Every Family Has a Mission...

After reading my post yesterday, my friend Barbara put her thoughts on virtual paper. It's one thing to sit and philosophize about who should use NFP and who has just cause to delay childbearing. It's another thing entirely to throw one's door open to the very people others judge. Barbara and her husband are NFP proponents. They've been a teaching couple as long as I've known them (and that's a very long time). But more importantly, they are proponents of charity in the culture of life. Their home is a haven for moms who have said "yes" but who have real, tangible, and often urgent needs.  Barbara writes:

I think every family has acalling, and this is ours. I'm hoping to inspire other families to consider this mission to help pregnant women. Our diocese has just two homes right now, and has recently been getting more and more calls. It would be a shame to turn away someone who is asking for help.Read the rest here.

Babies are Only and Always Blessings.

In her wisdom, the Church never says we must use NFP; she says we may. We must however-- always-- be charitable. Contrary to so much popular press, NFP is not the default. NFP is not necessary for holiness or for strong marriages. Charity is.Are you growing in charity? Are you living in charity and acting in charity and working in charity for the culture of life? Read this and then think real hard about that.

Note to Self...

Remember to tell the physical therapist that Paddy is very allergic to latex before he tapes him. Do this even if you are certain that you have written it on each and every piece of paper required to initiate treatment.

Poor Paddy.

This will forever be "The Summer of the Shoulder."

Latex-free athletic tape (by the case) and shoulder braces available here.

Inquiring minds want to know...

"Why do you have a monitor and a laptop on your desk?" and "I thought you had a Mac. That screen's a Dell."

Details. Details.:-)

Last year, we bought Michael a reconditioned MacBook before he left for school. At Christmas, the screen burned out. It's outrageously expensive to fix.  So, he took an old monitor and hooked it up to his Mac. That was a Dell monitor. Around that time, I grew very tired of sharing a computer with all my kids and I began saving pennies to buy myself my very own computer. I've never had my very own computer...

Then, Lightning Struck. And it zapped our Dell desktop (our second Dell to be zapped). So, we needed a new family computer.That's a computer shared by everyone else in the house. It was becoming nearly impossible to ration time on it, particularly since the bigger boys are taking writign-intensive courses this fall, too. And Michael was going to travel extensively this summer and in the fall, all while attending college. He needed a laptop that functioned like a laptop. So, my pennies went to a new family Mac-mini withthe lightning-struck monitor (the monitor is fine). And some more (many more) pennies went to a new laptop for Michael. The old lightning-struck Dell can still do word processing; it just has no online access and other limited fucntioning, so as soon as I retrieve a monitor from my father, that will fucntion nicely for paper-writing. And I set myself up with the Mac-Dell hybrid on an old desk my aunt gave me. Admittedly, I am visual enough that the necessary tangle of cords drives me nuts, but all in all, I am pretty thrilled to finally have a 'puter all my own (except for when I share it with everyone else;-). The bonus is that it acts like a Mac.

Prayer for Today

Let me be this kind of friend, this kind of mother, this kind of wife, please God:

Oh, the comfort —
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person —
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
~Dinah Craik