Advent Day 1 Begin Clearing the Stable

In the exact spirit of Christmas, not Advent, I made a list.   I'm now checking it twice.   But I now write for DeTours (school newsletter to alumni), the Catholic Standard (freelance), the Catholic Digest (freelance), Catholicmom.com, some of my stuff is being posted and run at Eat Sleep Write,. I also moderate a writing page, and am currently editing a book, working on a book and blogging.

Then there's the non writing life.  Raising ten kids, managing the needs afar and near, ranging from 21 to 3 about to turn 4 takes time.  The house, well, there are a lot of piles that need at least a day's attention to become something other than a pile I put somewhere else. And I need need need more than anything, to be present to my family, to be a person in Advent, a person who prepares and is watchful.

But you can't prepare if you're overwhelmed.

Something's got to give.

So what am I doing?

I will still write, but this blog will be a place where I post links to pieces that are published.

You can't double post in the writing world, it's a big No-No.  Apparently Google punishes your site if you do. So I will do as others before me have done, and post lead ins here to links where the work gets published.

I'm sad that all my old stuff is now considered published, and thus unusable elsewhere.   Seven years of stuff that can't even be recycled on the internet unless I take the whole thing down, and that would involve saving the entire blog to files and combing through them.  Not really interested in that level of a project on top of everything else.  I have to let go of it.  It's not an easy thing to surrender.

It's a good step, one that's been coming for a while, but which I'd put off because I thought I could do all the things. (It's what I always think).    But today, I was reminded, no matter how hard I work, I'm not in control.  I can't always do it.  I started thinking about all that needs to be done, and I felt overwhelmed.  Until I went up for the Eucharist, and it was God's way of saying, "Don't worry Sherry, I've got this.  Just be willing to give up a bit of your handle on this, and I'll flood in the difference beyond what you could hope."   I'm not supposed to do all of it.  I'm supposed to facilitate all of it that I've been given.

So the blog is the first step in clearing out the cluttered nature of my stable.  

This week I go to the Marian exhibit in DC and get to do an article for the Catholic Digest on Portraits of Mary over the centuries.  I'm really looking forward to Wednesday.  I'll be thinking of my mom as I look at portraits of Mary, as I know she'd love this even before I walk into the place.  

I also have to write the newsletter to take that off my plate.  They are the baby steps I need to take to start in earnest removing the piles away, to empty my soul of all the clutter that keeps it from being a open place for Christ.  Happy Advent.