Five Quick Parenting Tips: How to serve your family without losing yourself.

Reclaim your time

It is easy to be swept up in caring for others. Families are busy and the demands on parents is constant. Sometimes the demands of others seem to steal the hours away from us - but it doesn't have to be that way. Here are five things you can do today to reclaim your time and better service your family without losing yourself. 

How to reclaim your time:

1. Be organized. Think of organization on a continuum. As a parent you must have flexibility to respond to others needs. At the same time you frequently have small batched of time you can utilize if you are organized. For example, can you sort the mail daily and respond without it piling up? This only worked for me when once I set aside stamps, envelopes, pen, return labels and my checkbook in a drawer together. Otherwise, I spent too much time each day looking for a pen. 

2. Don't distract yourself. It is easy to distract ourselves with screens whenever we can. When you finally have a minute to pause, take that minute to breathe and think, not just click and scroll.

3. Prioritize. Decide each week what is essential and what is ideal, then protect the essential and strive to incorporate the ideal. If it is essential that you pray for 5 minutes in the morning, protect that time. If it is essential that you hit the grocery store Monday morning or attend an important meeting then make it happen. If you really want to have coffee with a friend, schedule it, and build the rest of your time around that appointment. If you have to cancel, be sure to reschedule right away. Thinking wistfully about doing something won’t get you there. Take the small steps to make the important things happen.

4. Use your quiet time carefully. Separate your tasks into things you can do with others around (fold laundry, wash dishes), and things you need quiet time to do (read, pray, respond to calls or emails). Use your quiet time for the things that you do better or more efficiently when you are not distracted. Using your quiet time carefully enables you to be more present to your family when they want attention.

5. Work towards a simple routine. This helps your family to better anticipate when you are and are not available. My family knows I am awake at 6, but not responsive until I come downstairs closer to 645. They know I do my weekly planning on Sunday. They know I am usually in the kitchen from 5-630 each night looking for company and conversation. Even young children can learn the best time to come to you for snuggles or reading time or conversation based on your schedule not their impulses.

We all have just 24 hours in a day and we all have a responsibility to be better stewards of the time we are given. 

Being at home with the family can be personally taxing as the demands seem constant. With intentionality and purpose though you can still serve with love and devotion, and maintain some semblance of self and you grow through your vocation.  

“We must take all the care that God wishes to take about perfecting ourselves, 

and yet leave the care of arriving at perfection entirely to God” .

- St. Francis de Sales

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. 

Argument in an Age Devoid of Reason

"Don’t confuse critique of your work, theories, or ideas, to be a criticism of you as a person."

That was the advice given to me when I was a young graduate student and researcher. This was years ago, before everyone had a platform online and before everyone who felt strongly on a topic would declare himself or herself an expert.  Now simply having opinions on a topic seems to mean one has moral obligation to change the opinions of others. We find ourselves in a time of intellectual arrogance where arguments simply need passion, and often find themselves devoid of reason. 

It was with humility that I presented that project and others that followed. I discussed the concepts and research, gained insight, refined my understanding, grew in wisdom, and developed an understanding that was greater than what I could achieve on my own. Through the process of intellectual discussion, scholarship is refined and the intellect is sharpened.

This is how ideas evolve. Understanding grows when facts and experiences can be discussed and debated without personal attack or character assassination. When we attack a person - their privilege, wealth, religion or race, rather than addressing how they came to their conclusions, we show a complete lack of intellectual integrity. 

This type of rhetoric is just one step above name calling, and is referred to in rhetorical strategy as “ad hominem”. The highest form being Central Point Refutation, when you explicitly refute the central point of the argument. When you practice ad hominem, attacking the person not the argument itself, you undermine your own argument, you set the opposition on the defense, and you loose any possibility of helping your opponent grow in understanding. Moreover, in disparaging the individual, you expose your inability to argue your point based on fact.  

Change and growth in intellect occurs through the one-on-one interactions between individuals. If you hope to change minds and influence people in the coming year, keep to the facts. Stay focused on the argument, not the individual with whom you are arguing. 

As Oscar Wilde wrote, “The value of an idea has nothing whatsoever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it. Indeed, the probabilities are that the more insincere the man is, the more purely intellectual will the idea be, as in that case it will not be colored by either his wants, his desires, or his prejudices”. 

Reason is required to change hearts and minds. Emotion expressed, when devoid of reason, only causes an individual to intensify their position. But this requires each of us to have sound reasoning on the issue and an understanding of the facts of the situation. As you approach a conversation, you must to be knowledgeable on the topic, rather than just passionate.  Some of that knowledge will naturally come from the conversation itself, for you need to seek to understand the views of others, before you can hope to transform their thinking. 

Minds are not changed through emotions or insult. They are changed through intellect and reason. Hearts can be motivated to raise the mind towards an issue, and emotions can help touch a heart, but it is insufficient to use emotion alone and hope to change a mind. Even if you are accurate in your assessment, insulting someone and pointing out his or her personal failings or lack of experience will do little to bring them to your side. Your argument will become “bankrupt through an over-expenditure of sympathy” (Oscar Wilde). 

May the Holy Spirit continue to guide our thoughts and conversations, and give us knowledge and courage in the coming season. 

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. 

A Good Enough Advent: No more Advent fails

This time of year, as advent draws to a close, it is easy to have a heavy heart about what I call my Advent Fails.  The advent wreath that was lit once (yes once), the mad scramble to purchase gifts, spending more time making sure thing are even and balanced under the tree than on the thoughtfulness of each gift, the prayer journal that has many, many more blank pages than it does completed ones, and the utter exhaustions that comes from running at sprint speed for a marathon season.

But take a minute (just a minute because you have cookies to bake), and give yourself a break.  Look into your heart and ask yourself three questions –

Have I spread Joy?

Have I sought Peace? 

Have I shown Faith? 

Have I brought Hope?

God doesn’t care if your advent wreath was lit each night.  God doesn’t care if your packages have perfect bows. God doesn’t care if your house is adorned in Christmas lights.  What counts this season is what is in your heart, and how you show that to those around you. 

Today I was determined to bake gingerbread men with my girls. Why? I don't know. It seemed like a good idea.  We are gluten-free so baking in rare and more complicated and generally less satisfying that it used to be. But I found a recipe... and two hours later I was near tears. Stupid stupid stupid gingerbread men. I don't even like gingerbread. I don't know how people make them so pretty.  Mine are sticky blobs. And then my sweet third-born said "Mama that is the best gingerbread Santa I have ever seen!" My girls didn't care that they were ugly blobs. They were having fun.

Intentions count. So does attitude. God knows what is in our hearts.

I am not saying blow off Advent, quite the opposite - Strive for more, but strive for the right things and the right reasons and realize that there is no such thing as a perfect Advent because should all be striving towards more. Strive to have peace in the unrest. Strive to keep perspective about gifts and giving. Strive for what is really important. So we didn't get the nice lights up outside. Oh well. Maybe we can take some walks around the neighborhood instead and enjoy their lights. 

Strive to do a little more, but also a little less of the stuff that distracts you from preparing your heart for His coming. If we do this right, then each year we may feel like we want to do just a little bit more spiritually than we did last year - and that is a good thing. 

Be intentional about what you do today. Maybe you bake gingerbread cookies, maybe you don’t.  Chat with the Lord throughout the day. Pray while you bake or wrap or shop. Buy a little meal for the guy on the street with a sign. Don’t make it complicated. Spread joy, seek peace, show faith and bring hope.

And hey, if you don’t light your wreath this year, finding Advent candles will be one less thing you will have to do next year when the season comes back around.

How to Survive the Seasons of Motherhood: Redefining Your Normal

When my firstborn was about 6 weeks old, I sat at my kitchen table and sobbed.  I was on the phone with a friend who had two older kids.  She had just told me I wouldn't ever sleep again.  I was ToTheBoneTired, and maybe without thinking I had asked "but how much longer before I get some sleep?".  I was really glad she was so honest with me though because it helped me realize something.

I had to stop trying to reclaim my past life and instead I needed to redefine my normal. 

I thought I had hit my groove a few years ago. With each child I had adapted and been able to keep up well enough.  I was mothering three little-ish ones, was able to make dinner most nights, founded/ran a pretty decent mothers group at our parish (read more here). I was in a neighborhood bunko group, had a cool book club, went to MOPS, and managed to work in a date night as frequently as we could find a babysitter. I didn't know it at the time, but I had it really good. I was able to duck away about one night a week for 'me time', get to the gym regularly during the day for a little break and shower, and even have a regular lunch with friends (and our kids) on occasion. 

I mistakenly assumed that this was what motherhood was going to be like forever.  The advent of our little Anna changed everything, but honestly it would have changed even if I hadn't had her.  I had just turned over leadership of my mom's ministry and helped create a new ministry for women at our parish. My new baby showed me I really could only have 'one baby' so I backed out leadership there too.  My bunco group conflicted with the boys sports, my book club just wasn't worth all the hassle.  Lunches out became too much of a struggle with a gaggle of kiddos and the expense of feeding two growing boys made it extravagant even when they were well behaved. 

The Awesome Nellie from WhoaNellie Photography took this photo. 

Check out more of her work by clicking here. 

So I have to redefine normal again. Normal is no longer taking care of the family and filling the spare time with stuff that I love doing.  It is no longer taking a shower every day or grabbing lunch with a friend.  


It is school projects and soccer/dance/gymnastics/piano, homework and groceries. And laundry laundry laundry. I have become a TwoCart Costco shopper and nothing that is easy before seems easy anymore.  

It is as if my 24 hour day has been slowly shorted.  Just a few minutes each day.  Like my LifeClock is fast and I always think I have more time, but each day I have just a little less.

So I sleep less, I wash my hair less, I shop less (unless it is for food or done online), I make more lists, I exercise when I can (usually with children or dog in tow), and it takes me forever to finish a book. I find ways to volunteer that are short-term, low risk, and low stress, and most importantly done as a team with people I love. I write when I can and try not to stress about the weeks that have gone by since my last blog post. 

The Awesome Nellie from WhoaNellie Photography took this photo. 

Check out more of her work by clicking here. 

My challenge at this stage is recognize that this too is a stage, and find the beauty in the chaos. My time of having one child in Jr.High, one in Preschool, and two in between will be short.  Even though we aren't able to have more kids (more about that here), I recognize that I will need to stay open and maybe even embrace the changes that come with family life. Six years from now (God willing) I will only have 3 kids to tuck in at night.  It is a scary thought but at the same time comforting, because I know that there is no way I can maintain this pace for more than a few years. But I don't have too, because it is just a season. 

Whatever your season in Motherhood, embrace it sister. Don't stress about it. Realize it is the normal for this time, today and tomorrow, but your normal will evolve into something new.  Embrace the challenge and know that you will grow into the newness. The newness brings opportunity to grow, to grow in Faith, to grow in virtue, ultimately to grow in Motherhood. 

Thanks for stopping by!