Fast
Let the answering machine pick it up! Let your caller leave a message and only return essential phone calls today.
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Pray
"Blessed are the ears which hear God's whisper and listen not until the whispers of the world." (Thomas a Kempis
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Give
"Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough; money can be got, they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go." (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta).
Fast
"Outward sacrifice, to be genuine, must be the expression of spiritual sacrifice: "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit..." The prophets of the Old Covenant often denounced sacrifices that were not from the heart or not coupled with love of neighbor. Jesus recalls the words of the prophet Hosea: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice." The only perfect sacrifice is the one
that Christ offered on the cross as a total offering to the Father's love and for our salvation. By uniting ourselves with his sacrifice we can make our lives a sacrifice to God." (CCC #2100)
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Pray
Listen. God is speaking to you right now. Stop interrupting.
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Give
The new evangelization is accomplished with a smile, not a frown ... it is all about a 'yes' to everything decent, good, true, beautiful and noble in the human person. The Church is about a 'yes!', not a 'no!'
—His Eminence Timothy Michael Dolan, Cardinal-Archbishop of New York
Read or watch the entire reflection here. Truly a gift for this time.
Your children will see that– in spite of imperfections in their parents– joyful obedience to God is still the standard. That obedience is all the more fruitful when difficult temperaments and real life challenges are involved. Your children will learn that you can’t change someone else. But you can love them.
I'm sharing an old post at Suscipio this morning, the notes from long ago conversations with wise women. Thoughts on love and marriage. Please join me there?
I know this isn't the weekend yet, but I have so many tabs open that my computer is leaning backwards. So, in an effort to clear the clutter, let me share the week's wanderings with you.
First up, don't miss Ann Voskamp's post on ways to short circuit every married fight from now until forever. Well, I guess I can't speak to every every married fight, but I will tell you that I told my older sons to read carefully. I can't speak for all women, but I do know from my limited personal experience that Ann articulates beautifully what I wish I could say and what I dearly wish men would know: Pull her close. Read it. Print it. Pray it together. Five ways to fight through to a loving marriage: Five things that truly could change your lives.
It's been an interesting couple of weeks. I unexpectedly found myself talking about homeschooling more than I have in a long time and more than I ever have with people who really don't know much about it. It's been good for me, a chance to thoughtfully reflect on what this lifestyle has meant for our family and how grateful I am for the freedom to live and breathe and educate the way we do. Just as the homeschool legislation has sparked interest and conversation, so has the misguided HHS mandate.
I find myself being the woman who is obviously in that 2% minority of Catholics who don't contracept. Oh, so that's what it looks like. Note to self: Stand up straight. Remember lipgloss.
But that 2% number is ridiculously skewed. We're having a rousing discussion of that on Facebook. (If you aren't a FB friend, just send me a request. Then, the link should work.)
There are so many layers to this issue. First, there is the layer of who thought of it and how it oppresses religious liberty and how clearly the bishops have articulated their objections. Then, there is the opportunity to express the personal side of the Church's teaching.
Just as the Tebow Bill has shed a light on homeschooling and given us the opportunity to broaden and deepen understanding, so has the HHS mandate given us the chance to affirm that yes, yes, indeed; the Church speaks loudly and clearly against contraception. The Church does not oppress women. The Church respects women and protects women. Sometimes, it's helpful to pass along a witness from an unlikely source, a writer who is used to expressing himself in clear, quantifiable terms. This piece touches on the nuts and bolts of why the Church has been right on this issue all along. I like the piece; I really do. But it doesn't begin to touch on the nuances of what this lifestyle--and all its joys and all its sacrifices-- do to the heart of a marriage and the soul of a mother. I pray that the current crisis in our country will give us opportunity to bear witness to God's love and providence when we live true openness to life.
Finally, these two newsworthy items--the Tebow bill and the HHS mandate--have me reflecting in a very personal way this afternoon. I think back to the fall of 1991. I had miscarried in November. I was terrified. I'd been warned that chemotherapy would leave me unable to bear children. Despite the fact that our second child had been conceived just seven months after finishing chemotherapy and radiation and was delivered healthy and whole nine months later, I was sure that this third baby, lost so soon, was a harbinger of things to come.
My doctor strongly encouraged contraception, at least for a few months. We had stepped out in faith. We were committed to the teachings of the Church. God had brought us so far, taught us so much throughout our cancer experience. We were not turning back now. A baby was conceived the very next month.
I was sick, super sick, can't-pick-my-head-up sick. My doctor--a new one who is 110% pro life--suggested an early sonogram to rule out twins. I was 16 weeks pregnant. The radiologist saw one baby. He knew it was a boy. And he saw cysts on his brain. They were troubling, the radiologist related, because they could be indicators of Trisomy 18, a rare chromosomal anomoly. He warned us that we might never take our baby home from the hospital. And he shared that some couples choose to abort.
In those days, we didn't have a PC; there was no surfing to research Trisomy 18. Instead, on nights when I taught childbirth classes in an OB's office, I pulled medical textbooks and journals from the shelf and read everything I could. I was so scared we'd lose this baby.
He was born on the Feast of the Guardian Angels, a Sunday that year. His head was undeniably large and my pediatrician had me back to her office every week that fall and winter to measure him. He struggled hard through January and February and a nasty bout of RSV is still with him when he pushes himself to run faster and farther. But run he does. He has no extra chromosomes. Not only did he leave the hospital, he left just 8 hours after he was born.
He grew into a fine young man who has more courage than I can ever hope to have. As the spotlight shines on Patrick these days, and people keep mentioning him in the same breath as Tim Tebow, I am a bit struck by God's protection over my own fragile baby. Life is so precious. And I am ever grateful that God granted us the grace to allow Him to be in charge.
What if it had been Trisomy 18? I can only hope that we would have responded with same grace Rick Santorum has.
In the months before we left for Disney World, we began to plan. Of course, there was research on hotels and rental vans and some reservation-making. Mike managed most of that. Once he had the dates nailed down, I started planning each individual day.
There were a few major planning tools. We read three books: Birnbaum's Walt Disney World, Birnbaum's Walt Disney World for Kids, The Unoffical Guide To Walt Disney World. The kids devoured every page of the kids' book. The other two books bounced around the house from reader to reader. I challenged every one to pick up little tidbits here and there that they could offer as we considered what to do each day. When we arrived, it was funny to hear them all quote the books while we were in the park. A few days in, we recognized that the books weren't always right. Still, they were a place to begin.
In addition to the The Unoffical Guide To Walt Disney World book, we got a subscription to Touringplans.com. This service will plan your entire day, one event and attraction at a time. For ten dollars, the site offers several different plans for each park: plans for just adults and teens, plans for tweens, plans for families of little ones, and big, happy family plans. I planned each day of the trip and printed the plan and put them in a three-ring binder. Honestly, the greatest value these plans had was my sense that I knew we were going to arrive at each park and not waste time getting the lay of the land and figuring out what to do when.
If you have a smart phone, skip the printing and binder step. We learned that Mike could download the plans right to his smart phone. He could also check (in real time) the wait time on any attraction and the crowd level at any park. Buy the book first and then the app. Book owners get a discount on the app. And really, the book is so worth the purchase cost. Touringplans.com also provided valuable "day of" information. We were reminded to be in Magic Kingdom the night of the Electric Parade. We knew that Dumbo (Sarah's absolute favorite ride) was going to be closed for renovations the fourth day of our trip and would remain closed a long time. We made sure to ride on third day. I can't begin to tell you how much we learned from those books. nearly as much as I learned from careful reading through Dawn's notes. There is nothing, nothing like another generous mom to mentor.
All that said, the plan is just a skeleton of what your day will look like in real life. Like any good plan, it works only as well as your ability to look at it critically and deviate if necessary. Despite our very careful planning and all our research, we missed a big detail. None of the sites or books told us months in advance that the Disney Marathon and Half-Marathon were being run the first weekend we were there. Not only were crowds much bigger than they were historically on those dates, the foot traffic inside the parks was re-routed for the runners. Our plans as written were as worthless as plans for a full co-op day the morning you discover your kids have chicken pox.
We didn't panic. We were determined to mine for the magic. As a result, we ducked into far more shows than we had planned, discovering the happy fact that Disney puts on a very fine live theater presentation--consistently, in every park, every single show. That crowded marathon day found us in Hollywood Studios as the runners ran through the main walkways. We sat it out in a stunning performance of Beauty and the Beast. I think it was my favorite attraction of all and it wasn't on the plan at that time. Days later, when crowds weren't an issue at all, we were lost and late in Animal Kingdom just as the Lion King show was beginning. So we stopped rushing to where we were going and stepped inside to take in the show. Absolutely awesome. I mean that. We were awestruck. That one wasn't on our list at all because everyone had told us to make sure to see the Nemo show and that was our priority. In the end, we saw both.
There were several times we vehemently disagreed with the opinions expressed in the guidebooks, mostly when it came to dining. I'll cover dining in another post. Within hours of our first day, I reconciled myself to the fact that autopilot wasn't going to work in terms of planning. The first ride we took with Sarah (who had never been to an amusement park) was Living with the Land. It's train-like ride that moves through a dark tunnel, into a lighter tunnel and then into a bright open greenhouse space. She hated the dark tunnel so much that the rest of the ride was tough. Then we went to The Seas with Nemo and Friends, another dark tunnel, a scary shark. Then, we moved over to the Mexico section of Epcot. Three Caballeros: by now Sarah was sure that Disney was all moving train-like rides through dark tunnels. On to Norway: The Maelstrom. Dark tunnel. Scary trolls. The ride got stuck. We sat there forever about twenty minutes. I talked and talked and talked to Sarah about what we were seeing and how it was built and anything else I could throw at the situation. By the time we were unstuck, she wanted to go again!
The plan is flawed or the plan goes awry, but something better than the plan comes to life.
That was easily the theme of our trip. Over and over again, serendipitous good things happened for us. I think being planned helped put us in position for some of them and certainly, reading up ahead of time and doing some research and availing ourselves to tools helped, too. But in the end, praying for grace and being open to the unexpected good was what made the trip great. I was also struck time and again by how well Mike was able to cheerfully reassure me that it was okay that the plan was going awry, all the while coming up with Plan B or C and steering us forward.
The big planning picture was important, but so was the micro-planning picture. We put thought into packing. That translated well when we grabbed a ziploc bag with a full outfit in it and laid it out the night before, so that girls could quickly dress themselves in the morning. We shopped well for breakfast items so that we wasted neither time nor money getting well-fed at the beginning of every day. We did laundry as we went, so that it never became a big pile of worry. We ended every day with the next one in mind, mentally rehearsing where and what we'd do and devoting a good deal of creative thought to troubleshooting.
I've heard stories from lots of moms with far fewer children than I have. They tell me how hard vacations, particularly Disney vacations, can be for them. There are classic articles out there about how difficult vacationing with children is. I think I was intimidated by those. The reality though, is that moms are overwhelmed at home, too. And moms write all the time to tell me how glad they are when there kids get on the bus in the morning. Homeschooling a big family is great training for taking one on vacation. Whether vacationing in Orlando, taking a huge trip to China, or just trying to do a good job at home on a gray day in February, the principles are the same.
Plan well.
Study up. Become an expert in the field.
Pray hard that you will know when and how to diverge from the planned path.
Think creatively about what may come.
Embrace the surprises because they often yield the greatest blessings.
Stay together.
Look to Dad for reassurance and another creative solution.
If you have to abandon the plan, abandon it for something better, not for sloth.
Plan for meals and rest and make sure they happen.
When it gets scary, hold them close and talk it through together.
Expect that it will good, very good.
I'm Elizabeth. I'm a happy wife and the mother of nine children. I grab grace with both hands and write to encourage myself and others to seize and nurture the joy of every day. I blog here with my daughter, Mary Beth, a wholehearted young lady on the brink of adulthood.
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