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Remedies for Sorrow and what the Saints Had to Say About It.
On this side of Heaven, we are going to have sadness and sorrow — it’s inevitable — but the Church and the Saints that have gone before us have much to say about sorrow and a gloomy disposition. I figured since half the world has gone a little cray-cray, maybe it’s a good time to share some simple thoughts for keeping the “gloom” at bay. As somebody who is naturally a bit on the melancholic side of the temperaments, I have benefited from approaching those tendencies with a consistent prayer life and by gaining practical wisdom from the great minds that we are blessed to have in the Church. We…
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Male and Female He Created Them!
If I’m being absolutely honest, I didn’t always appreciate being a woman. I once looked upon my “femaleness” as something of a burden. As a young woman, cycles and the changing relationships with guy friends and all the other things I associated with becoming a woman seemed burdensome. Honestly, with all the pressure to go to Ivy league schools and “make something of myself”, getting married and having babies seemed to be a hindrance to all my hopes and dreams. Without knowing it, the change in the culture around me had informed my ideas of what it meant to be a woman — and not for the better. The conclusion…
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Barcelona & Staring at the Darkness For Too Long
A few years back, we took our kids to hike a section of the ancient pilgrim path known as the Camino de Santiago. It was on this hike that we had a birds-eye view of a large statue of Jesus, overlooking the city of San Sebastián, Spain. Honestly, we needed that perspective. We needed it because we were trying to regain hope in our hearts. Only a few days before, we had arrived bleary-eyed in Barcelona, and no sooner did we step foot off of our metro, but John was pick-pocketed. Welcome to Barcelona. Oh boy, not the best way to start a trip! Perhaps in retrospect, that rude awakening…
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Happy Birthday and What Our Kids Teach Us About Really Living
Today we celebrate our sweet girl — now a young woman — so hard to believe it’s been 20 years since the first moment I saw her beautiful, little face smiling back at me. She taught me so much about being a mom. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I need to apologize for knowing so little about what it really meant to be a mother when she first came along. Her siblings have her to thank for teaching us the most important lessons in life — and what it means to really love somebody. As an aside, CHECK OUT ALL THE GEAR in this photo. It was the closing Mass…
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Crazy May, So Here’s a Sneak Peak at Next Week’s Post
May has always been a bit crazy — and surprisingly, this May is no different — which means my weekly post will be delayed until next week. But here’s a little sneak peek…it has to do with a crazy run through metros and getting out of Barcelona right before disaster hit. It taught me a lot about the importance of not staring at the darkness for too long. Also, please sign up for posts via e-mail, so you’ll know whenever I post. I promise I never spam people….don’t have the time, people. 🙂 It’s just a way to keep in touch and let you know when posts have hit. Also…
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Virtue Signaling, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and The Battle for the Human Heart
Okay, I have to say this up front, some of you reading this have no idea what virtue-signaling is — and if so, you are blessed, indeed! Seriously! It likely means you aren’t on social media or watching mainstream news on the regular — because if you are in those places, you are most definitely being exposed to virtue signaling and may not realize it. Even if you don’t frequent those places, it should matter to you, because loved ones are likely regularly in those spaces and being exposed to a world of virtue-signaling, pressuring, guilt-mongering and the like — all in order to control people and manipulate them into…
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Hope and Healing After A Choice
Happy Friday Everybody! I’ve been meaning to share this podcast that I recently recorded with Christine Mooney of the Catholic Mama Podcast. We turned the tables a bit and I became the interviewer — Christine and I discussed her abortion and how she is finding hope and healing. We also discussed the very real reality of the innocents who have been lost to abortion and that they don’t want their mothers and fathers to fall into despair. If you have had an abortion, I guess we just want you to know that there is hope, there is healing, and God has a plan to bring you out of your suffering…
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Be That Masterpiece God Created You to Be
Did you know that YOU are a unique, unrepeatable miracle of a masterpiece who was lovingly knit in the womb of your mother by the God of the Universe? Yep, it’s true! And I know that so many of us have grown so accustomed to the miracle that is another human being that we forget that truth about WHO WE ARE and WHO THEY ARE, TOO. Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that we were made in the IMAGE AND LIKENESS of God and we are meant to reflect THE GOODNESS, TRUTH AND BEAUTY OF GOD in our own unique way in this world. You are precious. Every…
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The Future Isn’t “Female”. The Future Isn’t “Male”. The Future is Family and It Always Has Been.
There is a dangerous CULT OF SELF that seems to be growing, and it sees the other as the “enemy”. We see it in slogans that try to pin men and women against each other. Slogans like “the future is female” or “toxic masculinity” or movements that want to downgrade the importance of FATHERS in the home or attack women who CHOOSE to stay home — frankly they’re not solving any problems. They are only making THEM WORSE! Because here’s the thing: we can never find fulfillment in the pursuit of SELF and the CANCELING of others . The pursuit of SELF LEADS TO SELFISHNESS, WHICH ULTIMATELY LEADS TO COMPLETE…
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Should a Catholic Take the Covid Vaccine Out of Love for Neighbor?
I see a strange trend going around social media as of late — one in which a relatively young person posts a picture of their covid vaccine completion certificate — with strange virtue-signaling tagline attached — something along the lines of, “I’m doing this for love of my neighbor”. (Author’s note: At time of writing, the vaccine is limited in availability and being offered to medical professionals and the vulnerable.) It is concerning to me when I see posts like these trending on social media because often they seem to be implying some sort of higher moral ground to a decision which basically comes down to a medical choice that…
