Mama

The Blessed Mother is awesome! I know you all know that, but I am just reminding you that Mom is the best.

I knew when I woke up this morning that I was going to have a rough day. Last night the teacher that I work with texted me that she wouldn't be in today, which was a good thing because the poor dear was sneezing and blowing and looking so uncomfortable, she needed to stay home and rest. But I also knew that I had to leave right before lunch to give rides to my high schoolers and to mission high schoolers who only had a half day today. Plus I had to give a ride to someone to their doctor's appointment. So in other words, I had a lot on my plate.

Before my feet hit the floor this morning I was praying and asking God for help and guidance. I did my usual morning routine, bathed and got dressed, etc. Then I put my rosary in my pocket and asked the Blessed Mother to help me all day.

And everything worked out. I felt peaceful and together. All the children were taken care of at school, the rides went smoothly and I sat at RCIA tonight completely calm and ready to work in my favorite ministry.

So tonight I am thanking Mom. Sometimes when I am feeling like a little girl, I picture myself hiding in her mantle. Sometimes, like today, when I see myself as an older daughter who just needs Mom's guidance, I picture myself standing next to her with her arm around me. She's backing me up, keeping me strong.

"Keep your eyes on my Son." She always points to Him. "Do whatever He tells you." She is wise, she is lovely, she is obedient, and she is generous. She said "Yes", and then she shared her Son with all of us. She said "Yes", and then gave Him up so that He could do for us, what no one else could do. How difficult it must have been for her. I can't even imagine. When He hung on that cross, she never, ever left Him. As a mother, oh, I know what that means. How can we not love her? How can we not place her above others? Who could do what she did? She has to be good, and kind, and loving, and sweet and gentle. She is suffering and sacrifice.

And she helped me today. Because my rosary reminded me to ask her. I will look at that rosary now as part of my armor.

As a missionary mom, I am learning that I am on the front line of battle. It's getting hot up here. And it ain't global warming kids. Souls, souls and more souls are at risk. But I am not worried.

As Father Corapi always says, "My Mama wears combat boots!"

Now that is one, tough, Mama.

I Will Serve

I am in a time of consolation. I love this time. It's like a honeymoon with God. It feels great this time because the suffering was pretty bad, the attack was awful.

Ok, so I am going to say this probably a few times on my blog. I am not a theologian. I am not an academic, heck, sometimes I stand in the supermarket and I can't even remember what I went shopping for.

But when it comes to my faith, I know what I know. I have experienced much grace, I have experienced sufferings and consolations. I have lived through attacks from satan and I have dealt with generational demons. I don't need high fulootin books to tell me that these things exist. It's my life.

I could have turned out a whole lot different, but the Hand of God saved me. I grew up in a mixed up, dysfunctional household. I experienced a lot of things way before my time. I could tell you stories that would make your straight hair, curly, but none of that really matters.

What matters is this. God took a girl who needed mothering and taught her Himself, how to be a mother. God took a girl who had the possibilities of being a wild, free spirit, and tamed her into a one-man woman with responsibilities and a house full of kids.

And if that wasn't enough, He formed her into a missionary. Because when He lights the fire in your heart, when you burn with love for Him, you want to bring Him more, and more, and more souls. As many as your arms can carry. And that is a heavy load. And while you are walking that path, that very narrow path, satan is beating you, with whispers and words, telling you that you can't do it, shouldn't do it, WON'T do it.

Satan wants us to be like him. "I won't serve". Sometimes when I sit in Adoration and I am struggling and bawling my eyes out, all I can muster up are these three words, "I WILL SERVE." And I say them over and over. Because no matter what, I believe that He will give me the graces I need to serve. I am weak, He is strong. He uses a weak, pathetic, no nothing girl like me so that He shines. Not me. And that is the way it should be.

Love is all that matters my friends. God is Love. He is all that matters. I don't have scientific proof, a list of resources or a picture of God in action. Only the story of a woman who could have turned out really bad, but turned out to be a missionary mother of nine, loving God and His poor.

I WILL SERVE.

Ben

Please pray my blogger friends for one of my missionary sisters and her husband. Today their 9 year old nephew was called home after a lengthy battle with cancer. Though I never met him, I can feel my sister's pain for many reasons.

First, because she is my friend and sister in Christ. I wrote about Sandy a few months ago. She is such a beautiful person, full of love and joy for everyone who is blessed enough to know her. She has a sweet and pure heart. My heart aches for her loss tonight.

Secondly, as a mom I can only imagine how his mom, Sandy's sister feels. Losing a child that young, has got to be devastating. You carry this child in you, you nurture him, love him, know him before anyone else does. Sadly, this little boy leaves behind his twin brother. My heart just aches for that family.

This little boy did touch a lot of hearts before he died. He was a hero among the people he lived with. The street he lived on recently had a party for him so they could all say their goodbyes.

Why? Why did this have to happen? I love God so much, but when something like this happens, I ask Him, why? It is a mystery. One that is far reaching. It makes me look up at the big night sky and know how we are really all connected by one Creator, one Father. When I see how I can feel the pain of a woman I have never even met. When I see that I can grieve the loss of a child that is not my own, and that I will never know him, but know in my heart that we are all connected to each other. In our humanness, compassion, understanding. We have to feel for each other. We were created to feel for each other. "He ain't heavy, he's my brother."

So tonight, in that spirit of love and compassion and mercy, please say a chaplet or a rosary for a family you may only meet in heaven.

Rest in Peace Ben.

The Teens!

My Sunday almost always starts the same way, with me getting totally aggravated with THE CHILDREN. The teenagers are the worst. You would think I was asking them to give up their cell phone for a month when I ask them to wear a dress shirt and nice pants to church.

What kills me is how they act each week like this is something I have just started in our family. Every week when I tell my oldest son that his Sabres tee shirt is not appropriate, and no, his tee shirt with The Office logo won't do either, ("but it doesn't have any stains on it mom!"), every week, he acts like I have never said this to him before. And then he acts like I am asking for something so unbelievably preposterous, why would I even have the nerve to tell him to do such a thing?!

Then I get so angry, I just start muttering to myself and stomping around. On Sunday. By the time I get to church, I feel like I should pull our priest over for confession. I feel just awful. Then I have to watch children fidget, and widget and winken, blinken and nod. The teens slump over like juvenile delinquents in front of the principal's office. One week I did the mom glance over my row, and I was so appalled at the older children's slumped shoulders, nail picking, and general horrid attitudes, I could feel my cheeks red with embarrassment. I realized that this is what Father sees as he is doing his homily. We sit in the front row.

Please, someone tell me that their children do the same. I thought things were bad when they were all little and I had to strain to hear the homily from the back of the church where I was chasing a running toddler. No, this is worse. I say to myself, "where were these children brought up? Who raised these kids? Were they not paying attention? Didn't they get the memo that we are a very Catholic family and we need to look pious at Mass?"

Instead, I get the slumped over, "my parents made me come today but they can't make me say the Our Father blues."

It's hard work getting children to heaven. I think parents with large families should get extra credit. We have more kids to worry about, pray about, get angry about........

So please, please, if you have teens like this, tell me about it. If you were one of these teens once who drove your parents crazy and now you are uber Catholic, even better. Share, share away.

There are only six more days until next Sunday and I need all the help I can get!

Pet Peeve Number 2 gazillion......

My husband thinks that I am a crab can and I shouldn't blog about what I am about to blog about. But I don't care. This is my blog, not his!

This is my question, why, oh, why, do construction men aka roofers, concrete driveway guys, painting and siding men, feel as if they are entitled to take over a whole street to do one cotton picken house?!

This is what always happens. Somewhere around 8am they descend upon the targeted house. Trucks towing things they won't even use. The guys in their cool pick ups with our local rock oldies radio blaring. The souped up cars with rap music even louder then rock oldies. And always, two old farts, using the "f" word and talking smack too each other as if it were 2 in the afternoon.

And they don't care. They don't care if you are trying to sleep in for once. They don't care if they are blocking every driveway on the street. It is their right. Oh yeah, that's how they act. About three or four hours into this, their co workers and friends stop in. They are parked everywhere. They are parked on both sides of the street so that I cannot, (after I have waited for Jimmy to move his pick up from the end of my driveway), back out my big 12 seater van out of my driveway for fear of hitting Tony's Chevy.

And even though at least 10 guys are working on one roof, driveway, side of the house, (take your pick), they will still block our street for at least 8 hours. Cause they have to stop and eat lunch, and shoot the (you know what), and mock each other out and whatever else keeps these guys from finishing the job in a timely fashion.

Did I mention that it is always men? I will tell you what, women would get the job done faster so we could go out to lunch and drink wine and laugh about the person's house we just fixed up.

And we would be mindful of our language and we wouldn't wake everyone up at 8am. (We would still be doing our hair and reminding our husbands what they need to get done while we are gone!) I can also tell you that it wouldn't take 20 of us to do one roof, and we would never block anyone else's driveways. I think it is a testosterone thing. I really do.

Because:

Ya gotta have stones to just park your vehicle across the end of

SOMEONE YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW's driveway.

Ya just gotta.

Random Thoughts

Life was so much easier for Harriet Nelson. It just was. And June Cleaver and all those high heel wearing moms. How did they do it? And will someone look at my life someday and say, "How did she do it? Probably not. Or maybe.

I live my life in the van. Seriously. I spent more time in the van today then I did in my house. If only I could have it hooked up with cable and a full time waitress who served me nothing but chocolate, well I would just go ahead and move in.

It's only been a week or two and I am already thinking, "Why did I make this commitment to blog everyday?" Was I smoking something funny when I came up with this idea? Did I hit my head? Well, I always did think that there would be some damage from all the times I hit my head on the upper part of the doorway to the beer cooler back in the day. Yeah, I was a barmaid. Can you believe it? And I had to go down to a dungeon like cellar, where we had a beer cooler and we had to bring up cases of beer. Sometimes I would forget to duck, and whomp, the head hit the top of the doorway. Oooh, I can still feel that pain. Not so good.

But you don't want to hear about that. Although those were fun times. I used to pray with my customers. It was crazy. I think that was my schizophrenic phase. Later on I would get wasted with them, and that was not always a good example to set let me tell you. But some things are better not talked about!

Did you ever wonder how a person can get so tired from sitting in a vehicle all day? Makes 'em a little slap happy and prone to wandering thoughts better left unwritten. No, I have not been hitting the bottle tonight. Have you ever been so gosh darned tired that you haven't a normal thought in your head.

I am past that. Way, way past that.

But at least I wrote.

Consolation

I love God. I mean, I really, really love God. I mean no disrespect here. He is awesome and He knows how to take care of His kids. If we let Him.

After weeks of feeling like I am drowning, then receiving graces through confession, today I received consolation. Right and left consolation. He downright spoiled me today. After days of the little things going wrong, today I had a day of little "rights". It was wonderful and I thanked Him every step of the way.

I don't know how people live without Him. Honestly. I really don't. I can't imagine my life without knowing Him and loving Him. When I look at something beautiful, I think my joy is increased because I think about how He created these things for us. All the little details in life are important to Him. Including my little "things" that make me smile, make me laugh, make me feel happy. I wouldn't know happiness if I didn't know Him. Not real happiness anyway.

Just sit and ponder sometime how much He loves each one of us personally. Really knows and loves each one of us, intimately. That boggles my mind. How can He do that? Well, He's God. A mystery, a beautiful mystery, not to be totally solved here on earth. That's okay with me. I can wait until heaven.

In the meantime, I am down here, His little girl, just loving life. Thanking Him for His graces, thanking Him for His consolations, thanking Him for the gift of confession. Thanking Him for loving me despite knowing all my imperfections. He loves me.

He loves you too. Think about THAT when you go to sleep tonight.