Winner of Simplicities of Life Rosary

Simplicities of Life is offering readers here a chance to win A Natural Men's Rosary.Here's how it's described:

In a word: holy. This hardy, masculine rosary is one meant to be used in prayer for his family or the woman he loves. Its rich, deep 10mm Buri seed aves and 12mm Bone seed antique paters exude strength and power from above. It’s perfected by the solid bronze Holy Eucharist medal and the solid bronze Holy Family crucifix which amplify its clean and manly tone. This rosary would suit a grandfather, father, son, nephew, son-in-law, or any other special man in your life.

The Winner Is:

Barbara  who said...

I'd love to win a rosary for my soon to be son-in-law. The men's rosaries are beautiful and masculine. I especially like the Natural (I & II), Garden of Gethsemane, and (my favorite today) the brown/cream/tan one made with Tiger Jasper stone and buffalo bone.

Congratulations, Barbara, I'll send your email information along to Kessie:-).

Joy in the Ordinary

Yesterday, I mentioned that until very recently, I hadn't read a fiction-for-Mama book in over twenty years. I used to inhale fiction until, inexplicably, when I had cancer, I no longer had any inclination to crack a volume that wasn't a non-fiction book, unless I was previewing for or reading with a child.

Someone suggested yesterday that fiction requires an emotional investment. Indeed. And I'm just so emotionally invested so many places that investing in fictional books (or even movies, for that matter, much to my husband's chagrin) doesn't come easily for me. 

I sort of got hoodwinked into this one.

Theresa Fisher approached me and asked if she could run an ad for her new book. All of the sponsors on my blog offer something I think will benefit my readers. I don't offer sponsorship unless I think I'm passing along information you can use. In order to have Theresa as a sponsor, I had to read her book. The whole thing. No way around it. I was going to have to immerse myself in the lives of these characters until the very end. 

I read the introduction standing in my kitchen, stirring dinner. Without reading further, I emailed Theresa and told her I'd love to have her! Then, I got up early one morning and read the rest. Children awakened. I waved them in the direction of the kitchen. I may or may not have finally caved and let them watch Doc McStuffins. I finished before our 10:00 rosary walk. 

It was a sweet, gentle story of Joyce Barrett, who spends a year as a postulant, thinking that God was calling her to become a nun. When she discerns that she's not called to the convent, she leaves and goes back to the ordinary world. She is plunked down in rural Indiana in a big, Irish Catholic homeschooling family. I felt myself pulled into the comfortable familiarity of a wholesome Catholic story as her life was woven together with threads of parish life, family life, and life at the family-run pub. 

The book is lovely and easily one I can hand to my teenaged daughter. It's a simple story, but the themes resonated long after I finished it and the characters were ones I found myself caring to know. Honestly, I fought the urge to call Theresa and beg her to just tell me the story she's planning for a sequel. 

I know this book isn't destined to be the next great classic. I also know that it had all the elements of a lovely, Christian novel that I noted in the Grace Livingston Hill book I read next. For me, the fact that its characters are earnestly, wholeheartedly Catholic made it all the better. Furthermore, Joy in the Ordinary is a story that's entirely plausible. It didn't require the same stretch of willful suspension of disbelief that the GLH book required. And the children in Joy in the Ordinary were entirely believable. I felt like these were folks who could easily live next door.  I wish they did:-).

The paperback is available at Amazon. The Kindle version is a well-worth-it bargain. It's only 99 cents! For 99 cents, you can have a three -cups -of-tea-morning, where you let the children watch a cartoon or two, and click your Kindle closed with a happy sigh. Go ahead, do it!

~ ~ ~Giveaway Details~ ~ ~

Theresa Fisher  is a happily married wife and homeschooling mother.  With six children at home, she and her husband enjoy an extraordinary ordinary life of lovable chaos.   Mrs. Fisher enjoys writing and knitting, keeping up with the family blog, and drinking coffee.  She dreams of owning a self-sustaining hobby farm someday.  Meanwhile, she's trying to keep a tomato plant alive.  Joy in the Ordinary is her first novel.

Go visit her blook blog or her family blog. Leave her a comment and let her know you were there. Come back here and let me know you "met" her. You'll be eligible to win an autographed copy of Joy in the Ordinary.

Monday Moments

{These Monday moments? Jotted down on Sunday. Full of prom pictures. There's a Grandma in Florida who wants to see them all. Please indulge her, y'all.}

I find myself:

::noticing God's glory

Morning walks are full of signs of new life. Little buds, new leaves, berries not yet ripe. There are ducklings and goslings in the lake and I think some new bunnies under the hedges. The weather was absolutely glorious this weekend.

::listening to 

Sarah and Karoline playing "Prom." Kristin came over as the pre-prom bustle started bustling. She spirited the little girls upstairs for hairdos and makeup and manicures and pedicures. Then they put on dress up clothes. This is the (new) game that will never end.

::clothing myself in 

Cropped jeans, my favorite gray shirt and a big apron with strawberries on a field of black. This apron best hides beet stains and roasted beets are on the menu for dinner tonight.

::talking with my children about these books

Since I'm going to share my own reading on Thursdays at needle and thREAD, I thought I'd share some reading from our family's choices. 

Mary Beth and I are digging into the free Grace Livingston Hill downloads on Kindle. She didn't get terribly excited about hers but I read mine cover-to-cover over the weekend. Happy sigh. This is remarkable because it is only the second fiction book outside of books for my children's education that I've finished since 1990. It's also the second book I finished last week:-).

 I used to read fiction voraciously. Then I got cancer. I never finished a fiction book on my own again. I'm not sure why and I haven't spent much time analyzing it. Partly, it's because I hate conflict and every good book has some conflict. But that's not the all of it.

Whatever it was, I'm cured! I've begun my second Grace Livingston Hill book and I'll also be back tomorrow to share with you the very first fiction-for-mama book I've read in the last two decades.

::thinking and thinking

On Saturday, Patrick hurt his knee. We don't yet know how big a deal it is, but our hearts stood still in the moment, for sure. I was dispatched to drop in on Hilary and let her know that plans for prom would most definitely change. I interrupted the merry afternoon she had planned to ready herself for the big dance to tell her that Patrick was going to go on crutches. He wasn't to drive and he'd have to be really careful. What's more, he might be a little preoccupied, because knees are rather important to boys who plan on soccer careers. 

She responded with nothing but concern for him, with absolute certainty that they'd change whatever plans necessary, and the assurance that if it was in his best interest, they didn't have to go at all.

For his part, he determined not to show any sign of pain, not to take any pictures with crutches, and to dedicate the evening to making her smile. 

And smile she did.

They went to dinner at the home of friends and then, after dinner and before the dance, paid a visit to Mike's parents so that Patrick's grandparents could take in the glorious sight they were. 

It was an early evening as proms go, but the memory will linger happily a long, long time.

::giving thanks for

a sweet girl whose blue eyes brim, not because she's sad for herself, but because she cares so much about my boy.

::pondering prayerfully

When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize, she was asked, "What can we do to promote world peace?" She answered "Go home and love your family."

::carefully cultivating rhythm

Hah! A few weeks ago, I ordered a big box of curriculum kinds of things. I explained to a friend that my thought was that I wanted an underpinning of things that would happen everyday--a little grammar, a little math, a little handwriting, a little spelling, some foreign language. I prefer more creative endeavors, and many days we do those, but I wanted something that would be there whatever came.

My words to my friend were, "I just want to be sure we hit the rhythm of learning even on the Mondays when I get up and say, 'Nicky hurt himself in Sunday's match. I'm off the doctor-xray-doctor. Just do the regular and keep things going.'"

We're going to test that this morning. Insert Paddy instead of Nicky and Saturday instead of Sunday. Here we go.

::creating by hand

We shall see. I've been known to accomplish quite a lot in medical waiting rooms. 

::learning lessons in

trust.

::encouraging learning 

I'm endeavoring to make sure that one day a week is dedicated to learning out of doors. From now until it's way too cold. Every week. Promising myself.

::begging prayers

for all the people who have joined our weekend prayer community. I carried your requests with me to Mass and I will keep a candle lit for you throughout the week. Elizabeth DeHority has left an update in last weekend's combox, for those of you who are continuing to hold her in prayer.

for lonely missionaries.

for Patrick.

for the repose of the soul of my Aunt Christina, who died this morning.

for baby Truman, who drowned in a few inches of water in a bucket this weekend, but was revived. Won't you watch and wait with us, keeping Truman, his doctors, and his beautiful family in your unceasingly prayers?

:keeping house

Patrick is going to re-write the chore chart. Mine is not working.

::crafting in the kitchen 

I ended up not going to the dance competition. Mary Beth's Saturday dances were shifted to Sunday and she went with Hilary and her mom. I stayed home with Patrick, changed out ice packs, and tried to be positive and cheerful. I gathered the first herbs from our kitchen garden to make roast chicken. We're having carmelized rosemary sweet potatoes and a spinach salad with beets and bacon dressing. Sunday dinners are wonderful, aren't they?.

::loving the moments

when I wonder if my heart could be any fuller.

::living the liturgy

We are using  33 Days to Morning Glory  in preparation for Marian Consecration on the Feast of the Visitation. Soon!

We'll celebrate Pentecost Sunday this coming weekend. My plans are just taking shape, but I know that Saturday's soccer will take us to Poolesville and that means we'll pick strawberries to be a part of a 7-fruit salad. I love the feast of Pentecost, but I admit to being a little sad this year to see the Easter season end.

::planning for the week ahead

When a week begins with an 8 AM appointment to the team doctor, followed by an MRI, I hesitate to make plans.

{Photo credit? Who knows? Some are mine; some are Hilary's mom's. Some might even be Stephen on my iPhone.}

Lord, Hear Our Prayer

The internet is a formidable force for bringing the comfort and consolation and hope of the Lord to all of us. It can be an incredibily powerful medium for community. There is an unfathomable resource for prayer here. We have on the 'net the privilege of praying for people and of being witness to the miracles brought forth when fervent, faith-fulled people pray for one another.

Let's be that community of hope and faith for one another.

But how about this idea? What if I pop in here every weekend, share Sunday's gospel and talk a wee bit about how we can live it and pray it in our homes? And then you tell me how we can pray for you that week? Deal?

{And please, do return and let us know how prayer is bearing fruit.}

In our diocese, the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord is celebrated this Sunday, so that is the Gospel I share below. To read the Gospel for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, please click here.

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Go into the whole world
and proclaim the gospel to every creature.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved;
whoever does not believe will be condemned.
These signs will accompany those who believe:
in my name they will drive out demons,
they will speak new languages.
They will pick up serpents with their hands,
and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them.
They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover."

So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them,
was taken up into heaven
and took his seat at the right hand of God.
But they went forth and preached everywhere,
while the Lord worked with them
and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.

Mark 16:15-20

~ Think~

"To this end, it is more necessary than ever for all the faithful to move from a faith of habit, sustained perhaps by social context alone, to a faith which is conscious and personally lived. The renewal of faith will always be the best way to lead others to the Truth that is Christ" (Bl. John Paul II, Ecclesia in America, no. 73).

~ Pray ~

Prayer to Jesus Christ for the families of America
(From John Paul II’s Ecclesia in America)

We thank you, Lord Jesus,
because the Gospel of the Father's love,
with which you came to save the world,
has been proclaimed far and wide in America
as a gift of the Holy Spirit
that fills us with gladness.
We thank you for the gift of your Life,
which you have given us by loving us to the end:
your Life makes us children of God,
brothers and sisters to each other.
Increase, O Lord, our faith and our love for you,
present in all the tabernacles of the continent.
Grant us to be faithful witnesses
to your Resurrection
for the younger generation of Americans,
so that, in knowing you, they may follow you
and find in you their peace and joy.
Only then will they know that they
are brothers and sisters
of all God's children scattered
throughout the world.
You who, in becoming man,
chose to belong to a human family,
teach families the virtues which filled with light
the family home of Nazareth.
May families always be united,
as you and the Father are one,
and may they be living witnesses
to love, justice and solidarity;
make them schools of respect,
forgiveness and mutual help,
so that the world may believe;
help them to be the source of vocations
to the priesthood and the consecrated life,
and all the other forms
of firm Christian commitment.
Protect your Church and the Successor of Peter,
to whom you, Good Shepherd, have entrusted
the task of feeding your flock.
Grant that the Church in America may flourish
and grow richer in the fruits of holiness.
Teach us to love your Mother, Mary,
as you loved her.
Give us strength to proclaim
your word with courage
in the work of the new evangelization,
so that the world may know new hope.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of America,
pray for us!

~ Act ~

Take some time this week to talk with a child about Jesus. Really talk. Really listen. ice cream is good, too.  

~ ~ ~

How can we pray for each other this week?

Cool Kickstart:-)

So, I might be thinking that all fulltime Catholic missionaries are named Colleen. Chances are, you know my friend Colleen who is in Costa Rica. May I introduce you another Colleen? Colleen Nixon and her husband, Titus, go around doing speaking and music engagements in various parts of the country. You can read about their ministry here. Colleen writes her own music, and has a bee-yoo-tee-ful voice. (I have that on very good authority.) 

Like every good missionary, Colleen is looking for a little help from her friends. Let me let her explain:

So give to a good cause and good music!! Here are some of the rewards and their links:

•  Pledge $10 or more:  a digital download of the album before it’s released
• Pledge $30 or more:  a signed hard copy of the album plus a digital download before it’s released
• Pledge $40 or more:  a signed hard copy of new cd and “love is in the details” (my 1st project with mitch dane) plus the digital download
• Pledge $50 or more:  special designed t-shirt just for THIS kickstarter campaign, a signed copy of the cd and digital download

AND THERE ARE MORE OPTIONS!! Go to the kickstarter website to see more videos and more donation options!!

So let's help her just do this! 

Only $3,000 to go!