I have a confession to make. I am very satisfied with my life and can count my blessings but have problems in one area: I want a home of my own. I know, I know. People all over the world live in hovels and can't care for their beloved children because of poverty/natural disaster/wars/general upheaval. I should feel very, very lucky. But at the moment I don't. I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. It doesn't help that the neighbors wake up my children, either.


So what do I do? I say a novena to St. Joseph. (For those whose lore of saints is as weak as mine, St. Joseph is Mary's spouse, stepdad to Jesus, and patron of fathers, families, homes, and carpenters among his many roles.)


http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/novena/joseph.htm


Now, I'm thinking that this is great! I want a home. My husband wants meaningful employment. We need peace in the extended family. And what do I get for praying the novena? Do I get sleeping babies? Quiet neighbors? A change in circumstances? No. I was the one who was called to change.


What does St. Joseph have to do with us moms? I'm glad you asked. St. Joseph did whatever God asked of him. St. Joseph followed Judaic law with all his heart but loved God more. When Mary was found to be with child he was going to divorce her quietly out of compassion for her. He could have been cruel and exposed her. He didn't. He loved Mary more than his own manly pride. Then God told St. Joseph to take Mary for his wife. He did. Then move to Egypt and back again. And, oh yes, raise a child who is not his own. He did all of this lovingly and without question.


It's very tricky to tell a woman, a mother, to humble herself and give of herself without question. So many times it is used as an excuse to subjugate her. But humility to the will of God is different than subjugation to religious or societal norms which are man-made and often unjust. Remember that we are also God's beloved daughters. 


If we are to follow St. Joseph's example we should first look to our faith. What does Catholic teaching tell us? This can help us get through many difficult situations or avoid them entirely. Think of it this way: we are transformed by prayer. When we ask God what His will is for us we admit that we cannot see the universe in its entirety and maybe we are not asking for the right things. If we are stubborn, we are so busy being 'right' that we are willfully blind to the graces and beauty around us. We should persevere instead. In this way we work towards our dreams while being open to achieving them in a different, often better, way. When we are tempted to pray "God, help me get through this", maybe we should pray "God, help me transcend this". The difference is subtle but important. Do we want to just make it through or do we want to become closer to God?  Because, Ladies, we have a tough job. God demands our bodies, our sleep, our time, our ambitions for the future, and even our ambitions for our children. We are strong. We have to be. We are unsung. We are under constant scrutiny.  We are nothing to the world but we are the world to those who rely on us. Imagine the comfort and guidance we can give to our children. Imagine the damage we can do to them. 


I never thought I would feel such devotion to a male saint. I never thought that one could teach me how to be a better mother. But St. Joseph is a beautiful example of someone who allows God to meet him where he is. God called St. Joseph to protect and raise Jesus in much the same way we are called to protect and raise our own babies. He did this quietly and humbly. St. Joseph doesn't have one spoken word in the bible but his life is a beacon two thousand years later. 


I learned all of this because I wanted a home of my own. 


St. Joseph, Ora Pro Nobis

Ash Wednesday

Disclaimer - My daughter has been teething, my son has just gotten over croup, and I'm on pain medication due to a recent dental surgery. This is probably a very bad combination for writing a blog. My apologies in advance.


Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. This past Sunday I took both my children to church on my own and I swore that I would not do it again until my daughter was older. So along comes Ash Wednesday. It's the beginning of Lent. It's an important day. But important enough to take two children to church on my own when it's not even a holy day of obligation? Surely God would understand if I didn't make it. But then I wavered. What is one hour of misery and mommy humiliation compared to Jesus dying on the cross for us... So I had to wake my daughter up early from a nap to be in time to pick up my son from pre-school to make it to 12 noon mass without having time to feed the kids first. I was literally praying that God give me ANY excuse to change my plan. (Sometimes I think God finds our prayers highly amusing. But then if I could turn water into wine I would probably find life a bit more amusing too.)


We survived mass only because my husband was able to join us (a miracle) and take our tired, underfed, teething daughter outside. And so it goes. So why did I do it? Because, Ladies, sometimes things aren't about me. It slightly surprising for me to say this because I'm all about taking care of mom. But this was one of those times for me to go beyond my wants and comforts and kneel before our Lord in gratitude in wonder.


Lent is a time that reminds us of our mortality and our utter dependence on God. Growing up I was told that I had to "give up" something for God during Lent. We moms give up so much that, like going to mass on Ash Wednesday, it seems easy to feel that we are exempt. (Somebody asked me if I was going to give up coffee. I might as well try to give up breathing.) But this doesn't mean that we should let the wonderful opportunity to contemplate our relationship with the Lord to go to waste. Here are some suggestions that might make more sense:


Take a few minutes in prayer to imagine that you are meeting Jesus at the end of your life. Are you meeting Him like an old friend or are you hiding like Adam and Eve? Ask Jesus what you can do to change this Lenten season. Do you do something that keeps you from having a fuller relationship with Him? Are you negative towards someone (even if they deserve it)? Pray for that person. Work towards forgiveness. 


 Personally I am not worried about my actions but my sins of omission. It doesn't make any sense to me just to 'give up coffee' but I could be persuaded to take the money I would pay for my coffee and give it to the poor. 


Take time to be more grateful to Jesus for his sacrifice which allows us to spend eternity in heaven with our babies. (Or if you're having a really rough day think of heaven as a place of peace with free babysitting.) Just be grateful that God loves us enough to help us transcend our limitations. Not just get through or cope: transcend.


Offer up your daily activities. You are not just doing the dishes. You are doing God's work by taking care of your family and children. Make your daily chores holy. 


Use your prayer time to sit with Jesus in His suffering. How can You help Him? He loves you and wants your company. 


Make more of an effort to pray, go to church and receive the sacraments. Prepare yourself for the coming of the Lord. It might not be easy but it will be worth it. 


These are only a few suggestions. I'm sure that you ladies have more and better ideas. Me? I'm currently praying that my daughter sleeps well. She's been teething and in pain for a while.  Then I will try to practice what I preach.

Family Drama and Sleep Deprivation

I warn you that this will not be a coherent post. My two children are not sleeping well. Or at all. It seems like a cruel trick of nature that children who are up sick half the night should have energy the next day to be miserable. My son is now well and now it's my daughter who is not sleeping. Ok, she's sleeping now when I have to be awake. I have noticed with sleep deprivation that my moods are either like black storm clouds ready to break or like looking at the world through a pink kaleidoscope; everything seems pink and strange.


Today is a pink day. I'm just trying to get through till bed time. 


Lately I have been trying to plan my daughter's first birthday. This is a HUGE deal in my family and must be treated accordingly. I don't mean that we need to invite a lot of people or have a a huge meal. But my daughter MUST be stripped to her diaper and allowed to plunge into the cake. And the right people must be there (just the elder of the family who has trouble getting around). 


If you think about it it doesn't seem too complicated but if you've read my earlier post entitled 'Feast of the Holy Family' you know that there is another elder of the family who is rather poisonous. I was determined to pray for her (which I do) and go on my merry way but as time goes on I realize just how far her poison has reached. This continues to make me angry. Why do people make children into pawns? The strange thing is that she hasn't tried to contact us since her meltdown on Christmas day. My husband thinks it's because she has 'come to her senses' but I disagree. I have heard that she doesn't even remember her trip and I find the fact that she has not tried to contact us ominous. I am almost sure that her addiction has taken over. 


And where does this leave us? We are strangely prohibited from even mentioning my daughter's birthday to the extended family. But typing this last sentence I'm realizing the ridiculousness of it all. We are not even asking for gifts. I am much too tired to make excuses for our existence. The thing is that the extended family misses receiving messages and pictures. I haven't been sending them out because 'I must not offend the elder'. This woman deserves my compassion and pity and a certain amount of respect but I will no longer allow fear of her inner drama to dictate my actions. She doesn't seem to remember them anyway.


My daughter is still sleeping so I'm going to take a nap. So much for the blog!

COMMENTS

Hello Ladies. For some reason the comments still aren't working. If you read this please try to comment. If it doesn't work please let me know by sending a message to marianmoms at gmail dot com. I would love to hear some feedback. Thanks.

In His Image

Have you ever really thought about what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God? When my son was born I would joke that it meant that God must be chubby and have kissable cheeks. When my daughter was born I joked that it meant that God had a smile that could light up a room and can scream like a banshee. 


All joking aside - being made in the image and likeness of God means that we were created to be in constant communion with Him. Let's think about this for a minute. It means that our most basic, natural state is to be connected to God. Our home is with Him, our Beloved, who formed us in our mothers' wombs out of desire for us. To have a relationship with God should be as easy as falling in love with the one person who you know will never, ever reject you or say that you are not good enough. Wouldn't you love to be in a relationship with someone like that? 


Yes, we have original sin. We are not perfect and we turn away from God. But God loves us so much that He is willing to lower Himself to our level and raise us beyond our own flawed capabilities. Some very powerful ways God leads us into relationship with Him is through the Sacraments. (I am personally becoming more dedicated to the Eucharist, Christ among us.) But unless we're very good, devout, and organized moms we might not make it to Mass. Or if we do we spend most of our time in the foyer of the church with a crying child. It is easy to get discouraged because we know that we rely on God but can't seem to do enough for Him.


This is where remembering that we are made in His image can come in handy. Yes, going to church is very important. Reading the Bible is very important. But for those days (and nights) that we've been dealing with a fussy, teething baby and a toddler who really is trying his best to get to the potty on time... Think of it this way: Imagine that you are having one of those days when the baby is in abject misery from teething, the toddler is running around like a maniac (and is smelly), the house is a wreck and lunch (which is late) is about to burn and Jesus knocks on the door. Do you say "Sorry, Lord, you deserve so much better. Can you come back when the house is clean, the children are clean and content and I can fix a lovely meal for you"? Or do you say "Lord, it's not much but this is my life and you are welcome to share in it. Would you like a grilled-cheese sandwich or hot dogs. Or we can always order pizza." 


There are times to be somber in the presence of God. There are times when we dress up, tell the children to be quiet and get on our knees before our Lord. But we cannot wait for everything to be perfect before we approach Jesus or invite Jesus into our lives. And we certainly don't have to climb high mountains in exotic lands and spend years chanting  strange mantras in foreign languages (well, maybe Latin) to find inner peace. Our natural state is to be in communion with God. So take a deep breath and for a few moments (you might not get more) be yourself in the presence of your Beloved.  Remember that Jesus loves you in the most perfect way. You do not need to be perfect. You do not need to have all the answers. Remember that being in communion with God is as easy as being yourself: the person God, out of love, created you to be. Then go and change that diaper.

Let's Be Honest

The strangest thing happened to me the other day. I happened to call a good friend of mine who I hadn't heard from for a while. (It was a bit more than 'just happened'. I really felt that I needed to get a hold of her.) When I was finally able to get her on the phone she told me that I was exactly the person she needed to talk to because she was going through a rough time. Through all her trials she was trying to be a good mother to her children. She felt overwhelmed and embarrassed. And why didn't she call me earlier? Because I send out a mass e mail to friends and family about my life and kids. Since this e mail goes to family members who are not always (or never) supportive of us I always make them upbeat. I didn't write them in that way to make us appear glorious. It wasn't for vanity. It was a form of self-preservation from cranky relatives who claim that their kids were potty trained, sleeping through the night and reading the newspaper by their first birthday. But my poor friend mistakenly believed that I had something that she lacked. In a way I do: a propensity to make sins of omission in my mass e mails. 


So let me be honest. 


I have been known to swear at my babies (obviously not my son now that he can talk) when they wake me up for the fifth time in one night.


I have turned off the baby monitor and let my daughter cry herself to sleep when she was tired and overstimulated and I couldn't sooth her.


My husband has found me curled up on the floor in the middle of the night crying out of frustration and sleep deprivation.


I am about to despair of feeding my son anything but cheerios and crackers.


My son is three and a half and is still not fully potty-trained. He does not read the newspaper. My daughter is almost a year old and will eat the newspaper.


I'm saying this because we moms get so much criticism that we tend to hold back instead of being honest and helping each other. I may be Theology Mom and my children are a gift from God but some days the only proof of the Holy Spirit is working in my life is that I haven't eaten my young. They are good kids. I love them. But being a mom is hard work. 


Maybe it's our brokenness, our weakness and imperfections that make us shine.


So next time you see a mom heading out to the street with a baseball bat because some motorist woke up her babies by idling his car in front of her apartment and playing loud rap music don't be so quick to judge. It's probably me.


To my Dear Friend: If you read this - you are normal and you are an AMAZING mom. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to let God work in your life.


On a totally unrelated note you, the reader, should now be able to post comments. It would be nice to see is anybody is reading this. :)

CARITAS

DISCLAIMER - I have really been struggling with this post. I feel that I have some relevant things to say but have not had the opportunity to write it as well as i would like. Sadly I am at the point of not writing the blog at all so I would rather post something imperfect than not at all. 


Well, Ladies, January has been an interesting month. My son started pre-school. My daughter was teething. My father came home from a care center which is great but we were hoping he would be walking and not remain in a wheelchair. Certainly none of these things are bad but it does entail a certain amount of upheaval. It has been difficult to keep centered.

If you read my last post you know that I reached out to the communion of saints for help. Let me state that this was not a part of my Catholic upbringing so it is a bit new to me. I've written several papers about the theology of the communion of saints but it's easy to hide behind footnotes as it were. So I decided to get to know some of the saints personally. This is not a post about my discovery of the saints but where the study of them has led me.


One thing that I discovered is that God shines through in small but profound ways. Another thing I noticed is that average people were able to accomplish extraordinary things. Many of the saints are from religious orders. I know being in a religious order has its challenges but it got me thinking that it has the advantage of a daily routine. That's the point of many of them; you have a routine based on prayer. 


We moms try to keep a routine. We know this every time we curtail a shopping trip or something enjoyable to make sure that the baby has a nap on time. There is also the disadvantage that motherhood is not necissarely prayer centered. We have all met those mothers who might take care of the physical needs of their children but who treat them as objects. Then when the children get older and have no affection for their mothers the mothers cry: "Oh, I made them food!" or "After all I did for them!" And then they sneer and cry because it was always about them (the mothers). But if you look at it, people who work at soup kitchens for years prepare more meals than the average mother. Mother Theresa cared for more ill people than the average mother. So what is the difference? 


I think it is that many mothers do not having a loving focus. We have difficulty getting to church much less every day. And if a toddler decides he doesn't want to be at church... well, you know the result. So I prayed for something, a focus to get me through the days (and nights) of motherhood. This is what came to me:


UBI CARITAS ET AMOR DEUS IBI EST


The typical English translation of this is "Where there is charity and love there [also]  is God". I take issue with this translation because it does not fully encompass the meaning of the word 'caritas'. Caritas is not just charity. It is the spirit of love which prompts action. Caritas is what keeps mothers (and people who volunteer in soup kitchens) from burning out or resenting their role. Caritas demands action. 


There are a few more things I would like to bring up that might help us moms along. The first is that we must always remember when we deal with our children that they are God's children before they are ours. This means that we are NOT at liberty to do what we like with them. We will be held accountable for our actions.


The second thing is that our role as mothers (and fathers or caregivers) is to make our children fit for the kingdom of heaven. We cannot think that we are terrible parents because we cannot buy all the stuff our kids want. We also cannot think that because there is ample food on the table that we are amazing parents. We must take care of their physical needs. We must get our children to strive for their dreams. But we must also teach them to discern God's call in their lives.


The third thing that we must remember is that we are also God's children. This means that we must maintain healthy boundaries for ourselves. We are not perfect. We are not called to be perfect. But too often we think that we need to have all the answers. We don't. Or when we think "what is the most loving thing to do in this situation" the answer always seems to be giving more of ourselves than we can give. Perhaps a better question would be "what does God wish for me and my family?" The answer will be very different. It will not include "run yourself ragged" (we already do!) or "say 'yes' so much that you get no respect" or "let the man take the money and leave you and the children in a vulnerable situation". After much prayer you may decide it would be best to leave that high-paying job and scale back at home or even to get a job. What is it that God wishes for us? We are also His children.


So, Ladies, when we go about our tasks as mothers, tasks, might I add, that will go unnoticed and unappreciated but are necessary none the less, let us remind ourselves of God's love.


UBI CARITAS ET AMOR DEUS IBI EST. 


God is with us. He loves us. We do not have to do this alone even if we are in the house alone with sick children all day.