Tips for a Happy Summer

We all want our kids to be happy, but as you enter into the summer months and have more contact with your children, I want to encourage you to help them learn and grow this summer by letting them be just a little unhappy.  

Sometimes we need a happiness reset. 

We have a tendency (called hedonic adaptation) to return to a happy-midpoint emotionally. This means that if we experience the same awesome event repeatedly, after a while it doesn't seem as awesome. We experience less pleasure from that same event. We then seek even greater pleasure to just feel the same level of happiness we felt before. A period of boredom, although generally not pleasant, will help your kids to more fully appreciate the fun parts of their day or week.  

Boredom has two components: low arousal and dissatisfaction. You can help your children to be more tolerant of boredom by building into your day times of low simulation (no screens, family prayer time, alone time), and by occasionally saying no to their requests.  Letting your children be bored is not the same thing as simply checking out and disengaging from them all day long. 

I am a huge supporter of planning and intentionality in family life. Each summer has looked dramatically different based on the kids' ages and our travel plans, but one thing that has helped is having some loose schedules posted in a central place. This can be a weekly or a daily schedule or both and I have examples in previous blogs (here and here). But I want to get you to think about providing structure when you create your schedule rather than over programming the children. Structure means having quiet time each day vs having a set time that they must read a specific book. Or building in some crafty creative time vs you planning and teaching a specific craft. When you schedule, you give them an idea for the flow of the day, you don't necessarily entertain them all day long. 

One area that is fairly structured in our home is meals. We typically have one wake up time and in previous years I make a decent breakfast for them. I do this because it will keep them from parading through the kitchen all morning and it gives them a good start. The key is consistency. Either make breakfast, or leave it up to them. But be consistent about it and provide some time frame for their meals. Breakfast 9ish,  lunch 12ish, snack 3ish and dinner 6ish works well for us. Getting everyone eating and sleeping in sync helps me escape the summer title of short-order-cook.

By providing a loose schedule, regular meal times, giving them a chance to be bored and saying no to their every demand, you all can have a happier healthier home this summer. If you have enjoyed these tips for a happy summer please share it with others!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cultivating Goodness in a Culture of Fear

Fear is the path to the Dark Side.

Fear leads to anger,

Anger leads to hate,

Hate leads to the suffering.

-Yoda (Phantom Menace, 1999).

I am not a Star Wars fan, but this quote by Yoda is one that stayed with me. In the past year, I have repeatedly thought about these words as we witnessed what happens to a world when fear runs unchecked - No, not unchecked, but rather promoted. 

In the early days of the pandemic, a retired police officer told me to prepare for massive civil unrest. She said that anytime you have a community living in fear, whose government puts in restrictions (as we anticipated would be coming), you have civil unrest in some form. Because fear leads to anger.

Neither of us knew what the trigger would be, but as a sociology major she knew that something would happen, because anger would soon follow the fear that was already growing around us. 

The anger unleashed, rather dissipating in a cathartic wave, grew into hatred as it was stoked by social media, cancel culture, a lack of national leadership, and social justice warriors taking up the mantle of not just reporter, but also that of judge and jury. 

Hatred towards entire occupations.

Hatred towards entire political parties.

Hatred towards our entire economic system.

Hatred towards our entire judicial system.

Hatred towards our entire democratic process.

Hatred towards our own brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors.

Rather than a constructive critique and transformation of processes that was failing us, we heard a call for utter destruction. A razing of our way of life. 

Rather than civil discussions with friends, we turned to division and conflict. When someone failed to agree with our opinion, we were shocked by their ignorance. There was no longer room for ideas that were different. Diversity once considered good, is now considered evil. 

Rather than I love you and I am sorry, rather than I forgive you or I don't see it that way, we accused one another of being unconscious, or worse harboring a cruelty of heart. 

Rather than teaching and leading and listening to one another, we assaulted one another's very character. 

Evil already roamed the earth, but this year we invited it into our communities, into our friendships, and into our homes. We taught our children how to recognize and point out ignorance in others, rather than teaching them how to recognize intellectual elitism and pride within our own selves. We invited in the fear, we stoked the anger, we justified the hatred as righteousness and we cultivated evil in our sacred domestic churches. 

It is time we undo it. Remove it. Cast it out. If we fail to root it out now, we pass fear, anger, hate and suffering along as a legacy to our children. 

We start by driving out the fear, and this can only be achieved through Perfect Love. 

Shut out the voices of anger and division and replace them with reminders to Love for the Lord and all of His creation. Invest, trust, and believe in your relationship with the Lord above all else and remain in His peace. Give specific thanks for the tangible things each day. Assume the best of others, not the worst. 

Be prudent, be just, be merciful, and be hopeful. You can not cultivate goodness without first driving out the fear. And don't wait. Your children are watching, listening, and learning. 

Parenting the Preschooler: 8 Tips for helping children develop respect for your rules & requests

The preschool years are full of fun and excitement, but they can also bring tears and frustration as the child's budding personality, wants, and desires, find themselves in conflict with yours.

One of the biggest struggles with preschoolers is that their growing independence and abilities aren't necessarily paired with an increased desire to follow your rules or requests. Preschoolers get caught up in play and can be curious as they explore their environment more freely. They have strong feelings, but lack the perspective taking abilities to recognize that you have feelings and wants as well.  By age three or four, preschoolers become experts at really testing the rules to see if they apply in all situations, every day, as they question if you really mean what you say. But there is hope. Here are 8 tips for navigating the preschool years and helping your child be successful at following your rules and requests.

1) Stay positive and redirect. The old tool of toddlerhood is still effective with many three or four year olds. Rather than saying NO all day, strive to say YES by giving them other options.

2) Use simple explanations for your requests. You don't have to justify your rules or requests, but if you explain them, your child is more likely to remember the rule and may even begin to generalize. Children at this age don't naturally realize that if you say "no jumping on the bed" that actually means "no jumping on the furniture".  Explaining why you have the rules helps them to make sense of their world.

3) Be consistent. If you say "No eating on the couch", but let them have popcorn on the couch before bed you are undermining yourself and confusing them. Set specific rules and follow those rules as a family.

4) Look for patterns related to the problems. If you are struggling, look for patterns to the disobedience. Is it primarily when she is tired? If it is related to something specific (putting away toys or backtalk or bedtime drama)? Troubleshoot the specific problem. Maybe she needs a little more guidance or has a little problem you need to work out together. When my oldest son was this age he had a huge problem whenever we went to get his hair cut. He finally confessed he was scared the stylist was going to cut off his ears. If there is a particularly tough situation, dig a little deeper to get to the issue.

5) Offer both a request and a reward. One of my go-to approaches with all ages is to make a request paired with some little thank you. Let me know when you take out the trash and then we can play that card game together. When you are done cleaning your room, we can have lunch. Make sure you finish up your chores before you come to join us swimming. You get the gist. This gives them an objective to work towards after the work is done. It helps them stay focused and motivated until the end.

6) Follow up with simple discipline when rules are broken. Eliminate the drama and give firm follow-up, allowing the consequence to be the punishment, rather than just your complaining. Don't loose your cool. "I asked you to pick up your toys before you turned on the TV and you did not do that. Now you won't be able to watch TV at all, and your toys are going in the box for the next few days". Keep it as simple as possible.

7) Recognize that testing your rules is her job right now. Your job is to help her understand those rules and respect your authority. Expect her to test, and prepare yourself with your reaction plan.

8) Shower her with more attention. When we experience conflict in a relationship, sometimes an extra dose of affection can move us in the right direction. Your child needs to know that your love is not tied to her behavior. She was created by God to love and be loved. When children are secure in their love, they respond better to the feedback, guidance, and discipline.

The preschool years are rough in many ways. Hopefully these tips will help you switch your approach and give you the confidence you need to proceed at the task of raising your child to have respect for you, your rules, and your requests. God's blessing on you and your family through these difficult times and situations.

If you want more on discipline or obedience at any age, check out episodes 24 and 34 of the podcast where I expand on both of these topics.

Thanks for stopping by!

The End of Pandemic Parenting

A friend said recently, “It is as if we are living in some dystopian novel”.

Like many of you, I have been slowly adjusting. I have been thinking of this time as “a time that is set away”- different and somehow almost suspended.

When we first embarked on our Springtime of Pandemic Parenting, I suggested that we all relax a little. That was when I thought that by the time summer rolled around, I would be vacationing far away countries, and visiting colleges with my oldest, rather than living each day in my same t-shirt, answering the routine question “What are we going to do today?” with the routine answer “Not much”. 

Early on, I encouraged you all to be a little more child-led in your approach to the Spring. Let your kids watch movies and play their video games. Let them Facetime their friends and make messes creating with all those amazon boxes. Whatever you needed to do in order to just survive the realities of living together 24/7, for this short period of time, was unlikely to create lasting damage in your children.

And here we are many months, MONTHS – not- weeks- later, and it is time to change our mindset. Because the “time-out-of-time approach“ works on vacation, or summer break, or some shortish time frame. But it is not the optimal approach for everyday parenting.

How to Raise Anti-Racist Kids

For Christmas this year, I got Dr. Crystal Fleming’s 2018 book How to be Less Stupid about Race. In it, Fleming writes “living in a racist society socializes us to be stupid about race”.  The main premise of her book, is that the current broader culture, in her words “exposes us all to absurd and harmful ideas that, in turn, help maintain the status quo” p3. When something is part of the mainstream culture, it becomes our normal. Good-hearted people, can then contribute to the pain and suffering of others, without realizing it. With the proliferation of thoughts and ideas, of opinions and emotions, ignorance to the issues of race can no longer be an excuse for perpetuating racism.

Addressing issues of racism from a parenting approach, can be a way to address the culture in our own home- how we look at situations, how and when we discuss things on the news, with whom we socialize and how we interact with others, how we answer difficult questions. In and through our conversations, we can work to change the culture in our homes, and can continue to change our culture as a whole. Change happens on a micro-system level in the 1:1 interactions we have with our children and our friends.

Development of Racism

Racism is a way of thinking about something – it is a thought process that begins with stereotypes, biases, and prejudices based on an oversimplification or a generalization of groups or people.  This starts as soon as we notice differences, because our brains strive for simplification – our brains are going to try to classify, generalize, and oversimplify. We have to combat this because racism, biases and prejudices are inherently evil.

By age two, children recognize physical differences and by age 3 and 4 children start classifying things, including people. Children may start questioning why people have different hair or skin tones, and just like with gender they don’t necessarily see race as salient.  By age 4 children show age preferences – then by age 8, children come to understand racial constancy. And this is really a ripe time to talk about cultural awareness and racial identity.  Obviously as questions come up, we can and should talk about it with younger children as well. We should not shy away from dialogue. There is nothing shameful about talking about race.

Lasting Lessons for Your New Graduate

Is your graduate suddenly someone you WANT to see leave the house? Doors slamming, eye rolling, sarcastic remarks, insults that cut to the core? Or maybe they have just checked out and are escaping for as long as possible to spend time with friends.

No worries. It is all normal. Don't take it personally. Actually, take it as a compliment. Because it means two things.

1- Leaving you is going to be hard.

2- Your Child is ready to leave.

Separating themselves physically and emotionally is part of the Senior year process. Your graduates should feel ready to leave. They should be excited and a little wound up about leaving. They should be just a little worried about how they are going to get by without their safety net. Trying to cut that net now is okay.

How it manifests is different in every family, but many graduates who are leaving in the fall, turn a little vicious, or become apathetic towards those in their normally close knit family. They spend as much time away from the home, with friends (or acquaintances),  or  working. They want to start to create space between themselves and you. They become distant.

It is hard. It is terrible. It can be heartbreaking. But it is normal. And they probably don't even realize they are doing it.

How to Parent in a Pandemic

Parenting in the current climate is hard.  For many of us it is harder than we would have thought it would be. Having our own children around and spending time at home with our spouse aren’t traditionally seen as hardships. However, fear of illness, employment uncertainty, frustration, with new learning processes, and a loss of our own social support are new trials we are struggling to endure.

For those fortunate to still have gainful employment, there are stresses of working at home with children to parent during the day. For families experiencing job loss, unemployed or underemployed, uncertainty regarding meeting their families basic needs exists, and this breeds fear and anxiety.

Fear and anxiety love to grow in uncertain times. When we lack a mental schema, or a mental representation for how to proceed, our creative instincts can get the best of us.  We have so few answers, and no real understanding of how or when this will end, what our culture will look like, when can we return to regular mass, what will happen with the schooling in the fall.

If we were “just” and I use just in air quotes, experiencing an economic recession, we would sort of know what to expect. We have been through some of those. If we were just experiencing (again with air quotes) a big flu season, we may know better what to expect, when it will go away. 

The fact we aren’t able to plan for the future makes this so much harder.

We need to balance the reality of the day-to-day difficulty with the truth that parenting is our vocation.  Just as God can bring good from suffering, as parents we can invite Him to bring increased goodness into our homes now.

We parent in the present, we love in the present, we live in the present. So we can take this time to learn to be more present. Don’t worry about the future – Saint Padre Pio said “Pray hope, and don’t worry.”

That doesn’t mean being less intentional about your parenting.

We should all take some time to think about how we want our kids to remember this time (read more about thathere). We have a beautiful opportunity to spend time with, and connect with our kids in such a unique way right now, but we need to be intentional about it. The intensity with which we parent now has changed as has and the opportunity to play a bigger role in our children’s lives.  

Being present and living more in the moment is the answer to more fully embracing the opportunities we have at home now.

The research on stress tells us that if we are under stress, we either need to remove the stressor, or we need to change our reaction to the stress. We can’t remove our children, or spouse, or the threat of illness, so we have to change our reaction to the stress. 

Intentionality Part Two

Intentionality 

If you missed Part One: Being intentional with God, but sure to check that out as well! 

Part Two: Being intentional with our children

In order to excel in any vocation one must be intentional about what one does.  Aren't your best days as mothers the days that you actually say "hey, lets do this".  It doesn't have to be something extraordinary – it can be a simple as having dinner outside on a blanket – but it is intentional!  Think about how much of your day you let others have control of …or how much you plan in advance (ie. Mondays groceries, Tuesday laundry)… those of us with older kids are dealing with their schedules and the youngsters have their important routines.  

Routines and schedules are critical for young kids especially because they leave kids feeling safe in a fairly unpredictable world. I am not suggesting being unpredictable. I am suggesting you be intentional about your parenting and your relationship with your spouse.  Developmental psychology tells us that the more routine you are with your kids, the better they are at being flexible when you need them to be so.

Intentionality Part One

Intentionality

Are we caotic and messy? A little kaos and a little mess is great, but too much leaves us with no opportunity to reflect, to mediate, to pray, to listen, to think. We need to do these things for ourselves and for our families. If we don't take time (not having time is an excuse) to think about what we are doing then we are simply existing and we are not being intentional. In order to excel in any vocation one must be intentional about what one does. It doesn't matter WHAT your occupation is, you won't excel at it if you just show up and go through the motions. This is a tough time for our whole country, our whole culture. We are being asked to sacrifice much for the greater good. Intentionality will help us all survive the craziness and maybe come out better for it in the end. With that in mind, Here is Part of One of a game plan for living intentionally as mothers and fathers.  

Part I: Be Intentional About Your Relationship with God

If we expect to have Christ in our hearts and homes…Shouldn't we be intentional about getting to know GOD? Do you think you know all there is to know about God? Or do you just know enough? Are you comfortable with your relationship with the Lord? Do you hunger for more? Are you a lukewarm Christian? You show up for service each week, you pray a routine prayer before bed each night...you love God right? Do you WORK for that relationship? How do you love someone if you don't know them?  Have you EVER known someone that you didn't EVER have to work to get to know?  

Do the work. 
Too often we expect someone (like our priest) to do all the work for us. The priest is then a mutual friend that we and The Lord have in common – we only know God through this person rather than having our own relationship with Him. We are so blessed to have truly wonderful priests who have a brilliant understanding of tradition and scripture. Our journey to personal sanctification needn't be completely dependent upon these individuals.

God is there for us to know. He is there for us to know in the BIBLE. Get to know God through The Word – Jesus was the Word made flesh. God is available to us in prayer. To have a real relationship with someone you must enter into dialogue with them and LISTEN. Set time aside for Him – for fellowship with those who know Him, for study, for prayer, for reflections. Join bible studies, go to adoration and just be in His presence, sign up for an online workshop, read scripture.

Be a role model. 
We need to be a role model of an intentional relationship with God...for ourselves and for our kids –

Compressing as a Remedy for Stressing

Sometimes when a muscle or joint is super tight a therapist, rather than stretching the area, will compress it in order to get it to relax. It seems counter intuitive, but it works to help that area to relax. The other night I found myself in one of those parenting moments of heightened anxiety. Maybe it was the storm outside, or the cancelation of practices (I am horrible with changes to the schedule), maybe it was the soundtrack of our life with the thump - thump - thump of the ball against the wall and the chatter of the girls interrupted by thunder outside…regardless, I found myself in the kitchen barely keeping it together.  I took deep breathes and tried to show prudence in my response to the little loves and their requests, all the while feeling a constriction in my entire torso.  I was at that moment that I just gave in. I gave into the tightness and stress and confusion in the schedule. Rather than continuing to stretch myself I constricted. I turned inward. I grabbed my rosary and went room to room asking each of the kids at home if they wanted to join me for the rosary. Right now.  In the dinning room. I sat with my 13 year old and we just prayed. And as promised a peace came over us and over the home. There are three things in this situation which were bold and new for me.

1) I prayed in a very public space.
2) I invited the kids to join me instead either demanding it, or hiding from them.
3) I added something sacred during a time of day when I typically was simply responding to the needs of others.

Let me tell you that in moments of intense frustration, I rarely have the wisdom to turn to prayer. But just as it is counter intuitive to compress a muscle that needs to be stretched, when we are stretched beyond what we think we can tolerate, we too must compress, and rest in the Lord. And sometimes that means adding something to an already full or overwhelming situation. Rather than stripping away tasks on the list, sometimes we need to add prayer to the top.

How to be a good mother in 5 sort of easy steps

How to Be A Good Mother...

According to our pastor, being a good mother really isn't that hard.

And as much as I have to laugh at the suggestion that parenting is easy, he made enough points that I started to take notes. With his permission I have summarized and compressed and paraphrased and added to put together a join list of 5 sort of easy things you need to do to be a good mom.

1. Consecrate our child to God.  Baptism is the first step here. We should consecrate our babies to God and bring them in communion with God and His Church.

2. Give your child Jesus. My Pastor brought up of the old adage "you can't give what you don't have".  Mothers should be setting aside time to develop their own personal relationships with Jesus so that this can act as a model for normal living. Just as you may give them an appreciation for sports, or art, or music, or literature, you too can give them Jesus.

3. Be sacrificial in your mothering.  Serve with love - not begrudgingly. Don't hang on to the past or worry about the future - just give what you have to give. My father used to say "if you don't go to bed tired, your didn't do enough".  Never is that more true that with mothering. Somedays it feels like we don't do enough, yet we go to bed (and some mornings wake up) exhausted. Motherhood is a sacrifice and we often have to do things that we dont want to do... but we know we are going to do them anyway so put a smile on your face and take a deep breathe and bring God in to your moment to moment acts of service.

4. Pray for your child. At all stages in their lives. And don't stop praying.

5. Bless your child. Numbers 6:22-27 instructs the israelites how exactly to bless their children and we have adopted it as our bedtime blessing.

The Lord bless you and keep you!

The Lord let his face shine upon 

you, and be gracious to you!

The Lord look upon you kindly and 

give you peace!

So shall they invoke my name upon the Israelites, 

and I will bless them.

It gets a little awkward now that my oldest is bigger than me, but I still try to bless him at every opportunity.

Too often, we moms set ourselves an impossibly high bar. Our kids have to be the smartest, prettiest, most polite, most creative, and most athletic or we have failed. Our measure of motherhood shouldn't hang on the snippets of our children's behaviors, but rather should focus on what we are doing in these five areas. Beyond that we have to let go. Our children have free will. All we can do is love them, keep them relatively safe and well fed, and give their spiritual life a firm foundation so that they can develop a relationship with Christ.  Now doesn't that seem easy?

No Advent Fails

As usual I had lofty goals for Advent this year. My Advent journal was prepped and ready, the decorations were up, many of the gifts were purchased, and I even bought my purple and rose colored candles ahead of time.

And as usual my goals of really entering into the season, and spending time in deep contemplation about the arrival of my Lord and Savior in the form of a little baby, went unrealized.

Each year I have some excuse. This year I got sick. Not deathly ill, or even super sick requiring Rx or a trip to the doctor. No, I just got a really persistent upper respiratory something.  It came the first Sunday of Advent and just hung around all month. It sucked my energy, my motivation, and kept me at an arms length (or more) from many friends and families.

And it slowed me down. In a time of hustle and bustle, this little bug dropped me into first gear and I sort of trudged through life. The result of this dampening of energy meant that the class party I had to organize was fine rather than great (no one seemed to care that the hot cocoa was actually chocolate milk), the Christmas cards did not go out (or even get addressed), the family ate quite a few more take-and-make dinners than normal (and enjoyed every bite), the gifts were simplified all round (who cares if the packages have bows), and we left the Christmas party early (unnoticed I am sure).

So what if we only lit the Advent candles a few nights each week. Advent isn't about lighting candles, or planning the perfect party or sending an amazing card. Like all of our special times in the church calendar, Advent is about living life differently. Sometimes those special times are feast days, sometimes they are fasting days, sometime they are seasons of preparation, but they are different for a reason. They shock our system. They help us to notice a truly Joyful or Reverent time. Advent is a time to prepare for that truly Joyful time of Christmas.

Too often we hope for a grand revelation during our Advent or Lent season. We look for a conversion of our own heart, without realizing that when align our hearts to Christ, we are continually being transformed. This Advent I had to slow dow.  Really slow down. I had to choose what was important, what was urgent, and what could be left out. And then I just let go of it all. I stead of getting out of bed to read my journal and write and reflect, I stayed in bed and just prayed. Good prayer. Just talking with Jesus in the silence of the early hours and resting in His love.  And that is how I prepared. It wasn't extravagant, or complicated, or even recommended, but it worked. It wasn't a Fail. And now we get to celebrate.

As this New Year approaches what sort of goals are you going to set for yourself? Are they going to be lofty-impossible-to-achieve goals that leave you deflated and defeated as the first flowers of spring pop up, or are they going to be less measurable goals that lead to a transformation in your heart and mind?

Self-care in Stages

Photo credit @anniespratt via Unsplash

School started this week and I am not going to lie. I was thrilled. With 4 kids at home all summer I was acutely aware of a startling lack of anything that resembled self-care. The first day back had me wondering how best to celebrate having a quiet house all day for the first time since becoming a parent 14 years ago. I debated between going home to take a nap and going to a friends to do some work wilts drinking mimosas.

And that got me to thinking about self-care. Because self-care is all about the self and it will differ with each of you. My hope is peaking in my evolution will give you pause to look at your own, and help you to seek some significant ways to take care of yourself, where ever you are in life.

In my pre-parenting life, self-care was all about betterment of the self. I would go for a run a few times a week. I ate well. When I didn't eat well I would run a little more. I was able to mostly sleep until I naturally awoke because my graduate school classes were typically later starts and I never had to be at work before 9am. I got the occasional expensive coffee drink as a treat. I got plenty of alone time naturally.

Once we got married and started our family, I turning inward, not to myself but to our little growing family. As we solidified our union as husband and wife, we began to bond with other couples who were in a similar stage of life. Those relationships were often family based and frequently instructive for us as we embraced the new roles of Mother and Father. Self-care in those days meant regular lunches with these friends or playdates where my friends and I would watch the children play and dissect every little concern over coffee. It meant getting out of the house and talking with another adult eye-ball to eye-ball. It meant dropping the children at the gym not so that I could sweat, but so that I could clear my head of the little chatter and delved into a fictional life while I sort-of worked out, all the while balancing a book in my hand.

That was about the time I converted to Catholicism and began the mom's ministry at our parish. I had two little boys and I craved relationships with women whose eyes were on the cross and whose end goal in life was an eternity in heaven. I didn't want to just spend time with other people. I wanted to spend time with people with whom I shared values, and goals, and dreams. I wanted my children to grow up in a community of people who had strong marriages and strong faiths. Self-care started to mean more about my internal and personal growth. It still had a social aspect, but it wasn't about passing time with people. It was about growing with them. I would gain weight with pregnancy and loose it again only to gain it once more with each pregnancy. My gym time, which I still considered critical for self-care, was for mental health more than physical health because it seemed I was almost always pregnant or nursing.

And then the children started school, and I found a resurgence of discretionary time and a introduction of outside demands. People started asking things of me. Will I help with Vacation Bible School? Sure. Will we hold a bake sale? Sure. Can you help decorate the church for Christmas? Sure. Wanna run the parish consignment sale? Sure. Do you want to join our bunco group? Book club? MOPS? And on and on it went and because there was no end to the opportunities and I quickly became engulfed. There was so much I wanted to do and getting out of the house one night a week was a delight. Having a night "off" from the bedtime routine was bliss. Self-care meant escaping the responsibilities of family life for just a few hours, even though that often meant taking on other responsibilities. I became a compulsive volunteer, because it meant I could leave without guilt.

And then Baby Number Four came along and escaping became impossible. Our schedules, the demands at home, the needs of the children overwhelmed the schedule. Whereas self-care once meant saying Yes to serving outside the home, now it meant learning to say No. Learning to say No to the things in life that overwhelmed me, consumed me, and kept me up at night was one of the healthiest lessons I have learned as an adult. I realized that each time I say Yes, I took on a task that could be completed by someone else. Saying No to serving provides others the opportunity to say Yes. So I began saying No more often. If it wasn't something that I was uniquely prepared for or had a gift for, I could now say No. Saying No became the primary way to say Yes to myself and to God. I stopped doing and started being. I started to become intentional.

And I began writing. I let the Lord call me to a new life within, a new love within. He spoke to me in prayer and lit a love for words within me. He called me to serve in the quiet. During nap times, during preschool, while the little ones played. I was able to serve Him and use my unique combination of gifts, training and experience in a way to that left me without guilt or exhaustion.

Now as I settle into my 40s, life with a teenager a kindergartener and two in between has left me with little headspace for writing. I have found different a unique ways to serve outside the home through my writing and my role with Blessed is She. I am back to trying to escape, but mostly just so that I can breathe without children around. As my teen stays up later and later the quiet time at home in the evenings has been reduced. I hit the gym a few days a week for vanity purposes as my metabolism and muscle mass both decline. I have a glass of vino in the evenings and take pleasure in the fact that I can drink decent wine from a nice glass, and it is a healthy thing to do as I watch my HDL's. My friendships are solid. They aren't just the parents of my children's friends, or relationships I cling to from other stages in life although I thankfully do still have some of those. They are heart-to-heart friendships with women I want to grow with. They hold me accountable and advise me. They seek my counsel, recognize my strengths, and tease me about my weaknesses. Self-care also means escaping with my husband - Date nights, an annual trip with another couple, and a little trip for just the two of us. I will continue to grow through the years, but real self-care means making sure that my husband and I grow together as well. With the distractions and demands of parenting kids, a tween and a teen this is my biggest challenge.

One day, I am told, I will blink and it will be just my husband and me. I will be saying goodbye to the baby and entering Empty Nest status, and self-care will look much different from how it looks today. It will challenge me to evaluate how much time and energy I am willing to commit in order to combat natural aging. My hormones will shift and I will be forced to adjust relationally and emotionally. I predict a bit of a return to self-care as it once was with a more self- rather than other-focus, but now that focus will be on the internal not the external.

Self-care won't be about seeking out time away, but it will be about boundaries of some sort because it always is. Self-care will still concern balancing the needs of others and the needs of the self. And so the flow of self-care from external care - to care of family unit - to care of social/community unit - to care of internal self will continue.

Take a minute and think - Where are you with your self-care? What does that term even mean to you today? Is self-care taking just a few minutes to veg out on social media? Is it something as simple as listening to your favorite music or building a favorite activity into your weekly routine? Is it intention or does it come naturally? 

Thanks for stopping by to think with me today!

Finding Peace in Chaos: Summer Survival 2017

I was having a hard time keeping my thoughts straight, hovering somewhere between "yeah I am fine" and "ah man I am loosing it". Two separate viruses had hit our normally healthy home in the last 6 weeks. Couple those with a jumbled up schedule packed with extras like sacraments and recitals and tryouts and house hunting all as we finished off the school year. It wasn't that we had so much more going on that normal. Being released from sports practices for a few weeks gave me much more than a few extra hours in the day. No, it was the complete lack of predictability that caused the unease. 

There are seasons in life where structure and planning and purposeful living comes easier. Then there are seasons like this.  

I was leaping into summer without any vacation plans in ink, without a master calendar dotted with ideas to structure out days, without team commitments for my three club athletes, crossing my fingers that my healthy ones would stay healthy and the sick ones would get better already. Oh and we quite literally did not know where we would call home the next month. 

I am a hyper-planner. I think I was blessed with a charism of administration. Scheduling the lives of the little and big people under my roof really brings me joy. And riding through a harried spring into a more laid back time of triple digit temperatures should be refreshing and instill feeling of relaxation. So why did I find myself living instead with a sense of dread? 

During Lent I had developed a beautiful practice of rising early to work through my BIS Lent journal. I am not a journalist by nature, but the concrete daily time for me to get grounding with God was life giving. But it is hard to drag oneself out of bed early. Having a Lenten promise to do so was the only reason I persisted. Plus I didn't want to get behind in the book. The perpetual student in me wouldn't allow for that. 

But Lent ended and the Easter season brought with it joy and celebration and the sacrifice of getting up early... well it was easy to give that up. I had an Easter season book study to do. On my nightstand, on the counter, in the car. It didn't matter where I put it. I wasn't getting done. I was sleeping a little later, checking in with social media, glancing over my email and getting the daily readings, making my coffee and going about my day. But it wasn't Lent anymore so why should I sacrifice sleep?

Gone was the time to just sit with God. 

Holy Spirit come. That was the simple prayer I would utter before opening my Lent journal. Holy Spirit come. So simple and so easy, and those were the first words each day. 

Today I woke up and instead of checking the feeds or opening my email even, I listen to God. I asked Him to give me peace.

Peace doesn't come from the schedule, or the plans, or the organization and structure of the day. Peace comes from God. He will provide peace in the days of uncertainty. But our God is a gentleman God. He doesn't force himself into our lives. He loves us from afar in those times when we keep Him at a distance. When we invite Him in closer he comes equipped with all the graces we need, ready to rekindle the holy gifts he has given us in baptism and confirmation. 

In Matthew 11 Jesus tell us 

"Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest." 

He invites us to come to Him. He offers rest, but in the next line he offers so much more...

 "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves."

He doesn't say he is going to take away our problems. He says He is going to teach us and give us rest. 

I don't want God to take away my problems- my problems are good problems. Having many hearts to love and many mouths to feed and many talents to nurture in my little ones is a joyful problem. I need him to teach me how to enter into the fullness of life without feeling weary or burdened. I need to learn how to have faith and trust so deep that uncertain and shifting schedules don't keep me up with worry at night. I need to have confidence that my children will grow through their physical suffering and if they all end up getting sick so be it. 

"For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light". 

The load is still there because that is life in this world. 

When we take our uncertainty, the frustrations, the worries, the sadness,whatever we have weighting down our hearts and we cast that upon the yoke of the Lord, the load is made manageable. 

I still don't know where we will be living when the next season begins. I don't know what the summer will bring. But for me, putting on His yoke each morning means starting each day with an invitation to God.

Come Holy Spirit Come. 

When Rescuing is Wrong

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We were siting around the little patio at our local pub. Just a group of us moms out for a little fellowship and some time away from our cumulative 20+ children. One of us had gotten the wrong beer or maybe it was just a stinky beer and she wasn't going to drink it. There was some passing around of the glass and the agreement at the table was that the beer was nasty and she should send it back. We all agreed that the friend who ordered it should just send it back and let the server know it was bad. But this friend was really tentative and would rather not have anything to drink if that meant she may make someone else (the server) feel uncomfortable. After some good natured teasing and laughing, she decided that maybe she would try to be assertive (see the hesitation there already?) and give it a try. As the server approached I could see the stress in her face. She hemmed and hawed and hesitated and so I just blurted out - "Can she get a new drink? This one is awful" - at which point the server smiled and acquiesced and the problem was solved.

Except it wasn't.  Another friend (who is a counselor by training and practice) looked at me with a smile and stated "You are a rescuer!"

A what?

I had never heard that term. What ensued was a bit of more drinking and lot of laughing and even more self-reflection on how each of us as the table handle conflict. 

My counselor friend is absolutely right. I am a rescuer.  I don't like conflict, but what I hate more than conflict is to see my loved ones uncomfortable, in pain, or really suffering in any way. Although it is a nice and noble thing to be willing to help alleviate others discomfort, especially when it comes to beer, being a Rescuer can lead to some rather negative parenting situations. 

Our children grow through conflict. As a mother I should be providing them with a safe and loving environment in which they have the opportunity to solve their own conflicts. I can provide guidance, I can give suggestions (when asked), I can model frameworks for conflict management, but stepping in to take away their pain, discomfort and sometimes genuine suffering, only handicaps their ability to grow into mature and capable adults. Rescuing behavior shows a lack of awareness or appreciation of the good that can come from suffering.

Children are going to have conflicts - daily - and if they have sibling it can at times seem like they life a life of constant conflict. Kids can be mean (yes even my kids) and they make poor choices all the time. I blame their poorly developed frontal lobes. But it is through their conflicts that they learn. They learn when to speak out and when to let things go, they learn how much crap they can take from their peers before they snap, they learn at what point they need to stand up for others, they learn that some friends are fun but not good for them, they learn about honesty, and loyalty, and trustworthiness. They come to value people who are virtuous and learn to avoid those who lack decency.  

So what's a Rescuer- Mom to do? It hurts so much to see our little ones hurting, but swooping in and messing with their business isn't often the best way to handle it. What we need to do is Love and Listen.

First, we are called to love. They need to know that what ever they do, however they handle a situation, they are loved by both us and by God. They are going to mess up. They are going to make poor choices. They are going to fail in some way at some time.  And we are called to loved them through that time. They need to know that good behavior is not a condition of our love. Is it easier to show them love when they are acting awesome? Yes. Will behaving well make us love them more? Nope. We may like being with them more when they are awesome, but we love them the same amount when they are awesome and awful. Our heart are designed to love them. When the rest of the world is giving them crap, we will give them love.

Secondly, our kids need to know that we are here for them when they want advice, and all they need to do is ask. We aren't too busy or too stressed or too important to listen to their struggles. We have open doors and open hearts and when they want help we are here for them. But we have the confidence in them to let them make their own choices and reach out to us when they need a little assistance.

Our children don't need us to rescue them, but they do need us to notice them. When our children are having a tough day, we ought to let them know we recognize their struggle. We don't need them to tell us everything that happened (unless they want too), but we should take a minute to let them know we see them, and we notice they don't seem quite right, and that we love them. This opens the door for the conversation and it lets them know we care. Sometimes that is all they need to push through those rough times in childhood. 

So the next time you find your little one is in a sticky situation, hold back. Give them a chance to figure it out. Let them know you are there for them, but you trust in their abilities to problem solve and to identify when the problem is bigger than they can handle on their own.  Be there for them, but let them grow through their struggles and come out more confident and competent young men and women. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Journeying with Jesus

Remember that story from Luke 24, when two of Jesus's followers were walking on the road to Emmaus, and they come upon Jesus (the Risen Lord) and they were prevented from recognizing Him? They were walking along the road talking about everything that had happened, come across Jesus, and then when he asks them what they are talking about the disciples tell him all about what happened. Cleopas, one of Jesus' followers tell Jesus that he is the only one in Jerusalem who doesn't know what happened. 

I love this story because it reminds me that I too get wrapped up in the drama of the day and fail to see Jesus right before me? As hard as I try, I know that I get sucked into the reality of human life today and I am blinded to the truth that He is still here in the word and in the flesh, revealed in the breaking of the bread. I sometimes talk of Jesus as though he were a character from a book, or more intimately as a loved one who has passed away, but in doing so I fail to internalize the reality that he is still with us in The Eucharist.   He is beside me now on this road and he hears every prayer of my heart.

How can we recognize God in the day to day? The answer is intentionality. In my life finding God in the day to day translates into study, community, and service. They are three points on a triangle, three legs of a stool. I need all three in my life.

Study. I can study the word and delve into the lives of the saints who knew God through a deep intimacy. I can allow myself to be lead through scripture daily by my Blessedis She sisters or others who have a gift in this area. I tune into workshops online. I carve out prayer time each morning and visit him in Adoration as often as I can. This is how I get to know my Beloved.

Community. The men on the road to Emmaus were not traveling solo –they were together. Jesus ministered to His disciples in a group, not just one-on-one. We are called to walk to road in community with our brothers and sisters in Christ. My sisters in Christ challenge my assumptions and my biases, they support me when life gets overwhelming, and they call me to be a better version of me. Who are your spiritual sisters walking on the road beside you?

Service. The actions of our bodies, how we spend our time, and how we serve those in our lives all provide evidence of the depth of our Love for God. A common phrase around my house is “you might as well choose to serve with a joyful heart because you are going to do the work anyway”. We should strive to serve with a joyful heart, happy to be offering a sacrifice of the self for God.

Jesus' followers prayed and served in community. When we nurture each aspect of our spiritual life, study, community, and service, we are able to grow more wholly.

Do you have a tendency to get caught up in the daily drama and miss the miracles around you? How do you find His very real presence before you? How can you feed your soul today? What resources do you have to help you to better understand your faith? What physical action can you take today to serve God in love?