Talking
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Bringing the Heart to the Home At Christmas
The phrase, “the woman is the heart of the home” may result in very different reactions, depending upon the circles you find yourself in. Some women find the title offensive and belittling — while others are totally on board with it, and can’t figure out what all the fuss is about. The truth is that our culture seems to value things like “heart” and “home-making” very little in comparison with job titles and worldly success. It tells us a lot about how out-of-whack our priorities have become, but I totally understand the struggle to make peace with a term like “heart of the home” in the career-driven culture that surrounds…
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Why Do Catholics Do That?… The Miraculous Medal
Hi, I’m Catholic and I do crazy things like wear miraculous medals with Mary around my neck. Have you ever wondered why Catholics do that? In case you are wondering, this is not about worshipping Mary. Nope! I know that this might be hard to understand for those who haven’t grown up in Catholic circles. Trust me, I get it! In fact, there was a point in my life where I refused to say the Rosary because I also wondered if it was some sort of worship of Mary. Which now just makes me laugh — but then, it was a serious question that I grappled with. Maybe you grapple…
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Becoming a Superhero
Happy Feast of All Saints from St. Kateri Tekakwitha and St. Bernard of Clairveaux! 🥳. Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Technically, St Bernard wasn’t a dog — but technically a St. Bernard is a dog (though, technically St. Bernards aren’t light brown) — but I think this costume qualifies for our All Saint’s party celebration, wouldn’t you agree?😂. (Give me a break, people, I’m just trying to get through the days over here.) Yes, Catholics do crazy things like have All Saints parties to commemorate the heroes that have gone before us — we call them “saints”. We do even crazier things, like dress up like St. Lucy and…
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The Crisis of Fatherhood & Healing the Wounds
Can we talk about fatherhood for a minute? When I think of the word “father”, I think of the unsung heroes in our midst.👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 The men who do the good, even when it’s inconvenient or at great personal sacrifice. I think of men who discipline out of love, but are also quick to recognize the good in others and to offer encouragement. When I think of “father”, I think of men who use their strength to love and protect — never to harm. I think of men determined to be more than just “one of the boys” — and strive to be men of God, first and foremost. I think…
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We All Need Healing
We all need healing. Every one of us. Can I get an Amen!🙌🏻 We’ve all inherited a fallen nature (shout out Adam and Eve 🙁 ), have grown up in a broken world, and have sometimes suffered greatly at the hands of the broken people around us. There’s no denying it, we have all been a bit battered and worn from the battle to do the right thing, to forgive the wrongs done to us, and to love the people around us, even when it’s difficult. Which is why we need healing — spiritual, physical and emotional healing — and it’s also why God stepped in and gave us a…
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The Nobility of Being a Homemaker in a Career-Obsessed World.
In recent weeks, there erupted a bit of a storm around the question of married women working outside of the home. There was one man in particular, who shall remain nameless — well known in the Catholic Youtube world — who claimed Church teaching makes it clear that it is sinful for a women who is married (with or without children) to work outside of the home. You can imagine the barage of fighting that ensued after such a statement — with so many Catholic women working in different capacities, in and outside of their home, paid or unpaid. Honestly, I find statements like that to be highly inflammatory (and…
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Staring at the Serpent
Through an unfortunate series of events, already enumerated in the update I shared this morning, today’s original post was irretrievably lost. The thought has occurred to me that maybe the devil didn’t want me to finish that post — which, I know, sounds strange, but I feel like this little conversation we had with a man named Stewart is crucial in taking back what has been lost in recent years. It’s hard to even describe what has been lost, but maybe you have felt it, too. It’s as if we (and by “we”, I mean “Christians”) have given up the good fight and gone into defensive mode, just trying to…
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Maybe He Shouldn’t Have Kissed Dating Goodbye
This week, I was saddened to see a very public statement by former megachurch pastor, Joshua Harris, announcing his divorce from his wife and a renunciation of Christianity and its teachings. Harris had risen to fame at the time I was graduating from college with his wildly popular book, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I am sure I have a copy of that book gathering dust somewhere in one of my boxes from that time, so I am relatively familiar with the impact it had on a generation of young adults. In many ways this man, Joshua Harris, had begun a revolution amongst evangelicals trying to navigate the sex-saturated world around…
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The Hardest Part of NFP
Hey everybody, it is Natural Family Planning awareness week! I figured an honest look at the challenges of living out NFP is in order, but first a little background on my own NFP journey. Before I was married, I studied Christian Marriage and Family and the basics of NFP. I fell in love with the concept of it all — diving deep into the philosophy and theology — it made complete sense to me. If I’m being absolutely honest, though, I was probably a bit too idealistic about how NFP was going to look in my own life. And that was before Instagram, people, so imagine how bad I would…
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Time for a Gut Check
I’m sitting down to write a post. To be honest, it’s not because I want to write a post. In fact, I guess you could say I’m not “feeling it” right now, but I made a commitment to publish a post every Friday. So here I sit, fighting my inertia, because I believe I ought to stay true to my commitment. It reminds me of a quote of one of my favorite people, John Paul II. Like most things in life, it’s in the doing the thing that you ought to do — even when you’re not “feeling it” — that will make all the difference in the end. This…
