Beth's Confirmation

 

May 15, 2016

Dear Beth,
My sweet girl.  There are no fitting words to express how proud I am of you today- truly, how proud of you I am always.  You have always been intelligent and mature, thoughtful and insightful.  You stump me with questions about how our world works and how God is a part of our lives, and you humble me with your loving and forgiving heart.  Your longing to find God's place for you in this world has always impressed me.  I didn't make you that way, your Heavenly Father did.  He called you at a young age to be a witness, to be His.  And you said yes.

You are blessed to be in a faith community that not only supports but encourages you to receive the Sacraments, and as you prepared your mind, heart, and soul for the sacrament of Confirmation, I knew that the Holy Spirit really had called you to this.  You were already His, and now that you've received the gifts of the Spirit, I know He will continue to call you to great things. 

At 9.5 years old, you are the youngest member of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter to be confirmed.  I believe your enthusiasm for the graces this sacrament will no doubt pave the way for other young girls and boys to be confirmed in their faith!  We believe that you've received the Gifts of the Holy Spirit- piety, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, fear of the Lord, counsel, and fortitude- and what else does our world need more right now?  You understand what it means to be a soldier for Christ as we spoke at length about this during your preparations.  You know the world needs Christ, though thankfully your innocence prevents you from knowing just how badly our world needs Him.  Your understanding will grow and change as you get older, but those holy gifts, this indelible mark, will remain with you always.

Daddy and I are filled with joy, our hearts overflow with gratitude to God for giving you to us. We know the Holy Spirit will guide you as you leave childhood behind and enter into adolescence, and for that we are also so very thankful!  We pray that you will seek His guidance and wisdom all the days of your life.

I love you, my precious girl!  

Love, Mommy

January (and February 2nd!) photos

An epiphany party which included a procession of canned goods to a nativity scene, indoor candles (because it was raining outside), a gift exchange, a cookie contest (we won second place!), and the revealing of our "advent angel"- our secret friend who had prayed for us during advent!

A drawer full of eraser-less pencils, because of an orally-fixated 5-year-old. 

Brothers learning to read together.

Our new "morning time" allows for some free-play with clay while I read shared lessons to everyone. 

A Christmas present from MawMaw and PawPaw that has already given us hours upon hours of use and fun.

Late night smores with old friends.

Regular library and park afternoons, taking advantage of a beautiful Texas "winter."

A gift basket I assembled with donations from two friends.  I crocheted the mustard and gray blanket, purchased the basket and a handful of "tried and true" mommy and baby items, which raised $200 at a silent auction for our co-op.

Impromptu soccer practice during music lessons at our new music studio.  Beth and Luke attend weekly lessons (piano and ukulele, respectively) while Jack, Caeli, and I play soccer in the parking lot.

"Mommy, take a picture of the puzzle.  It's not coming apart when I pick it up!"

The ordination mass of our new Bishop Steven Lopes at our diocesan co-cathedral.  After a day of celebration, the 7 pm mass went beautifully with our worn-out crew!

Remarks from Bishop Lopes at the end of mass, not aired on EWTN due to timing.   I have no doubt he will bring beloved Roman tradition and structure into our beautiful, young ordinariate! 

A Plea

So let's see... Two posts about the two big things that happened.  But, for my future reference, let me recap:

1. In-laws came to town 9/18, spent the night, left for Italy the next morning.  
2. Mom and two brothers came to town, spent several nights with us helping us paint our downstairs
3. My grandfather passed away on Thursday, 9/22
4. The rest of my family came to town for the funeral, which was held 9/26
5. The next day, 9/27, I started spotting. 
6. 9/28, had an ultrasound that showed Samuel's loss was due to a blighted ovum
7. 10/3, two clients had their babies, I attended both births.  The highlights of my week!
8. 10/4, in-laws came back to town, Ryan told them the news and I updated this blog

I'm not trying to feel sorry for myself and am not posting to fish for sympathy.  I am allowing myself time to heal and grieve, but I just have to put this all together and make sense of it.  This was a very difficult two weeks, but I have to say it could have been so much worse.   It sounds awful but I just kept waiting for something else to go wrong, and I'm so very thankful it didn't.  I am so thankful that I have my faith to rely on; God has gifted me with unwavering faith and for that I'm so very grateful because I'm not quite sure how I could have done this if I were having a crisis of faith.  I'm emotionally beat up, and even though I've seen my husband and children every day I feel like I haven't been truly present for them lately.  I miss them.  I miss feeling like myself but I know once my hormones settle down I'll feel normal again.  Well, I'll feel normal, but I'll never be the same.

A Time of Loss

I'll just start at the beginning, because otherwise it won't make any sense.

My mom came to visit last Monday.  My two youngest brothers are homeschooled now, so my mom decided to bring them in for a quick visit since they never made it in before summer ended.  My grandparents live very nearby, so their plan was to spend a couple of nights with us and a couple of nights with my grandmother.  My grandfather lived with a caretaker due to his Alzheimer's. 

My mom and grandmother went to visit my Pops on Wednesday morning, and on Thursday morning my mom got a call that he had passed.  There was no way of knowing that Thursday morning would be the day, there's no way to explain why my mom just happened to come to town to visit and just happened to visit him the day before.  It was just one of those "coincidences" that can only be explained by God's intervention.

Discipline

It's time for another "serious" post about my life, my deep thoughts and my ponderings.  You were waiting for one, weren't you?  It was inevitable after a series of short picture-only posts. ;-)

Day-to-day life for this mother of three is nothing short of chaos.  I do take some comfort in knowing that I am not the only mother who lives with such chaos, but on the other hand this chaos that has become my life isn't what I want for me or my family.  We each have our own paths to holiness, and this is mine.  I accept.

This year I hope to embrace my vocation more fully.  The mothers I look up to all seem to have lives similar to mine- young kids who like to scream and yell, dirty sinks, piles of laundry, husbands who work all day- but they also seem to radiate holiness.  (I know it's funny because some of y'all will be reading this and wondering if you are one of those moms!)  They seem to possess a true joy and satisfaction despite the chaos, and it makes me want that.  I have felt that joy before, when my life was less complicated.  I have been in the state of joy where everything I did and said was the work of the Holy Spirit, so I know what it's like!  And I miss it!

I know it's not out of my reach, I know that true joy is only in JESUS and am ready to give him what he needs to work in my life.  Well... Maybe. It's going to be hard to give him things I am so comfortable with... saying "no" when I should say yes.  Choosing to surf the internet instead of take care of my home.  Taking the easy route instead of the better route.  But my children and husband are worth these changes.  My soul is worth these changes.

So a word I've brought up before on my blog (some past Lent...) is discipline.  What a dirty word for me!  But yeah, I need some...

I hope to follow Elizabeth Foss and Danielle Bean's Small Steps for Catholic Moms book, a page a day.  One small step at a time.

I am also most likely going to start an online book club for A Mother's Rule of Life.  I'm mostly finished reading this book and have a lot of great notes to type of for anyone else to read, use, and follow along with. It's a Catholic book, but I think it would be great for any Christian mom, especially homeschoolers!  If you want to be a part of this book club, I will be forming a private blog, so send me an email and I'll invite you to join.

I also want to incorporate more music into my day.  Christian music inspires me so much, I feel like having it playing in the background will help me keep a focused, level head on a more regular basis.  My kids also seem to do really well with background noise, so maybe this will help their behavior?  We'll see.  I do usually tear up when Beth starts singing along though, so maybe I'll spend more time crying, I might have to rethink this in a couple of weeks!

I'll check in here every couple of weeks with a special update on how things are going.  Accountability is a good thing for me!  I'm interested to hear if any one of my readers feels called to change any specific aspect of their lives this year, or has any encouragement to offer to me.  I know I have a lot of readers, I've seen my page stats, so it's time to come out of the woodwork and talk to me!

Lenten Reflections

Lent has started and each year I am so grateful that I'm given the opportunity to "go into the desert" with Jesus and walk this journey with him.

As a mother and wife, I really feel like I walk through the desert every day. Every single day the devil tempts me: he offers me luxuries I know I don't need, he tells me to tempt God by relying on myself, and he pressures me to worship him through temptations of the world instead of following God. Daily temptations... Laziness, vanity, jealousy, greed, pride... My list goes on and on, but you don't need to know everything I bring to the confessional!

I know that the idea of "giving something up" for Lent is something everyone has heard of, but I truly believe it's something very few people understand. I just read on another blog that, "Fasting without prayer is just dieting," and I think that a lot of Catholics forget to pray during Lent, or to offer their sacrifices as redemptive suffering. It's pretty easy to not eat meat on Friday but to visit a seafood restaurant instead, but where's the sacrifice in that? This year, I'm not focusing on "giving up" one or two particular things, but instead offering my sacrifices and joys throughout the day, and on making sure that God really comes first. Prayer will come first, even if it means trying to pray through our noisy breakfasts! I have other resolutions as well, but I don't plan on sharing them- they're between me and God. :-)

I think part of the reason I tend to think outside the box a little on this is because for the past four years, I have not been obliged to fast since I've been pregnant and/or nursing. Instead, I've come up with alternative ways to offer sacrifices, because not eating is certainly not a good thing for expectant mothers!

Instead of seeing my days as trips through the desert, I'd prefer to call to mind the image of the tree in Jeremiah 17- the tree who has deep roots planted next to the river. (This reading has come to me several ways in the past week.) It says that even though heat comes, the leaves will stay green. I know that I walk through the desert daily, but as long as my roots are planted next to Christ's stream, my leaves will stay green too!

I know my thoughts are scattered, possibly because I'm blogging in front of a Rockets game (not that I'm paying any attention!). I might decide to blog some more about it when I get my thoughts together a little more...

The thorn

Here is my effort to recreate my previous post that I lost; wish me luck!

The other day when I took Luke to the doctor, I had an appointment for Beth also. Beth had two things going on with her, the first being a bump on the back of her left thigh that I noticed sometime last October. The bump was big and purple, but there was nothing else to be seen. Last week I noticed something was starting to poke through, and she soon started complaining that it hurt her. We had Dr. F. check it out and he wound up pulling out a thorn! As it turns out, she apparently was injured after that fall into the rose bush when we went to Austin last year to evacuate after the hurricane!

All the metaphors that this little thorn in her thigh could symbolize... I could go on for a long time...

But, I will continue with the second reason we went to the pediatrician for Beth. She had several "accidents" in her car seat, so frequently and so out-of-place that we believed they weren't accidents after all. (Since Beth potty trained in January, she has had no accidents in the car.) Just to be cautious, I asked the doctor to check for a UTI; it came back negative. So Dr. F. and I spent some time talking about her actions- why she was choosing to act out in this way, what sort of attention was she getting, how I should handle the situation. I was already handling it pretty well, but he told me I should just 100% ignore it, not even correct her slightly (I was telling her that, "Tinkle only goes in potties!" and hiding my anger until after she was in the other room.) Her car seat is not easy to take apart to clean five days in a row!!!

The ordeal made me wonder- if she's begging for attention- why? How am I not meeting her needs? What am I doing that has made her feel like she has to cry out for attention in this way?

It made me feel inadequate. Like I don't have enough time in the day for her, that I'm not giving her the attention she needs. Or is it just attention she wants- and that I'm doing a just fine job? There's no way to tell (though I'm sure most of you would argue I'm a good mom). Sometimes I catch myself devoting too much attention to things other than her, the internet especially!

Nevertheless, it's been sort of a wakeup call for me. It's good to occasionally have reminders of our priorities, and this was a well-needed reminder that my kids need to come first! Where before I have caught myself giving Beth minimal attention to make her happy so that I can move on to my next chore, I now linger a little. I give her deep, heartfelt hugs, even when she doesn't ask for it. I give her lots and lots of eye contact, and try my hardest to stop what I'm doing to give her my undivided attention- even if she just needs to show me that she swaddled her baby for the 10th time that day. These are things I've done in the past (I've always made an effort to fill her "love tank"), but sometimes good habits slip out of habit.

And you know where this is going...Yup. Resetting priorities? Good habits? Since last fall, I've distanced myself with the Catholic lay movement that I've been involved in since I was a teenager. Since then, my prayer life has struggled! This lay movement offered me a very structured prayer life, and being the type of person I am, I need struture! So I get into good habits, then fall out very easily- I guess so much so that you could say they were never really "habit" to begin with! I've simply started begging our Lord to call me to Him, to give me the grace to never want to go a minute without thinking of Him. It's working, quite well actually. I've posted a few extra bible quotes around my house (Proverbs 31 especially!) and been more faithful about incorportaing structured prayer into my day. Actually this past week, I brought Luke and Beth to daily mass for the first time since before having Luke! WOW what a blessing- what a grace!- to be able to actually participate! Beth and Luke behaved wonderfully!

So in my effort to set priorities straight again, I plan to make a few resolutions regarding my prayer life. I like to set goals and write stuff down, so this will help me!

I think the message that I'm drawing from all of this is to be prepared. Is to not let things get so out of control that pee in the car seat has to remind you to pray.

Wrapping it all up and tying it all together... The thorn? The urine? Priorities? I can't seem to come to the same conclusion I did when I previously wrote this all down, but it was a good one. Feel free to offer me your thoughts, ha! Right now I'm going to go have a glass of wine and make a list. :-)

9 months old and some random thoughts

coming tomorrow!

edited: You will not BELIEVE what happened. I had a LONG, beautiful post saved that I was going to add here, detailing Luke, the past 9 months, Beth, my motherhood thoughts and I even tied some religion all in there... GONE. How annoying. Deep breath...

I will have to work on this later. What a bummer. In short, here's the numbers:

Luke is 18 lbs even, which puts him in the 10-25th percent for weight, and he's 28 inches long, which puts him in the 25th percent. We visited Dr. F. yesterday for his well-baby checkup, and he has no worries about Luke! Still no teeth, not even any signs of teeth. He is still occasionally pulling up, but he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to get mobile (I guess I'm okay with that!). When Ryan gets home, Luke practically jumps out of my arms to get to Ryan, it must be quite a warm welcome for Daddy with Luke doing that and Beth running to the door yelling, "My daddy! My daddy!" Luke is all smiles all the time now, and his big sister constantly makes him laugh. It cracks me up to see them together, I was waiting for these moments!

All of my other deep thoughts will have to come later... If I can remember them...