My Poor Dusty Blog

 I have about fifteen drafts from this week, because this week, like the many weeks before it, despite the absence of outside errands, has been packed.   I figure, it's only fair to give an update.   

1) What am I writing?  Well, I'm writing poems, I'm editing my book. I've thrashed at words but they're repetitive or just don't get where they need to go or they sound too stressed and I don't want to worry my mom.    

2) What am I reading?  Well I'm glad you asked, though you didn't.  We're reading Harry Potter's Order of the Phoenix with my youngest, The Book of Three with Paul --he's into it, and others keep hovering around not really listening you understand, but nearby.  I'm trying to get my next two to listen to A Horse and His Boy.  I'm going to keep trying.  I've also started Our Mutual Friend with my son John...and I'm hoping that one catches more of them too.   

3) Are you Exercising...three times this week I did...then it rained...and I've discovered an inverse theorem...if I dress to exercise, I don't.    

4) Are you praying?   Every day I drop off for school, I drop by the outside adoration chapel near my home for at least five minutes.  So yes.   

5) What else are you doing?  Teaching.  Managing the house...everyone's home now.   I'm also helping to organize a conference for January for writers ---so that counts.   

6) I haven't seen any links lately ...why is that?  Sometimes, you get dry spells.   This is one of them. I'm submitting, sometimes three pieces in a week...but they're getting what I'd call dead cat bounces.  Not to worry, I have a lot more to throw at them.   Visualizing me throwing cats at the editors...it's helpful.  

7) Will you ever be funny again...as a blog?   ---wait, I wasn't?   

Small Success Thursday

Last week, my son turned 21, and I decided, as a gift to my family, I would begin working out again. (Not at a gym mind you), but walking and/or as I call it, wogging --where you jog down hill.  Wogging has resulted in me setting an actual weight goal, which I've already discovered, is going to be a lot of work. 

That being said, every day this week, I've gotten up at 6:30 and gone for a walk/wog.  I've gone from the five pounds past my you shall not pass point, to one pound past my you shall not pass point.  This you shall not pass point is five pounds over what the old you shall not pass point was, so that will be the next goal post.

I've been told my children who run regularly, that 90% of exercise is willing it, willing to do it.  I am lousy with will on this point.  So I started wogging from one mail box to the next, and then to the next...and became irritated, because I'm following the philosophy of Frozen 2, do the next right thing and then the next and then the next with respect to exercise.  The morality isn't wrong, it's just the movie isn't good.

However, it's now day eight, and I've lost four pounds in the first week of committing to this, so I'm reporting it as part of my small success Thursday.  I'm hoping to keep this up, and SST is a good place to state, these are my goals.

These are my goals:  Lose (over the course of a year, 32 pounds).  Get 52 articles published (one a week), finish writing my book, and read a book a week.  These are the ambitions for the year.  They fold into parenting, living, working, learning, and all the ordinary chores that clog up any week --like getting my sons their physicals, getting the car fixed, and registering people for classes and preparing one child for confirmation.  Every week is jammed with lots, and sometimes the lots overwhelms.

Still, I'm blessed beyond blessed during this time of Covid-19, that at the moment, all of us are healthy, and we have each other to play spades and hearts with (trounced them all two nights in a row), to throw water balloons with --there was a full scale war in the back yard today, and to feast with at dinner time.   Hope your week was full of small successes.  If you need me, I'll be out wogging tomorrow.

Years of Sundays

If you write long enough, it becomes harder to scrape out a column, as you feel you've already said everything you wanted to say.  Sure, there are thousands of stories in any given 24 hours, but many of them echo what happened before and thus do not haunt the brain and demand to be written the way they once did when it was the first time one thought of telling such a tale.   However, the desire to carve out something new from the every day persists.  

Today is Sunday. It's September 4th, Saint Mother Teresa has been proclaimed, and we had our traditional bacon and bagels after mass as a family.  We honor Sunday by not demanding too much of anyone if we can avoid it.  Sure, there is homework and laundry, dishes and groceries, but much of the day is marked by a stillness, if not of body, of spirit.  We all come to the table, we say grace, and Paul makes sure everyone is there.  If someone hasn't made it to the table, he will get up and lead them.   It is a ritual, and it is a source of joy, we start a new week.  We call the older children if we can, so that everyone gets a "Hello" and "What's going on this week?" before the grind of the week itself starts.  

Today we will make brisket and watch Notre Dame play Texas.  I will finish up the last of the paper work from the first week of school and try to keep up the mental promise to 1) keep blogging, 2) write a column a week for publication, and continue work on the two book projects I thought I'd have more time for when Fall hit.  

There is never more time than we have in the day we are in, and that's the real key I think, to writing, to exercise, to prayer, to paper work, to all of it.  Making today a good day, requires I not so much not fritter the minutes, but spend the time well.  It is okay to sit and watch a movie with your almost eight year old son because he loves it, it's also okay to doze during half of it because you have seen it so often, but still get the high five when it ends for being there.   We live in a busy age, when every minute can be plugged in, tweeted, monitored and measured, so I hope when they all grow up, what they remember are the moments like my 17 year old playing chase with the five year old, and the two of them making fifteen cats out of duplos for her cat shop.  I hope the 14 year old remembers taking a break from her AP homework to practice guitar and make the rub for the bbq.   I hope the twelve year old remembers playing chess and sometimes losing to his mom and the girls recall cranking the tunes while we did the dishes.   I'll also hope the Irish win tonight and don't look bad doing it.

What I really hope is they remember, every day is great in the details, even if the plans aren't always fleshed out. I hope they remember childhood as years of Sundays.  

7 Quick Takes

1. What I am Writing.

Fiction: Penelope is much harder than Helen, because she does not have the volumes of secondary sources and much of who she is, is based on her long endurance sans husband.  Not a lot of dialogue, even less action, though as Grace Kelly said in Rear Window, fending off wolves is the hardest job a woman ever has to do.  So maybe I'm just not that into her yet.  I'm not a patient writer, it's part of why I blog. Lots of volume, little returning to reflect or rewrite what you wrote yesterday. I'm writing Penelope in part because I think the story is important, but I need to sit with her longer to hear her voice.

2.   Why I am Writing. 

I've started a project, Stories of the Holy Spirit.  As a monthly contributor to the Catholic Stand and Catholic Mom, I needed some sort of hook, some sort of corner of the Catholic blogger universe that was mine. Simcha has the corner on big family laughs paired with thoughtful commentary, followed by Jennifer Fulwiller, with six under 8 and a conversion story to boot.  I'm not a theologian so I can't argue from the intellectual vantage point of being any more informed than anyone else and felt my writing on Catholic matters lacked focus.  Firing from the hip works for blogging, but not for trying to write something of merit, so I am giving myself a focus.  My friend Sarah Reinhard writes about the Blessed Mother, she's made years of meditation with Mary the focus of her reflections and the result is, she has written a few books and become a resource for those wanting to deepen their relationship with Jesus' mother.   Who did I have a good relationship with in Heaven?  Saint Anthony and the Holy Spirit.  I decided that few blogs/writers focus on this third person of the Holy Trinity, in part because we aren't as familiar with the Divine Advocate as we are with God the Father or His Son.   We'll see how it goes.

3.  What am I reading? 

Next up on my reading stack is The Gargoyle Code.  I've had this book for over a year and am finally getting to it.  It's supposed to be a sequel of sorts to the Screwtape letters. It takes no small amount of courage to stand on the back of a theological giant like C.S. Lewis, so I'm eager to see how it turns out. 

4.  How is Parenting? 

I noticed that my children become more animated about unreal things than real ones.  While this is partly normal with respect to childhood as kids live in the world of imagination and slip easily from the real to the not real in conversation and in thought, it is partly a result of our culture creating a whole way of living that touts the unreal as real. 

Animal Crossing, Sim City, Rock Band, Facebook, twitter, tumbler,DS, Wii, all of these allow for virtual relationships that require very little but consume tremendous amounts of time, and so our children come to value what is not real --the accomplishments in the world inside the X-box, more than the world around them.  They will spend hours looking at pictures on the internet, but not go outside where the pictures were actually taken.  How do we help them to become more real, to appreciate the struggle to master the difficult things of real life when a virtual life gives so much appreciation and reward for so little effort?  Yes I turn off the machines, but it is still a matter of getting them to willingly embrace more than day to day existence.  I have to sell work, struggle, slow progress...not an easy thing.  They know the computers will return, ergo, most of the time, they can wait me out.  

5.  I am Still a Mess

Some days I just should not be allowed outside.  We were getting gasoline and I went into the store to purchase diet cokes. Getting back into the car, I proceeded to put my purse to rights.  As such, I discovered I'd left my wallet inside.  Within the same week, I also managed to send my sister two books and two presents for her children for their birthdays, only to discover I'd written down the address incorrectly.  (Sigh). 

6. What I See

There is a product we lack in this country. I know, you wouldn't think a nation that created whole new unhealthy beverages that we consume by the truckload monthly would in any way have any want that isn't marketed to within an inch of its life and sold for 9.99 plus shipping and handling.   But I see it in politics. I see it in sales, in testimonies, in responses to celebrities and their trials, in Facebook blow ups that deal with more sensitive issues like race, same sex marriage and abortion.  We are lacking the salve of society that allows for difference of opinion, the presumption of good faith, that it is the rare bird who affirmatively seeks or wishes ill for the country, regardless of political affiliation.  We no longer grant to a person unknown once his or her political stripe is known, the benefit of the doubt and charity of gracious respect for a diverging opinion from our own.   Society will not long withstand the assault on civility borne of the presumption  everyone who disagrees with me is deliberately filled with ignorance or malicious.  We have to reapply the salve of graciousness before we forget its incredible power to sustain friendships, create them, and build bridges between seemingly intractable positions of policy. 

7.  What I Hope

That we will start to remember to be more salt to the world, even as we cut back on our use of it ourselves.  Vacation ends tomorrow.  This has been a good retreat for the heart, head, body and family, if not the wallet.  Hope they hold the memories of this week, I know I do. 

Welcome Baby Paul!

Chocolate for Your Brain welcomes it's latest inspiration, Paul, born this Wednesday, September 17th at 7:28 pm. The following is an article written about him which ran September 11th in the Catholic Standard. Thanks for visiting and for reading.

Baby Paul's Heart and Ours

“Will you accept the blessing of children lovingly from God?”

In every Catholic wedding, the priest asks the question and the couple responds.

There isn’t a caveat or a footnote or an asterisk to that particular answer or question, designed to explain away exceptions or alternatives. It is a promise a couple makes to God in the process of obediently submitting to the sacrament of marriage. The choice to have children was made on that altar amidst family and friends, prayers and flowers. “Yes.”

As the mother of eight, soon to be nine children, even total strangers have remarked to me, “You must have wanted a large family.” No. I have to confess, that wasn’t my plan at all. I planned to get a PhD and run a school, and maybe one day teach English at my Alma Mater. That was my plan. I loved my husband to be and we had dutifully gone through the pre-marital inventory, had the interviews with our bishop, and spent the weekend at the Pre Cana retreat in preparation for the sacrament. But we hadn’t asked the specific question of each other, “How many kids do you want to have?” To be honest, the question had never occurred to either of us, in our youth and inexperience.

When I started on my Doctorate, my advisor asked the question, “How do you hope to prevent yourself from becoming seduced by academia?” I said “My husband and children (at that point I had only one), would be able to keep me humble and out of trouble.” We laughed but God saw the opening I had given Him and took it.

Prudence might indicate that, once kids became a part of our lives, we would have discussed numbers. But again, the question never came up. We couldn’t argue with the consequences of the blessings of our marriage. We loved each new addition to our family fiercely and found the idea of not having known such unique amazing individuals as our sons and daughters, a horrid prospect.

Graduate school was postponed. These people had always been part of our family, though we had never laid eyes on them before they were born. It was as if pieces of our lives and our hearts, our personalities and our gifts, were being revealed to us for the first time in each of these new people. Whenever I would begin to yearn for what had been let go, God would immediately ground me in the present with the people around me. Maybe our family would be smaller if I hadn’t been such a stubborn person, but I wouldn’t wish it. It has been an amazing and unexpected journey these past eighteen years.

God’s plan included this ninth person Paul, who has Down’s syndrome and a heart defect that will require surgery. His heart will have to be remade. Like most parents who discover they will have a child with disabilities the world can see, our hearts had to be remade too. My son’s heart has no walls on the inside. Our hearts had walls that had to be torn down. We didn’t know they were even there.

Paul’s heart will be examined by 35 pediatric cardiologists via the wonders of technology, so that the best possible care can be given to make the four chambers necessary for him to thrive. God has spent the last 42 years peering into our hearts to try and get us to submit to the surgeries of life necessary to make our souls flourish. Neither of us have been terribly cooperative patients, sometimes ignoring the prescriptions that would make us spiritually stronger. There have been moments when we have wanted to say, “No.” Or at the very least, “Why can’t it be my plan?” or “Why this plan?”

I wouldn’t argue with the 35 cardiologists about how to do this pending surgery; I have to trust they will do what is best for my son. Likewise, arguing with God about His plan seems a waste of energy. He’s the expert. God’s plan was for a different sort of Doctorate, born of thus far, fifteen years of study. Once one recognizes God’s plan, acting within it becomes a condition of will, a choice based on trust that the Divine Physician knows more about what’s best than the patient.

God’s plan was much more interesting than mine. I still hope to one day get that Ph.D. if it is right for me to have it, but I must concede, in all honesty, not getting what I wanted thus far has been the greatest gift of my life. God tells us He will make for us whole new hearts, and that is what this journey of life is for, to give Him time to operate on our souls via the trials, triumphs and tragedies we experience. He came to heal us of the illnesses we do not even know that we have.

A dear person in my life asked the question, “How do you know God’s plan?” At the time, I didn’t have an answer but I do now, “If it stretches you beyond your own perceived capacity to love, it is God’s plan. If it makes you devote your whole self to others, it is God’s plan. If the fruits of your actions include joy, laughter, lightness, mercy, healing, hope, forgiveness, patience and peace for yourself and/or others, it is God’s plan.”

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I remain overwhelmed by the support and volume of prayers offered on Paul's behalf and am pleased to report he is beautiful, he is as healthy as one could hope, and that we already love him more than we could have thought possible.