Over at Catholicmom.com Today

I have a piece discussing inviting a Saint to walk with you in the coming year.  This past year, I helped contribute to the Catholic Mom Prayer Companion, a collection of 365 short reflections designed to give the reader a moment to catch her breath and pray.   Because the book is entitled, the Catholic Mom Prayer Companion, I thought it a great idea to have a companion for engaging in the year of prayer.  Hence, I suggested turning to Jen Fulwiller's Saint Generator. 

If you'd like to read the story over at Catholicmom.com, Walk with a Saint, it will explain what a Saint Generator is, and why you might want to give it a try.  It's fun.

As 2016 is winding down, I thought back and realized, I did make some of my goals this year.

1) I lost seven pounds.  I probably gained two back from the past two days of food, but it's still progress.   I also ran in two 5K's.

2) I read 12 books.  (One a month).  Working to make it two a month in the coming year.

3) Wrote 32 pieces that got published somewhere for pay. (A new high).  

4) Got a job.

Have a great time preparing for the new year, I'm going to make my annual overly ambitious list of things I want to do.

What are my goals for 2017?

1) Lose 10 more pounds.

2) Read 24 books.

3) Write 52 pieces that get published for pay.

4) Grow at my job.

5)  Learn a piece of music a month.  (It's to stretch me). 

6) Reconnect more with family and friends.

7)  Redevelop my prayer life.  (The Saint I got through the Saint Generator is planning to help me).

Have a great last day of 2016!

Small Success Thursday

If you're wondering where that feature of this blog went to the past three weeks, it wasn't that it got eaten by the holidays.  Small Success Thursday is supposed to be a means for people to interact and encourage one another in addition to being a moment of reflection on all the blessings of the past week.  However, we never got the participation in the link-ups we hoped.  People don't have always have the time to write a post about their comings and goings and spiritual victories.  So, to faciliate people being able to contribute to Small Success Thursday, we moved it to Catholicmom.com's Facebook page. 

While I know how to link a blog to Facebook, the reverse is more tricky.  So I've attached a link to Catholicmom.com's page, and you'll have to scroll down to read the rest of it.   If you're not a member of Facebook, I don't know that you can comment, but you read this blog so you can post comments here if you wish.  It now has a handy dandy hashtag too.  #smallsuccess.   If you use twitter, you can post your stuff there too.   (I am not a twitter officinado). I have one.  I just don't quite get it.  

Here's a sampling of the past two weeks if you missed Small Success Thursday...the posts are related so you might enjoy the sequence of events. I did.  

 
Week 1.  Small Success Thursday "Do not be afraid to take Mary into your home," was the translation I heard in the back row where we sat for this past Sunday's Mass. We have a prayer table. We have three nativity sets set up, and a framed picture of the blessed mother in my kitchen. How could I be afraid to take Mary into my home?

This week.

Small Success: She Means it.

Last week, I wrote about rediscovering the need to pray the rosary, and my attempt to put that devotion to Mary back into my life. Christmas happened and we got sick with the stomach flu and my good intentions which started so promisingly last week lay languishing. However, as I recovered and returned to normal life, I began to consider how I'd wasted an opportunity to pray. Prayers when we are ill, are a sacrifice, because when you are sick, ...

One of Those...

We've all had them, and as a society, we refused to speak of them.  Hence, there are no television specials or songs which remind us of the gory details of those Christmases.

I speak of the years when everybody gets sick.

We've eaten dinner, opened presents, phoned the parents and maybe dug into some of the pile of sweets left in the stockings when somebody says, "My stomach hurts."  Everyone pauses.  We all know what this could mean, but we all lie.  "It's probably because you ate too much."  "Or been up since four."  "And we stayed up late last night, don't forget that."  There are reassurances all around.  It's nothing.  Absolutely nothing.   Until the child in question throws up.  

After the scramble to clean up the mess and scrub down the bathroom, everyone knows, it's a matter of time and still, we repeat the fib for it's ever failing comfort.   "That was exciting." "Hope that doesn't happen again."  The next soul whose stomach doesn't feel great, doesn't feel they should mention it, and suggests everyone should shower up and get to bed.  

By two in the morning, three more people are down.  Everyone left knows the drill. Scrub your hands, wipe down everything and don't eat.  Whatever you do, DON'T EAT.    Alas, we've already eaten.   Doom approaches.  

In the dawn's early light, the body count now stands at seven, leaving one parent, one college student and three of the four youngest.  Even worse, Mom is down.  The victims park themselves with pots and blankets in the middle room, occasionally moaning or begging for ginger ale.  The surviving members of the family wipe everything down with clorox and try to hold off one bathroom for the well people.    The teen volunteers to go to the store ostensibly for cleaning supplies, saltines and ginger ale.   We all know, it's to get away.

The phone rings thirty minutes later, the teen needs a rescue.  In the meantime, two more of the littles have diarrhea.   Aparently, the bug begins with throw up and ends with...well, dehydration and weight loss.  The parent leaves the surviving eleven year old with the phone to hold vigil over her moaning older and younger siblings  and semi-conscious mother, and drives to the grocery store to provide rescue to the trapped sick teen.

Mom begins to show signs of life. She's been spotted helping with the youngest who just threw up. However the effort costs her, and she naps for the rest of the evening.   On the bright side, the day after Christmas, the house has never gleamed so clean.

My mom calls to see how things are going.  My husband manages a "Fine" before handing the phone to one of the teens and going to lie down.   Everyone who visits continues in the same vein, lying that Christmas was great, everyone is having a wonderful time, until we get to the five year old, who hasn't learned what we don't discuss.  

Grandmother had planned to come for New Years.   I think she's flying to Florida instead.