… and these Thy gifts …

Hee….

Click here for more like this.

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provided by this link, courtesy of my dd and her friend.

Good Gravy! I just terrible dreadful fear I have not updated this since people stopped clapping and Tinkerbell died… You would not believe the fairy dust I have to clean up. I’m a blogger so I will though!

I am not going to post now with responding to fanmail, waiting for the onshore winds, just generally being not online in order to the locals, my day is passing in a blur from midday to reef break. I am hoping one day they will call me ‘mummy’ again. I need some perspective.

I go, my lords and ladies; just although very chaste ones. Go with God, good friends. The Piccaninnies say I have to!

Except for the first and last sentences, everything here was random, as in I clicked on the arrow and clicked again without reading. Tinkerbell and fairy dust matched up nicely.

Goodness. What an education one can get by simply blogging, even nonsense. Just found out that “Picaninnies” (used in the above blog generator post) is a derogatory term. Sorry, sure don’t mean to offend anyone.

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I will not argue with someone who hasn’t quite got their life, their direction, or their reasoning together yet. It is work enough for me to manage my life, my direction, and my own reasoning… and on top of these I have children I need to shepherd. My vocation as a mom comes first. And for that I will look to the Blessed Virgin Mary for my example.

Virtue of the day: Silence

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Five Myths of Socialized Medicine

and here’s Obama’s plan for universal health care

Is this really what we want? Of course, I’m talking about those of us that actually DO CARE ABOUT TAKING CARE OF OUR BODIES, OUR HEALTH AND OUR FAMILIES’ HEALTH. We don’t drink or smoke, we wear our seatbelts, we try to eat a balanced diet, we don’t take unnecessary risks, etc. Why should we have to pay for the health care of someone who eats nothing but junk food and smokes and drinks? Why should we get the same health care as all of these people who are abusing their own bodies? Tell me why that would make sense.

Here’s the rest of the “Before You Vote” series of posts.

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Telling it like it is.

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could we maybe make an exception and clone this guy for when my daughters are ready to settle down?

Hey, he’s tall, dark and handsome, he speaks Spanish, AND he’s unequivocally PRO-LIFE??? What’s not to like?

The unedited version (contains graphic images of abortion) can be found here.

And not to minimize the impact of abortion on the Hispanic community, but let’s not forget this either.

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haven’t done a meme in a long time, so i’m stealing borrowing from donna:

• I believe that love can heal anything.
• I believe that hugs are more powerful than drugs.
• I believe everything that the Catholic Church teaches, and not just because they actually make sense.
• I believe that God wrote/is still writing my love story.
• I believe that the more we rely on technology, the more complicated our lives become.
• I believe that character is number one.
• I believe that we are created for God’s purpose.
• I believe that happiness comes from finding out that purpose and living it.
• I believe that (like Donna) my hubby was created JUST for me.
• And I believe our children were created just for us.
• I believe that the deepest joy often comes through the most sorrowful pain, and that when we try to avoid the pain we end up denying ourselves unbelievable joy.
• I believe that life comes after death and not the other way around, in more ways than one.
• I believe that God puts a little of Himself into each and everyone of us, which means there’s a whole lotta good in us, we just have to dig it out sometimes. Often it surfaces without us being aware of it!
• I believe that opening your heart to risk means opening your heart to even more love than you thought possible.
• I believe that whatever you give, you get back, often multiplied, and unexpected.
• I believe in angels.
• I believe that clutter is created when Mom sits down at computer and types the rest of the day away:)
• So I believe I will get up now and do some decluttering while I still have the willpower and energy.

Tagging my dd, Dev, Kim, Anne, Mary, Maria and Marilyn.

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I’ve been going through the master bedroom closet, purging. Four (going on 5) kids and four bedrooms means someone has to share their closet with another, and Yena shares ours. Which isn’t a bad thing at all; it keeps us from going overboard with clothes and keeping only those pieces that we really need and actually use. One of the benefits of having a large family — as the years go on, you realize that becoming a minimalist is key. (But please don’t look at my kitchen shelves; they still need lots of work; as you probably know by now, I have an unhealthy attachment to cooking and baking accoutrements.)

I take each piece of clothing that’s hung and judge whether I’m still going to be able to wear it during the pregnancy. If not, they go on the pile to be folded and put away until I can fit into them again. Wow, it’s been years since I last did this. The last 6 years all I’ve been doing is alternating hot season and cold season clothes. Now I’m not only going through seasonal clothes. I’m also back in the process of trimestral selection: what fit in the first trimester and could possibly be worn again when I sorta get back into shape, maybe when baby’s walking; what fits now that I’m in the second trimester that’s still “normal clothing”; and then a mental list of tents and other larger types of clothing that I’ll need to borrow (from hubby ) or buy, as I transition into the last trimester.

(I’ll tell you what bugs and puzzles me. Hubby and I went to THREE different stores just a couple of weeks ago, looking for maternity underwear. Guess what? They had tops, but not bottoms! Hubby’s comment: Do they expect pregnant women to go without underwear these days? Very strange indeed. Even the salesladies couldn’t explain the oversight.)

Looking at the limited number of options before me once I was done folding the clothes that needed putting away, I had to smile… well, to be honest, smile, with tears. I remember the days of being so thin that people thought I was sick. Every party and family reunion we went to, someone would comment on how thin I was. I’m just one of those people who couldn’t seem to gain weight no matter how much I ate, and believe me, even in those days, I ate A LOT. My daughter’s the same way now, but I wish she would eat veggies and fruits just a bit more. She does, but not as much as she should.

And then we got married, and then had kids. And as the years went by, though I was still considered pretty thin by most of our peers, I steadily gained weight with each pregnancy. It bothers me, just the littlest bit, but not enough to really go on a diet or take up a consistent, rigorous exercise program. I *know* I should, for fitness’ sake if not anything else. One of these days, I promise myself to get to it

For now, I’m looking at the clothes in my part of the closet, and remembering pieces I had worn with previous pregnancies with not a tiny bit of sadness — I’ve given most of my maternity clothes away. My babies aren’t really babies anymore (which makes us quadruply excited for the new one coming). I’m not the type of person who thinks of clothes much (I hate shopping for one thing), but standing there, it hit me just how much life has changed. I might have grown in size with every child — the numbers are certainly there and there’s no denying them. But more importantly, each child that blessed me with that wondrous weight gain that comes with supporting life in the womb also blessed me with so much more… opportunites for growth, growth in holiness, in love. I may not fit into a size 4 anymore, but if my heart has grown in proportion to my clothing size, that means I’m a size 8 or 10 these days, and that’s just fine with me. Come to think of it, size 12 doesn’t even sound that bad anymore.

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Wow. I don’t get paid for what I do. Not monetarily anyway. But there are MANY MANY things I certainly would NOT consider to be above my pay grade. I *know* my baby has human rights even before he/she is born.

That argument about fetuses being just blobs/groups of cells? Sorry, not buying. People abort BABIES. They don’t abort TISSUES. If babies were merely tissue, you could just leave them alone and they would NOT turn into babies. That’s just an excuse promoters of contraception and abortion use, but it does NOT. MAKE. SENSE. But I digress…. let’s go back to my pay grade.

Isn’t it fascinating how some issues we moms (especially Catholic homeschooling moms like me) would never consider to be above our pay grade? Soooo glad I’m not a politician.

Still waiting on news re McCain and his VP choice. I hope and pray he makes the right one.

ETA: Thought this would make interesting discussion at lunch, so I bring it up to the kids. Their answers to the question, “At what point does a baby get human rights?”:

The 9-yo: “At 4 o’clock.” (That’s when they’re allowed to play music other than classical around here. It’s also the time they’re allowed to watch Cyberchase.)
The 12-yo: “At conception”, although based on recent happenings around here, I was anticipating him saying “When they’re allowed to get an iPod.”
The 6-yo: “In heaven?”
Me: “But those aren’t humans, Yen.”
The 17-yo: Yes, they are, mom. Man-in-heaven is eschatological man. (LOL.) Her actual answer, of course, is “at conception.”

Just FYI, starting at around age 7, they get a monthly allowance = their age. So the 12-yo gets $12/month, etc. Glad to see there weren’t any thoughts about pay grade, etc. to answer this question.

Some silly people were defending Obama’s answer, interpreting it to mean as “Only God knows the answer to that.” Riiiight. If you’re going to be in a position where you’ll be making decisions regarding human rights, you BETTER have a definite answer to that question. Taylor Mali’s “Totally like whatever” might have made more sense had he used that instead of “Above my pay grade.”

To quote,

I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?

Where indeed.

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This post may be qualified as venting, because I do need to get these off my chest. While I am a very opinionated person I don’t believe in confronting people who don’t know me well enough to know that I’m speaking from my heart. What makes this difficult is that I’ve been seeing so many statements lately that just make me go, “Huh?” and I have to respond in SOME way, even if only to record for my kids to find later, or for those wandering readers that may happen to stumble here and just might find something that would help them. If I left these comments on a combox somewhere people are sure to pounce on them right away and I really don’t have the time or inclination to defend my views.

Statement #1: “I am a practicing Catholic but I’ve long ignored Catholic teaching about contraception, and my (married) life has been so much happier since.”

“Practicing” and “ignoring” in the same sentence don’t make sense. Practicing means you know what the Church teaches, you believe the teachings, and you follow them. “Ignoring” can mean several things:

1. You might know what the Church teaches but you’re purposefully choosing to neither believe nor follow.
2. You don’t know what the Church teaches and you’re not taking the time to find out
3. You don’t want to really understand what the Church teaches because you don’t want to accept the Church’s authority over you or any of the life decisions you make, you don’t want to be told you’re wrong, and you don’t want to be told that you have to change.

Whatever “ignoring” means for you, I think we need to agree that “ignoring” and “practicing” just don’t go together. When you say that, it confuses people about the Church, and it confuses people about you. You’re confused enough, so please don’t burden others with your confusion as well.

Also, “happy” doesn’t mean “right”. I’m sure there are criminals around the world that are perfectly happy about the crimes they’ve committed. (Maybe they won’t be happy down the road, but there are sure to be some who don’t have that remorse thing down yet.) There are many things that make us happy. There are many things that make us right. Not all things that make us happy make us right. And not all things that are right make us happy, at least maybe not in the short term. There are long term rewards, however, for doing what’s right. If you’re not into the long-term thing however, you know, that delayed gratification thing — this may be a hard concept for you to accept.

And one more concept that may be foreign to you: there are those of us who DO follow Church teaching about contraception, that are actually HAPPY. Again, just because something may make YOU happy, doesn’t mean it will make EVERYONE happy.

Statement #2: “The Church should trust people to just use and follow their conscience.” (as regards contraception)

I think it’s correct to assume that our consciences are all formed differently. That is, something that may bother my conscience may not bother yours; the opposite is true also. This is why we have Church teaching, and this is why serious Catholics try to follow them. If all we relied on were our own consciences, how do we determine whether your conscience is right and mine is wrong, or vice versa? Ideally, we Catholics would have well-formed consciences by the time we are adults and have to make difficult decisions like who to vote for, or whether we should wash the dishes before hubby gets home or not. Sometimes it doesn’t work that way — maybe we were taught wrong. Maybe we were taught right but we weren’t listening. (Funny but yeah, old habits die hard.) The sad part is that a well-formed conscience doesn’t grow overnight, so when we get to adulthood and realize we’re being wishy-washy, we can’t just flip a switch.

At some point in our lives, it becomes the conscience-owner’s responsibility to continue to inform that conscience, hopefully by putting forth some effort into understanding exactly why the Church teaches what She teaches. There are those of us who can follow Church teaching quite well without asking questions. Blessed are they. There are those of us who need to work on our understanding before we can proceed to application. But just because one attended Catholic school doesn’t make one’s conscience “well-formed”. Ask me how I know; I spent 12 years there and I’m still working on developing mine. That’s why we have converts, reverts, and all kinds of people in between: all of us are on different stages in the journey.

But if Church teaching were to become dependent on OUR consciences, as opposed to what She has always known and taught, how many Catechisms do you think we would have today? And which one would we pick to understand and follow? Hey, we can follow or not follow Church teaching all we want, but don’t you think it’s foolish and ridiculous to expect the Church to FOLLOW US? That’s rather like putting the caboose before the engine.

In a way, I agree with what you’re saying. The Church SHOULD trust us to use our consciences. And actually, She does! Last I checked, there aren’t priests or nuns holding a gun to our heads at the voting booth or even at the sink where my dirty dishes are. I think the real question here though is, “SHOULD we — COULD we — trust our own consciences?” Now that’s the tough one.

Statement #3: “The Pope is an old celibate guy — how can we possibly take his advice on marriage, contraception and abortion? He has no idea what he’s talking about!”

Let’s see, the Pope was born in 1927, a year before my father was born. That would make him 81 years old. Just looking at possibilities here, could he maybe have met and talked to one couple, maybe ten couples, a hundred couples, AT LEAST, before he became Pope? I’m half his age but I can tell you I’ve met at least fifty married couples in my lifetime. Goodness, I’ve got 9 married couples just on my mom’s side of the family — and that’s not even counting their kids, my cousins, who are also married now! That’s not counting my own parents! I can tell you that having met and talked to all these couples through the years, I’ve formed some opinions on what works in a marriage and what doesn’t. My hubby has had a totally different kind of experience growing up, with less married people in the family, etc. But between the two of us we’ve seen enough to have a good idea of what a “happy marriage” looks like. We also have a good idea of what an “unhappy marriage” looks like. I don’t need to tell you we shoot for the former everyday — it does take hard work and conscious effort. But I didn’t need to get married to know what I wanted in a good marriage. I saw good and bad examples everywhere. If I hadn’t gotten married, I would still be seeing examples of both everyday. My job (before I got married and had kids) did not include counseling couples, married or engaged or in trouble. But that didn’t stop my married friends at the time from coming to me sometimes to vent and ask for advice. You think maybe I’ve formed some insights on what goes right and what goes wrong in a marriage based on the stuff they tell me?

Popes and bishops and priests may be celibate, but they are certainly NOT innocent or ignorant of any of these things. They have had PLENTY, I’d be willing to say, MORE THAN ENOUGH experience dealing with all kinds of people from all walks of life, to form some very good opinions about human sexuality and marriage and all that comes with that. Not to mention the Church’s common sense teachings from the very beginning — our priests and bishops and Popes have seen these teachings applied, ignored, discussed and dissected, etc., etc. Just because they’ve chosen the celibate life doesn’t mean they have no understanding of human sexuality. In reality, and you may be surprised — they had to have a thorough understanding of it. It’s quite ridiculous to assume that these men have come to the decision to embrace celibacy lightly. They’re also getting a huge reward for this sacrifice, that most if not all of them believe it’s more than worth it, or that it’s not even really a sacrifice the way WE often think of “sacrifice”. But since we’re looking at this from the outside, I won’t presume to discuss how that all works. If you’re curious enough you might want to invite your parish priest to dinner sometime and see what he has to say about it.

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119 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Now I have a ton of things to REALLY shoot for.

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For freshly-done laundry.
For moments of reprieve from all-day-sickness
For Panera. And Chipotle.
For congee.
For a hubby who after 18 years will still do anything for me. And more.
For conscientious children who help out when they see the need.
For children who fight, but forget all about it the next day.
For an 11-yo who makes Jell-O for his 6-yo sister.
For a 9-yo who toasts bread for his 6-yo sister.
For their love of music.
For their innocence.
For their trust.
For their great love for Dad.
For tears, when they miss him and want him to come home.
For the Rosaries we share daily.
For the love of reading.
For Emma.
For late night owls.
For $100 rebates.
For poets who love life.
For Janet Smith.
For Cormac Burke.
For the rain.
For forgiving seedlings.
For the neighbor who is gone and can’t complain about the weeds.
For friends who pray for us.
And a thousand other gifts I am forgetting to name at present.
Because today, it’s enough to just be thankful.

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For a pro-life daughter. Who thinks. With her BRAIN. And yes, with her heart. But always with Christ’s will dead-center and in focus. Or at least trying her best.

May Jesus be her Guide, always. May Mama Mary keep her protected at all times, not only from those who may prey on her innocence and her trust, but from her own moments of weakness. May she never lose confidence in Christ her Savior. May she always find strength from the examples and prayers of St. Philomena and St. Catherine of Siena and St. Maria Goretti.

Lord, thank You for a child who teaches me more than I teach her. Who humbles me more than words can say. Who makes me want to become a better example and a better mother. Thank You for her faith and for Your Graces manifested in her.

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Just a little note. To remind myself of what a wonderful, loving daughter I have. A conversation we had tonight (one of many thousands) just showed me again what an awesome human being she is. She’s so giving, and so generous, so selfless. I can’t remember being this kind or thoughtful or self-sacrificing when I was her age (17). It’s incredible how much she blesses me with her faith, her endurance, her loyalty. Without going into details… tonight we were speaking about an upcoming event, and she told me about several sacrifices she’s willing to make for the sake of people she cares deeply about. I stared at her in disbelief as I realized that what she’s about to do will probably break her heart, just a bit too much for me. But then again I’m the selfish mom who doesn’t want her princess’ heart broken.

So she has her selfish moments too. And her cranky and unkind moments. But tonight her faith and selflessness just shone. (Add to that that she played and sang Hosanna (Hillsong) to us as we all snuggled in bed waiting for Yena so we could pray the Rosary.) I am in tears just thinking of how she has grown as a person and as a child of God the past 5 years. What a gift!!!

(I am off now to pray for her vocation. Because lucky is the convent who will one day have her. Or, okay, lucky is the man who will take her as his bride. She is one special young woman.)

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