Mary as Mama

May 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A Mary Moment Monday post

Four letters, two syllables.

Mama.

Sometimes, the soothing balm to my days. Other times, pronounced in certain way, I find myself cringing, knowing what’s coming next.

Mama.

I don’t remember using this term for my own mother-figures. I don’t recall ever saying this as a child, but maybe I’ve just forgotten.

Mama.

It’s a word I don’t hear the teenagers in my life using with their mothers. Has my own seven-and-a-half-year-old started trending away from using it?

Mama.

It’s such a simple word, isn’t it?

Mama.

Though I do call Mary “Mother,” it’s to this word that I come when I think of her.

Mama.

She can be formal, poised on a statue in the front of the church with perfect hair and a well-behaved toddler boy. She can have great make-up and an unreal complexion and unrumpled clothes.

Mama.

To me, she’s more approachable with an apron and gardening gloves, a coming-lose-at-the-temples ponytail and the start of a sunburn. She’s someone I can talk to when I think of her as human (even though I know she was also sinless) and as a mom-friend (though I know she is the Queen of Heaven).

Mama.

Turning to Mary has become natural, but I sometimes forget its importance. I overlook the difference I can make, I will make, when I trust with my whole self.

Mama.

She must touch our temples, she must hold us tight. She must carry us when the tears flow so hard they blind us. She must pray for us when we don’t know what to ask. Even when we aren’t sure anyone else is there. Even when we wonder if it’s worth it to continue. Even when the bright sun can’t fight the dark night.

Mama.

A whole month for Mama. I’m glad I get a day, but even gladder that she gets a month.

image credit: Karen’s Whimsy

Filed Under: Inspired by the Virgin Mary, Mary Moment Mondays, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , ,

Did Mary yell at Jesus?

January 30, 2012 By 3 Comments

A Mary Moment Monday post

Did Mary yell at Jesus? I ask myself that question a lot sometimes.

Like the day I started the draft of this post.

I was trying to remain patient. I was doing my best to keep my voice calm.

I failed. I failed big.

If ever you think I am a model of motherhood or a mentor to emulate, let me set things straight right now. If you look at me and think, “I want to be like Sarah Reinhard when I grow up,” let me correct you loudly. If you smile when you read this and think I’m exaggerating, don’t tell me, because I will want to smack you.

I fail all. the. time. It’s part and parcel of who I am, how I’m made, what I struggle with.

Yelling: an ongoing struggle, a bad habit I fall back upon when I feel pushed, stressed, or otherwise cornered, and something I feel called, of late, to address.

It isn’t going to be easy to address.

Ask my fifth-grade PSR class: I’m not soft-spoken. Ask my husband: I’m not quiet. Ask my friends: I’m not calm.

So yelling fits right in, in many ways, with who I am.

Or so I used to think.

But that question keeps coming up in my mind when I think about yelling. Did Mary yell at Jesus?

Well, maybe she did: ”Jeeeeeeesuuuuus! Time for dinner! Come in, wash up!”

I can’t help but think, with some amusement, that she was one of the only people who could yell his name and not be guilty of breaking the Second Commandment.

On the other hand, I can’t help but continue to feel called to silence in different ways. And in that, my tendency to yell seems to clash.

My husband doesn’t yell a lot. For one thing, he doesn’t need to. When it comes to the kids, he can “growl” with great effectiveness. (Sudden insight: I need to learn to growl!) For another thing, he has presence. I can’t explain it more than that, but I get the feeling that it’s ingrained, not something I can learn.

Did Mary yell at Jesus, the way I slip and yell when I’m frustrated or overwhelmed? Did she give in to the emotion and let it out through her voice?

Is my yelling indicative of a lack of self-control? Does it point to a need for greater trust in others, in myself, in God?

As I consider my own question and Mary’s response in other areas, I think I stand a lot to learn, as usual, from Jesus’ mom. Maybe she did yell, but it wouldn’t have been in a way that would have been sinful. She certainly felt frustration, but did she give in and act on it?

Once again, I find myself turning to Mary and leaning back into her arms. I’m going to do my best, this week, to ask for her help when I’m on the brink of yelling in ways that aren’t positive.

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Filed Under: Inspired by the Virgin Mary, Mary Moment Mondays, Motherhood, reflection Tagged With: , , , ,

A Mother’s Hope

May 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

It sounds so strange to my ears to say that I have “a mother’s hope.”

It would have made me cringe even a few years ago to use a phrase with that ring to it. But now I have a daughter asleep in the other room, and the phrase “a mother’s hope” stirs something deep within me, making me feel a rise of bile and tears. Bile, because I see how the world is. Tears, because I now have that very thing I have sought, without knowing it – hope.

I like to think that I’m an educated person. After all, I spent years earning college degrees. “Book learning,” you might scoff, “is nothing to experience.” I’ve had a few jobs, been a few places, and I still haven’t given up on a couple of deep-seated aspirations for myself and my life.

In short, I was in no way prepared for motherhood.

I was not ready for the little person who took over my life and who looks so much like the person I admire more than anyone else. I was not ready for her small, perfect hands, and her tiny, vulnerable head. I was not ready for the pleasure of middle-of-the-night feedings and the complete feeling my arms would have every time she was in them. I had no idea that a sincere smile would change my outlook forever, or that any little excuse was reason enough to take her back into my arms.

Nothing had prepared me for life beyond myself.

Motherhood is scary. There’s this great opportunity to shape someone, to impact their views and learning, to do everything right. Then there’s the risk: ruin their life in some inexplicable way, unconsciously make them a menace or a danger, pass along some uncontrollable factor that ruins your grandchildren’s lives. I should have considered all these things before I met the man who made me think motherhood was attainable. In fact, I did.

None of the risks matter anymore. (It’s too late anyway!) Nah, I don’t think there’s a maternal instinct any more than I think there’s a man on the moon. But I do think that there is something that has clicked in me. There is some wellspring of confidence that makes me know that my first interest is protecting my child. It is this same something that probably made the phrase “a mother’s hope” relevant to me, in all of my wanting-to-be-nonconforming-and-ending-up-just-like-everyone-else glory.

I find that I have so many hopes for my daughter, but they all boil down to one thing, the hope that she is safe to adulthood and that we provide the very best for her. Sounds a little “small,” even as I write it.

Modified from a post originally published August 19, 2006, when my only child was 19 months old.

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Filed Under: Motherhood Tagged With: , ,

Serving as Loving

April 25, 2011 By 4 Comments

A Mary Moment Monday post

I had to go to the back of the church to nurse the baby, so I had a clear view of the front of the church after Father’s homily on Holy Thursday last week. He invited everyone forward to have their feet washed.

“It’s a gift you give me,” he said, with a look that I now recognize. It’s a look of love for each of us and of gratitude for his vocation.

This year, I noticed something: the children were the leaders, the first responders to the generosity of the invitation, and they didn’t hold anything back. They were at the head of the line with open arms, wide smiles, and unabashed enthusiasm.

My six-year-old, who has been asking all year long when this Mass would be (it’s one of her favorites too), leapt up and was first in line. She was followed closely by my ten-year-old niece, who asked to miss her volleyball practice so that she could come to this Mass.

I ended up in the middle of the line, and I couldn’t help but reflect on how awkward I felt standing there. Then, when I was in the chair and Father leaned over to kiss my just-washed foot, I had the same conflicting thoughts I have every year: “Ewww, gross! Awww, how sweet!”

That night, my six-year-old, who related to Daddy in great detail everything about the Mass, from the foot washing to the procession to repose the Blessed Sacrament in the church basement, turned to me suddenly.

“Why did he kiss my foot?” she asked. “That’s GROSS!”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why would he do something so GROSS?”

“He’s showing us that when we love someone, we will even do gross things.”

Parenthood is full of moments of showing love and embracing gross, but I’ve also dealt with it in my role as sister, daughter, and friend. When you love, you serve.

Mary stands as a model for me of serving as loving. When she was asked to bear the Messiah, she said Yes, beginning her service to the world. Upon hearing that her aged cousin Elizabeth was six months pregnant, she dropped everything and traveled the 80 miles. When she saw that the young couple ran out of wine at Cana, she turned to Jesus with complete confidence.

Did Jesus learn his gentle ways from her? Could it be that when he looked the Samaritan woman in the eye, that he saw the scorn his mother must have endured from the people who just saw her as an unwed mother? Was Jesus’ love for us a product, in some way, of the love he saw every day during the hidden years?

Our faith gives us this gift of tangibility, of things we can touch and see and smell. It also gives us the gift of love: the love we give and the love we receive. As we rejoice over Easter, join me in smiling while you do those gross things that show your love.

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image credit: jotachito2003 on Flickr

Filed Under: Faith, Inspired by the Virgin Mary, Mary Moment Mondays Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Life in More than 140 Characters

March 26, 2011 By 9 Comments

A guest post by Christine Johnson, who’s the woman behind Domestic Vocation and can also be found on Twitter (though not during Lent!).

I discovered something almost three years ago: Facebook is not just for high school and college kids. It’s a really neat tool to keep in touch with your family and friends of old.  It’s a convenient way to share pictures of your family – whether growing in numbers or simply in size – with far-flung cousins stationed with the Marines in Texas, Florida, Afghanistan, with aunts and uncles living thousands of miles away, with dear friends you’ve known more than 1/3 of your life but who live too far to have coffee with.

I also learned that there are games! And, oh, how those games suck your time.  If you have even a smidgen of competitiveness combined with a touch of addictive nature, you can discover that your “quick couple of games” at Bejeweled Blitz have turned into an hour.  Seriously!  I mean, how can I let Rachel continually beat me at this game?  I can beat her this time.  Just one more …

So last year, I gave up Facebook for Lent. I had also been playing some other stupid game that was fun for a while but had become way too addictive.  When I returned after Easter, I had no idea how to play because they’d updated and changed it.  And so I stopped.

Time was gained back!  I did slip back into Bejeweled occasionally.  Okay, a bunch by the time Lent rolled around again this year.

Which is part of why I did the same thing as last Lent: I gave up Facebook.  My family can reach me still via email, and I changed my avatar to let people know I would be off Facebook until Easter.  (The only exception is that my blogs auto-post to Facebook, but I do nothing to make that happen, nor do I go and check if it’s actually posted.)

But I discovered something else in the last year: Twitter. I’d tried it before, but was quite limited in my uses.  I didn’t “get” it.  Until I tried again, being a little more open and following some bloggers and writers I like a lot.  (Hello, Sarah!)  I figured out that Twitter can be a very interesting way to find news, to learn about things happening as they happen, to find interesting articles on topics I really like.  I even learned how to use a hashtag – both seriously (#Catholic #prolife #40DaysForLife) and jokingly (#whyaremykidssobig #whendidIgetsoold #doespeerybinglemissmeontwitteroramijustbeingegotistical).  It was FUN!

(ahem)

A bit too much fun at times.

I suddenly realized that I was checking it WAY too often, wondering if I had re-tweets (which is, for the uninitiated, when someone likes what you say enough to pass it on – it’s basically an electronic “ditto!” that reposts your comments).  I wondered if I had more followers, if I had less followers, if I could say something witty that someone famous would respond to … for the introvert that I am, it was a way to socialize.

Now, I have actual and real socialization on Twitter.  I have made some friends there who I’d love to meet in person.  People I pray for, who (I hope) pray for me.  But I also know that there is some very fake socialization that I’d love to pass off as real, but isn’t.  Things that amount to shouting into a crowd of people who do not know me at all, thinking that someone might be paying attention to me.

And being addicted to that is not a good thing.  (Really, what addiction is good, save the addiction to God I ought to have but fail to nurture enough?)

And so, due to my own slightly addictive nature, I pulled the plug on Twitter as well as Facebook.  Again, my blog is auto-posting on Twitter, but I do nothing to make it happen.  I don’t go to check the news.  I did leave the Twitter extension at the top of my Safari browser, but mostly I don’t even see it.  I’m definitely not clicking on it!

I do sort of miss the back-and-forth that I occasionally shared with friends, but overall, I’m trying to use the time I was spending on these social networks to socialize with Someone more important.  I’m trying to read the Bible each morning, or at least the Mass readings for the day, and to focus more on my vocation and less on myself.  (My vocation requires me to focus on others first.)

I’m basically trying to live in the real world a bit more. Which, left to my own devices, I was tending not to do as much as I ought to.

One of the other things I’ve noticed is that constantly writing things in 140 characters can change the way my mind works.  There are some benefits: I have to express myself more succinctly, I learn to be more direct about what I’m saying.

But there are pitfalls, too.  I tended to feel more frenetic, less calm.  The speed at which things can move on Twitter and Facebook can really make you jumpy.  It’s as though I’m expecting everything to be in short soundbites.  I was having troubles really reading anything deep for long periods of time; for someone who loves reading as much as I do, that is a serious problem.

I wanted to break that a bit.  I wanted to force calm back into my life and sooth my mind so it’s able to contemplate, to be at peace, to meditate on the great mysteries of this life.

One thing I’ve discovered is that I’m a bit more able to concentrate lately, and to write longer things. I’m doing so with more clarity and with (I hope) less rambling.  But I think this break from the short, punctuated writing that takes place on Facebook and Twitter is helping me think more clearly.

The biggest benefactors of this break are my children, who get my undivided attention far more than when I’m busy joking with someone on Twitter.  And I’m a better mother for that.

So that’s why I gave it up.  It’s why, despite others who have said they couldn’t give up Facebook for Lent because it’s their biggest connection with others, I think it’s a good thing for me.

For some people, logging into Facebook and Twitter is a fifteen-minute activity.  It’s not usually that for me, or at least it eventually grows to be much more.  When I go back to it, I’ll try to limit my time better, but if it gets too hectic – if I’m finding that it’s too “important” to me, I’ll break from it again.

And maybe I don’t need Lent for that, either.

What are your thoughts?

Do you use Lent as a way to eliminate bad habits or to lessen activities that seem to take over your life?  Do you take breaks from those things at other times of year?

Filed Under: guest post, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Teaching the Catechism

February 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Thanks to Charline Cormier-Pellerin for this guest post. She resides in Moncton, New Brunswick, with her husband and their four children.  She can be found at Bread ‘n Molasses and at Times & Transcript, where she shares everything from crafts to rants in her regular parenting columns.

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When registering our first-born for her very first catechism class, I nearly choked when I was informed that all parents were expected to teach at least one class throughout the seven years of their child’s Catholic education. With a very limited budget, all teachers in the program were parent-volunteers and everyone (including me) was expected to do their share.

I was suddenly struck with an overwhelming bout of nausea at the mere thought of trying to teach something which I felt I seriously lacked the ability to teach.

My cheeks must have gone from rosy to crimson; probably redder than had I branded the word “hypocrite” across my forehead … because that’s exactly what I felt like.

Yes, I had been brought up Catholic, attended Catholic primary and middle schools, gotten married and had my children baptised in the church, but there was still so much that I didn’t understand.

For whatever reason, I viewed Sunday school and catechism teachers as having a certain standard for which I didn’t exactly adhere to. At the time, I really didn’t go to church as much as I meant to, and I didn’t always agree with all of the church’s views and I certainly didn’t know the bible inside-out; in other words, I wasn’t perfect.

By my daughter’s second year, however, I had worked up the courage to volunteer as an assistant, and within a couple of years after that, I was ready to take on teaching. Thanks to the help of manuals and other teaching supplies, I quickly came to realize that I really was more qualified than I had initially given myself credit for.

It truly has been a positive experience as my children enjoy having a parent (in this case, me) teach their class. And as we’ve explored bible stories and parables, I’ve come to realize that I instinctively know most of them, either because I learnt them as a child or because they simply coincide with my personal beliefs. And those stories that I don’t remember learning, the children and I get to learn them together.

Now, whenever new parents to the world of catechism confide their fear of teaching a class and ask my advice as to whether or not they should take on the task, I try to reassure them. After all, we aren’t memorizing bible verses; we are learning the difference between right and wrong. We aren’t judging anyone; we are learning to accept others as they are and not judge them. Nobody is perfect and catechism teachers needn’t be either.

As parents, just like our children, we are constantly growing, learning new things, changing our views based on what we’ve learnt, and improving. Teaching catechism is no different, and I’m glad GOD gave me the strength to give it a shot.

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This Week’s Dose of Mary and Motherhood

January 15, 2011 By 1 Comment

A Triple Dose of Mary:

A Dose of Motherhood:

I’ve noticed, in the last six years, that motherhood has really changed me. Maybe others don’t notice it, but I can see it from within. It’s probably not all motherhood, but I think a lot of it was. In my column at CatholicMom.com this week, I consider the top five ways that motherhood has made me a better person.

Just last night, my husband and I were remembering tough times with our oldest when she was three. The conversation was inspired by my comment that I don’t think I ever prayed as well or as often before we had kids. He agreed and shared a tip that I’m going to use immediately.

“I pray for my anger to be turned into understanding,” he said.

Do you have a secret to share or a way that parenthood has changed you for the better? I’d love to hear it!

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Filed Under: Inspired by the Virgin Mary, Motherhood, podcasts, writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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