The Kings Kids

My sister Debby and her friend Jane have been working on a children's book called "The King's Kids". Debby has been posting the pages from her book on her blog, Heavenly Humor.

Her latest posting features a picture of my son Jack when he was three years old. He was having a bad day and sat at the table spunking. Usually, when my kids are having a bad day, I wouldn't say they look "cute", but in Jack's case, that word perfectly described his disposition.

The shadow couple fighting in the background are not Paul and I. We never fight! ;)

Why don't you pay a visit to Debby's blog and if you scroll back you will find some of the other pages from her book as well.

Praise!

When I awake in the morning, and the fog of sadness overcomes me, thinking of reasons to praise God always picks me up...

1. My mother-in-law Marilyn had successful surgery this week to remove her breast cancer, and my nephew had successful surgery after being assaulted. (See my sister Debby's blog, Heavenly Humor, for the story and to join in prayer for Aaron.)

2. My nephew and Godson, Matthew was able to spend a few days at home from his military station in California before he leaves with the Marines for Afghanistan. It was wonderful to spend some time with him and celebrate his birthday before he goes. We were especially blessed with beautiful warm weather for November as we wandered the zoo on a family-free day.

3. My husband and I enjoyed a vacation day together this week browsing at an antique store and sampling treats at a gourmet grocery store. Days alone together are a rare treat!

4. My son Jack served at his first Mass this week. He was so excited and did a very good job!

5. I am so grateful for a warm cup of coffee between my icy hands on a cold morning, and the additional gift of warm steam rising to my face brings me so much comfort.

Dear God, for all of these blessings I give you praise and I ask you to keep gently nudging me with reminders of your goodness whenever I'm tempted to despair. Amen.


Thanks to Jennifer at My Chocolate Heart for hosting this MEME.

Elizabeth Esther is the host of the Saturday Evening Blog Post. Why don't you stop on over and join in the fun! Add your favorite post from the month of October and visit lots of other bloggers who are submitting their favorites as well!

My submission from October is Conversations from the Backseat/United in Prayer. I chose to share this post about one of my favorite people, my daughter, because although she is only eight years old, I learn so much from her about the power of God and how He works in our lives. In this particular story, she taught me about the power of prayer for those from whom we are separated.

Days of Waiting

"Patience obtains all things." St. Teresa of Avila

These have been the days of waiting. Fr. Dennis, the associate pastor at our parish very often tells me that God's answer to prayer is frequently one word… “Wait”. I think that Fr. Dennis is right and that this is God’s standard answer to the prayers of this very impatient girl. God keeps telling me "Not yet, not yet, slow down, everything has a season, and this autumn, my dear friend, is not the season for you.”

I have my heart set on beginning an Apostolate for Spiritual Motherhood in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. After reading about Spiritual Motherhood on so many wonderful blogs, I was sure that God had set this on my heart as my special calling. At first when I began to ponder this calling, I felt completely overwhelmed. Who am I but a simple mother and nutritionist, what do I know about Spiritual Motherhood and beginning apostolates? This is just beyond my ability, there is no way that God could be calling me to this. I thought that maybe I was bordering on mental illness with grandiose visions of greatness, thinking about such a fabulously huge endeavor. So I resigned myself to what I’ve always done, that is, to pray for priests on my own. But having the nature of a chatterbox, I couldn’t seem to shut myself up about the whole concept of Spiritual Motherhood and every person to whom I mentioned it all seemed to be intrigued and excited about it as well, so I remained encouraged.

Then, through what I believe was the intervention of God, I met my friend Marge. I told her the same thing I told everyone else. “I’d love to start a Spiritual Motherhood Apostolate for priests in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, but I’ve no clue about how to begin, and really, I don’t need an apostolate to pray for priests, I do that anyway.” At that, Marge sat straight up in her chair and she said, “We’re going to do this, you and I! We’re going to establish an Apostolate of Spiritual Motherhood for Priests in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and we are going to see to it that every bishop, priest, religious brother and seminarian is assigned a Spiritual Mother who will pray for them. We can do it!” She was so confident and her assurance easily rubbed off on me and energized me. I foresaw a day in the near future, before the end of the Year of the Priest, when 800 women would readily sign up to adopt one of our holy men in Milwaukee as her spiritual son.

It wasn’t long after this conversation when I met someone who I thought could really help us move things along. Dick and Terry Boldin head up the very successful Rosary Evangelization Apostolate in Milwaukee and when I shared my idea with them, they were also very excited about it and agreed to help. I felt that this was a sign from God that He very much wanted this Apostolate and I knew that if anyone had the connections and expertise to help get this endeavor off the ground, Dick and Terry were the ones!

But now, we’ve officially hit our first roadblock, one that honestly, we anticipated from the beginning. Our Archdiocese has no Archbishop. It’s been six long months since Archbishop Dolan left Milwaukee for New York (can you feel the moisture from my teardrops falling through the keyboard as I type this? He is still terribly missed here!) Bishop Callahan is doing an outstanding job holding things together, but he does not have the authority to give his blessing to a new apostolate. So, until we have a new Archbishop, the Spiritual Motherhood is going nowhere! As Dick so wisely reminded Marge and I, we are not to become discouraged, because this is God’s will. We are to accept this in obedience to church authority. He’s right.

But I’m afraid that discouragement must be my middle name, because I can’t help from being discouraged! Wouldn’t God want this, I wonder? But then again, who am I to know God’s will? I am reminded of one of my favorite movies that my mom and I used to watch every Christmas when I was little, “The Bells of St. Mary’s”. Do you remember how desperately those nuns needed a new school for the students? They prayed that God would give them the building that was being built next door. As their hopes were being raised that this might actually happen, they all agreed to lift their voices in prayer and one of the nuns wisely stated, “God’s will be done.” Then the Mother Superior chimed in, “And may God’s will be our will.” Ooh, that part always got on my mom’s nerves! “That is NOT the way to pray!” she would say. “We are to pray for God’s will in all things, never for our own will! That's sacrilegious!” Of course, she was right.

So I turn to St. Monica and St. Francis de Sales who were both well known for their extreme patience. I ask them to guide me in the art of patient, hope-filled and prayerful waiting without the pain of discouragement. I also ask them to pray for me so that I will become enlightened about God’s will in this matter and to give Dick, Terry, Marge and I the fortitude to continue the work once our new Archbishop is assigned and gives his go-ahead for this very important Apostolate. And I ask you, dear reader, to join me in prayer for our beloved Pope, all bishops, priests, brothers, seminarians and those discerning a call to the priesthood. May our voices, united in a prayer of love for these holy men, inspire them and encourage them to continue their wonderful service to God and to all of humanity.

The Absence of God

“You see all my light and You love my dark…and You’re still here.” Alanis Morrisette

It was several years ago on Holy Thursday. I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes and it hit me hard. My words can't adequately describe the sudden, completely empty, cold and drained feeling that washed over my soul like the suds on the dishes in my hands. God had left me. I don’t know how it is that I knew this was the cause of my sudden emptiness, but there was no doubt in my mind that the absence of God had overcome me.

I had walked in the light of His love my entire life and had really taken it for granted that His love would always be there. I never gave any thought to the fact that the awareness of His presence was a gift. There were many times in my life when I put His love on a shelf and completely disregarded it as unimportant. What a fool I was!

So anyway, there I was at the sink, feeling absolutely horrible. Tears began to fall and my children, upset to see their mother crying, asked what was wrong. I couldn’t answer because I really didn’t understand what was happening to me and hadn’t a clue about how to explain it to my little ones.

We went to Holy Thursday Mass, and as I sat in church and looked around at all of the other people present, I thought, “How can God love all of these people but not love me?” I immediately scolded myself for my prideful thought, but it wasn’t pride really, it was something worse than pride. It was despair.

The associate Pastor who loved to include pop music lyrics in his homilies quoted an Alanis Morrisette song at this Mass-

Everything:

“You see everything,
you see every part
you see all my light
and you love my dark

You dig everything of which
I’m ashamed
There’s not anything to which
You can’t relate
And you’re still here.”

He explained that this is exactly how God is, loving us and never leaving us no matter what. As happens from time to time, I felt that these words that Father quoted, these song lyrics, were spoken directly to my heart. The tears I was trying so hard to control, began to spill once more. I knew he was right, that God is always with me, so that made my present condition even harder to bear. The tears continued after my family and I returned home. I cried while kneeling bed-side with my children for their evening prayers and once again they began to question my tears and attempt to comfort me. How could I explain the unexplainable? I had told them all their lives that God loves them and will never leave them. How could I tell them that He had left me?

By the next morning, I was feeling better, not quite so desolate, and gradually I began to feel the presence of God in my life once again. I know that God uses all things for good for those who love Him and this short-lived experience of darkness was enough to change my life significantly. Since that night, I began to attend daily Mass even though, at first, I questioned God all the way there and all the way home. “Why do you want me there? Right now I'd rather be anywhere but church!” I told Him. Yet everyday I'd get up, get dressed and drive to church regardless of whether or not I felt like being there. Sometimes I would cry all the way to Mass, cry the entire time I was there, and then cry all the way home. I wondered if there would ever be an end to my tears. Still, something made me go day after day. It’s as if God was drawing me through the pain to a deeper love for Him, one that didn’t rely on consolations and joy, but instead, thrived even in the nothingness and the pain.

That experience of the absence of God also brought me to spiritual direction in a desire to try to understand God and how he works in my life. It is such a relief to know that each month I can sit and talk one on one with someone who has also been in that dark place and has found a way through it to the knowledge that we remain forever in God's presence whether it is felt or not. It is a huge help to know that I am not alone on my journey to holiness, that others have been where I am, and that I will always continue to grow in my faith.

I know I’ve got a long way to go spiritually, but daily Mass, spiritual direction and spiritual reading have led me to understand that the words of that priest so long ago are very true: even when I can’t feel God, He is always there.

Never

Never had the lake been so blue
Never had the sun shone so bright
Never had the cool autumn air felt so refreshing
Never had the leaves on the trees enchanted me so
And never have I loved my husband as much as I do today.















For all of these blessings, Creator God, I give thee thanks.























Happy 44th Birthday to Paul, my dear, sweet husband! I love you!

Angel of Death

While sitting on the rock by the beach,
feeling the cold November air chill
me to the bones,
I noticed The Angel of Death
pass over in a low,
gray, cirrus cloud.

Ripples immediately moved across the lake,
and the crow was silenced.

I waited for the Angel
to take my soul
and leave my limp, lifeless body
on the rock.
But, he continued on his way
and left me in my silent
peaceful reverie of Autumn.

(see Carry on Tuesday prompt
"In the arms of an angel"
for even more angels!)