Daybook from the Coffee Shop

Outside My Window

Is the parking lot. I am grabbing a few minutes of time to myself at Starbucks. So how about that?

I am Listening to

Jazz and the expresso machine

I'm pondering

"If you have to choose between being right and being kind, always choose to be kind." Immaculee Illibigiza

 The more you think about this one, the more there is to think about.

I am Reading

some very sweet emails. I promise to write back, but it might be a few days:-)

From the Kitchen
transitioning the spring menu into summer...grilled maple-dijon glazed pork chops with creamed corn and asparagus were a real hit last week

I am Thinking

about silence and conversation. About boundaries and embraces. About activity and stillness.

I'm having a Kind Conversation about

sweet things to do to let your husband know how much he's loved.

I am Creating

a lifetime of memories with my children. As I approach the twentieth anniversary of being diagnosed with cancer, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the gift of just being here.

On my iPod

Books, not so much. I'm finding that my Kindle reading is not kind to my eyes. I really, really need to give in and go to the eye doctor. My eyes think I'm middle-aged.

Towards a Real Education

I'm finally looking towards next year. The plan is pretty simple and I'm detailing quite a bit in order to create a very big safety net. I think our lives might include some travel so I'm looking to make sure we're portable.

Towards Rhythm and Beauty

I'm working out some new bedtime routines. When I was on bedrest, Mary Beth fell into the habit of putting Katie and Karoline to sleep. The habit continued was Sarah Anne was tiny and then it just became a part of what we do. I'm reclaiming that time with my little girls. They need me. And I need them. And Mary Beth needs some time to herself at the end of the day.

To Live the Liturgy

This week, we are praying the Divine Mercy novena and lulling small children to sleep at night with the chaplet, sung over and over. Still:-)

I am Hoping and Praying

for someone who could be on the brink of things bigger than ever imagined. For grace and strength and wisdom to know His will.

In the Garden
The peonies have shot up. The roses are full of buds. And we had a bumper crop of dandelions (they have a post of their own, tomorrow).

Around the House

I am trying to think creatively as we anticipate Michael's homecoming for the summer. He's going to be interning at USAToday and he'll work in the office and also at home. We're running out of quiet pockets and he's going to need one.

  
On Keeping Home
Totally re-worked my iCalendars. I was inspired by a thread at Kind Conversation to take another look at Mother's Rule of Life and at my homemaking notebooks. I haven't really had time to sit and gut those notebooks and then make pretty pages, but I am working to being very intentional in everything I do.

One of My Favorite Things

Quiet.

Sarah Annie this week

Oh my goodness! This sweet baby has bloomed with the spring:-)! She still won't walk unless she's got a finger to hold onto, but she's talking up a storm. And if you hold her hand, she kicks a soccer ball, too. She loves, loves, loves chocolate and is having serious withdrawal from Easter candy. I am still in shock that a baby of mine even knows what chocolate is. Some things they say about the baby in big families are true.

A Few Plans for the Rest of the Week

There is a whole lot of soccer in the plan book this week. That means I will be in the car a lot. We're also going to head back to Bull Run (sans bluebells) for springtime nature study. There are some tadpoles that need chronicling, among other things.

And I'm going to sleep. I'm planning naps and early bedtimes. And I'm sticking to the plan.

Picture thoughts:

Karoline loves to twirl. This is her very favorite dress and we have to hide it sometimes just to keep her from wearing it every day.

 

Try a Little Kindness

Good Monday morning! I'm going to be guest blogging at Faith and Faith Live! all this week. I'm using the format of the daily devotions in our new book, Small Steps for Catholic Moms: Think. Pray, Act. Every Day. to give you an idea of how it works. The book is expected next week, so consider this a sneak preview:-).

In the book, we focus on a virtue each month and look at the wisdom of great spiritual counselors, say a short prayer, and set about doing some small thing to help us grow in that virtue. This week, we're all about Kindness. 

In her gripping, amazing, life-changing, fabulous, testimony to grace and faith and mercy, Immaculee Illibagiza takes forgiveness to a place that most of us will never be challenged to understand. Grace shines through this woman in a tangible, but supernatural way. She once said, "If you have to choose between being right and being kind, always choose to be kind."

With that in mind, knowing that we can be kind no matter what life throws us, let's look together at kindness this week.

And then there is Easter

I have to write this post. It's a little scary though, because I have no idea where it's going. I just know it's going.

There is a place in this big world where I predictably return every year. In this place, burnout is remedied, love comes to life in the budding of flowers and the greening of trees, friendships are renewed and sunshine-starved souls welcome the spring.

Year after year, predictably, I go there. I bring my new babies for their first taste of springtime in this great, glorious world. I even go when extreme nausea and fatigue prevent me from going anywhere else. Somehow, I get myself down there.

I didn't have a new baby this year. And I didn't have a baby on the way. That was different.

And more than a little sad.

My children come with me. They propel me there, begging to be there, begging to stay. There we are. This place is us. And I love it.

But not this year. This year I returned there. And it just wasn't the same. I went through the motions. I took the pictures. I willed it to be so. But it wasn't.

This year, the flowers bloomed early. They caught me by surprise. I was exhausted when they burst into color.

Utterly and completely exhausted.

This was not burnout. At least not the garden variety. This was complete depletion.

Lent had been long. My husband was gone for most of it.

 

It began with a betrayal of trust, an awakening to the understanding that some women were not at all who I thought they were. This was a strange place to be. All through Lent it raged around me; I was oddly calm in the face of it. One friend reminded me that we melancholy types often struggle with something much later--kind of a delayed reaction. I appreciated her concern. But I wasn't worried.

I had good counsel throughout that trying time. I read good things, went almost daily to Mass, surrounded myself with good and holy people. 

Out there, in the computer world, women picked apart my life. They questioned my faithfulness to the Church. They questioned the way I am raising and educating my children. They even picked apart the story my daughter wrote for her little sisters and said all sorts of unkind things about it. That was probably the most difficult of all. Do what you want with me, but really, don't hurt my kids.

Here at home, I was too busy to spend much time dwelling on what was happening in the computer. I had children who needed me in very big ways and they were stretching me beyond what I thought possible. So many of them. So little of me. Such big issues.

In hindsight, I recognize that I did what I usually do when I am stressed, only I did it to an extreme I've never done it in the past. I tried valiantly to perfectly order my environment. It was as if I thought that if I could control every last detail in my house, somehow I could bring healing to my hurting children, and quiet to an unkind crowd, and peace to my troubled soul.

So, I slept four hours a night for all of Holy Week and invested everything I had in my home. I made sure that we did all the traditional Holy Week things we always do, despite the fact that Mike was gone and Paddy was gone and Christian and Mary Beth were both too sick to help with anything. I cooked, I cleaned, I ordered the world in my control.

I pushed and pushed and pushed myself as if I could vacuum away the hurt and bleach out the sorrow.

Easter came. The sun shone. Mike arrived home just after sunrise. All was right with the world.

Or at least is should have been that way.

But I was so tired I couldn't even function. As nature would have it, Easter Monday was our first Bluebell Day. I cried on the way there. I cried on the way home. I cried the next day, too. And the next.

It was as if, now that he was home, I recognized that it was safe to fall apart. And so I did.

It wasn't pretty. I did that melancholy thing. 

And I wondered again and again. Why do I do it? Why do I put myself out there and offer my life in this space and in nearly 17 years of family life columns? Why do let myself be in such a place of vulnerability?

I don't know.

But I do know that every time I wanted to give up, to snap the computer shut and never look back, there was a perfectly timed email from a total stranger. Someone took the time to let me know that the words that appear in this place somehow made life a little better for her.

I was glad for that.

Glad to encourage.

Glad to help.

Glad to have taken the time to care.

But mostly glad for the opportunity to share God's grace.

Because He's here.

He's here even when the hard days stretch into entire seasons.

He gives me time and words and beautiful pictures.

He gives me 10 glorious reasons to get up in the morning.

I went back to the bluebells today. I went with my best friend in the world and her youngest children and a small band of my children. I had a good, honest talk.  I understood the great gift of forever friends.

The flowers are fading--it's a stretch to even say it's still bluebell season. But the trees are a lovely leafy green that wasn't there two weeks ago and the forest floor a regal carpet of lush color.

It's a beautiful life.

Sometimes, even a beautiful life hurts.

And then, there is Easter.

Our First Week on Kind Conversation

We've just enjoyed our first full week of Kind Conversation:-)!Nearly 800 members have moved in and "decorated" their pages. "Status Updates" are full of cheerful quotes, reminders from the Hours, and happy updates on daily doings.

Here's a little look at what we've been up to in other places on the network:

On the Encouraging Words message board

• Fourteen discussions about Real Learning--everything from plans for next year to taking learning on the road
• a conversation about homemaking notebooks
• a very useful look at shoes for nature hikes
• thoughts on which devotions bear fruit in our families, depending on the stage of our family's life
• a thoughtful reflection about what it means to be an Easter People
• and many, many more discussions

Kind-hearted women are discovering each other and finding a niche in the Groups. Among them,

• Kate Wicker has women thinking about what it means to be made in God's image and how to better love the skin you're in
• Over one hundred ladies have jumped into a book study of Simplicity Parenting
• There are 16 different local diocesan groups and more forming every day so that women can meet and then plan some face-to-face events
• We're talking about growing old gracefully and parenting adult children
• Or, we're talking about mothering little ones and attachment parenting (or we're talking about growing old and mothering little ones;-)

On the blogging pages

Some ladies who have never blogged before have set up their own blogs and some veterans have shown them the way.

All in all, we're learning what the technology can do for us, getting to know each other, and asking what we can do for one another.

 Come join us for some Kind Conversation!

Visit Kind Conversation

Spring Break

 



Many thanks to our friend  Roger who joined us with his camera in the beautiful bluebells!