request He will always generously grant: a plea for more love. Ask for more love, Father had urged us. Years later, as I was feeling utterly poured out with nothing to give this new life inside me, I asked God for more love: more love for my children, more love for my husband, more love for the life He had given me, more love to love God with. In the same moment—and again, I have no doubt was prompted by the Holy Spirit—it occurred to me that I should try asking Mary for help. Mary, who was the Mother of all mothers, the mother God chose for Himself. Mary, I ask for your help. Please love this baby inside of me; be her mother until I can love her as I ought.

The change wasn’t immediate; I was angry and worried for a while. But a few months into the pregnancy, I was sitting on the couch folding clothes with my kids, and I realized I was enjoying my time with them. I realized that slowly over time, I had grown to love them more. I had grown to accept my vocation a little more. I also learned a lot about prayer during that pregnancy. Always afraid to ask for things in prayer, I went out on a limb and asked God for a lot over that pregnancy. And He delivered. Not always in the ways I expected, but we were taken care of.

Furthermore, I know Mary took my plea to heart—and must have known how sincere I was in my desperation—for this fourth baby, who I call Viva here, was born on the feast of St. Anne, Mary’s mother. And she was born into laughter! It was the only birth at which I did not hemorrhage, and was able to nurse without difficulty.

That same year, my husband lost his job, we foreclosed on our house, and moved 3,000 miles away to the opposite side of the United States to start over. But instead of allowing worry to fill my heart, through grace, I trusted God was going to take care of us. I know that was the fruit of prayer, of offering my heart up to Jesus through Mary’s maternal intercession. Embracing Mary led to embracing motherhood as a true and just vocation.

stormy parenthood

I’ve been fortunate as a parent to have never felt competent. From the very beginning I have felt completely out of my league in both knowledge and skill, to say the least of experience. God threw me a curveball from my very first days of motherhood—and I thank Him for it. It brought me to my knees, and I haven’t risen up since.

Most recently, it has been my eldest son who has caused me the most befuddlement and angst (here, I call him Bear). The poor guy is utterly surrounded by women—he’s flanked by sisters, two elder and two younger. His younger brother is only now beginning to want to play and wrestle, but the 7-year age difference will require restraint on Bear’s part for a while. He’s ten years old, and around the same age and stage with his older sisters, I was equally befuddled because they started to change. It was like human plate tectonics—the hormones, the feelings, the body—everything starts to shift and adolescent natural disasters begin to avalanche. Sure, it’s frustrating and tiring, but most of all I begin to feel helpless. I want to help them through this trying stage, but it’s as though I have to get to know them all over again.

Recently, a friend from my parish wanted to get together with some other ladies and pray aloud for each other’s children. I had low expectations going into it, afraid it would be too like long days past at Quaker camp when we would all cry around a campfire while someone played worship songs. But it was surprisingly moving and powerful to listen to a friend pray out loud for my son, and petition God’s assistance in his life and mine as a parent.

In the weeks that followed, I noticed that when Bear had a blow-up or break-down, instead of reacting, somehow I didn’t. Somehow I remained calm. Somehow I listened. Somehow I tried to figure him out in that moment and do what was best for him. I could feel the grace of God in those moments, knew the words I was speaking weren’t my own. The confrontation would end and I would find myself shaking my head, kind of in awe of what just transpired.

Nothing’s permanently fixed, of course. From experience I know that soon we’ll pass through another confusing and trying stage of behavior. Parenting is forever clinging to a lifeboat at sea, constantly feeling out the movement of the ocean, riding each wave as it comes, learning some from experience, but relying mostly on grace.

St. Joseph, give me your silence

St. Joseph is a quiet saint. For my first several years as a Catholic, his March 19 feast day passed by without my acknowledgment. This wasn’t fair or just on my part because he’d definitely been around in my life. But, like Mary, his brief appearance in Scripture and near-silence left more to the imagination than I was ready to spend on him. Other male saints—like St. John the Apostle, St. Thomas More, St. Isaac Jogues—captured my attention with their accolades and heroism. St. Joseph was just too quiet to notice.

Yet, like Mary, Joseph’s silence in Scripture, coupled with His faithful obedience to God, offer rich food for meditation. As I grow more deeply in my own vocation—where I will not live a life of big heroics like John, Thomas, or Isaac, love them as I do—my attention has turned more and more towards the Holy Family to find the heart of this interior life that spends itself physically in the home, mostly unseen.

Of St. Joseph’s silence, Pope Benedict XVI wrote it is “a silence woven of constant prayer, a prayer of blessing of the Lord, of the adoration of his holy will and of unreserved entrustment to his providence.” In one homily I heard years ago at a local parish, the priest pointed out that Joseph was so prayerful, he could listen to God in his sleep. Pope Benedict XVI also wrote, “Let us allow ourselves to be ‘filled’ with St Joseph’s silence! In a world that is often too noisy, that encourages neither recollection nor listening to God’s voice, we are in such deep need of it.”

It’s so difficult to find actual, physical silence anywhere, particularly in a home. When I had my first baby, there was so much silence that it made me uncomfortable. Whenever she was asleep, I enjoyed the first several minutes of quiet, but wasn’t sure what to do with myself after that; I was so unaccustomed to silence that it made me agitated. Now, with so much to do and so much activity in the house, I would know exactly what to do with that hour of silence.

But there is a silence of the heart that I am praying for the grace to develop, that stillness spoken of in the psalms, the stillness that Jesus asked of the disciples on the stormy sea. Ideally, one would start the day with prayer or Mass, and I used to have such high expectations—a Rosary! Liturgy of the Hours! Wake-up at 4:00 and pray on my knees! Yeah, that never happened. I have settled for a brief morning offering. It orients my heart and mind towards God in a simple, straightforward moment. Evening prayer has gone the same way: I’ve settled for a brief examination, a brief list of gratitude—and honestly, sometimes it’s just a “Glory Be” beside my bed before collapsing.

It’s the middle of the day that needs so much work. When life doesn’t happen the way I want it to, even simple daily tasks, I get agitated and that stillness is disrupted: if I don’t eat breakfast soon enough, if I have to clean up spilt milky cereal, if my little ones won’t occupy themselves long enough for me to help another child with division, if my toddler is screaming for food while I’m making dinner… the list is generous. If I fail to pray throughout the day—and these are little prayers, little cries and thank-you’s to God—then I grow more and more disgruntled and agitated, and instead of silence, I have a litany of complaints turning over in my head.

The Holy Family couldn’t have been without those daily annoyances. As a carpenter, Joseph must have dealt with the messy business of getting paid, jobs taking longer than anticipated, dissatisfied customers. And like every family, I’m sure they dealt with not having enough food on the table, illness, the circulating village gossip. But they weren’t somber puritans either—they were friendly, generous neighbors who partook in the feasts and festivals of the year. I’m certain they danced. Yet, in all this, they maintained peace and a still readiness before God. I hunger and pray for that.

Lenten Traditions: Food

Over the years, our family has developed Lenten traditions. Some of those have to do with food, which may sound strange since it’s Lent, but even fasting should have an element of beauty and joy to it. I’m not an adventurous cook, so I won’t make a habit of talking about me in a kitchen, but these are worth sharing:

The Redwall Cookbook

A few of our kids (and my husband) love the Redwall series by Brian Jaques, stories about rodent-monks in a medieval setting. And, lucky for us, there is a Redwall cookbook, and it’s all vegetarian. “Stones Inna Swamp” sounds a lot more delectable to kids than vegetable soup with dumplings. It always cracks me up to see them get excited about food they would otherwise roll their eyes at. There are little stories to accompany some of the recipes, and the illustrations are very well done, reminiscent of Beatrix Potter.

Red Lentil Soup

For the first several years of marriage, meals during Lenten fasting days consisted primarily of variations on bread and cheese. The first time I tried making soup, for some reason I thought I could wing it, but it was pretty bad (let’s just say I put the “lent” back into lentil soup). I went hunting for recipes and found one that has officially become a tradition: Red Lentil Soup, with manchego cheese on the side (a creamy sheep cheese from Spain, sooo goooood). For a small meal on a day of fasting, it’s satisfying.

Lenten Scones

Several years ago, when I had three children under four, I had just quit teaching and was a full-time at-home parent. I easily grew listless at home; I had no at-home hobbies, and sometimes the hours seemed to creep on by. My saving grace was a handful of friends I had in the area who, I’m fairly certain, felt similarly. We all came together for company and friendship for both ourselves and our children.

I remember one particular day in March when I needed it more than usual. March is often a difficult month in the Pacific Northwest—lots of gray skies and rain. It’s easy to get stir-crazy. Plus, it’s Lent, so you’re often left without those stand-by pick-me-ups like coffee or chocolate. A friend of mine called me up and invited me over. I remember sitting down at her table, and taking a deep breath, relieved to have my kids occupied with her kids. She set down a steaming cup of tea and a scone in front of me.

There was a story behind this scone, which she called a “Lenten scone” (and it looked very Lenten—lumpy with oats and raisins). She had received the recipe from a family friend in her hometown. Whenever she made these scones—and only during Lent—it reminded her of her home 2,000 miles away and the family whose company she sacrificed for the sake of her new family.

Perhaps the reason I like making these scones is that it reminds me of my friend—and not just that particular friend, who is still dear to me, but for that group of young women who were friends at just such a time. It reminds me of those days of early motherhood that felt Lenten in their sacrifices and self-surrender as I struggled to navigate a life that was no longer about me. I’m still figuring that out, of course, still struggling with it, but those early days were more difficult in their newness.

I make these scones for Ash Wednesday, then for every Friday during Lent. They’re definitely Lenten, but also delicious and weighty. With a side of cheese and carrot sticks, I count them as a small Lenten meal on a fasting day. If you try them out, share them with a friend to keep up the tradition! (And my family is gluten-free, so I just use 1-to-1 gluten-free flour substitution, as well as gluten-free oats. And I’ve substituted buttermilk for cashew milk which works pretty well.)

Ingredients

2-3 tbs. sugar (quantity of tbs. sugar = how Lenten do you want to get?)
1 1/4 cup. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
dash of salt
1 cup oats
1/3 cup raisins or currants
4 tbs. butter
1/3 cup buttermilk

Directions

Combine: 2-3 tbs. sugar, 1 ¼ cup flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, ½ tsp. baking soda, dash of salt
Stir in 1 cup oats and 1/3 cup raisins or currants
Cut in 4 tbs. butter
Work in with a fork 1/3 cup buttermilk
Press onto a cutting board or counter and cut into squares, or form into a circle and cut into triangles.
Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 20 minutes

Christ must increase, and I must decrease… in body fat…

The other day I went to the local coffee shop to buy hot chocolates for my kids; it’d been a rough week at home, the cold weather had limited our activities, and with Lent around the corner I figured a little mini-mardi-gras pick-me-up was in order. As I stood waiting for six hot chocolates, the barista struck up a conversation. Ordering six of anything usually leads to a conversation. She wanted to know what the occasion was, and I explained that since Lent was coming soon, this was our last hot-chocolate-hurrah of the season. She seemed familiar with the idea of Lent and asked about what we do.

“Individually we all give up or do certain things,” I replied, “but as a family we give up dessert.” (And if you know our family, dessert is a major sacrifice. One eats dinner in order to have dessert.)

The barista’s face lit up. “What a great idea! Lose all that Christmas weight!”

I laughed awkwardly, and didn’t say much more. I figured a crowded coffee shop wasn’t the best place to go into the true purpose of Lent. But her response is not altogether unreasonable. In our culture, we give up food to lose weight. When I found out I was gluten-intolerant, I was surprised at how many people were interested in my gluten-free diet, said they were “trying it out”, like it was another diet fad. Besides the fact that a lot of gluten-free bread is made of starch and has very little fiber, it generally doesn’t taste good—why would someone willfully subject themselves to that? I had to explain that I was gluten-free, not by choice, but because gluten made me physically ill. Fasting, without the primary goal of losing weight, is non-comprehensible to many people.

This non-comprehension is something I’m definitely familiar with, and it’s related to why I don’t fast. I fast according to what the Church instructs, the small meals on meatless Fridays, and I find that doing this as a family increases its meaning as we all ponder our gratitude, or lack thereof, for having more than enough. But for the first several years I was Catholic, I tried to fast on top of that, fairly ambitious with new-convert zeal and enthusiasm, but I failed miserably. I got to the point where I dreaded Lent, associating it with failure and discouragement, with old wounds re-opened.

When I was a teenager, like many teenage girls, I struggled with self-image and a borderline eating disorder. When I started to pursue a career in acting, it only heightened. I remember a fellow actor during a lunch break look at my food and laugh, “Rabbit food again?” I’m from a line of sturdy-built farm women, so I had to nearly starve myself and exercise like a crazy person to achieve a slimmer side of curvy, but it was never slim enough. This lifestyle of mine, which had its roots in other issues, was wholly unhealthy not just for my body, but for my mind and spirit as well. That was a long time ago now, yet I still have a hard time disassociating those unhealthy dieting habits from fasting.

It took me a long time to learn that food is not the only thing one can fast from. It seemed like the most ascetic choice, maybe in my mind that meant holier. But if the point is to grow spiritually, I would have to choose a form of self-denial that would truly bear fruit.

In an interview about the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa spoke about how difficult it can be for young postulants to adjust to their new life in the order. Some, she said, have “more” to give up than others. For example, one postulant had been used to ice cream every night after dinner, and later admitted to Mother Teresa that it had been very difficult to give it up, even to suffer the memory of it. In my own lack of charity, I imagine that Mother Teresa, who was daily face-to-face with poverty, hunger, and death, would have heard that and scoffed. But no, Mother Teresa, in her great charity, understood the degree of sacrifice the young woman had made, instead of focusing on the thing she sacrificed.

I’ve borne many frustrating Lents, at the end of which I feel discouraged and not at all prayerful. Maybe someday I’ll be mature enough to fast prayerfully. But for us modern Americans with shame-faced first-world problems, there are lots of fruit-bearing forms of self-denial: abstaining from television, Facebook, and frivolous googl’ing; waking up early, praying the Liturgy of the Hours, daily reading the Bible; picking up after people without complaint, bearing toddler tantrums with patience, you get the idea—these are difficult (embarrassing as that is). Lent is about self-denial, but the kind of self-denial that will bear fruit; self-denial that will allow us to decrease so that Christ may increase.