Always Another Page

Writers, like teachers and parents, are fundamental optimists.  We begin with the unknown, the story we can't quite see but know is in our brains, or the unknown student, or the child in the womb.  Each day, we pour everything out like the ocean, and hope some of what we present, sinks in.  The cumulative effect of writing, of teaching, of parenting, is the outcome of all we give and all the reader, the student, or the child brings to the process.  In all three cases, it is also a journey and an act of faith, to every day begin again, even if what you wrote yesterday stunk, the classroom didn't sing, and your mom skills yesterday didn't quite measure up. Begin again. Begin again. Begin again.

That's the advantage in each of these vocations, they're as much about love as they are about knowledge and practice.  They're callings which demand one do even when not inspired, and one do and do and do again, regardless of outcome.  They are professions which care deeply about both the process and the product as it were, but can't be reduced to process and product.  You can't be a writer, if it is only about success, or only about generating word count. The words have to be about something and pointing toward something bigger than the mountain of cyber space they take up.  The story has to matter, has to move.  It is about relationship.  The story reflects both the author, and the reader's response, and is a thing itself.

Likewise, you can't be a teacher if all that matters is test scores or lesson plans, you have to work at those things, but teaching is about relationship, both to the students as individuals, and as a class, and to the topic.  It is a triangle.  Student-Teacher-Topic.  How do I reach them today?  How do I reach them tomorrow?  And also, what did I learn about them today?  What did I learn about myself in the process?  What will we learn tomorrow?  It is an ongoing snowball process, which should always build upon itself.

Parenting begins as a reflection of the Trinity, Mom, Dad, child, or if you go one step back, Husband, Wife, God.  It is always about trying to reveal to the other (in this case, the child) who God is by what we do.  To the extent we get in the way, we mess up.  However all of these processes are something which must begin again each day, and which build upon whatever came before, regardless of how well or poorly executed.

Writers Block, like teacher burn out, and distracted parenting, is when the person cannot get out of the way of either the process or the outcome.  Rededicating, rechristening one's self to the process, and not demanding that feelings or inspiration, supersede the act of doing, of being present; of working at writing rather than worrying about what to write, of teaching, or of parenting.

The solution is always self surrender, begin again and to try not to get bogged down in minutia or overwhelmed by the longevity of the task itself.  These are infinite professions.  There are ends to stories, to school years and stages of parenting, but the act of writing, art of teaching, and role as a parent, goes on infinitely.  Even silent, we will be telling stories.  Even without a classroom, we will be teaching the world, and we cannot cease to be parents, only better or worse ones.

In each of these vocations, the act itself often brings us to places we'd never reach on our own.  The journey on the blank page, into the classroom, or within our own home, is often a joyous surprise.  And when it is not,  the good news in all three roles is, there is always another page.  We can always begin again.  There are always more stories to tell. There are always new things to learn, new things to share, new ways to reveal knowledge and to invoke wonder.  Each day, we can begin again and love better, love more deeply, and get more out of the way.

Slow Down

It is the most common error I make as a mom; I can partially attribute it to being the first child, and to being a mom over and over again, but it ultimately comes from my own fault.   I forget to ask for help.   I forget in my quest to GET IT ALL DONE, that GETTING IT ALL DONE is not the goal of life.   It's also not the point of being a mother.

That "GETTING IT ALL DONE" is just an alternative version of "HAVING IT ALL" and both are the world's song.  The former is how a stay at home mom creates worth for being home, the later is how the at work mom, justifies not being home.  Both songs involve having the woman value herself according to what she can do, not who she is, and both require that the woman be something other than mother, something other than present.  Both songs require the woman be BUSY.

I fall into the siren trap of both tunes all the time.  I know because today, I heard my Catholic blogger friend, Sarah Reinhard talking on WMET 1160 about her new book, Word by Word, Slowing Down with the Hail Mary.  I was running late.  Mass started at ten.  One daughter was home sick.  Another was cantering at the mass.  I dragged my toddler and the sick one to the car.  The trip normally takes seventeen minutes (twenty-one if there's a train).   I had 18 minutes to make it.   The light at the mid county high way was abnormally clogged.  Two service trucks with flashing arrows eliminated the two lanes I would normally be in, so I moved over.  The light took forever.  The line didn't move.  I looked.

Two men from the work crew were shaking hands and hugging the passenger and driver of a truck and talking through the green light.  Sarah was talking about the need to slow down and how we have this tendency to speed through things, even prayer.   I sat bemused at the men stopping traffic and all of time, to hug.   But then I had to switch lanes again and now, I was stuck for another round of lights and in the wrong lane.   My good humor evaporated in an instant.

I had ten minutes to make it to mass, and I'd been stuck at this stupid light for over seven minutes.   To calm myself down, I refocused on Sarah's voice.  She spoke of the process, of asking forty writers to each take a word from the Hail Mary, and use it as the source for a meditation on the whole of the prayer, and I thought, the idea of asking others for help, was something I needed to learn.  In writing, asking others to contribute was a means to flesh out the deeper meaning of the prayer.  So also, if I could learn to ask for help, I could help flesh out the deeper meaning of motherhood, of living this life, and not "HAVING or GETTING IT ALL" but having all be part of the process of living.

Sarah talked about "Slowing down" in the prayer, and in life.   I had eight minutes and another red light.

Slow down...slow down.  How would it be possible to slow down?  I sat at the red light, trapped behind a bus, convicted.  I was fighting the best advice I'd ever get.   Why?  Because I'd have to surrender something.  I'd have to abandon getting it all done and having it all, if I wanted something better.  But  I'd been pushing this damn boulder of life, whether as a parent, or as a writer, and thinking, what would happen if I slowed down?  Less progress that's what!   I didn't want to slow down.  Five minutes left.   I made the turn onto the side street to try to navigate back to the church.  The bus stopped and pedestrians got out.   "I JUST WANT TO GET TO MASS ON TIME!" I growled in frustration.   The bus pulled away.

"Slow down."  I'd heard Sarah say.  I felt convicted.  The men shaking hands had slowed down. If they'd been efficient, there would have been no hi, no hugs, no smiles, no laughs.  That would have been a darker moment of life, just work, no solace, no joy, no friends.    I slowed down.  Because I slowed down, I saw on the side of the road, a woman dressed in black.  She wasn't paying attention to the drivers.  She was stalking two deer in the underbrush, trying to snatch a picture.  I slowed down more so as to not spook the deer.   She too, was stopping time, stalking beauty instead of caution or efficiency.  There are countless pictures of deer on the internet, but this one, would be hers.   I look at the clock.  It is ten o'clock. At best, we will be five minutes late but I've finally been pulled into the proper spirit to even show up at mass.

We pulled into the parking lot, and there were the children, lining up to go to the Church.  We hadn't missed it.  It hasn't started.  Mercy for me and a message, over and over again.  Slow down.   That is the purpose of Advent, the purpose of prayer, the purpose of living.  Not to have done everything or get everything or have everything, but to be present.  I held my daughters and sang, "Ave, Ave, Ave Maria..." but my heart was shouting, "Thank you, thank you, thank you Blessed Mother."

Small Success Thursday

It's Thursday so come join me over at Catholicmom.com!

Here's the start...

Why do we do this each week? What does all this recounting of rosaries and bedtimes, cleaned closets and date nights add up to? It adds up to witnessing. One of the big problems with Catholicism lived is it does not make the news. A woman feeding their children, caring for their home, romancing their husband, this is what we hope should be the norm. It does not impress to do these things because it should be the baseline. To do what is holy is to become it, and as St. Teresa of Avila said, “God is in the pots and pans.” He must want to spend a lot of time with me, because there are always dishes.

 However, given the nature of our nature (fallen), what we aspire to do as ordinary, is in fact, extraordinary. It is holy.

There's more, so go and read and participate, even if it's just in the comment section.  :)

Lawn Chair Catechism This Week

I have really loved doing this Lawn Chair Catechism, it's like the midweek jolt to my soul. "Wake up stupid! You're supposed to be doing something!!! Do you even know what that is you are supposed to be doing?"  I need a GPS with the step by step directions out of the driveway for my soul, every day.  Even though I've been trying to drive this route every day.  

Resurrection, Ascension, New Life, Adoption, and the Kingdom:  The Cross is not the end of the story.  Seekers can investigate the historical evidence for the reality of the resurrection.  Satisfied with that evidence, they can move on to asking, “What does this mean for me?”

In special education, there is a diagnosis called "learning disabilities" which is a general term for wherever along the process of seeing/hearing (visual disorder) interpreting (processing disorder/language issue) analyzing (associative disorder) responding (writing/speaking), the information gets stuck.  I think the soul gets stuck in the process along the way as well. 

Many of us hold the seed in our hearts, we have heard the resurrection story and we believe it.  We see/hear correctly.  But we might think it either impossible to get there (despair) or spend our lives wringing our hands over everything in a false attempt at perfection (also despair) making ourselves miserable and thinking this is what God wants. (form of gnosticism and scrupulosity mixed together, toxic spiritual cocktail).  It is why we need the gift of knowledge that Jesus ascended to prepare a place for us. He is anticipating us coming to him as his friends, as his guests, as his family.   He is preparing a room, it has already been set aside, we have to will to get there.  Predetermination is not in play here.  It is an invitation. He has invited us.  How we live determines our RSVP. 

To take on new life is to revision everything we do.  But we forget.  We forget often. I know I do.  So we need the reminders of the sacraments and scripture, of daily prayer and corporeal acts of mercy and the lives of the saints, sacramentals, all of it, to pound through to our heads and hearts, you're invited. Come to the table. Come to my heart.  Come.   

But we might still think, He can't mean me.  And if He does mean me?  What does that mean?

It means we've been adopted.  That's radical, we've been grafted into His family. At any celebration we want every guest to come. We want everyone at every reunion, even the crazy uncle who smokes and has tattoos. (I had one of those, he gave us quarters and told scary stories, he smelled of tobacco and was both fascinating and frightening at the same. He suffered from schizophrenia).  We need to recognize, for all our preening, we aren't that different from the crazy uncle.  We're still invited with all our faults, all our failings, all our sins.  

And that means, being the Kingdom here, not waiting until death.  Starting today.  If I smoked, it would be time for a cigarette to steady the nerves.  

The seeker thus comes to a final set of thresholds: Jesus asks me to follow him.  He forgives my sins.  I’m ready to drop the net and become a disciple.

For discussion:

In your own faith:

• Are you practiced in sharing the Gospel story? Have you ever heard it told especially well.  

Yes.  I've watched it lived out in the story of my parents, in their friends and in their care for their family, both immediate, extended and adopted.  They took in cousins. They took in crazy uncles. They took on other missions along the way.  It was never about them.  Even now, my mother goes every day to the home where my father receives 24-7 care. She brushes his teeth. She sits with him at meals. She brings him the Eucharist.  

My father for many years of my life, took me to church, made me say the rosary rather than talk or fight with my brothers, read to me from books I could not understand, like giving a novice a taste of fine wine.  I could not understand the highlights or the special nature of the drink, I drank anyway.   Now, he does not do these things, but I have seen him and he still lights up to receive. He holds in the deeper parts of his memory and fights through the Alzheimer's for bits of the rosary and to take communion.  His face lights up when he sees Mom, it is a form of "Hello." It is silent, but it is real.  

I know the Gospel story, I know how to splice moments into everyday life. My children are well practiced at rolling their eyes, not because I cite scripture or Christ's teachings, but because usually, when I get it nailed down, they agree, fold the resistance and life resumes. I know in my head always to ask,  "Is it right? Is it just? Is it kind?" before speaking and acting.  But I struggle with the living it out part. 

• How can you become more skilled at explaining and answering questions about the Gospel?  Prayer, reading, and practice.  Plus asking God to place me, to push me, to show me where he wants me to work, and then give me the will to do what he has placed before me, to not be distracted by all the things that so easily distract me.  My daughter came to me and said, "I'm hungry."  I said, "I'm writing. Let me finish this."  She said, "It's going to take a long time." and another daughter agreed, "It would." But when I tried to stay on task (this task), all hell broke lose. There were deer in the back yard which sent a child running at them, a toilet clogged and there was a fight of pecking order amongst two of the middles over a card game.  Everything seemed to spill over and I admittedly ran back to the comfort and safety and illusory control of the computer.  But the words, "I'm hungry." came back to me where I was sitting, so I got up again, and started to take care of things. 
• I thought I'd finished when a daughter came to me and said, "Mom, when are we going?" I'd forgotten about how yesterday I promised to take two or three of them to the mall for back to school shoe shopping.  Writing would have to be put off again.  The other day a writer asked in a forum, "How do you find time to write and how do you help your family understand?"  
• The reality is they aren't supposed to understand, they come first.  They have priority. It isn't easy. It isn't always fun, and I certainly don't always have the temperament to sublimate my desires to my vocation.  I come grudgingly to plunge the toilets and hound the child to pick up the toys he just tossed off the table, I come irritated to clean the dishes and fold the laundry and run the errands.  Absent grace I come annoyed to climb the stairs and wipe down the counters and do all that the daily life of a family demands.  But with grace, all these actions become better, become what they should be, acts of love.  
• So, the call has been given, and I have to serve.  It's a matter of not objecting to the nature of the service, which is where my ego, my sins, my desires wrestle with my soul and what is right.  Another daughter comes into the room. She is sick. I call the doctor to schedule an appointment.  "When are we going?" "Right now."  That is the answer.  It is always the answer.  

I'll be back after I take two to the mall and the other daughter to the doctor's.  

Strange Gods and Cool Moms

One of the things I decided I needed to do for myself this year was read a book a month.  In May, I read Strange Gods by my Internet friend, the very excellent writer, Elizabeth Scalia.  She addresses our proclivity to create for ourselves Golden Calves to worship in our everyday life.  As I walked through the pages, I saw my earlier self when she got immersed in physical fitness, when it was all volunteer all the time, when I obsessed over gourmet cooking and discovered writers forums. 
Every time, what began as a good, an interest, a passion, a hobby, would eventually become less good, an obsession, a substitute, a routine or want that became a need and thus a chain.  This is not to say that foodie lover impulses or work outs or learning a new trade via reading/interacting with professionals online is a bad thing, only that my natural tendency toward being enthusiastic would allow the right order of things to become disordered.  I'd even done it with prayer!  It is a good but hard read in the same way going to the doctor and stepping on the scale is a good but hard notice, time to stop eating apple bread and go for a walk.

In June, I read my friend Tracy Beckerman's Lost in Suburbia and while she tackles coming to terms with motherhood through humor, she and Elizabeth are talking about the very same thing, our innate desire both to be consumed by whatever role we've chosen/been given  and to be noticed as singularly unique and special, beyond the role we've chosen/been given.  I laughed out loud several times at the pool and in the car before I finished, seeing my own self in the unwieldy battle between  trying to be mom and still more than mom and becoming increasingly crazy whenever one's own identity gets lost and  the mom role of one's life takes over entirely. I have known that strong need to stand apart and separate from everyone else, which when given, makes me wish to blend and be one in a million.   Ultimately, her search for the cool person within (read happy with herself and who she is and where she is and why she is in life), mirrored my multiple idol creating quest and the deep frustration and unhappiness that came with being ill at ease with wherever it is that I was before coming to terms with my own self.

 Being a mom of many, I've often felt subdivided and like I'm never doing what I should be. Ironically, it's meant I've cast about rather than be still, the best example being when my oldest son set me straight. I was expecting our ninth.  I'd volunteered to be the chair of the fall festival and I was writing.  Aloud I mused, "Do you think I should coach Peter's baseball team?"  He pushed himself back from the computer game he'd been playing.  "Are YOU CRAZY?" he asked. 

It struck home. I was trying to somehow do it all, to show I could do it all, but by casting myself apart from my family, rather than being present to it.  I didn't have the words then for what I was doing, creating an idol, in servitude to myself. But what I learned from my friends and family and years of hits and misses is not to beat myself up over the times I become overtaken by enthusiasm, but to just keep starting over. 

So today, I got up early and was writing when three children asked for breakfast. After I'd served them, I returned to the table but the laptop now took up too much space.  Symbolically, it was correct, the laptop should not crowd the family.  It was a gentle reminder, priorities.  Removing the computer, I looked at those still sitting at the table, happy, eating, content.  I looked at my daughter who was still on the couch.  "Want to play some pinball?" I asked. She beamed like a sunflower.  "Cool mom!" she said as we went up stairs.   Yeah.  I am a cool mom too. 

Can't wait to figure out what July's book will teach me.

Understanding God's Love

I saw this video and was overcome by the simple beauty of the policeman holding onto the man afterwards.  Go ahead and watch, I won't spoil it.

Here, there was a soul despairing. Nearby, perhaps anticipating the rash cruel impulse that was tormenting the man, the policeman watched.   I especially love how he continued to hold onto the man afterwards.  God is like that with us when we seek to sin, when we fall into despair, when we find that the world is crushing us.   So God's love is vigilant, muscular, active and holds on long after we think the worst of it is passed.  He holds on until we let go.  

The commissioning of Catholics, at Confirmation, at every mass, is to be like the policeman for all the souls we encounter in whatever situation we find ourselves. 

To me, this video is luminous. 

Love is willing the good of the other first, primary, foremost, always.  The policeman may merely have been doing his job, but he did his job well.  Love simply does and does well, and if love is done properly, it is always treated as baseline.  It is simply, what we are called to do, our job.

How? 

Love is always sacrifice.

So love surrenders the body to be grown out, to be changed forever.

Love surrenders the time, all time, every time. Whether the surrender is at the job for years of sacrifice to pay for the braces, camps, tuition and all the treasures of childhood, or in hours of long tedium making sure there are enough socks or we have the right fruit and the prescription has been ordered,  love gives for eternity.

It does not count costs or tally favors, it is poured out lavishly, like water over everything, and all the love given yesterday does not count towards what must be given today. 

It is willingly given, so it is not a burden even if there are elements (toilet training, adolescence, driver's liscences, college tuition, and all the myriad of issues that come from this messy business of just living), that are burdensome.

Sometimes we forget because the messiness of life with the chaos that only humans can bring upon themselves and each other (see last week for prime examples), about the luminous component of living that only come from loving.  

So today, recognize that all you do, if done out of love of God, in response to God's love, be it homework, writing, housework, paperwork, exercise, carpooling, etc, it is a gift of love, to open the hearts and souls of others, to save them from oncoming trains and to hold onto them afterwards to let them know, it will be okay, it is okay, I've got you.  

Luminous Cross

Yesterday, I was flat. Moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer, from the dryer to the couch to begin the hard slog of folding, I just felt empty. Two weeks of not writing had left me wondering (as I am neurotic this way), could I write, was writing what I should do?  Or was it an exercise in ego that took me away from my main vocation, parenting these ten children? 

So I told God, "I need to know YOUR will.  I know Mary obeyed perfectly, so she got an angel to tell her directly what God's plan was.  I don't merit an angel, but I'm stupid and stubborn so I need a big NEON sign on a Silver Platter, what do you want me to do?"  Then I folded the clothes, dealt with a sulking teen because Wendy's messed up his order and so all he got was fries (mine), convinced a reluctant 10 year old to do math and an 8 year old to read, did the dishes and picked up school supplies for the new high school student who was hyperventilating over 3 ring binders.   When we got back from the Popsicle social (swimming lessons were to follow but got canceled due to thunderstorms), I checked my email. 

There was a Neon sign on a silver platter.  1) The Arch Diocese was considering my application to be a writer for them and 2) Museitup publishing sent me a contract for THE BOOK OF HELEN.  I owe God some serious knee time in thanks and gratitude, 1) because I'm very happy and grateful and 2) because He took my silly demand for a overt message seriously.   I'm glad He humors my impatience. 
But He expects reciprocity from me.  

To celebrate, I got to change two diapers, my teen said, "That's nice. I have homework." and the other said, "Stop calling people and help me pack for school."  So I did.   My younger children wanted to throw a party, so today, we're making a cake and I may get balloons and champagne.  

Back when I was in graduate school, my advisor asked, "How will you keep from being seduced by academia?" as I detailed my dream of running an inner city school for students with special needs that provided real services, cleaning for low income housing, home repair, landscaping and a soup kitchen.   Being a smartalec, I responded, "That's my husband and children's job."  I don't know why I said children, as at the time I had one.  But God understood and essentially said, "Okay, that's your path to holiness."  and graciously gave me this luminous cross.  

So today, I'm celebrating....and getting more school uniforms, a lunch bag to replace the one that's broken, and I have to stop by the doctor's for medical records and have reached critical mass on the dry cleaning...so in the midst of triumph, it will still all be very real.  

Thanks for sharing in my joy! Now I have to get to the real work.

Motherhood is Not a Job

Elizabeth Wurtzel over at The Atlantic wrote a piece explaining how 1% Wives are Helping Kill Feminism and Make the War on Women Possible.   There's a lot wrong even with that title but the buzz line was "Being a mother isn't a real job --and the men who run the world know it." 

The temptation to leap at the low hanging fruit was strong. The snark in me envisioned perfectly coiffured Jimmy Choo wearing women with GOP bumper stickers on their Sleek bulky SUV's flying over the country like unmanned drones, shooting down every green shoot of a feminist that dared show her face.   But Mommy wars consist mostly of my-self-righteousness-trumps-yours-because-my-opinion-of-my-choices-is-as-self-deferential-in-its-certainty-as Elizabeth Wurtzel's. Further, I do not think her piece was intended to delve into motherhood as much as it was a thinly veiled hit piece on Mitt Romney and his wife.

Instead it got me to thinking of the C.S. Lewis quote, "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." and motherhood. "You are a mom. You have a child."  My brain wouldn't let go of the reality that you do not do motherhood, Mom is someone you become.

We may work at a job or not, but the careers we have are accessories to our total selves.  Wurtzel's limited feminist vision of woman reduces her to her paycheck and her politics, and deems what does not validate either to be of no consequence.  But a true feminist would not view any woman's choices and sacrifices and labor to be anything other than an expression of her deeper self.  Women like men, may work and even hold very high profile professional polished important running the world type jobs, but that isn't who they are, it's what they do.

Wurtzel is even correct (in an ironic way, as she meant to put motherhood into its proper compartmentalized place), because motherhood, while work, is not a profession. Motherhood is work, but it is not a job, it is an extension of self towards others to the degree we allow it, and a path to sanctity if we fulfill it. (But that takes obedience, consistency and perpetual greater and deeper sacrifice born of love), which means, as difficult and time consuming and important as "real world" work is, motherhood is harder.

 Adopted/grafted or gestated, anyone can become a parent these days, but it takes staying power and courage and humility (gobs of humility) to love through all the messy sticky stinky frustrating aggravating why did you color on the walls why didn't you study for the test how could you even think about doing that kind of moments that will saturate the rest of your life. You may quit, retire, resign or start over in many jobs and professions, but you will never stop (even if you stink at it), being a Mom. You will simply be a bad one or a good one based on who you are and how much you love.  

Motherhood is a vocation.

It is an external extension of God's love through service granted to those who willingly accept God's gift of children.  When you are dealing with Divine gifts, there is no box big enough to contain them.  As a result, the role given must by necessity, expand beyond the limits of worldly imagination.

There is a huge difference between choosing to do something (my job), and being chosen (by God to be a mother).

 Mom is a name.

It will come to mean to those one is the mother of, whatever you the mom, pour into it.  Whether that word is spoken by our kids with love or frustration or anger or joy will be the sum total of what we poured out plus grace.  For the children that call us Mom, Mom is not what we do, but who we are and how they perceive what we do.

What we do as Mom will be more closely aligned with our being than any profession we embrace.  The difference is, what we do as Mom is akin to what we eat to sustain ourselves.  What we do as professional working individuals, is akin to the outfit we pick out each day.  There is a level of degree and importance and control in both circumstances, but the former is much more intimate, vital and systemic in nature.  

To be a Mom is to be radically loved and if we do it properly, love in an individualized manner. While we can all share those moments that arch across from one parent to another, there are some moments that are uniquely our own.  My first startled reaction to the really realness of being a mom came with a 1993 ultrasound. We take them for granted now a days, but this was breaking technology and I can still see my son, opening his eyes.  I was seeing his eyes looking out, and that moment blew me away.  It was the beginning.  My children love me as they will love no other person. They will love other people, and they will even hopefully find people they love as deeply as I love their father, but they will only love me as mom, because I am the only one they call mom.
I would write more, but one of my sons just came downstairs and said, "Hi Mom. What are we going to do today?" and when I asked him what he'd like to do, he said "Go to Butler's Orchard and pick berries and play Farkle and read books. What do you want to do today Mom? Can I have breakfast?" 

So it's time for me (heh), to go to work and be Mom.

The Vocation of Mother and Wife

This weekend, I had the chance to snatch a bit of a mini-retreat being held at my church.  It featured a pastor from another parish who had once been an associate pastor at ours.  He'd been a good friend and was much beloved. I remembered his zeal for the sacrament of confession and his absolutely resonating homilies and wondered if my memory had gilded over time.  It didn't matter.  I also knew I needed the break, needed the silence of listening, of being that came from going to the church without anyone and being there.

Standing in the church hoping to  steal the sacrament of reconciliation to top it off, there were people gathered for a wedding.  I stopped to admire the deliberate beauty, the details that included everything, even the men with their silk embroidered shirts.  There was a luminous quality to all these details and in the guests faces, waiting for the mass to begin.  Here, we cannot multi-task. Here, we cannot email or check websites or be distracted beyond the temptations of our own minds to run down rabbit holes.  We need this still place.  I stood in that stillness, knowing that I needed it and yet was restless.  I opted to let my sins stand as the line was still six deep with the organist warming up and headed back down to try and sit for the lecture.

Alas, I do not sit well. It is not in my nature to be still.  We'd barely made it through the opening prayer when I was fidgity.  I thought I'd take notes so I scrounged for paper in my purse.  There wasn't any.  So I went to the table for notices like 40 days for life and took a sheet.  While there, I noticed a woman wrestling with four.  This was familiar territory.  I went to help.  We wound up taking her smaller ones to the playground. We exchanged names, we shared stories and I felt better, that I needed to hear this woman and see what others see when they see me, and watching her, I could see how good it was, how much of a witness she was holding her daughter and caring for the other three in tow.  I felt blessed to meet her. 

Returning to the hall and the talk finally, I caught the tail end and I don't know what was said before, but he saved the best for the finale.  He spoke of priests living out their vocation, of saying each mass as if it were the first, their last, and the only.  And I thought, substitute being wife or mother and you have the prescription for how we are to pour out our lives.  We are to live each day as if it is the first day we are blessed to be his wife, each day as if it is the last day we will have that blessing, and to hold that title as only.   Likewise, we are to be mother to our children, to each as if it were that first day when we first inhaled the divine smell of them, as if it were the last day we'd be so blessed to hold them, and as the only, for each of them, as if they are the only.  

The mind reeled with the idea of seeking to treat each day as a birthday, a honeymoon, a sacrament, a mass, a feast.   It made it hard to fathom how life could be other than luminous even with all the scourges of minutia that awaited me. It was hard to wait, being so impatient to come back home, to fix lunch, to change diapers, to fold laundry, if only as part of pouring out whatever it was I'd kept in reserve.  If we do this, if we pour it all out, the best will be served later in the feast. 

This world does not understand motherhood or fatherhood or wifeliness or husbandness.  It views the first two as chains against freedom, the later two as utterly unnecessary.  The world views the product of such unions, a pure burden.   The world does not understand treating people with such permanent lavish love, or loving beyond what is easy.  The world talks of making time for "me" or balancing life.  We aren't called to be balanced, the world on one side and our faith/God on the other with us at the fulcrum.   The two aren't equally weighted.  It is us that weigh each according to our own heart's scale.  What we measure, we limit in value.  This is how much I will love, no more. 

We are not called to a limited life.  We have a limited life.  We are called to unlimited love.  We are called to love with abandon, forever, today, the people we have been given.

It's hard in even beginning to grasp that concept, not to imagine how wonderful today and all the todays to come will be, but now I can't wait!

Embracing an Advanced Degree in Motherhood

Back when I first started staying home as a mom, I had great ambitions and most of them, amounted to silliness and ego.  I was going to read a book once a week, learn a foreign language by having the tapes on in the background while I cooked; and the food would be eventually, gourmet.  I dutifully watched Great Chefs of New Orleans and the Frugal Gourmet (They were my equivalent of the Food Network at the time) and took notes.

I nearly spent us into oblivion in my first four months of being at home because I bought exotic ingredients and used my cooking obsession to fill the void; all the time feeling terribly guilty that I wasn't doing enough with my son such that at one point, I sat reading aloud the cookbook to him in a sing song voice because he was up.  I didn't know how to be and enjoy motherhood yet.

I simply had all the impossible standards and invisible voices of years of being taught that I needed to be more than by the magazines and popular culture.  My mom had never demanded perfection, and she had loved us well; it was me getting stuck in the amber of pride.  I was just a stay at home mom.

Well that wouldn't do. 

That wouldn't do at all.  So I tried cooking....but that particular kind of crazy caused me to 1) spend money 2) gain weight and 3) make a general mess of the apartment kitchen which was not suited to the abuse I gave it. So, did I stop, reflect and change course?  Well, sort of.  I stopped.  I more changed color than course.  I started exercising at the gym and that became my devotion for the day, plus I started studying for the GRE.  Yes. I was living the dream.  I had it all.  I went to the gym, dropped my son off at the child care room, hopped on the treadmill with my practice book, number two pencils and my walkman playing classical music to drown everything else out, and I would take two tests while I marched. 

The flailing to "drown everything else out" was the same, it was just the focus that had changed.  I'm a stay at home mom....and I'm a graduate student studying blah blah blah.  Fortunately, a job forced us to relocate and while I attempted the madness again and again and again, by the time my daughter came around, even I had to recognize to some dull extent, this wasn't working.  The dream wasn't bad, it was simply misplaced, out of order, not what should be first.  Like Martha with Jesus in her house, I wasn't paying attention to the gifts I'd received, but more focused on an impossible ideal; a perfect Sherry as versus a perfected Sherry. 

I still labored with these annoyingly stupid thoughts.

If I had the Ph.D. I would be smart.
If I had the title, people would respect me.
If I did these things, I would be accomplished.

Earth to Sherry, Heaven to Sherry, this is not what I want from you.  God sent a third child.

And it was nuts. Sitting in the delivery room, hooked up to an iv and monitors, talking on the phone to my team about a paper on teaming based on qualitative research about schools and trying to explain my thoughts in between contractions...it suddenly dawned on my brain...this is a special kind of crazy...and not the good kind.

So with her, I started to surrender.  It was small at first and I had lots of set backs.  I tried being Parish Council, (4th child) (after all, I have this free time because I'm not in school anymore) and Development Director (5-6th) (done with Parish Council and I need to do something) and being a writer. (7th to present)  All three were great, all three were also for other reasons,to serve because I was asked, to organize things because it was part of getting my children into Catholic school, to share stories, to make money, to have a little something for me, there were good, bad, mixed and pure motives in everything, like there always are for all of us.  But the extra always came first up until Paul.  Then I had to wrestle with the now of saying, "I'm a mom of ten." because the operative word should be Mom, not the number.  And that's hard because 1) it's a reality 2) I'm proud of them all, and 3) I'm a bit of a show off.  I'm always looking for an excuse not to do the one thing God asks and has asked in spades. 

But one of my children is starting adulthood, he's preparing for college and that, contrasted with holding an 8 month old daughter, brought back into sharp relief the time span that had transpired.   The old demons that had been fought so often, made an attempt to bite me ...if they can't have me, they'll at least make me sting a bit....

So Sherry, got that degree yet? (No but some day). What about learning that language? (Ha!)  How many books do you read a year (4-7)...but I buy more than I ever read. Learn a new piano piece in the past year (No). Gourmet cooking? nope, love eating it, don't have the precision or the time for it. How's that book coming?  (Slowly).  They've needled me into momentarily looking at the 18 years like time squandered, lost, flung away carelessly on computer, on eating badly, and laundry.  The maw of despair is always there trying to make me under value love, undervalue teeth brushed, baths given, stories read, beds made, meals and errands and the daily feeding, dressing and cleaning of children; like 18 credit hours somehow carry more weight than 18 years of care.

But God orders all things and knew the demons would be there lurking, waiting to bite me today; so the Gospel was Gospel Mt 15:21-28.

At that time, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon.

And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out,
"Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!
My daughter is tormented by a demon."
But Jesus did not say a word in answer to her.
Jesus' disciples came and asked him,
"Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us."
He said in reply,
"I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
But the woman came and did Jesus homage, saying, "Lord, help me."
He said in reply,
"It is not right to take the food of the children
and throw it to the dogs."
She said, "Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps
that fall from the table of their masters."
Then Jesus said to her in reply,
"O woman, great is your faith!
Let it be done for you as you wish."
And the woman's daughter was healed from that hour.

and the Holy Spirit prompted me to click on Fr. Barron's Word on Fire for a precursor understanding while I fixed breakfast for the youngest six.
http://www.wordonfire.org/WOF-Radio/Sermons/Sermon-Archive-for-2011/Sermon-553-Strength-Through-Resistance-20th.aspx

And the 18 years suddenly felt like training for the Olympics or like being forged.  If a sword in the making could know what it was to become, would it welcome the blows? Embracing a vocation requires knowledge and awareness (I know what I am about to do and am prepared to do this), and volition (I will do this even when I'm not feeling it) and obedience (I submit forever).

You live out a vocation not when it is without thought, effort or struggle, but when the fruits are not yours first and your thoughts are not either. I was feeling fairly rapturous about it all and then I realized, I was being forged into being a better mom.   Would I ever get there?

Then, I remembered, I'd received a gift this week.  Words spoken to me at a meeting regarding my son's placement in school this coming year.  We were discussing his verbal skills and I was explaining I didn't think he needed socialization so much as language; that home life had acclimated him to being around others from the get go.  I joked that having always had a baby or toddler in my life for the past 18 years, I was something of an expert on this area of development.  The woman across the table looked at me with a wide smile and said, "You have a Ph.D. in child development from the school of hard knocks."  She did not know I'd sought an advanced degree, she was simply having a bit of fun.  But those words in that moment, felt like I'd crossed the stage and shaken a hand.

And just as Heaven is when we begin to really love as versus the imperfect love we render here, so also the degree was merely a starting point.  A sword, a book, a brain grows dusty if it is not used.  It must be used to be of value.  The training would go on, but even as it did, now was time to get to work.  And the blows of training will still sting, the imperfections still prickle, but at 18 years, with 18 more to go to see the latest to the same point my oldest is now, I was no where near ready, it's just now, I know I'm only less unready.