Uncategorized
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Thirsting For Lent
Whether or not we know it, we are all thirsting for Christ. Even more amazing is that — despite our sinfulness or brokenness — Christ is thirsting for us, too. This photo below was taken in 2016 at the Canonization of Mother Teresa. I guess you could say she’s one of my heroes. Perhaps more than anybody else in recent years, Mother Teresa recognized that thirst in all of us. She recognized it, because she felt it more keenly than most. In every chapel of every convent that Mother Teresa established, she wrote 2 words over the main crucifix: “I thirst”. They were some of the last words Jesus spoke…
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Off to Watch Some Basketball
Hello everybody! Thanks for stopping by. I’m off to watch my kids play some basketball this weekend, so no post this week. I’ll be back next week, but stop by my Facebook or Instagram accounts to hear about how John and I first met. Happy Valentines to you!
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Giving Thanks
Hope everybody had a beautiful Thanksgiving! Keeping this one short so I can get back to family. I just returned from a whirlwind trip to DC to see a great friend get sworn in as Ambassador to Fiji. It was beautiful. The first stop we made of our trip was to the Lincoln Memorial — and Lincoln is the first president to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday — so I figured we should give a little-shout out to Abraham Lincoln. We have Lincoln to thank for our days off and time with family — more importantly, we have Lincoln to thank for persevering in his fight for recognition of the…
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Staring at the Serpent (a post in the making).
Through an unfortunate series of events — including children running off with computer mouses so as to make clicking on “save draft” while writing my post impossible (aren’t kids the best?), as well as finally locating said “mouse” and getting it back to my desk just as the power happened to go out, I lost my entire post! I was determined to not give up and to begin again in the wee hours of the morning, but alas, the keyboard hitting me in the face as my head slumped over in unexpected sleep proved I was done for. So I resolved to get up early and finish this post because…
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Travel Posts To Get You Going
Hey guys, thank goodness summer is not over yet! Here is to hoping you are making the most of your last days of summer — I know I am trying to. I am getting ready for our own family adventure, so I figured I’d share some of my favorite family travel posts from the past 3 years. Hopefully, they will inspire you to start planning your own crazy family adventures. Without further ado, let’s get to it! This one is an honest and light-hearted look at the 7 Do’s and Don’ts of Family Travel. I’ve made lots of mistakes along the way, so hoping this will help the next guy…
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Once Upon a Time in Melaka a.k.a. Making the Case for Pilgrimage
Technically, John and I made our first family pilgrimage to Rome when our oldest daughter was still in utero. Understandably, our life with littles quickly transitioned from world travels to beach travels — and somewhere along the way, we began to lose sight of the importance of pilgrimage. Maybe it was because I assumed deeming something a “pilgrimage” would bring with it extra sufferings and hardships, and I was barely keeping my head above water with so many littles in the mix, as it was. Whatever it was, we likely would have kept choosing family vacations over pilgrimages if it wasn’t for an opportunity that John and I had to…
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Be Sealed With the Gift of the Holy Spirit
Hey Guys! We just celebrated a beautiful confirmation! Family is still in town, so no post this week. Come back next week for some ideas on making family adventures happen this summer — big or small, just do it! Thanks for visiting! God bless your weekend!
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How to Make the Most of Holy Week
It’s hard to believe that we are less than a week away from the Triduum — and then Easter! Here’s a few suggestions for living out this last week with greater intentionality and an increased awareness of the amazing mystery that we are entering into. Without further ado: 7 ways to Make the Most of Holy Week. Go to Confession Seriously, first things first. If you haven’t gone to confession this Lent, Go! This would be my number one word of advice for opening yourself up to the ocean of graces that God is waiting to pour out on you this Holy Week. So what are you waiting for? Go,…
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Rooting Bitterness Out of Our Lives
“The devil invites mankind to rebellion and disorder…he sows discord and incites us to pour out our hatred upon each other…” ~Cardinal Sarah~ I have had to work through some things this week. I have had to work through anger and sadness and repulsion at the meanness of men. But one thing I have learned in life is that I can not stay in that place of anger. I have learned that I must allow that anger to move me to the right and proper action and then I must let that anger go. Because if we don’t let that anger go, it will begin to fester like a thorn…
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Will He Find Faith? A.K.A. What’s Next?
We all survived our Irish pilgrimage — hip, hip, hooray — but the transition back has had it’s challenges. Not going to lie, I am also missing Ireland a bit — I wasn’t expecting to miss it like I do. It was a grace-filled time, and when a time of grace comes to an end, it is challenging to enter into “ordinary life” again — whatever that is. Honestly, I knew it would be beautiful and we would have fun as a family, but I was worried that the faith would be missing from our trip to Ireland. I wondered if all the priests would just be going through the…
