The saints have long been a special love of mine. It’s just SO COOL to have a group of heroes and mentors and real-life people who are already in heaven. They weren’t perfect, either. They were a colorful, often crusty bunch.

As I’ve been reflecting on the importance of praying for others, I realized that I’m not tapping into this heavenly crew nearly enough.

I’ll send a shout-out to a favorite patron here or there, but am I doing it with any regularity? Nope.

In the last few weeks, I’ve composed a personalized litany. I looked up all the former patron saints I’ve had from previous years and included my patron saint, my children’s patrons, and saints who have become special to me over the years. Because I have a special devotion to about 100 different titles of Mary, I alternated the saints with titles of Mary.

After each name, I pray, “pray for us,” thinking of all the intentions and family members and close friends and perfect strangers who so need divine intervention and the graces of God.

The final litany has become one of my favorite parts of my morning prayer time. I generally pray it before I pray for my list of intentions, so it feels like I’m tapping into a whole group of pray-ers. As I drink my coffee and invoke my heavenly friends, I really feel the reality of the Communion of Saints.

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Nothing has pushed me to the edge like motherhood. I’m glad I was ignorant of the amount of work and stress involved in this adventure, or I might have declined my handsome prince’s offer of marriage and run straight to the convent. (Though, that said, I’m pretty sure it’s not easier there. In fact, it’s probably harder in a much different way.)

But here I am, married with three kids, completely to the shock of that small part of me who remains a rebellious teenager. I had embraced, rather completely, the notion that a liberated woman didn’t need to concern herself with things like dishes and laundry and cooking, but that was before the squalor beneath my feet and the grumbling of my stomach forced me to rethink my priorities.

I didn’t become different overnight. It might not have really happened until Kid Number Two made her appearance and shook  my tenuous grip on reality more than my balancing act would allow. Or maybe it was the brush with mortality that came from losing a few close family members and some health scares thrown in on top.

Whatever it was, I began to become better at embracing—however imperfectly—my role as “home maker.” And in doing that, I began to see that there was one thing I could not do without: prayer.

If I believe the things my spiritual director and confessor tells me, then God loves me. In fact, he has only good in mind for me. If I believe the reality before my eyes, then the floor needs scrubbed, the toilet is a mess, and there is anything but order in my domestic castle.

These two things seem unrelated, but it seemed to me, in my brush with feeling theological lately, that they could not be. They HAD to be related somehow.

What does God have to do with my poor housekeeping?

Well, not much, if I don’t invite him in. It’s hard to have a conversation with a friend who’s never available, isn’t it?

In some seasons of my life, getting up early and beginning my day with intense prayer is possible and fruitful. It prepares me for the battle—even if all I’m fighting are little people’s backsides and my own chafing pride.

In this season I’m in now, though, I find that I need to pray all the time. I’ve tried to make a habit of saying a Hail Mary when I’m washing my hands or going up and down the stairs. If I’m in the car without any conversation, I try to whisper a Hail Mary or even an Our Father. While the computer boots up or the information downloads, I might pray a Hail Mary.

And there’s the secret: it’s not when I pray, it’s that I do pray. Prayer has to be a habit, something I turn to without even thinking. Just as I dry my hands when I’m done or take my car keys inside with me, I need to pray as a habit, all the time.

Praying without ceasing seemed impossible when I first heard about it. That was before I found myself stranded between a baby and a deadline, cornered by a family obligation and a sick kid, humbled by the generosity of others and my own limitations.

Prayer can be as much a habit as anything else, and once God is in the small moments of my day, I find it’s not so mundane. There’s grace flowing all around me, but when I’m so focused on myself, I don’t even notice it.

The other day, I was running up my mother-in-law’s basement stairs on an errand of some sort, and I caught myself praying a Hail Mary. And I’m pretty sure that God was glad to be along with me as I did my work, whatever it was at the moment.

This “Finding Faith in Everyday Life” column originally appeared in The Catholic Times. 

A couple of years ago, I was struck over the head with a thought that wouldn’t go away: I’m supposed to pray for other people.

It felt so…well, so inconsequential. I want to be a Woman of Action, a Person Who Brings Good Change, a Warrior and Adventurer.

And praying? Just praying? Really, God?

So I did it, but I sort of held out for the Big Gig, the one where I would need a glowing sword and a pithy speech.

(I should know by now that there usually aren’t fireworks in my faith life, but I keep hoping. And I’m a slow learner.)

Now, many years later, I am pretty comfortable with this role of praying for others.

And I’ve noticed something…whether or not it’s helping other people, this praying for others has (and continues to) change me.

Has it made me more patient? Am I more willing to look into the crevices of life’s subtleties and see meaning there? Do I recognize God at work more than I did before?

Is it that I get beyond myself and my desires? Could it be the intertwining that happens when I take others’ concerns and needs to God? Might it be a letting go that I can’t help but do?

I’m not sure I can recognize the changes fully, but I know, even when I look back at the archives for this blog, that they exist.

The other day, my seven-year-old, who’s turning into quite a little reader, looked over my shoulder and started reading out names. “What are you doing, Mom?”

“I’m praying.”

“Why?” and then, before I could answer, “Do you pray for me?”

Yes, I do, and I told her so. I was praying for her long before I was scared we’d lose her, and I continue. Some of the names on my list represent wounds in my heart, while others are hopes and dreams wrapped up in another’s name.

That list is intimate, I realized, as I felt her gaze and her curiosity. And maybe that is what leads to the change: when you pray for someone else, you can’t help but let go of some of the worst parts of yourself.

And maybe that change is what the world needs.

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A Mary Moment Monday post

Today’s the feast of the espousal of Mary, which means we celebrate the fact that she was married. (More about the espousal of Mary here.)

It’s easy to forget that Mary was a married woman. It’s also easy to imagine that marriage, for Mary and Joseph, was something easy.

Mary and Joseph’s marriage didn’t exactly get off to an easy start.  They were engaged and Joseph had promised not to “defile” Mary, because she was a consecrated virgin.  He was really marrying her because, in that day and age, there was no security in being a single woman.

And then she turned up pregnant.  This was the girl who was supposed to have promised to remain pure.

It was a dilemma for Joseph.  It’s a dilemma for us.

Mary didn’t struggle with NFP, because she was a virgin and she remained a virgin.  She didn’t worry about whether it was the right time to have a baby or whether she would be able to handle the next swaddled blessing.

That makes Mary’s marriage a little…different than mine.  It makes me wonder just what I can learn from her when it comes to marriage.

But maybe it also points us to some of the truths of marriage and to some lessons that we sometimes forget.

Mary gave birth to the Savior, and then she raised him.  She did it with the help and support of a man, a man chosen by God.  Joseph was the head of the family, and that’s no small thing.  Angels appeared to him, and he was the earthly male role model — the man Jesus knew as Daddy in the flesh.  How do I support my husband in his role as head of our family?  How do I encourage him — with a hot meal, a smile in the evening, my undivided attention?

Life in Nazareth wasn’t easy, but it was as normal as it could get.  Mary didn’t have a slew of servants at her disposal.  She and Joseph had to work — really, truly work — in their life together.  There were laundry piles and dirty dishes and meals to prepare.

It’s there, in the boring, ordinary, common life…it’s there that I see Mary and Joseph.  They’re holding hands and smiling at some shared joke.  Maybe it’s a toddler mispronunciation they’re remembering together.  Could they be thinking of Jesus’ first steps, of the journey to Egypt, of the trip to Jerusalem searching for Jesus?

Marriage is a commitment of the highest order, and Mary stands before us, not as an inaccessible perfect wife (though she undoubtedly was), but as an achievable sister-in-arms.  She taps us on the shoulder and urges us to put the computer away, to bake a pan of brownies, to write a little unexpected love note.  She shows us Who should be at the center of our marriage, reminds us where it is we’re trying to reach, prompts us to reach, together, for the many graces wrapped up in the sacrament of marriage.

She knows how hard it is in this day and age — it was hard then, too, though the standard was to stay married.  She sees the obstacles in front of us and she leads us, once again, back to her Son.

Originally published in a modified form at Faith & Family Live.

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— 1 —

So last week, as I was jumping up and down about the cover of my newest book, I neglected to mention one key thing:

It’s not available for pre-order yet.

Don’t you worry. I will let you know when it is!

— 2 —

I have a whole pile of Lenten books to review, and the first of them, Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit, by Paula Huston, blew me away. (I reviewed it earlier this week.)

So if you can buy only one Lenten book, buy that one.

If you have room for another book or you’re looking for something for your family to use during Lent, could I suggest Welcome Risen Jesus?

It’s available at your local Catholic retailer or in a number of other places.

— 3 —

I’ve been thinking already about my Lenten plans. For whatever reason, my New Year didn’t ring in with any resolutions. I still feel sort of flat about it.

But Lent, LENT! I am formulating a plan.

(A plan, it should be noted, is almost always destined to fail. I know this. And yet I continue to persist, because it helps me to have a starting point, at least. Or that’s what I tell my planning-obsessive self.)

— 4 —

The crazy idea came to me to go offline during all of Lent.

It’s made even more crazy by the fact that the work I do means I have to be online at least some almost every day.

AND I have a book I’ll be promoting.

AND…well. You see where this is going, right?

Was that the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit?

So being a bit more conscious of my online time is definitely part of the plan.

— 5 —

Do you have Lent reflections to share? I was thinking of doing a series of guest posts here on my blog, and if you’re interested, feel free to email me your ideas at blog -a-t- snoringscholar .d.o.t. com.

— 6 —

In the “too cool not to share” category: My husband came home from work the other day and shared this with me. It’s a video of a baby’s reaction to hearing his mother’s voice for the first time. We watched it about four times in a row, and our almost 14-month-old just loved it. And so did I. (I’m going to go watch it just one more time…)

— 7 —

Here’s my pick of the week (an idea shamelessly stolen from Catholic Weekend, where, rumor has it, I’ll be appearing tomorrow morning!): Catholic Family Night.com. The idea is that you spend some time each week with your family studying the upcoming Mass readings.

From their website:

Want a fun and simple way to bring the Sunday mass readings alive? With just a few minutes’ preparation, your family can enjoy fun activities, discussion time and even a creative snack, but best of all, your family will remember the time spent together learning more about God.

After hearing the interview with Jeff Cavins on The Catholics Next Door podcast for January 3, I think this is something my family can actually handle. Maybe we’ll start it during Lent…

Visit Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes!

I sat down to read Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit, by Paula Huston, with the intention of just reading the first section. Then I decided I could read the first couple of sections.

And then I read the whole book.

In my defense, I had a whole evening before me and I needed to get the review written for the Patheos Book Club. What I found with this book, though, was much different than what I expected.

I don’t know what, exactly, I expected, but I’m sure it had to do with preaching and a feeling of insignificance at the end. I was excited at the premise and what the book jacket promised, but maybe a little sure that I would not be able to approach Lent using this book as an actual resource.

“It will be good for someone, though,” I thought, “and I can surely read it and see what I have to look forward to.”

(Negative much?)

I was gloriously, wonderfully WRONG. I found myself reading, shaking my head, and looking forward to Lent, when I can dig in.

Will I fail? Yeah, probably. I do every year. In the failure is the kernel I need from Lent, I think, and success isn’t usually about what I plan, but about what graces I allow God to work.

Each day of Lent has a task, with a reflection by the author from her own experience, and then an brief description of the task or practice for the day.

Throughout the book, you get to know Paula Huston as your guide, someone walking beside you and encouraging you, even as she doesn’t settle for less than what you can at least try to do. She’s gentle, but tough. She weaves humor in with what I can only call teaching: she makes the Desert Fathers and Mothers an accessible crew, even for a busy mom in the Midwest.

Not only will I be embracing this book to the best of my ability this Lent, but I encourage you to do the same. It’s not too much, but the seed it will plant and tend during Lent, I believe, will grow into habits that make me a better Christian.

A Mary Moment Monday post

We were driving from the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico, up through the mountains to Los Alamos. My husband (who was then just a really committed boyfriend) looked at me and said, a bit shocked, “You never told me it was beautiful.”

To an Ohio girl (or guy, for that matter), the mountains of northern New Mexico, with their soaring height and expanse of flatness, are quite a sight. The New Mexico color palette is quite a bit different, too, and in mid-July, it’s more brown than green.

My aunt says she’s always shocked by the brightness when she comes back to Ohio.

That first visit to New Mexico was something. I first went out west following my college graduation, and I think, looking back, that I found God there.

As I hiked with my uncle and talked philosophy with my aunt, I found myself cheerfully small. I looked around at the great monolithic stone structures, felt the burn of the different altitude, experienced the dryness in the air, and it was more than I could explain.

It’s still more than I can explain.

When my husband was finally able to join me in a visit out west, he saw at once the many factors that contributed to my crush on New Mexico. The sky! The mountains! The atmosphere!

All that…and more.

I think of the feeling of driving up the road up the side of a mesa when I see pictures of the shrine to Mary in Montserrat, Spain. The rock is pale and reaching up, up, up. The shrine seems to be almost carved from it.

And then there’s the statue.

She’s black from all the candles that have burned before her. That black represents the people coming to her, pleading for her help, asking for her to look on them and remember them to her Son.

They go to this place of beauty, to the Woman of Beauty. Mothers always have a beauty that their children appreciate more than anyone else, and Mary’s no different.

This statue may not look like much, and the miracles attributed to it may be legends. But I’m inspired by the color, by the faith of centuries of people before me.

I love the quote of one historian about this image:

“In all ages the sinful, the suffering, the sorrowful, have laid their woes at the feet of Our Lady of Montserrat, and none have ever gone away unheard or unaided.” [source]

Our Lady of Montserrat will surely be on my mind the next time we travel out west. I have no idea when that will be (though I always hope it will be soon), but there’s no hurry. The beautiful vistas aren’t going anywhere and my experience will be sweeter for having waited to savor it.

She’s also a reminder that nothing is too small, nothing too mundane, nothing too inconsequential, to take to Mary. When I feel like I’m climbing mountains to get through my day or to deal with a particular challenge, I’ll turn to Our Lady of Montserrat. That’s Jesus on her lap, after all, and if she can hold him, I can at least sit down for a chat.

Further reading:

• Montserrat Shrine (with great pictures)
• CatholicTradition.org
• University of Dayton Mary Pages

statue image credit: University of Dayton

This week, I used an object lesson to introduce my fifth-grade class to the sacraments during our parish’s evening religious education classes. I wrote about it over at Amazing Catechists, and there are already some great ideas in the comments. Hope you find it useful, and please do share your ideas or suggestions if you have them!

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Over at Catholicmom.com, I wrote a review of a book that I dub a must-read for all Catholics, Women, Sex, and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching, edited by Erika Bachiochi.

Take a moment and check out that new photo at the top of my blog (copied below so that those of you in feed readers and on email can just stay comfortably there).

It comes courtesy of my four-year-old, who loves lining up her horses. And her brother’s cars. And her sister’s markers. It may be my favorite blog-topper EVER.

It happens every year: I catch myself saying, with varying level of drama, “I HATE CHRISTMAS!”

My husband points out, every year, that this simply isn’t true. “You know you love it,” he gently reminds me.

He has a point. I don’t really HATE Christmas. In fact, it is at Midnight Mass—or thanks to the memory of it on the years we can’t attend—that I find myself really accepting the truth of the Incarnation, being struck by the wonder, smiling at the beauty of the Baby in the manger.

And that brings us to precisely what I hate when I say, often vehemently, I hate Christmas.

I hate Advent turning into Christmas. I hate Christmas ending when the clock strikes midnight and the calendar turns to the 26th. I hate feeling like I’m speaking a foreign language when I suggest that Christmas parties would be fun—and more appropriate—in the week following Christmas.

Christmas is a season, but the season doesn’t actually begin until December 25. Though our retail empires try to get us in the “spirit” earlier and earlier, all hearing carols in October does for me is make me harrumph and bah-humbug even sooner than usual.

Recently, a dear friend, in a fit of what I assume was frustration, looked at me and asked, “Can’t you get past yourself? It’s CHRISTMAS!”

Well, my analytical brain responded, it actually IS NOT Christmas…and then it hit me.

I place a bigger expectation on Christmas than what anyone can make it deliver. It’s not until I place myself humbly before the poor, helpless Baby that I realize that it’s not about me.

It never was. And it’s not supposed to be.

To that friend, thank you. To my family, thank you. And to that Baby, THANK YOU.

I’ll struggle my way through Advent, trying to fight the uphill battle against misplacing the meaning of the season. And as I journey through Advent this year, I’m going to remember the penance and try the impossible task of not railing against what isn’t really Christmas at all.

This “Finding Faith in Everyday Life” column originally appeared in The Catholic Times. 

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A Mary Moment Monday post

Yesterday was Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, the one with the pink candle. And today is the feast of my homegirl, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Rejoice!

By the third week of Advent, I’m usually ready to decorate: I’m either resigned to the fact that Christmas is coming or, as in the case of this year, slightly encouraged by my children’s excitement and anticipation.

The fact that the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe falls so close to Gaudete Sunday this year–and, now that I think about it, just about every year–speaks to the reticence I feel about this season in general.

What is it that appeals to me so much about Mary as Our Lady of Guadalupe? Is it that she’s pregnant, that she’s looking down, that she strikes me as pretty in a very human and approachable way? Could it be the influence of the huge image, one of eight that’s been touched to the actual tilma and blessed, hanging in our parish church?

I think, though, that it has as much to do with what I learn about Mary from this image of her.

She appeared to Juan Diego, who was–just like the disciples themselves–the most unlikely of people. He was simple and humble and a convert. He had a difficult life, but he embraced his faith.

And he believed her. He loved her.

Her words to him resonate with me, and when they came up as part of the December image on a Marian calendar I have, I felt them, once more, in my heart:

“Am I not here, who is your Mother? Are you not under my protection? Am I not your health? Are you not happily within my fold? What else do you wish? Do not grieve nor be disturbed by anything.”

God is always choosing “badly,” isn’t he? I mean, when you stop to think about it, that phrase about how he doesn’t call the qualified (though I think he does), he qualifies the called is basically pointing this out.

God has his own way of choosing, and it goes agains the wisdom of the world. What seems obvious to us as logical isn’t at all how God operates, at least not in my experience.

In Our Lady of Guadalupe, I see a mom looking down at me who can live up to everything I need. She holds me gently and never fails to point me to her son.

Whether I need a shoulder or a boost, comfort or cheering, she’s there.

In Mary, and especially in Our Lady of Guadalupe in mid-December, I’m reminded that I don’t need to do it all and I certainly don’t even need to try to do it alone. In Our Lady of Guadalupe, I’m given the opportunity to embrace and follow, to practice and fail, to smile and continue.

As I light the third candle this week with my family, I’m going to be mindful of walking with Mary through this last part of Advent. I’m going to look at her when I’m feeling the blackness swoop in. I’m going to lean into her when I feel overwhelmed. I’m going to remember that it’s about a Baby, that it’s a celebration, and that the stress can be largely dismissed with the right mindset.

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Speaking of Advent wreaths, have you sent me yours?

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My past Our Lady of Guadalupe columns:

• “Juan’s Mom” at Faith & Family Live
• “To the Poor and Lowly at Advent” at CatholicMom.com
• Tomatoes and Guadalupe here at SnoringScholar.com

Advent wreath from Whispers in the Loggia

Our Lady of Guadalupe image from our parish church