Positively (Im)perfect

I. HATE. WAITINGGGG!” I actually yelled this aloud the other day in a painfully weak moment {thankfully no one else was around to witness my crazy}. Despite all the reflections on Advent and waiting, despite getting my world rocked that morning by my friend Mave's incredible Blessed is She devotion about God’s timing , and feeling utter peace in my soul—proclaiming to the world that “Jesus is in the waiting!”—only hours later I was once again cursing the wait and having an internal tantrum that would put a threenager to shame. Because human nature is a fickle and powerful thing. I’m in this weird space where there simply aren’t enough hours in the day and I desperately need more time, yet I’m also just aching to skip ahead to certain days that my heart has been hanging onto—almost as if life itself depended upon it—days that, in my mind, will bring happiness, hope, and maybe even healing. But I realized something today—it all finds its roots in my desire for control. I’ve set

It's strange sometimes how what's meant to be an inspirational snippet can become your complete undoing. One late summer day, I innocently watched a preview for a groundbreaking new show whose main character has autism. I was prepared to be touched and uplifted--but suddenly found myself shrinking inward as the reality of the subject matter landed a little too close to home. And there I sat, powerless, as an unwelcome emotional dam broke open to flood the depths of my soul -- a flood I thought I'd successfully ignored into dormancy, but whose currents apparently ran far deeper and stronger than I'd acknowledged. This particular dam goes by the name of "The ASD Mom Keeping it Together." ASD being Autism Spectrum Disorder, of course. And it's not a dam I pay much heed to or a subject I broach very often, here or otherwise — mostly to protect my son’s privacy, somewhat because I've learned over the years how to keep the dam mostly inta

CLOSED! Congrats to our winner, Elisabeth S.! ADVENT. It arrives in two weeks, people. I have been waiting for Advent for {seemingly} ever this year, and we are FINALLY so close I can feel it. The reason I've been waiting so impatiently is, of course , the gorgeous Blessed is She Advent journal - a devotional called In the Beginning  designed by Erica Tighe and written by  Laura Fanucci , which invites us into that sacred, anticipation-filled "beginning"-- the origin of our being, the beginning of our faith journey, the gift of new life and a new year and new possibilities. 2017 Advent Journal Laura takes us through the beginning of each Gospel in a soul-stirring new way, and having snuck (more than) a few peeks, I can tell you that I.cannot.wait. for this journey! I also happen to have the inside scoop that this year, everyone with a journal will be able to participate and share the journey in a beautiful new way, together . It's gonna

11.13.17 Sometimes you get just plumb tired of life. Tired mentally from the drudgery and toil of demanding routine, tired emotionally from the struggle, tired physically from the pain and exhaustion.  And there’s just no way around it {but through}.  I used to think I could {& should} tell myself to suck it up and power through and be happy anyway. {Talk about unhealthy coping mechanisms}. But I’m learning—between the hard work of dragging myself from bed on these life-tired days and the endless to-do list that’s never actually done—that purposefully injecting intentional joy into my day helps balance the difficulty of the “through” and energizes me to do more of the hard stuff in the end. Today, I had the presence of mind to go beyond the mental exercise and actually write joy into my schedule. Today, after centering my tired soul with morning prayer, I felt compelled to make joy not just a nebulous task, but a visual goal. I started with something as simple as a pair

ST.  JUDE  SIDE  CHAPEL  |  ST.  PATRICK'S  CATHEDRAL 10.30.17 I got stopped dead in my tracks this morning while listening to this line from the First Reading {Romans 8:15}:  “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into...”  ...and just as my brain tried to autocorrect the last word to “sin,” I heard a different word proclaimed, the very word my soul drags around like a weight just as heavy as sin: “fear.”  This verse, as you might know if you recognize it, goes on to tell us about our spirit of adoption in God. The one that invites—no, compels—us to call Him Abba. Daddy.  And words of the Bethel Music hymn ripped through me— I’m no longer a slave to fear // I am a child of God  I could almost hear God’s gentle chuckle. Because no matter how often I circle around it, no matter how much I stretch my spirit, no matter how hard I try and fail to wrap my mind around this Father-daughter relationship, He is lovingly, patiently, relentless in

Fear. In this life, it seems just as inescapable as suffering. Both have long been my unwelcome companions, but it dawned on me recently that while suffering is a hallmark of the Christian life, fear and anxiety are decidedly not . The Word tells us in a thousand different ways to seek peace, to not let our hearts be troubled, that worrying won't add a single second to our lifespan. It also tell us to take up our cross in union with Christ's cross, and to rejoice in our sufferings--not out of some twisted masochism, but specifically for the fruit they will bear, and because they are nothing compared to the glory of the Kingdom that awaits. I think we all clamor to agree with this wisdom, even pressure ourselves to snap our fingers and be at the endstate already, without acknowledging the necessary process of learning how to get there. For the longest time I both ran from my cross and treated anxiety as something I could just ignore away, instead of learning to ackno

Yesterday, my husband did the most exceptionally loving thing. He cleaned the windshield. You see, we were driving home from a weekend in the mountains, which had, naturally, caused our windshield to collect a fair amount of used-to-be-bugs. Also dirt: copious amounts from our time spent exploring the loveliest places on God's green earth--which, naturally, involved driving down some mud-puddle-covered, out-of-the-way roads. And on the way home we were going be driving past (or, rather, through) another one of these breathtaking places: a narrow canyon with rugged walls reaching toward the heavens, anchored at the bottom by a singing, snaking river. And, because I'm...well, me ... naturally, I wanted to get some good clear pictures and videos of it all. So I asked my husband in passing to run the wipers over the windshield smears or something of the sort, I can't quite remember. All I knew was shortly after we'd merged on to the highway with a fully fueled

I caught myself at it again while driving--lost in thought with eyebrows furrowed and face scrunched, worrying over something big. Immediately I relaxed my face, sighing and rubbing the crease between my brows--as if that would erase the line that I could literally feel deepening every time I caught myself in a deep-thinking scowl. Just a few weeks prior, I'd gotten up one fated morning, and--quite suddenly it seemed--met a new face in the mirror. It looked hauntingly like mine, but was definitely not the altogether spry young face I'd known for so long. Of course, in many was I still consider myself pretty darn young at my current thirty-something years. And I've always been in the camp that it's better to grow old gracefully, embracing it bit by bit, instead of trying to fight it. But it's one thing to know this in the back your mind, and quite another to so unexpectedly and literally arrive face to face with the gathering evidence that we are, in fac

It's back. And betah then evah. [I hope you read that in your Arnold voice]. Yes, really--the 2018  Blessed is She Liturgical Planner  is officially here and available for pre-order! And hands-down, without a doubt, it is better than ever. Stunning, take-your-breath-away gorgeousness that you get to carry around every day. But let's let these gorgeous images speak for themselves, shall we? {I know, right? ALL the heart eyes}. It's all the best of last year's liturgical planner with gold foil gorgeousness {plus an added pocket in the back to hold notes and other goodies}. The planner runs from August, so it will arrive with perfect timing for those of you who bought last year's academic year planner which started in September. And just like last year's, this planner is chock full of the amazing features so many of us have loved this past year: monthly layout weekly layout an hourly layout for every single day place fo

Hey-o... Just chillin here on Easter Saturday, writing from the exact same place I started my Lent on Ash Wednesday... The sick bed. Yep, the same place of suffering, the same no-social-media isolation [only one day away from the end of my fast], the same slow, slow passage of idle hours when I crave the distraction of busyness--especially when there is SO much to be done in preparation for our celebration tomorrow. Aside from my mounting chronic illness woes, I've been fairly free of communicable junk since that fateful Wednesday some 40 odd days ago. Until yesterday. I'm sure it's no coincidence that I am here. Again. [Seriously, God?] Ironically, I waxed poetic just the other day about Jesus proving that He is actively with me in such moments as these, and worse...because I finally shut up and let Him show me . I offered myself anew, even as I felt like the crud was coming on yesterday, thinking, "I can do this with You, Jesus. I will suffe

It was a theme that had haunted me for awhile. A well-intentioned spiritual exercise, recommended by friends and mentors alike--spiritual sages who had all experienced the same need to bring meaning to a situation or a moment in time. "Ask Jesus to show you where He was in that moment." The suggestion, scrawled across the pages of my journal in months past and stamped into my brain as it continued to cross my path, it struck me as a worthy idea, a beautiful practice... ...for someone else. I had approached this sacred practice with eager carelessness, immediately posing the pointed question. "Yeah, where were You?" But I only succeeded in opening a Pandora's box. It seemed that the few times I tried to place Christ at the scene of one of those difficult moments in my life--the moments that brought me to a place of blinding fear or anxiety, the times rife with suffering--my intellect could certainly roll its eyes and tell me that of course

It's been a rough, tough patch lately in an already barren desert of a season. My body has all but quit. So many hard situations plague the surrounding world. So many loved ones seem trapped in a slow downhill shift toward another long, dark valley. Today, I felt the sigh of reality escape my lips as I gingerly washed some day-old strawberries that were already headed past their prime, hoping to pump some vitamin C into my sweet boy who'd just spiked a fever. He glanced at them and a smile lit up his flushed little face. "Soon," he said, his tired but bright eyes widening with delight, "we won't have to buy them from the store anymore. We'll pick them from our garden!" I'd forgotten how, a few weeks ago, I'd excitedly led the kids out back to show them the first, almost hidden surprises of spring. The green baubles of new buds clinging to dry skeletons of branches. The ruddy stubs of rhubarb and sharp green edges of bulbs, peeking o

I've actually gotten through a decent number of books since the start of the New Year. I immediately chased after a few new titles from my favorite genre of World War II memoirs/historical fiction before reeling it back in; since then, I've tried to stick with books already downloaded in my Kindle "stack" before getting any more. For the most part, this meant finishing a few series of classics; those well-written, but more relaxed, meandering reads that sometimes take a little longer. It's been a good departure from more intriguing but sometimes less substantial page-turners I often reach for. Here's the list so far... Finished Reading Kiss Every Step |  Doris Martin An incredible memoir of a Jewish family in Poland that managed to all survive the Holocaust, even though they were separated; one even ended up at a camp, and virtually all the remaining Jews from their village were wiped out. I found out about this book from a friend who met the a