Category: vocation

a participating parent

Recently, I went to “Parent Participation” day at my daughter’s dance studio. It was, as the title suggests, an opportunity for parents to go through each stage of dance rehearsal with their student. I’m guessing the goal is for us parents to see all the hard work our children put into dance, maybe see how great the teachers are and how much fun they all have—which insures we keep pouring money into this extra-curricular machine. But I knew it would be humiliating. I was a dancer—and a mediocre one at best—about 20 years ago. But my daughter—Viva, as I call her here—was so excited about it, begged me to come, so I swallowed my pride and agreed.

When we arrived, the receptionist handed me a goody-bag of water, aspirin, and an ice pack. Very funny, guys. As I stood awkwardly in the room in my mom-yoga pants and Star Wars t-shirt, I quickly tied my hoodie around my waist to hide my mom-rolls. I kept expecting Viva to be embarrassed that I was there, but she was standing close, holding my hand, and beaming. Her confidence made me feel confident—for the first time in our relationship, our roles had reversed. The instructor turned the lights off, turned on some mood-music, and we laid on the floor ready to stretch. I wanted to crack a joke about my creaky back, but when I looked over at Viva, her eyes were closed, she was breathing deeply, 100% in the moment. She was in her element, more relaxed as an awake person than I had ever seen her. It was an incredible parenting moment—you know those moments when you see your child as a truly separate entity, becoming a unique person all of their own—and there was Viva, truly herself.

My daughter, this daughter, is the token extrovert in our family. I don’t know how it goes for other moms who homeschool extroverts, but for me it’s tricky and laced with guilt as I wonder how to feed the people-monster in her heart when I personally find extended social experiences exhausting. I’ve never read that book about love languages, but from what I’ve heard, Viva’s would be time-spent together. She’s right smack in the middle of six kids and doesn’t get the attention she would love. I hug her a lot, but she needs more sit-down-and-talk time for sure. And this seemed the perfect opportunity to spend time with her—on her turf, at her pace. As I fumbled and bumbled through the dance moves, I thought she would be embarrassed, but she wasn’t. To see her joy made me realize I need to make more of an effort to do things she likes to do—and these aren’t elaborate things, but simple stuff like go to Starbucks and share some sous vide bites, watch a girly movie, cook and bake together, garden together.

Each of my children has, in a unique way, challenged my comfort level. Each one has drawn me out, stretched me, sharpened me— sometimes with sparks. It’s one of the great mysteries and gifts of parenting. But it requires a degree of listening and perceptiveness, which is difficult when life gets busy. Viva reminded me it’s good to participate— to get down on the ground, roll around a little, play and relax, be a fool for love. It made me ready to listen.

keep calm and feast on

As a kid, December 26 was one of the saddest days of the year. The giddy anticipation of post-Thanksgiving yuletide culminated in the biggest day of the year– Christmas, December 25. It was a riotous day of feasting and tearing open presents and driving from one family’s house to the next. But on December 26 it was all over. By New Year’s the Christmas décor was coming down. At that point, school loomed ahead and January was usually wet, cold and dreary where I lived.

Imagine my delight at discovering that Christmas is officially 12 days (and, what do you know, the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” was not just endless jibberish made up by drunken peasants), and can be justifiably stretched to the feast of the Baptism (the Sunday after Epiphany) and even the Presentation (February 2). Maybe it’s the naughty inner child in me who enjoys defiance, but I like that our Christmas tree still lights up the front window long after people have been chucking their trees to the side of the road. When our kids were all little, it was easy to ignore that the world had moved on to new-year resolutions and Valentine’s candy (what’s up with that??) and keep the grace of Christmas present in the home. This year was the first year that I felt a little tug-of-war with life.

my 9-year-old’s Kings cake

We always cap off the 12 days with an Epiphany feast. We have three movable Wisemen figures that, since Christmas Eve, have been moving around the house and arrive at the stable on January 6. We sing, we feast, it’s great. But this year the Epiphany was on a Monday. We had to slip in our family feast between one child returning from the orthodontist, and another child heading to an audition. In the morning while I wondered how I was going to home school my little ones and get this midday dinner prepared, I thought, Maybe I shouldn’t force this. I don’t want my kids to associate feast days as fun-datory family time. As I was pondering this, my 9-year-old jumped in and excitedly offered to help. It was a little hurried, a little rushed, but still a lovely time. And as I watched our three-year-old and four-year-old process with the Wisemen to the stable, I remembered how important it is to keep feasting so they can experience the liturgical year the way our older kids have. My older kids, even though their own lives are heavily on their minds, were present and took part.

As my kids grow up and begin their own lives in a world that runs on its own time, I want them to think of the Christmas season as it was meant to be, and to ease into January with joy, hope, and peace.

Children in Mass

or, 400 years in Purgatory

There’s a brief window of life—usually in young adulthood while wrestling with purpose and vocation—when one prays more frequently, which leads to an abundance of grace and consolations; silence is golden and Mass is a retreat, even if the music is distractingly off-key or the preaching is dull. Finding a moment to sit in the quiet still of a dark sanctuary is relatively easy to come by, and it’s easy to start fancying yourself a regular contemplative, maybe even a saint-in-the-works. If you are in that stage of life right now, cherish it, but understand with a degree of humility that it’s a gift, a feast of perceptible grace before life gets real. Because, let me tell you, it won’t last.

There comes a time in a person’s life when Mass feels like a stallion-training pen and all wonderful, beautiful, contemplative thoughts that may have flooded the mind and heart during Mass previously are at once snuffed out with a merciless puff. And that merciless puff is called a toddler. Or two or three of them.

If you are in that particular stage of life, when Mass is a purgatory of tantrums, potty-trips, flying plastic toys, a mess of bodily functions (breast milk leakage, peeing, blow-out diapers, vomit, runny noses, take your pick), then I have three things to tell you: 1) I am/have been there, 2) this too shall pass, and 3) until it does, I humbly offer the following.

First of all, I am/have been there; I GET IT

Exactly when this reality hits parents varies, but for me it hit right away with our first. Trying to nurse in a wooden pew is tricky; equally tricky is trying to mix a bottle of formula. It’s not impossible, but it effectively takes your mind off of Mass for sure. But by the time your child is a toddler, forget it. You’re basically wrestling and contorting throughout Mass, if you’re lucky enough to stay in the pew, though a lot of time is spent in the foyer or outside or in the germ-infested cry rooms which are really named for crying mothers while children feel at last free to be as crazy as they like (oh, how I loathe cry rooms—can you tell?). If you’ve decided to brave it in the pew (or if you’re landlocked and forced to stay), it’s a sweaty mess of wrangling arms and legs, and a constant inner struggle of how-and-should-I-discipline-my-child-with-so-many-witnesses, convinced the furrowed brows are meant for you and certain people are wondering how mother nature ever allowed you to conceive a child, unworthy as you are. It’s torture.

Then you get home, everyone’s hungry and tired, all the energy for the day having been spent getting to and through Mass. Not so Sabbath-y after all, and definitely void of any contemplative prayer.

This, too, shall pass

Really, it truly does. This era of the migraine Mass will end eventually. I remember sitting in Mass with scrawly children and looking over to an opposite pew where a family of ten sat almost perfectly. Instead of a beacon of light, they were the most discouraging thing ever to see because it made me wonder what I was getting wrong. But now that’s us—our family of eight sits almost without incident through Mass (though, we still have our turn of stepping out with the little ones when needed). I think it’s a positive form of peer pressure. The little ones watch and follow the older ones. There’s an unspoken oh-this-is-what-we-do understanding, which is why it’s good for little ones to sit in Mass. Eventually they get it. So gird your loins and buck up, this is only temporary!

And until it is over, here is what I humbly offer to (hopefully) help you in the interim:

In stressful situations like Mass, it seems like our children are the ones making us miserable, but in reality we are the ones who make ourselves miserable. A two-year-old is just being a two-year-old. Sometimes I have a hard time paying attention in Mass in the best of circumstances, so I imagine for a child it’s quite a challenge. We have tried bringing church-related books or small toys to Mass, though for our kids that often becomes its own distraction. But maybe it’ll work for your kids. We found the best solution was sitting close to the front, or having our littlest ones sit at the end of the pew near the aisle so they could actually see what was going on. It’s not fool-proof. If a child is tired, hungry, has to go to the bathroom, or just feels especially naughty that day then nothing works, and you resign yourself to pacing the back.

If that happens, try not to get frustrated. Often times the source of my frustration was what people were thinking of me, how they must be thinking that I couldn’t control my child. If that’s a worry for you too, remember that people are not thinking that. And if they are, they have the problem, not you. The Church, taking a nod from God Himself (“Go forth and multiply”, “Let the little ones come to me”), encourages us to have children so the body of Christ should not be disturbed by hearing and seeing them at Mass. They are the future of the Church, so let them squirm and wiggle while they learn to love Jesus in the Mass. As they get older, talk them through what’s happening, point out the tabernacle, the altar, etc. And if a neighboring adult hears you, don’t worry—they might be learning something too.

To be sure, sometimes I was legitimately frustrated with my child because there are days when it was good old-fashioned belligerence on their part. As they get older, there were consequences for bad behavior in Mass. If they kept lying down (and we ascertained that they had slept and were not sick) then they had to lay down in their rooms for a while instead of having free time after Mass, which they did not like. Obviously you as the parent will make the best call. But associating Mass with a lot of restriction and punishment is, in the end, not the best attraction to Mass.

The next time you find yourself growing frustrated that you have to pace in the back with a misbehaving or tantruming child, or you’ve been exiled to the loathsome cry room, or you’re spending much of Mass waiting in the bathroom for your child, remember that you are being formed spiritually by the very act of willful, purposeful parenting. Choosing to care for your child even when you might rather sit and listen to the homily, or spend some silent moments in prayer, is an act of love, a discipline that will form your heart and please our Lord. It also means we have to purposely set aside time in the day for quiet prayer with God, even if it’s brief. But Mass, in the end, is not about what we’re doing. We don’t do anything in Mass that deserves His Body and Blood. It’s a gift. We have a responsibility to receive it worthily, with a clear conscience, in reverence and thanksgiving, but our participation in Mass doesn’t make us worthy. If you’re distracted during Mass by the act of parenting your child, you are fulfilling your vocation, you’re obedient to God’s call in your life. Try to be ok with that.

And if you don’t have children or yours are grown, please be kind and patient with those who do. An encouraging word is powerful. There have been several older women in my life who smile at me while I wrestle an escaping toddler back into the pew, and that little recognition means a lot in a stressful moment. In the reverse, I’ve had dirty looks from disgruntled Mass-goers. At first I felt humiliated, but now I know better. It helps to remember even the Apostles shoe’d the children away and Jesus corrected them: “Let the children come to me, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.”

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.

what to do (and not do) upon encountering a proverbial singing, tap-dancing, ukulele-playing Ann Miller

I had a dream the other night that I was at an audition. Right before my turn, I had to watch a girl audition before me. And she was amazing. I mean, this girl was tap-dancing, singing, AND playing the ukulele (and she bore a strong resemblance to Ann Miller). In my dream, I wanted to back out of the audition, but an even more pervasive feeling was smallness. I felt like I was growing more invisible and inconsequential by the second.

I’ve had stress-theater dreams before where someone tells me I’m in a show and I have to go on stage, but I have none of the lines memorized. Or stress-teacher dreams when I show up at school without a shirt on, or stress-college dreams when I find out I still need five credits to graduate. Or even stress-marriage dreams when I realize we’re still not married even though we have six kids together. But this wasn’t like that. I kind of laughed to myself about it all morning—I mean, that’s pretty funny, a tap-dancing, singing, ukulele-playing Ann Miller—but then I realized: I know where that came from…

I recently felt intimidated by another woman, and it took me by surprise. It’s been a long time since I felt small and inconsequential in someone’s presence. Humbled, sure. Inspired, yes. But suddenly self-conscious and uncomfortable about being me? It’s been awhile. While talking to her, I found myself wondering, “I bet she has a ‘beauty regimen’, whatever that is. I’ve never had a ‘beauty regimen’. Should I start having a ‘beauty regimen’? Buy creams or something?” I had a flash-memory of something I had passed in the store, some kind of skin-boosting de-wrinkling face mask that maybe I should have bought after all.

Then, by an act of the Holy Spirit I’m sure, I realized I was objectifying this person. I was assessing this girl like a virus scanner, looking for ways she was all noise and no substance, only because I felt small in her presence. This is the embryonic state of The Mean Girl. From here, it can only get so much worse. I snapped out of it, hoping I hadn’t caused palpable tension in the room with my laser-beam nasty-probe. Ideally, I wouldn’t have had to enter into the equation at all, except to offer my hand and heart to someone new.

As women, why do we do this? Why do we compare ourselves?

Ironically, I’ve been advising my daughters through similar things. Growing up in public school really was like the scene in Mean Girls when the students are acting like animals in the wild, either on the prowl, on the defensive, or tearing someone to pieces. That was definitely the subtext of my childhood education. When girls meet someone they are intimidated by, they either avoid them, grovel, or become their best friend just to keep them close. I thought by homeschooling my children, they wouldn’t encounter that kind of behavior. While they’re not immersed in it, I’m actually really thankful they get glimpses of it in social situations. It’s interesting to see how they react, how it stabs them to the quick, but how easy it is to fall prey to petty behavior. I’ve seen them leave a social situation and, as though having been in a girl-world-trance, break out of it with shock and confusion about how they acted, or at having been injured by another girl’s behavior.  Why and how did that happen? their bewildered faces say. Because you’re a lady-human, I reply. And we have to consciously choose charity every moment of our lives.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross famously wrote, “The world doesn’t need what women have, it needs what women are.” We nurture and cultivate life, we care for and draw out the individual, we seek out the heart and connect it to all aspects of living. This is certainly true in the reverse: the malice we are capable of on a personal, intimate level can be destructive. It’s the kind of harm that breaks down a person piece by piece from the inside, chipping away little by little. But when we, as women, use our personal insight to encourage and build up a person, the result is truly remarkable. Instead of reading another woman like a Pinterest-board and seeing all the things we aren’t or don’t have, we can thank God that amazing person exists in the world. (Because, honestly, the world would undoubtedly be a better place with more tap-dancing, singing, ukulele-playing Ann Millers.)

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.