Light and Momentary

Rest and Rules

A few weeks ago I was talking to a pal after Mass, grousing a bit about how busy I'd been and how much work I had to finish to meet a Tuesday deadline. I was a little surprised when she wished me luck with my afternoon writing. I said, "I'm not touching that manuscript today. It's Sunday."

There are all kinds of ways I could say that sentence, so let me clarify: no smugness, no sanctimony, only relief. I am so grateful that the Church tells me to avoid unnecessary work on Sundays. I forget exactly when I decided that I would try to follow that teaching-- I'd say it was more than ten years ago, fewer than fifteen. I was pretty sure it would be a burdensome fiasco. I had no idea that I would come to guard that day of rest zealously.

It would be easy for a legalistic person (like, ahem, me) to get stuck on following the right rules for a Sunday. I have a pretty simple test: do I want to do a particular task? Does it feel like work or does it feel like rest? I spend big chunks of my life making myself stay on top of things that aren't especially fun in the moment. Sundays are different. I couldn't knit on the Sabbath if I were Jewish, I don't think, but today I worked my way almost to the top of a purple cabled sock for my pal Amanda. I couldn't garden either, I don't think, but today I put in 40 petunia plants in pale yellow and velvety deep purple. 

When I was in grad school the first time, I thought I had to work on Sundays. The thing is, I usually frittered away my Saturdays, all the while thinking uneasily about the work I ought to be doing. These days I know I have to be efficient on Saturday. There's no chance I would have finished grading that batch of assignments yesterday (because let me tell you, I was pretty sick of them by the time I reached #34) if I could have put them off for today. It's also unlikely, though, that I would have managed today's dandelion-vanquishing or its eight-mile bike ride with Pete and Stella if I had been in procrastination mode yesterday.

There are occasional days when it seems more sensible to let work sneak in on Sunday. I wrote about one of them a few years ago; tonight I am wondering if I should check for backlogged emails from stressed out students getting ready for tomorrow's final. (I tell them at the beginning of the semester and then again before finals week: I will answer your emails promptly Monday through Saturday, but I don't check my work email on Sunday. It will not surprise me if that detail has slipped the minds of the more panicked members of my classes.) I'm not going to, though; I'm going to pick up the puzzles that Stella left lying around, and finish the French press cozy I've been wanting to finish for months, and go bed.

The Church gets a bad rap for having too many rules. I used to think the "no unnecessary work" thing was oppressive. What a lovely surprise to see how much freedom it offers instead.

The Snowman's Hosanna

I am leaving my house at 6 in the morning, but I wanted to stop scurrying around and get down some things that have been rattling around in my head.

We've had more snow in the past week than in all of last winter, I think, and it was beautiful snow: lacy delicate flakes piling up on tree branches. When you look at the giant parking lot piles of snow it's hard to countenance the idea that God sees each snowflake's individual beauty, but I believe it is true. When I think about all the bodies piled up in all the graveyards around the world it is easy to lose sight of the fact that God looked at each individual and pronounced him (or her) beautiful and beloved, but I know it is true.

The snow is turning into slush now but I am remembering the flakes that fell on my coat sleeves and eyelashes, fragile and unrepeatable.

From the time we knew there would be a funeral we were thinking that Elwood would go and represent the family. We can't fly seven people to the West Coast, and leaving five kids requires a lot of logistical juggling. But my SIL asked me to come to the funeral and sing the Ave Maria that I sang at their wedding, and I said of course I would.

Well, first I said to myself, "There is no possible way I can get through the Ave Maria I sang at their wedding while I am standing in the room with his cancer-ridden remains. No possible way." And then I said to myself, "Jamie, if the woman who is marching forward into widowhood with two girls under two can do it this gracefully, then you had better believe you can get yourself together to honor her request." And then I said of course I would.

When my oldest son was weaning the hardest part was bedtime. He had always nursed before he fell asleep. Instead I rubbed his back and prayed the rosary, and the prayer morphed into a song -- a Latin version and an English version. My SIL asked me to sing it when they were married. I am remembering the comfort it brought my little boy as he learned to let go into sleep, hoping it can bring some consolation as we all let go of my BIL.

For Lent I wanted to pray compline every night and I've been pretty faithful to it. It's that "Lord, now you let your servant go in peace" bit that sticks in my throat a bit. It's so much more real right now that one day my soul and my body will be separated.

People have been so good and so generous. My mom cleared off her calendar to come stay with the kids. I have been thinking a thought I want to come back to, about how the awful bits of life bring out the best in the people around us -- how love becomes palpable in the middle of sadness.

The sight that sparked this post was a slowly melting snowman, his head sliding slowly back on his slushy shoulders. He was stable enough, with his tilting head and his upraised arms, that he looked to me like a person at prayer -- hands lifted and head thrown back, shouting hosanna to the pearl gray sky. And I thought, "I could look at that and think about how everything we make will fade and end. Or I could look at that and think, 'Frost and chill, bless the Lord.'"

I guess both those things are true.

Please keep praying.

What really matters

I walked into Mass this morning and sat down in front of a teenager with her phone out, the texting screen visible. I thought, "Whoa." In our family that teenager would find herself phoneless in a hot second. I thought, "Maybe her mom doesn't know what she's up to." The mom turned back to her daughter a second later and said nothing about the phone. Again I thought, "Whoa." I thought, "Your daughter is texting in church and you're letting it slide?"

I know better than to be a judgmental toad; really I do. I have this inner judgy streak, though, and some days it gives me more trouble than others. I knelt down and prayed for the girl, that God would shower her with grace. "Maybe," I thought to myself, "she's called to religious life! Maybe this situation is supposed to prompt me to pray for her to be open to God's glorious call." So I did, but my inner Judgy McJ was still thinking indignant thoughts.

"Maybe," I thought to myself, "she was texting her frail old grandma who was supposed to meet them here. Maybe she is texting because she is a kind and concerned granddaughter." JMcJ snorted, "She still should have stepped outside."

I glanced across the church and spotted a young mom nursing her baby under a cover. You already know JMcJ had something to say about that, too. Before the first reading the kids were dismissed for children's liturgy of the word, and the choir director played Edelweiss to accompany their walk down the aisle. You guys, I am ashamed to say I made actual scowly faces: why does she play secular music during the liturgy? Why is she playing the whole thing -- bless my homeland forever! -- when the kids have already left the building and the lector is waiting to start the reading?

Once the readings started, the irony that I was wrangling with JMcJ on this particular day was not lost on me. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. You have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband. Did Jesus make scowly faces? Did Jesus wag his finger as he told people UR DOIN IT WRONG? Uh, no. 

Our pastor gave a lovely homily, encouraging us to learn more about our faith in a specific and manageable way. Part of my brain thought, "Yes, I should totally do that!" Part of my brain was busy sitting on JMcJ. I asked St. Therese to pray for me, remembering her struggles with the nun who clacked her rosary beads. Sadly, I did not notice any immediate results. There was just no let-up, all through Mass. Even at the end-- we sang a hymn where the choir director always makes a particular mistake in the accompaniment. While my mouth sang about God being beyond all praising, my brain thought, "I can't really explain the mistake in a conventional blog post, so maybe I'll make it a video post instead." Because that's exactly how humble people do it -- they plan video posts about other people's errors during Mass.

Sometimes I am reluctant to post about my weak moments and my strong opinions for fear of being judged in the comments. But you know, if you judge me for a post about being how I struggle with being judgy, I will have no choice but to smile at the irony. And maybe if I put it out there -- I just spent an hour of my life in a fetid fug of fault-finding when I could have been learning to be the aroma of Christ -- maybe you can pray for me to do better next time. 

***

I had just finished writing this post when the phone rang: my BIL is gone. He died a beautiful death, my MIL told me, with my SIL right next to him. I cranked up Mozart's Requiem until the kids complained, and I thought about the times we spent together. Here's the thing that struck me: the only words I remember from him are kind words, encouraging words. I cannot remember a time when he was irritable or snarky or mean -- not even once.

I hope I can leave a legacy like that, free of pettiness and ugliness. Et lux perpetua luceat ei. 

Sing it, Tom Petty

Tom Petty was right: the wai-yaiting is the hardest part.

I spent the morning in the office, convinced that they've offered the local position to someone else. I imagined the announcement at our next faculty meeting. I thought about other jobs I might get for next year, because it is really not very likely that I will accept a job two hours away.

I went to Adoration at 1 and spent most of the hour slogging through a book I don't love. Right at the end I looked up at the monstrance and back down at my own arms and I had one of those moments of knowing that I am loved -- individually, enormously. This sounds narcissistic but it is true: God looks at the sprinkling of fine hairs at my wrist, at the visible pulse that he set in motion and sustains, and says, "That is Jamie and she is mine." His will is only good, no matter how it may diverge from my own.

Perhaps I should camp out in the chapel for the next few weeks.

Guest post

Melanie kindly asked me to be a part of her series on the Creed. I wrote about "light from light," my favorite phrase.

Gifts

1. When our oldest son was almost 3, he taught us something about Christmas gifts that we still appreciate. We gave him a set of Duplos that year, and when he opened them he wanted to play with them...and play, and play, and play. I tried to interest him in opening another box, but Elwood said, "There's no rush. Let's let him enjoy them." So we did. Forty-five minutes later, he opened another gift. He wanted to play with that one too.

Our unofficial Christmas motto is "slow and orderly." Sometimes we might go from oldest to youngest to open a round of gifts. Sometimes we might each open a gift in alphabetical order. No one is expected to play with a gift for 45 minutes before the next person opens something, but the cardinal rule is "There's no rush."

I thought we had taken this from Elwood's family, where I remember being surprised to see them take turns. (My family took the free-for-all approach.) But one of his sisters was here with us today and she got impatient with the whole slow and orderly thing. While I was assembling dessert she started directing traffic, having the kids open multiple gifts in a row. Pieces were getting lost; there were stamp pads in use on the upholstery; I couldn't see what the kids had been given because I was up to my elbows in whipped cream. It was the most stressful ten minutes of the day, until Elwood said, "This isn't the way we do things here."

2. I mentioned that Elwood does the shopping for the kids, but he does it in a way that's a little unusual, I think. The kids don't make wish lists unless the grandparents request one. They know that Elwood will find a number of small and interesting presents for them. They know the gifts are frequently quirky -- often things they've never heard of. And they've learned that a gift that looks a little weird at first may become a gift they come back to again and again.

I was getting a haircut early in December and the stylist asked me what my kids were hoping to get for Christmas. I felt a little weird saying I didn't really know, but that's the reality: I couldn't recite a list of hoped-for gifts. And you know, I don't mean this in a judgy way at all -- I'm more interested in affirming my husband here than in telling other families how they ought to do things -- but there's much to be said for fostering a kid's willingness to be open to surprises. A Christian who says to God, "Surprise me with your goodness today!" is likely to be a more contented Christian than one who says, "Give me X, Y, and Z today!"

3. Speaking of surprises from God: wow. If you have been reading this blog for years and years and  years, you might remember a long-ago struggle with tithing when my husband was unemployed and its surprising aftermath. Last week I sat down to catch up on our giving. I'd let our non-parish gifts slide since JUNE, and so I was pretty behind. (Once my friend Anneleisa had such a great experience at confession that she wanted to tell everyone about it. She felt a little awkward saying "I just went to confession!" again and again, and finally she told me, "I feel like I should go pray in a closet!" I feel like I should go write checks in a closet now, instead of telling the internet that I wrote them.) I transferred money out of savings so I didn't have to worry about whether the checks would would clear, and I felt the happiness I've grown accustomed to feeling when I dropped them in the mailbox. I had no expectation -- I mean, truly, zero expectation -- that anything out of the ordinary would happen financially. I was just catching up, feeling a little embarrassed about getting behind.

This morning -- Christmas morning -- I got a notification from Mint that we'd received a sizable tax refund. This was so improbable that I assumed it was a phishing email. But no: our state revenue department deposited a big chunk of money in our checking account on Friday -- more than half of the amount I sent out to various charities last week. I have no idea why this happened (and it's possible that they made an error), but I suspect it's an expression of a lovely truth that I find too easy to forget: you can never out-give God. On this day, of all days, you'd think I could remember that. Merry Christmas, friends. :-)

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Henry's Funeral

People were chattering in the empty minutes before the Mass began. But when they brought in his casket, so small that most of his pallbearers were children, silence fell abruptly. Even the babies seemed to know that something important was happening. In the quiet before the priest began that beautiful opening ritual, there was only one sound: Carla was sobbing quietly. I listened to her ragged breathing and it sounded to me like the noises of a woman in labor.

We all sat down in the church together and I felt an unexpected relief. Tears have been sneaking up on me over the past few days, but here I was in a place where tears were perfectly normal. What a sensible thing a funeral is -- a place where it's right and appropriate to grieve together.

I didn't recognize anyone at first, but a woman in the next pew whispered my name. It was Amy, another breastfeeding counselor. Carla and I had made a road trip to her house together in 2002. I remembered all the things I was worried about on that trip, and I thought about all the gifts that the intervening ten years have brought, and even in the middle of a funeral I could only think "God is good."

The recessional will stay with me for a long time: Carla walked out behind the casket and the priests, flanked by her family and holding two of her little ones' hands. She was smiling, and singing "Lead me, Lord" with the choir. Mostly when we ask God to lead us, I think, we are imagining happy paths. Prosperous paths, maybe, or at least level and scenic paths. Most of us don't envision God asking us to follow a child-sized casket, holding a little body we have loved.

It wasn't until I was driving home that I realized why it was so fitting for Carla to sound like she was giving birth in that moment before Mass. Women in labor are being pushed beyond what they can endure; they're being asked to keep giving when they're not sure they have anything left to offer. It is no wonder that when a child is born into eternal life, his mother wails in just the same way. And in her song and her smile when the Mass was over, I saw an echo of the joy that comes when the work of birth is finished.

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Who stops his ears

Eight years ago I held a small body in the palm of my hand, the baby I miscarried near the end of my first trimester. Last week I was grading projects in which my students described congenital anomalies and to my surprise I found myself leaking slow tears into the keyboard. I was remembering that little body, delicate and still. His tiny ears were set low on his face, right down at the angle of his jaw. This is a marker for a bunch of bad things: chromosomal anomalies, various syndromes, teratogen exposure.

I was so sad -- so sad. We named him Dominic. Our priest came and blessed a little patch of ground next to our apartment for the burial. I will never stop missing him.

In the brouhaha over the election he seems to me like an emblem for what's wrong with American politics. One side argues that the continued existence of babies like Dominic should be at their mothers' discretion. The other side thinks that they ought to be born, but insists that the idea of communal responsibility for their complex medical and developmental needs will lead us straight to godless government and financial ruin.

I am so tired -- so far beyond tired, actually -- of hearing that I should go along with one of these errors for the greater good.

Heather King's writings on the American political system have spoken to my heart. I have been studiously avoiding political links on Facebook all through the election season, but what did I do on Sunday night? I shared a link to her recent post. Some part of me said, "Hey! Let's offend everybody, all at one time, by sharing a link that compares Obama and Romney to Hitler and Goebbels!"

Monday morning I woke up and said, "What was I thinking?" I deleted the link. Somehow, though, it was still floating around FB later that day. My friend Patrick saw it and declared King's thoughts on contraception "one of the most disturbing things [he'd] ever read." (With his permission, I'm pasting his whole comment down below in the comments on this post.)

The idea of contraception as morally problematic is regarded as a wacky one these days, the furthest purlieu of the bleak hinterlands inhabited by hardcore fanatics. It attracts derision and disbelief. In the first year that I was blogging I wrote about controversial things like abortion and Church teaching on contraception. Is it sensible or cynical that I don't touch those topics these days? I can't say for sure. What I know is that if you spend your twenties and thirties saying "Yes! I will be open to life!" you'll probably be too busy in your forties to argue about it online.

So I'm not really interested in arguing. I am only here to say that I am grateful for the Church that challenges me to say yes: yes to serving the least of these, yes to growing in the greatest of these. Yes to the crazy idea that fertility is a gift to be welcomed and not a scourge to be subdued. In the comments on that Shirt of Flame post Heather King responded to a man whose reaction was much like my friend Patrick's. She said, "when sex isn't open to life, something gets torn, something gets divided."

In my twenties I used to say that it damages the integrity of the sexual act, this idea that we can separate unitive and procreative purposes like bits of velcro. I used to talk about how empowering I found NFP. I used to say, a little smugly, "Humans are not baboons, with uncontrollable urges driven by estrus." I don't say those things these days -- in part because I'm rarely trying to persuade anybody these days and smug is something I try hard to avoid, and in part because NFP is harder in my forties than it was in my twenties and thirties. 

I have learned, though, that things worth doing are often hard things. My finding them difficult doesn't mean I have the freedom to give up on them. I don't say that lightly or smugly; I say it a little wearily. When I write about my Dominic I am keenly aware that it is easy to love the remembered baby and to mourn what might have been. I can only guess, from years of working with disabled people, at the difficulties of the might-have-been scenario. I have seen enough of those difficulties not to trivialize them.

At the same time, I have seen enough of difficulty to say that fear of difficulty should not be a barrier to doing God's will. As my spiritual director reminded me this evening, we don't count the thorns when we look at a rosebush. Life's not about the thorns. Instead it's about Jesus, who calls us and equips us to offer the greatest of these to the least of these. Jesus, who did not wave a magic wand to eliminate suffering but instead suffered with us. Jesus who is with us in the mucky mess, mysteriously enlarging our capacity for love and trust. Jesus, bigger than the brokenness and surely, mercifully, eternally, bigger than this broken political system.

Bookends

On Monday I sang for a funeral.

I've sung for a handful of funerals since the one I wrote about. I haven't known any of the deceased, but each one has moved me. The Church offers such a tender farewell in the funeral Mass: the white pall, the incense for the coffin. We say, "This body was redeemed by Our Lord, and we believe He will raise it up."

This guy was one of the founding members of our parish. A long procession of family filed in, dressed somberly. The line of black was broken up by a white cloth diaper flung over one suitcoat shoulder. Was that a great-grandbaby? I don't know, but I was glad to hear those squeaks and coos during the Mass -- an audible reminder that life goes on.

In the coffin he held his rosary, and his veteran's flag was tucked in beside him. I was acutely aware, there in view of his stilled body, of the evanescence of life. That morning my legs had run five glad miles for me; somewhere in their future lies a last step. My cricothyroid muscle contracted just so to hit the high notes in the Ave Maria; someday it will be stiff and cold. It's a good thing, I was thinking as I biked home afterward, to be reminded of what's coming-- to pull my head out of my various electronic conversations and work preoccupations and remember what matters.

On Friday a message on my answering machine shook me hard.

It was kind of silly for me to get so upset but I did it anyway. There was an Incident at one of the local high schools, a lockdown followed by frantic sirens and police with assault rifles looking for suspects kind of Incident. A 70-point headline on the front page of the local paper kind of Incident. As Incidents go, this one was fairly minor. No one was hurt. My kids don't even go to school there. And still, I couldn't quite get a grip afterward.

School violence hits me hard: the idea that high school kids would willfully try to kill their peers knocks me back every time. We were living in Edinburgh when Columbine happened and I read the London Times coverage of it obsessively, sending prayers across the ocean to our friends in Littleton, wiping away tears and snot to keep reading so I could understand.

I still don't understand. I still can't talk about Columbine without choking up.

It made for strange bookends to the week-- Monday's calm certainty (we're all going to die) juxtaposed with Friday's wobbly uncertainty (and sometimes it's really ugly). I don't have a tidy ending for this post, just an echo of the prayer that the man from my parish offered tens of thousands of times: pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Prodigal

The most powerful Olympic moment I've ever seen was by any reasonable standard a fiasco.

During the 1992 Olympics I clicked on the TV and found live coverage of the men's 400m semifinals. Not far into the heat, a runner slowed and then fell. He lay there, in obvious agony, while his cohort churned toward the finish line. Slowly he picked himself up. His face contorted in pain, he hobbled along the track.

You have probably seen some version of this clip repeatedly. His name was Derek Redmond, and he turned into the Agony of Defeat Poster Boy for the Barcelona Olympics. In the moment, though, there was no slo-mo and no swelling music behind him. The announcers, frankly, were puzzled. "There's some sort of disturbance in the stands," they said, "some sort of scuffle with security." The "scuffle" was Redmond's dad, refusing to be deterred from his attempts to get onto the track. He went over to his son, and supported him as he finished the race in his own lane.

"This rather bizarre scene," as one of the announcers called it at the time, hit me hard. I did not choke up briefly; I did not wipe away a discreet tear. I blubbered like a baby, watching that father and that son together. Seven years later, wandering in Barcelona with friends, we wound up in the Olympic stadium and I started crying again, trying to tell them the story. For a long time I could not articulate why I found it so evocative, but I think I understand it better now. I think I was sobbing because Redmond illustrated a hard truth: sometimes you work unrelentingly for something that you just can't have. And then you can pick -- you can lie there and cry, or you can say, "This is brutal, but I'm not quitting." I think I was crying because his dad illustrated a fundamental truth about parenting: sometimes you can't fix it, but you can walk alongside anyway.

I have been working through Grace for the Good Girl slowly, mostly in my Monday Adoration hour. It is hitting me hard, chapter after chapter. When she writes about the prodigal son the author asks, "What do you think about the father in this story?"

Now I've heard that story a million jillion times, just like anybody else who grew up going to church. And I've thought about the younger brother, and I've thought about the older brother, but I'd never given the dad much thought. He's supposed to be God, and I'm not accustomed to critiquing God. I was a little surprised to see I had an answer right there, just waiting for the question to be asked. What do I think about the father? Bad idea, that's what I think. You're going to get taken, old man, that's what I think.

Whoa.

I've been thinking a lot about this one. It's important for me as a daughter, because I am certain that I could live a freer life if I knew I had room to fail. It's important for me as a mother, because I want to be the kind of parent who sees a child facing some kind of brokenness and walks alongside anyway. The kind of parent who pushes past the security guards, the kind of parent who comes tearing down the road in welcome -- not the kind of parent who thinks, 'Did he squander all that money and come crawling back to me? Because he needs to know that is just not okay."

It is a crazy implausible quixotic truth and I want to own it in both directions: love means seeing a child disappointed and in pain, and running -- heedless of transgressions and taboos -- to throw your arms around him.

In memory of Uzzah

Uzzah appeared in today's Office of Readings. I first heard about him from my college pal Dave, who said that the story underscored God's holiness. Uzzah, who had spent his whole life near the ark of the covenant, reached out a hand to steady the ark when the oxen hauling it stumbled. He died on the spot.

Uzzah stresses me out.

I know it's a little silly to stress out over Uzzah. (I have a long history of taking Old Testament characters to heart. Jephthah knocked me into a weeklong funk back in 1992.) But see, if you can spend your whole life around the ark, and be struck down (kerblam!) for a well-intentioned mistake -- well, isn't that a little discouraging?

Jesus, I know, is the answer to that question, because he brought to us the holiness we could not attain on our own.

But.

I still have a hard time with Uzzah.

I've been reading a book called Grace for the Good Girl. It's all about living your life in fear that you won't be loved if you don't perform, which is pretty much my one big capital-F Fear. I am not far enough into the book to know whether the remedies she proposes are workable; I only know that I have wrestled with this one for a long time. (As recorded, in chronological order, here, here, here, and here. I expect there are others as well, but that's probably enough on my tendency to flagellate myself about my self-flagellation.)

Yesterday I went to the gym for a run on the treadmill. A few minutes into the workout, my shoe came untied. I stood on the sides of the machine to get it tied securely, and then I hopped back onto the belt. Or at least my plan was to hop right back on the belt, as I've seen plenty of other people do. What actually happened was that I completely lost my footing. The woman beside me stopped the belt for me, and she was so kind about it. I was mortified, and sore because the belt had left good-sized raw patches on both knees and shins, and for a minute I thought about just taking my keys and slinking out of the building. Instead I got back on the machine and worked out for 30 minutes, but I spent the whole time battling the self-defeating chorus. "Clumsy!" "Awkward!" "I've never seen anyone do that before!" Etc.

It would have been so much easier to offer understanding to a stranger beside me. Of course she could stumble -- everybody stumbles sometimes. Of course she might want to walk away. Good for her, getting right back in there. Can't quite manage to be that understanding with myself, though.

If I let down my guard, if I'm not vigilant about being good enough -- well, look what happened to Uzzah.

Juxtaposed

Two weeks ago I took Stella to the library in the middle of Mass. She gets a little rowdy in the narthex, as if "I can run around here" translates into "I must run around here" in her little brain, but she's usually pretty quiet in the library. The church's sound system is piped in, so I was able to hear the progression of the liturgy of the Eucharist.

We were at the Consecration when someone came into the bathroom, right next to the library, and relieved himself audibly and copiously. From the speakers I heard our pastor saying, "This is my body"; simultaneously, through the wall, I heard a body saying, "Hey, I'm a body!" And I thought, a little indignantly, "Excuse me, I am trying to PAY ATTENTION to the Mass here!"

Then I realized how often that scene plays out. As I navigate the world I can focus on the miracle of an immanent God, out of sight but always present, or I can focus on the crap that's closer at hand. I can get miffed enough about the crap that I disregard the miracle.

But that's always a bad idea.

Messy

I have a complicated sister-in-law.

She has been complicated for a long time, but the level of complicated increased exponentially last summer, when she found herself pregnant, single, and unemployed. The baby's due in a little over 3 weeks.

Her parents persuaded her to leave the West Coast, where she was pretty much alone, and stay with them instead. There's been a lot of drama this week surrounding her attempts to get on a train to the Midwest, and it has made me keenly aware of my shortcomings as a Christian.

I was trying to tamp down my unwelcoming feelings when it looked like she would be here for Christmas. "Excuse me?" I said to myself. "What kind of Christian would even contemplate turning away a pregnant woman on Christmas??" I will spare you the blow-by-blow on her changing travel plans and my roiling inner landscape; suffice it to say that it's been frustrating.

She was due in today. Her parents called to check on her and she said she was very sick. Headache. So congested she couldn't breathe. Very swollen hands and feet. Felt so bad she couldn't walk. They should find her a wheelchair for when she got off the train. I was not filled with compassion when I heard this litany of complaints. I thought, "Oh, honestly."

Not long afterward, I took three of my boys ice-skating with their cousin, my other SIL and her husband, that SIL's best friend, and the friend's daughter. On the drive to the ice rink the litany of woe rearranged itself in my brain: Headache. Very swollen. Felt so bad she couldn't walk. Older mom. First pregnancy. What's it spell? Pre-eclampsia. Louder? Pre-eclampsia.

Just typing that brings back the frisson of horror I felt in the van. Here I had been rolling my eyes inwardly at what I thought was more drama. What if she was seriously sick? I know a woman who had fulminant pre-eclampsia, who went from feeling fine to death's door in no time flat. I know many other women who have had a slower-developing form of pre-eclampsia, and another tendril of fear snaked around my heart when I remembered my MIL saying that she had missed her last few prenatal appointments.

We got to the skating rink and I talked it over with my other SIL and her friend. We tried to call Anne. No answer. We texted her, saying, "Please respond -- we are very concerned about you." Nothing. The friend tried to contact her OB's office for advice. Nobody picked up. We were all terribly worried.

I called my MIL, who had been planning to take Anne straight home for a nap. I said, "I'm worried about pre-eclampsia. If she still has a headache when she gets off the train, she should go immediately and get checked out. This can be really serious. It can even be fatal. In fact, we should ask if she's been having vision changes, because if that's the case maybe she should get off the train wherever she is and go to the hospital instead of staying where there's no medical care." I told her that she should call someone who knew more than I did to find out what questions to ask, and we talked about some possibilities.

She hung up the phone and said, "Anne's going to die."

My husband was with her and did his best to get her calmed down. After talking to the local L&D unit, they agreed to pick her up at the train station in town as planned. They took her straight to L&D, where the staff immediately checked her blood pressure and her urine and determined that it wasn't pre-eclampsia. They wanted her to wait until a doctor could check her out, which took some time once it was established that she wasn't an obstetric emergency. There was further drama; there was tearing off of fetal monitor belts.

She came home a few hours later, highly displeased with my meddling. "They didn't do anything," she said scornfully. And I stepped out of the kitchen and into a quiet corner, where I started to cry. My MIL and my other SIL spotted me, though, and were very kind -- so kind. My husband, who hates unnecessary fuss, also tells me that he thinks my reaction was reasonable. But I am still feeling sad and weighed down.

I have expended a lot of emotional energy on Anne over the past week: fretting and trying not to fret, chewing on her past visits and trying to let go of those old frustrations, praying for grace and trying to muster more compassion, mentally revising plans and re-revising them when she missed another train. And then there was today, when we didn't know for a while if she wasn't answering the phone because she was busy having an eclamptic seizure in her sleeper compartment. I've been hoping that I could show the love of Christ to her (or hey -- at least not provide further evidence to support her contention that Catholics are hypocrites), and instead I just made her mad.

So I am thinking about Christmas trees. My husband and I are real Christmas tree people, even though they shed needles and need watering and poke small children who get too close. Every year when I see the needles on the floor I tell myself, "Life is messy." You can have a tree that doesn't shed or need watering or poke small children, but it won't be real. And there's much to be said for real.

In the same way, I think, love is messy. You could live a life, maybe, where you never had to deal with prickly people and the stuff they strew across your life, but God calls us to love the prickly. On the long drive home I was trying to pray through my frustrations. In response I felt a wordless surge of loving tenderness from the Lord -- a momentary assurance that I didn't need to berate myself for being wrong about Anne's health. I hope she can find that same tenderness, somehow. I'd appreciate your prayers for her and her baby.

Later

When we were engaged and newly married, my husband and I were involved with a fantastic retreat program.  In the summer of 1995 I applied to be lay director for one of the retreats that next academic year. I wasn't chosen. When I got the call I hung up the phone and cried for a minute -- I trusted the team's discernment, but I was disappointed and I couldn't help feeling rejected.

A couple of months later they called me back. The guy who was slated to lead the November retreat was facing a huge family crisis and needed to step down. Could I fill in? I could. I did. It was a terrific (though trying) experience and I still think that the talk I gave to the participants on Sunday afternoon was one of the finest hours of my life so far.

Also in the summer of 1995, I miscarried my first baby. Losing that baby wrecked me: I'd never grieved like that. I'd never pleaded with God as earnestly as I did for the life of my baby, and he said no. I was still limping in November. I think that was part of why my talk resonated with the participants; I think they could hear the heartbreak and the sincerity in my voice when I told them that sometimes you implore God to spare you the outcome you dread, and he says no, and he is still good -- always good.

For complicated reasons I was convinced I wouldn't be able to get pregnant again, and in fact it was more than eight months after the miscarriage, in the spring of 1996, when I learned we were expecting Alex. Today I have been thinking about the little burst of hope I felt when I got the call about directing the retreat. I had applied because I'd felt called to the position, and then I was sad and a little embarrassed when they chose other candidates instead. As it turned out, God wasn't saying no; he was saying, "Later." Maybe he was also saying "Later" about the call to motherhood. Maybe someday I would have a baby to hold.

I wish I could tell my 1995 self that she really could look forward to the future -- that she wouldn't just have a baby to hold, that she would have five children and that they would be her favorite people in the world.

Why am I thinking about this today? Tune in tomorrow and I'll tell you why.

Love and Fudgesicles

I went searching in my archives for a recipe at Sarah's request, and I stumbled across a post I had completely forgotten. I never published it, because it was long and I thought it might sound boastful, but it was about sharing my faith with my children. It was such fun to read -- a fantastic window into our family's life six years ago. That's what I love about blogging: the record of events and thoughts and quotes and stages. It slips away so quickly if I don't record it.

As I've become less anonymous I've done more self-censoring. I suppose it's inevitable but it's also a shame. In the octave of Easter, even before it surfaced in the royal wedding, I kept running across this quote from St. Catherine: "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire." I was kneeling in the Adoration chapel, asking why I kept tripping over this quote. I said, "What would you have me do?" And the answer, mysteriously but unmistakably, was "Write."

So I'm writing.

(And also feeling utterly naked.)

Since I am already feeling naked, I will share a story that my inner editor would most likely have blue-penciled a couple of weeks ago. I was at Mass this morning, sitting across from a young family that leaves me feeling like a slacker. They've had four kids in rapid succession and yet they are always, always there at daily Mass. Back in the fall when I brought Stella to a weekday Mass, I got the distinct impression from the dad that he thought she was a bad influence on his kids. (She's not a fan of sitting quietly in the pew, my Stella.)

Do you do that unfortunate thing when you feel disapproval from someone else, that thing where you find yourself looking for something to criticize in return? "Well, my daughter may be a shrieking lunatic, but hey-- your tie is totally crooked!" No?? It's just me?? [heavy sigh and firm resolve] I have struggled with that unfortunate thing ever since.

Today I was there alone, while they were muddling through with their four little ones. Usually their kids are preternaturally well-behaved, but their newest baby is very new indeed and the older ones were wigglier and noisier than usual. At one point the dad asked each of the two oldest if they wanted a swat. As you might expect, they assured him that they did not.

Ten years ago that scene would have unleashed a torrent of strong feelings in me. (OK, actually, "strong feelings" = judgy judgy judgment.) Way to teach your children about the love of Jesus there, Dad! That's why he said, "Suffer the little children to come to me, and forbid them not, for in the kingdom of God I shall swat such as these." Or something like that.

But the certainty I had ten years ago about my parenting philosophy has been eroded by the reality of mothering my children. Ten years on I am able to see the irony in feeling superior to a parent whose children usually sit quietly and participate while mine erupt in unpredictable plumes of mirth and fury.

The reality is that the research on long-term attachment parenting outcomes is not as clear as Dr. Sears likes to say it is. The reality is also that Alfie-Kohn-esque discipline strategies can leave you up a creek in the short term. I continue to believe that it is worthwhile to teach children to do the right thing for its own sake, but OH do I see the utility of an occasional threat or bribe. I cannot know how it will all shake out in 20 years' time. Will my children be faithful Christians as adults? Will theirs? None of us can really know, and so I have come to think it's wiser to give each other the benefit of the doubt.

My 6yo has been having some trouble with his temper lately. This is a new thing for him; for a long time he was the sweetest and meekest of my children. In recent weeks anger has been smacking him around capriciously-- something minor will leave him enraged. This afternoon I sent him to his room to calm down and went up a few minutes later to check on him. "What was that about?" I asked him. "Hell," he answered instantly. "I think hell took over about a quarter of my brain."

At bedtime he got angry again. He has, and hates, the earliest bedtime. "I'm not going to put my clothes in the hamper," he fumed. We talked about it for a few minutes, about flexing your doing-the-right-thing muscles so they get stronger than your doing-the-wrong-thing muscles. "I'm too tired to do the right thing," he grumped. "Doing the right thing even when you're tired is the very best practice for your doing-the-right-thing muscles," I assured him.

He put his clothes in the hamper. "I'm doing this," he said with definite displeasure but no further defiance, "because I love you."

That's my highest hope: that when it is crunch time for them as Christians, that they will choose what's right and say to God, "I'm doing this because I love you." Will they? Do I?

***

I started this post three weeks ago and buried it in my drafts folder because (a) who wants to be naked in public? and (b) it kept getting longer, with no tidy ending in sight. After that Mass three weeks ago I thought to myself, "Instead of feeling so awkward around that family all the time, you should just love them the best you can. Take them a meal now that the baby's here." Today I finally did, lentil soup and corn muffins and a box of fudgesicles, assembled during the most tempestuous afternoon I can remember. The three youngest kids took turns wailing, and an older brother punctuated the wailing with poisonous sarcasm. I dropped that dinner off while my boys squabbled in the back of the van, with a prayer that we could all be more gracious to each other.

Maybe I don't have a tidy ending because motherhood isn't about the tidy or the endings: it's messy, it's gradual. It's love disguised in a box of fudgesicles and in fumbling efforts to be patient, and you can only hope the message gets through.

Like Newborns

This morning I read that bit of 1 Peter that tells us to be "as eager for milk as newborn babies," and I've been thinking about it all day. (The picture shows a brand-new Pete -- he'll be six tomorrow.)

I've been remembering the way that newborns accept no substitutes. When they're hungry you can't distract them or cajole them: they want one thing and one thing only.

I've been thinking about newborn diligence, the way they'll nurse for 20 minutes, 10 or more times a day. They've got a big task ahead of them -- imagine if you had to double your weight by Halloween! -- and they'll only grow if they keep feeding.

I've been thinking about the contentedness of a nursing newborn, the way their urgency gives way to satisfaction. I've been remembering colossal baby burps and sweet milk-drunk smiles.

And I've been thinking about the pleasures of providing for a newborn: the perfect reciprocity of an empty baby and a full mama, and the delight I've known watching a little one get exactly what he needs.

I'm not doing so well seeking out the "pure milk of the spirit." I get distracted and grab some bubble gum instead. I'm usually in a hurry -- a baby wouldn't grow very quickly on my current feeding schedule. In fact, a baby might wind up with failure to thrive on my current feeding schedule. I've been missing that joyful symbiosis: the Provider, overflowing with bounty, and the vessel, receiving it patiently.

Penetrated

I read Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts last month. It was a hard read. At first it was hard because I don't read her blog and I kept tripping over her style. Then it was hard because I kept tripping over tough truths.

Ann Voskamp is taking some heat for the last chapter of the book, in which she talks about making love to God. It's appalling, says one blogger. (See Elizabeth Esther's post here for more details.) We should just study our Bibles like nice Christian ladies, says one of the concurring commenters. Another commenter scurried away from the combox to go scrub her brain, she said. I haven't followed the comment thread since about Thursday, but I think that's an instinctive reaction and maybe pretty widespread.

The craziest, most breathtaking part of the gospel is that Jesus desires union with us. He didn't just rescue us from sin and death so we wouldn't fry for eternity; he rescued us from sin and death so we could have fellowship with him. So we could see him as he is. So we could be wholly filled and flooded with God himself. So we could KNOW him.

Studying your Bible like a nice Christian lady is important; St. Jerome was right that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. But the inverse is not quite true: knowing Scripture doesn't mean knowing Christ. Studying the Bible equips you to know about Jesus. It's not quite the same thing.

It would be possible for me to know a lot about, say, George Washington. I could read biographies and visit Mount Vernon and sift through archives to see his letters and papers. But I still wouldn't know George Washington. [I have a vague feeling that I've read this somewhere else. LMK if you recognize it -- I'd be glad to give credit.] You can't be in union with someone you know about from books and documents.

Union with Jesus, his call to us, has a lot in common with conjugal union. Because I am writing about Protestant criticisms of a book written by a Protestant, my focus here is spiritual union, not sacramental union. In both marriage and the Christian life we say an initial life-altering yes: the two become one flesh, or the life of Christ comes to dwell within us. In both marriage and the Christian life we have the privilege of renewing that initial yes, of deepening our union. This is the source of new life -- that "life to the full" that was Jesus' reason for coming to us. And it is designed to delight, to bring joy, to draw closer together. That delight, though, is edged with danger, because union -- whether spiritual or marital -- brings with it the possibility of discomfort, heartbreak, even death (all the more so in the days before modern midwifery care and anti-hemorrhagic meds). Granting entry to another is not a casual decision. Who knows what might happen if you say yes?

Union can seem like a crazy idea, in fact. Why are we eager for something that may cost us so much? I believe we are wired for desire; I believe too that most of us are hauling around some skepticism about how those yearnings might be satisfied. Like the child who says "...is that for real?" when he learns how babies are made, we think it's a pretty wacky idea that Jesus really wants to fill us with himself. Jesus lost followers when he taught about the Eucharist and I think the identical impulse is at in us work today. You want to fill me? With you? Is that for real?

Voskamp's book is about seeing that union made tangible through thanksgiving -- thanksgiving as the source of joy and fearlessness, thanksgiving as the key that opens our hearts to the Lord. I kept getting stuck while I was reading, hung up on a painful piece of my past that has left me chronically fearful about the future. One morning I was trying to talk to my husband about it and wound up sobbing in his arms. "I just can't give thanks for that," I told him. "I can't make myself do it."

"You don't have to," he said protectively as he stroked my hair. But I think eventually I do.

It's not because I serve some sort of monster God who doles out pain and maliciously wants me to thank him for it. It's because above all else I want to live my life with open hands, to live my life with a heart yielded to a sovereign God. I can only inch my way toward that right now, asking for the grace to get a little closer to the goal. But I believe, and am consoled by the belief, that the inching can still honor God -- I am thinking of my delight in my own daughter's wobbly first steps.

Perhaps we can all take comfort in St. Paul's comment on the reality of the Church as Bride: no stranger to tricky theological concepts, he called it a "great mystery." The idea of consummation with the Bridegroom is strange, and difficult, and hey -- who'd like to have a nice-Christian-ladies Bible study instead of thinking about something so weird? Is that for real?

It doesn't get any realer, actually: he is the Bridegroom, and together we believers are the Bride. To believe in the communion of the saints is to know that our collective Yes to consummation is the sum (the product? the exponentiation?) of uncountable individual Yeses. One of the blessings of an enduring marriage is a sense of freedom born of mutual willingness to keep plowing through the quotidian struggles. I believe the same is true of our union with Christ: it is through the quotidian struggles of the will -- where forgiveness is asked and extended and received -- that we are made ready to stand before the Bridegroom, once more naked and unashamed.

Thanks

During my first year out of college I was reading 1 Thessalonians for a Bible study. "Give thanks in all circumstances," said Chapter 5. I marked the "all" and resolved to give it a try.

The next morning I was racing out the door to work. I had just enough time to catch my train if I moved quickly. I zipped through my mental checklist as I ran for it: coat, gloves, shoes, bag, lunch, walle-- rrccchhhhhh ffffffccccccccchhhh.

That was the sound of my cat vomiting all over the living room carpet. I cannot even tell you how intensely I hated cat vomit. If you'd given me a choice between being in the same room with a live grenade and being in the same room with cat vomit, I would have picked the live grenade. They can treat shrapnel wounds, after all.

If I had lived alone I might have just tossed a dishrag over the offending spot and cleaned it up that night, so I could sprint for the train. But I had three roommates, none of whom would welcome that particular dishrag in their particular living room. I waved a mental farewell to my train and prepared to clean up.

I sank to my knees on the carpet and remembered the instruction to give thanks in all circumstances. You can probably imagine the sarcasm that crept into my voice as I began: "Thanks a LOT, Lord." As I began listing things I could be grateful for, though, I was surprised at how quickly they came.

For my cat, who was almost 19 at that point -- my first memories were of that cat. For a carpet. For able hands. For a job I loved and a train to take me there. I remember thanking God for the tenacity of life, not knowing that my kitty would die later that year. At some point it stopped being an exercise of the will and became an overflowing of the heart. I was surprised to feel it happening, and then grateful for that as well. It's a moment I look back on fondly, as a little glimpse of God's occasionally comical timing ("Thanks in all circumstances, Jamie? Here we go!") and of the fruits of a choice to obey.

***

Last night when they called school off for today, we invited the boy who was visiting to spend the night. Three of the kids slept in the fort Joe had made in our living room. At 11:30 I was awakened by an unhappy visitor. He woke up in the fort and, disoriented, was sick there. I helped him get some fresh clothes and a glass of water. I tried to contain the mess in the fort without waking the boys who'd been so eager to sleep there. It took a couple of tries to get in touch with our guest's family, and then it took me a long while to get back to sleep afterward.

I woke up too early this morning, because kids in a fort always wake up too early and even whispering boys will wake a toddler who doesn't want to miss a single minute of fun. I was crabby. I was not looking forward to our third successive snow day, this one so bitterly cold that the kids won't want to be outside for more than a few minutes. I don't mind doing my own kids' post-stomach-bug laundry, but it turns out that mother love is the reason for that particular change. (I am very fond of this kid, but vomit is still pretty gross.) I cleaned recycled strawberry ice cream out of the living room carpet with a fair amount of interior kvetching.

And then I sat down to do the Office of Readings. My ribbon was in the wrong place because of yesterday's feast day, which meant that I read, of all things, 1 Thessalonians 5. Give thanks in all circumstances, Jamie. All circumstances.

For this boy and his family. For my own family. For our friendship. For a carpet. For able hands. For a job that lets me stay home on a bitter February day. For good health (at least for the moment!). For a washing machine.

For a faithful God, who has a sense of humor.

Sunday Night Scrutinizing

Two weeks ago I resolved that I wouldn't goof around on the computer unless the dishes, the laundry, the meal prep, and my prayer life were where they needed to be first. For ten days this was an awesome plan. Things were caught up around here and I was feeling pretty good about it.

And then the habit fought back.

This week has been a real struggle. Part of it is that I hate my own sloth. Part of it is that the toddler sleep thing is kicking my butt from here to Madagascar. Or maybe Ganymede. I'm too disoriented from sleep deprivation to tell exactly where my butt has gone.

Part of it is that I'm not exactly sure how to proceed. I was in the Adoration chapel on Thursday morning, feeling guilty and frustrated about my bad habits, when I had a sudden insight, one of those moments of truth from outside my own head: overemphasizing self-discipline and to-do lists can be a form of idolatry.

The purpose of the Christian life is not to get things done. The purpose of the Christian life is not even to vanquish vices for the sake of vanquishing vices. The purpose of the Christian life is to live in relationship with Jesus.

If I fix my eyes on my to-do list, I can't fix my eyes on Jesus.

It's like I'm teetering between two errors. I can't be the person I'm called to be if sloth is grabbing me by the scruff of the neck. I also can't be the person I'm called to be if I am narrowly focused on efficiency. The computer and the to-do list are both good servants, bad masters.

I'm not making a Sunday Night Strategizing list this week because I have some discerning to do. (Also because last week left me full of discouragement and woe, but that's a secondary issue.) It's been really fun to see other SNS posts popping up here and there, so best wishes to all of you who are taking on your own to-do lists.

Oh, darn it, the 2yo is awake again. If you are a pray-er, please pray for her to sleep and me to have patience. I'm about to lose my mind here. Throwing up this unedited post and saying good night--

Your Questions Answered, Part 2

Kristin asked specifically about FlyLady and the rosary, both of which are fertile ground for breeding that alarming monster, the Perfectionist-Slacker hybrid. You can recognize it by its giant trailing flagellum (the better to beat you with, my dear) and its nauseous miasma of self-loathing.

I first subscribed to FlyLady's emails not long after she started sending them, eleven years ago, and I have been an off-and-on subscriber ever since. There are three things I have learned in those eleven years that may be useful (but may also be obvious). First, I have finally figured out that nobody else's program is going to work for me exactly as written. FlyLady and I part company early on, because I don't wear shoes in the house and I have no intention of doing so. (That was the big asterisk in my 2010 FlyLady resolution: "...everything* FlyLady tells me *except about wearing shoes because why would I want lead-contaminated soil and stray bits of dog poop tracked all over my carpet?") My house, my kids, my priorities -- why would she be able to predict exactly how I should keep my life in order?

Second, there are two truths in tension when it comes to FlyLady. I'm almost always glad when I do something she tells me to do. At the same time, I can only do everything she tells me if that's my primary focus. Outings with my kids seem to get pushed aside because I have one more FlyLady task to accomplish and suddenly it's naptime so we can't go out. It's better for me to plan on doing part of the package, perhaps choosing a particular habit to work on, and give myself upfront permission to delete freely.

This leads into #3, which is a hard one for me: running a household with small children is just not easy. There's this misperception that it's only housework, only childcare, and if you weren't a lazy slob you would just get it done. I disagree. Even in a small house there are a zillion things that need doing and entropy is an implacable force. It took me years to admit something that you may find self-evident (or whiny, depending on your POV), but I suspect I am not the only one out there laboring under the weight of a false idea. It's not an easy gig. Don't beat yourself up if you struggle: it's not you, it's the job.

Next up, the rosary. For those of you who aren't Catholic, the rosary is a structured meditation in which a person reflects on events in the lives of Jesus and Mary. A person could sit down for 20 minutes and pray the rosary contemplatively, pondering in turn the mysteries and the related scripture and her intentions and the words of the prayers. A person could also pray the rosary on the run, counting Hail Marys on her fingers while folding laundry and stopping in the middle of a sentence to redirect a contumacious child. Such a person might get to the eighth Hail Mary and say, "Wait, what decade is this supposed to be?"

Honestly, the rosary at my house looks like option B more often than option A. My strength is not contemplation. My strength is showing up. I cannot pretend to offer guidance on how to pray like St. Teresa, but I can tell you that you won't get to ecstatic union if you don't keep showing up. (Let me throw in here that I love Peter Kreeft's little book Prayer for Beginners -- it's just full of good stuff.) If you are trying to get started with the rosary, think of option A as a destination, not a starting point. Contemplation, kind of like keeping house, is harder than I expected it to be. It's reasonable to start small.

If you are trying to fit the rosary in, it may be useful to know that it takes less than three minutes to pray a decade. It may be useful to pray along with a recording so that you are not derailed by a moment of distraction, or so that you can do something mindless with your hands. I often pray the rosary while washing dishes or folding laundry. A person could complain that this diminished attention debases the rosary, though I hope only a really crabby person would think that. I prefer to think that I am sanctifying the housework.

Because a decade of the rosary is quick and composed of familiar prayers, it's fairly easy to do with kids. We almost never sit down to pray five decades, the way a Good Catholic Family^TM might, but one decade I can manage. Instead of launching into an unbroken string of Hail Marys, I usually give them a brief thought to reflect on at the beginning, after the third Hail Mary, and after the seventh Hail Mary. The goal is to combine facts and food for thought, so I might say, "Forty days after his Resurrection Jesus rose up into heaven as his apostles watched," and then, "We honor your authority over heaven and earth," and finally, "We ask for the grace to carry your holy truth into the world" -- just something quick and off the cuff that I hope will help those words from Acts 1 sink into their heads. The kids can all tell you that it takes less than three minutes but it's longer if you interrupt. And you know, maybe if I were a better mother I wouldn't emphasize how fast it's over, but I have to tell you they're almost always willing to cooperate -- in part because it's short.

One last idea, because my word count is creeping up and up, is to pray the rosary with a child who is going to sleep. To teach my children how to go to sleep without nursing, I would rub their backs and pray the rosary quietly. I think it is a lovely peaceful association for them -- my 8yo (who has been weaned for a long time!) still asks me to tuck him in that way.

So-- I am a half-hearted FlyLady follower, but my house is cleaner than it used to be. And I am hardly a rosary role model, but I can tell you that good things will follow if you just show up.