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Preparing Our Hearts and Our Homes for Christmas
I love Christmas, and honestly, I love the preparation of Christmas — at least I love it when I don’t feel the pressure of time slipping away before I’m ready! Every year, Joy Sunday is a big day for us. We get our Christmas tree, blast Christmas music as decorate the house, and get everything ready to celebrate BIG with our family and guests who come to visit over the holidays. It’s a lovely tradition and we all look forward to it. This year was a little different. We have two children away at school and there was a packed Gaudete Sunday weekend with end of semester activities. Instead of…
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We Begin Again
There is something about confession — something completely transformative — and yet so often we find ourselves going through the motions of a confession without really resolving to try to change moving forward from that moment of grace and forgiveness. It’s not to say that we won’t fall into the same sins again, but we should never accept those sins as part of who we are and we should never give up trying to put them in the past and keep them there. We are not our sins — not our sexual sins, our anger, our hatred or addictions — I could go on, but you get the idea. The…
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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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I Wish You a Merry Christmas!
As this is my lost post before Christmas, I figured it was the perfect time to wish you a Merry Christmas! I hope your Christmas Season is beautiful and full of so much joy you can hardly stand it! Try to let go of ridiculous expectations and keep the celebrations light-hearted and focused on the people in your midst. One of the things I love about being Catholic is that Christmas is a Season — which means there isn’t as much pressure to get all the Joy of Christmas packed into one day. We have days and weeks to celebrate and let the Joy of Christ really sink deep into…
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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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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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Is Abortion Really About Freedom for Women?
I am going to be honest. I didn’t want to write this post. Nope. I wanted to write a nice post about capsule wardrobes or decluttering your home. But then I got writers block and as I sat staring at a blank screen, I spontaneously said, “Lord what do you want me to write about?” (Warning: don’t ever do this if you just want to write a puff piece and call it a day.) And then it just popped into my mind, “Abortion is the new slavery”. “Um, no. I won’t be writing about abortion. That’s sooo controversial and not pleasant at all”. But darn it, then I went off…
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That Time I Confessed My Sins in Knock, Ireland
Today, a young man from Ireland sent a kind little word about a post in my Instagram stories. It was a quote from John Paul II: Shout out, David, if you’re reading this! I have to tell you, this young man’s honest words about the struggles he has had with his faith, after all the scandals in Ireland is hard to bear. And yet, after our own “summer of scandal”, I feel like I understand a little bit about how he is feeling. So many people disillusioned with the Church — and who could blame them? We had an amazing experience in Ireland, but I’d be naive to think that…
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What’s So Bad About Catholic Guilt? A.K.A. God Doesn’t Want Us to Stay in our Shame
Apparently, Catholic Guilt is a thing — at least, it’s a thing in a lot of circles and as often as I’ve heard it referred to, it always seem to be in a negative light. Perhaps it’s because people tend to confuse guilt with shame, and hence the bad wrap for Catholic guilt — but I’m here to say Catholic guilt can be a good thing — and before you write this post off as cray-cray, please hear me out. In my opinion, guilt is to the soul what pain is to the nervous system — it’s lets us know that somethings is not quite right and we need to change it.…
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Living the Life….Confession
Confession…it’s a thing…a really good thing…a run out to your local priest and get this thing done, thing. If you’re Catholic, you’ve probably gone at least one time this year, because frankly we’re asked to go at least that often. But maybe instead of saying that it’s something I have to do, what if I said that it was something that I get to do? I get to go to confession as often as I want, like everyday if necessary. I’m not saying you should go everyday, I’m just saying you could. But why go at all? Well, right before Jesus was getting ready to die, he spoke to the apostles, the first bishops of our Church and…
