— 1 —

When I read through the Quick Takes posts each week, I’m surprised at how often other bloggers express the need for cohesion in their posts. It’s somehow troubling to them to throw up seven completely unrelated statements, and so they carefully choose a unifying theme that will weave all of their items together. This is undoubtedly the sign of an organized, intelligent mind, perhaps one with an artistic bend as well. I, on the other hand, have no trouble at all with steaming heaps of disorganized randomness (something that anyone who has been to my house can confirm), and so I don’t have the slightest inclination to make my takes have anything to do with one another. Behold the themelessness!:

— 2 —

I’m now on Instagram! And I don’t really know what that means! But I thought I would say it with an exclamation point to make it seem exciting! I can’t figure out how to follow people who don’t follow me, I don’t know how to tell you to find my account, and I am so uncreative that I can’t find anything to take pictures of*. But it’s really cool to be able to make my photos look all professional with those filters!

* Okay, it’s not entirely due to a lack of creativity. A significant contributing factor is that I can’t find any areas of my house that are clean enough to be involved in photographs.

— 3 —

One of the first pictures I took was of this, a recent attempt to drink tea:

I went to a lovely local tea house, run by real British people, and thought that I would have this lovely experience of quietly sipping tea and looking classy. I am still trying to figure out where, exactly, things went wrong. Was it in the pouring? I could have sworn I saw the liquid actually bubble out of the pot on its own, but I know nobody would believe that. Anyway, the situation completely unraveled. I ended up splashing around in a mess of hot liquid, tea all over the table, on the plates, covering the silverware, a vague feeling of wetness on my shoes. So, basically, I thought it would be like this:

But it ended up being a lot more like this:

— 4 —

Wait. This is concerning. As I typed #3 it occurred to me that this is actually not the first time I have had an issue with drinking tea. Remember this? What is my problem?? I have heard of people getting banned from bars, but I may be the first person in history to get banned from a tea house.

— 5 —

I’ve received quite a few questions about homeschooling lately as parents begin to think through school choices for next Fall. I was thinking I would write up a little “How we decided to homeschool” post, but then I remembered that Sally Thomas did all the work for me. If you haven’t read the homeschooling magna carta she wrote for First Things, you must. It’s called Schooling at Home, and you can read it here. (And she has a blog, too!)

— 6 —

I have said this before, but I’ll say it again: Someone could get rich by starting a ruthless babysitting cartel. All you would have to do is get the phone numbers of all local households that have had a baby in the last three years. Each weekday morning you start calling around 6:30 AM, and when people answer, say, “We’ll come over right now and take good care of the kids so that you can sleep in. Our rate is $250/hour. We take Visa.” You cannot tell me that that would not be an extremely lucrative business.

— 7 —

My present circumstances enlighten me to the idea that that babysitting cartel could rake it in with bloggers, too. They could place calls to moms with blogs around mid-day, saying, “We just wanted to make sure that all your babies and toddlers are taking their schedule naps so that you could update your blog this afternoon! If that is not the case, we could be there in five minutes to help out…at the usual rate.” Man. There is a real business opportunity there.

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All my life, I’ve placed myself firmly in the category of Not the Kind of Person Who Goes to Therapy. First of all, I was vaguely suspicious of it as a general concept. I’d heard horror stories from friends who went to therapists who convinced them they had problems they didn’t have, presumably to keep the high monthly fees rolling in. On top of that, I simply didn’t see how talking to a professional counselor would help anything. I’ve always had a good network of friends and family members whom I could count on during difficult times, and I would turn to them if there was anything I needed to get off my chest. My conversion to Catholicism in my late 20s pretty much sealed my opinion on this issue: Now that I had prayer, the sacraments, and a wise spiritual director, what use could I possibly have for secular psychology?

What I was missing, that I have only recently come to understand, is that sometimes traumatic experiences can impact us in a way that goes beyond the purely emotional realm.

READ MORE AT MY NCR BLOG…

Camp Patton, the reason God gave us mommyblogs

I’m still in the land of Can’t Deal over here, which is good news for you since my inability to form words with my keyboard* has prompted me to do another undiscovered gems** post where I enlighten you about internet awesomeness of which you may have been heretofore unaware. Today’s gem: Camp Patton!

I don’t know whether it’s been good or bad for me that I discovered Grace Patton’s blog. On the plus side, her dry humor and concise writing style bless me with posts that don’t take a lot of time to read but always leave me either laughing, crying (from laughing), or shouting “SOMEONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS MY LIFE!” at my computer monitor. On the down side, I spent way too much time hitting Refresh on her homepage to see if she’s updated, and have a nagging sense that I cannot consider my life complete until I have read every post in her archives.

Not only has her Simon Says series convinced me that her husband and mine were separated at birth, but it has inspired other bloggers to round up “best of” quotes from their husbands that are equal in excellence (that last link coins the term “snacking trousers” — don’t miss it). Grace also introduced me to the use of the term “pre-game” as a verb, is crafty in ways that people like me can only imagine, and even manages to be funny about thyroid cancer.

And for the bonus round, her husband Simon is in residency to become an OB-GYN specializing in Natural Family Planning***. How cool is that? And just listen to how she suffers so that Simon can one day provide the world with quality pro-life medical care:

I’ve been moving one step forward and two steps back in the housework, patience, and personal appearance realms. Armed with a broom and baby wipes, I’m in a constant war with Julia’s breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, dessert, snack leftovers strewn about the house. Julia is put in her timeout spot more frequently every day for bopping Sebastian over the head. And while I was filling out paperwork at a recent appointment, I was asked if I worked outside the home with a tone that makes me fairly certain the kind gentleman had already clicked, “no!!!!” using my momfit (ill-fitting jeans, sweater over turtleneck and one pearl in left ear) and mom scent (casserole of spit up, toddler breath and a perfume mask) as telling indicators.

So, there you go. I recently emailed Grace and promised to share my husband’s super secret margarita recipe that he’s spent years perfecting (YEARS) if she promises to update her blog twice a day, so hopefully there will be many more posts to come. Enjoy!

* I’ve hired a trained monkey to write my Register posts.

** I know, I know, someone is going to point out that everyone already reads Grace Patton’s blog and it’s not exactly “undiscovered.” I simply mean “undiscovered by me,” and “I spend an embarrassing amount of time staring at her website and wanted to share it with you all but didn’t know how else to categorize such a post so I put it in ‘undiscovered gems.’”

*** Yes, I did have to double-check to make sure I knew that because Grace said it publicly and not from Google stalking her.

— 1 —

First of all, thank you so much for the kind words and well wishes. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the prayers and support you’ve offered both for my neighbors and for me. I can’t speak for anyone else involved, but I know that I am still working through it, and it may be a while before things go back to normal — or, rather, until we settle into a new normal. I appreciate you bearing with me as I navigate through all of this.

— 2 —

For those of you in the Austin area, on Monday (5/21) I have the honor of joining Professor Robert Koons as part of his apologetics series at St. Louis parish. The event starts at 7:00 PM and should involve some great discussions. Hope you can join us!

— 3 —

My seven-year-old son has surprised us by showing a huge interest in learning Chinese. I found a poster of Chinese characters on sale somewhere and put it up in our homeschool room. The act of tacking it to the wall represented about 99% of our homeschool language curriculum this year, but my son took the initiative to learn about this language, and more than once I found him studiously copying the characters and trying to memorize their meaning.

I’m going to run with this and have decided that his big summer learning project will be to pick up some Chinese. (When he will have the opportunity to practice it, I have no idea. Maybe I’ll talk Jen Ambrose into letting us Skype with her kids.) Anyway, I’m adamant that the only method I’ll use is Pimsleur. I’m a huge fan of their approach, for reasons I’ll elaborate on in a moment, but here’s a video that summarizes their philosophy:

(And let me add that I have no affiliation with them and was not asked to promote their product. Though if they want to send me a check or an Ikea gift card for plugging their product that would be fine.)

— 4 —

I used some Pimsleur tapes to pick up some Czech before a trip we took to the Czech Republic a long time ago, and that’s when I became convinced that it’s extremely important not to see a language written while you’re learning it. To interpret written words uses a different part of your brain than mimicking sounds and associating them with concepts, and I think it throws everything off when you combine the two. I only listened to those Czech tapes for two weeks back in 2002, and I still remember almost everything I learned. Which is really handy, since here in Texas I’m constantly needing to ask where the subway station is in Czech.

— 5 —

You know what’s frustrating? When you get all excited about learning a language before a trip so that you can converse with the locals…then realize that you learned the wrong *$&%! language. On that trip to the Czech Republic my husband and I spent about half our time in a town right next to the German border, and everyone spoke German. The owners of our inn didn’t even speak a word of any other language…which was problematic, since we didn’t know any German. (Well, I did know a couple of curse words, and the phrase “good luck,” which would have made an odd combination.)

Anyway, that hot mess reached its apex the afternoon that we tried to explain to them that we had aired up the tires of their loaner bikes. You don’t realize how hard it is to pantomime riding a bicycle until you actually do it; same with using an air pump. We never were able to get across what we’d done, and I’m pretty sure the owners were left thinking that I told them, “I am a galloping horse who sometimes stops to pant while digging ditches.”

— 6 —

Does anyone know of a faith-based support group for mothers who have chronic illnesses? A close friend of mine has a condition that causes her to spend a lot of time feeling fatigued and/or in pain. It’s difficult enough in and of itself, but she reports that one of the hard parts is simply feeling alone in her struggles. I think it would be a boon to her spirits to know that there are other Christian moms going through the same thing. Any resources you could share would be very much appreciated.

— 7 —

I hope you all have a safe and blessed weekend. Thank you again for your support.

————————-

Then, a week ago last Saturday, I was driving home from my mom’s house at 8:45 at night after dropping the kids off for a special spend-the-night with her and a visiting aunt. Her house is within the same connected network of subdivisions that we’re in, and so I was winding through neighborhood streets. Shortly after I turned onto the main drive of our own subdivision, I saw a motorcycle zoom past me, headed the opposite direction. I had just come around a corner, and when I looked at his trajectory and considered how the street curved, my heart sunk. He’s not going to make it, I thought. I hit the brakes and looked in my rear-view mirror. The darkness erupted in a spray of sparks, and I heard a terrible crash.

I turned the car around as I dialed 911. I parked by the accident site and jumped out to check on the rider. I could never have been prepared for the horror of what I would see. Without going into detail, I’ll just say that it was like something you’d see in a war zone. One officer commented that it was one of the worst scenes he’d come across in 20 years. I had trouble breathing, and immediately started going into a state of shock.

After I got off the phone, there was a surreal silence. I was standing next to this horrendous scene, with no authorities having yet arrived. It was just me and this deceased young man, with a couple of other stunned witnesses across the street. For a brief moment, I was pulled out of my shock and given a specific, very clear message: I was supposed to be there, on behalf of this kid’s mother. I was her envoy, there to look after him, to pray for him, and to send him off on to his journey in the next life. A feeling of calm, as thick and palpable as a fog, enshrouded the scene, and I was given the words to say a short prayer for him and his family — specifically, for his mother.

Police sirens broke the silence, and within minutes the street was filled with police, paramedics, neighbors, all walking around in the glare of headlights and flashing red and blue lights. I fell back into my state of shock, and was told by officers to go home.

At my house, I sat with my husband on our back porch and told him everything that happened. As I spoke, I felt a connection with the victim’s mother. “I feel like I know her,” I said. It was an irrational thought: The drive on which the accident happened was one of the main arteries into a large network of neighborhoods that contains hundreds of houses. I don’t know that many people around here. Also, the victim could have been here to visit friends for a Saturday night get-together; he may not have lived anywhere nearby. And yet I felt this sense of connection so strongly that I ran out the front door and stood in the middle of the road and looked down the street toward the house of my neighbor friend who has a teenage son. Her house was dark, and so I went inside.

The next morning after Mass, I got the call. We did know him. It was Cameron, the gregarious 21-year-old son of my neighbor a couple of doors down. When I was standing in the road the night before, I was turned the wrong direction; if I had turned around, I would have seen his mother’s house bustling with grief-stricken visitors, and I would have known.

As more details came out in the following days, it seemed that everyone on our street was involved in this tragedy in some way. Cameron had stopped by one neighbor’s house just minutes before the accident. Another neighbor was the first person he’d shown his brand new motorcycle to. Another neighbor had gone with him when he bought it. I was the first person to find him. Another neighbor was just arriving back from a night out when I came home from the scene, and cried with me as I told her what happened. Other neighbors had been outside because of all the sirens, and were with his mother when the police arrived to deliver the news. Still others were good friends of his.

All last week, I spent most of my time with the people on my street. I wasn’t online at all, and directed all of my energy to interacting with the people whose lives play out just yards away from mine. We stopped and hugged one another on the way to the mailbox, stood and cried on the sidewalks, sometimes right in the middle of the street. When we gathered to walk to the candlelight vigil at the accident site, the first person to greet me was one of the women whose property my son and his friend had damaged. The last time I had seen her I was standing on her doorstep, humiliated and chagrined, thinking that we’d probably never speak again. She walked up to me with tears in her eyes and asked if I was okay, we embraced, we cried, and we walked to the candlelight vigil together.

The night of the funeral a bunch of us gathered outside, sitting on the curb and talking until past 1 AM. We toasted to Cameron, we prayed, we laughed those raw and intense laughs that don’t quite cover over the grief, we cried, and we asked ourselves why we never got to know each other before now. The next day another person approached my house with the biggest bouquet of flowers I have ever seen. I could tell it was a neighbor since there was no car in front of my house, but couldn’t see the person’s face because of the size of this tremendous gift. I opened the door to see Cameron’s mother, accompanied by his sister and step-father. In an act of graciousness almost too shocking to comprehend, she had come by to give me this gift as a token of thanks.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the day before the accident, my husband and I stumbled across an idea for creating some more space in our house that took a lot of pressure off of our overcrowding situation. I had been so fixated on my plans that I had never paused to consider whether it was God’s plan for us to move on from this place. That time may come one day, but this week it was as clear to me as few things have ever been clear to me in my life, that that time is not now. I knew that God sends us to just the right time period in human history, that he sends us our families, but I don’t think that it clicked until this past week that he sends us our neighbors too.

As I talked with Cameron’s family, his mother and I in tears as we spoke, I noticed that his sister was sitting in the same place in my living room that she sat almost four years ago to the day, that afternoon when I first met her and my other little friends. And I had the same feeling that moment last week that I had those years before: this is exactly where I need to be.

Also, if you would like to read the obituary of the young man killed in the accident I mentioned earlier this week, you can find that here. Please pray for his soul, for all who were on the scene and are having difficulty moving past what they saw, and especially for his family and friends, who are understandably devastated.

— 1 —

Let me just warn you that I am writing this on very little sleep. Last night was one of the worst nights I have had in my parenting history — and that is saying something, considering that my first child woke up every few hours around the clock until he was almost two years old. The 11-month-old baby woke up around midnight, and alternated crying, fussing, and loud babbling until 5:00 AM. As she is still in our room, this meant that neither my husband nor I slept at all last night.

Anyone who tells me to savor these moments because they go by so fast will have their IP address summarily banned and a virus downloaded to their computer that causes it to catch on fire.

— 2 —

The baby’s sleep has been drifting from “very good” to “not great” over the past few weeks, and I am extremely ready to get this under control. I believe in gentle parenting: My babies need to be gentle on me, and let me sleep. And so I wouldn’t mind a little intermittent Kim West-style “crying it out” to send the message that no, seriously, we sleep at night in this family. But the problem is that I don’t have the kind of house where I can do that. Just imagine this…

…in the crib with the baby. I wouldn’t be able to let her cry for ten seconds without imagining that she’s crying not because she’s frustrated about falling asleep, but because she is being STUNG OVER AND OVER AGAIN BY A VENOMOUS ARACHNID THAT IS ATTACKING HER IN HER CRIB!!!!!!

— 3 —

Let me bring some balance into this post by telling you about Megan Tietz’s new book, Spirit-Led Parenting. For those of you who aren’t already familiar with her, Megan blogs at Sorta Crunchy and has been joining us in Quick Takes for years. She and co-author Laura Oyer wrote the book with this mission:

In Spirit-Led Parenting, two mothers share their stories. They tell of a journey that began in fear-soaked, tear-stained days marked by an overwhelming fear of failure that eventually found redemption in discovering the freedom to ignore the wisdom of man and follow the direction of the Spirit. This gentle path looks toward the example of God the Father, seeks after Christ’s unequivocal call to servanthood, and leans upon the wisdom of the Holy Spirit in determining and meeting the individual needs of each unique child.

I had a chance to glance at an early copy of the book, and it’s delightful. Though my own parenting style differs slightly from that of Megan and Laura (read: I recently mused to a friend that my parenting book would be called Mommy Is Going to Die if You Don’t Stop Being Bad and Go to Sleep: A Guide to Draconian Parenting Methods), I appreciated how honest they were about their journeys, as well as their passion for helping moms and babies find peace during that intense first year.

— 4 —

One big issue we’re having is that the baby really needs her own space. But with seven people in a three-bedroom house, there is not a lot of space to be had. And so I’ve been drawing a lot of inspiration from the local Ikea, which has all sorts of model living spaces set up for people who live in tiny spaces. Check out this video to see what I mean:

Whenever I go to our local store, I am always fascinated by their little “Living in 550 Square Feet” model home things they have set up. All my efficiency-loving German genes come alive, and I stand in awe as I look up and down the wall and behold an area where not a single square inch is wasted. I am convinced that if I could just get hooked up with a ten thousand dollar Ikea gift card, I could transform my house into a model of efficiently used space.

— 5 —

From my homeowner’s association:

When I saw the peppy clipart of that zany little snake, I did not expect it to be a warning about rattlesnakes sighted within the neighborhood. That image goes with an announcement like, Lost pet snake – answers to ‘Snookums’. That is not the appropriate artwork for a communique that says, in so many words, “Hey, there are venomous creatures lurking in the neighborhood! Unlike the scorpions that fill your houses, these things can actually kill you! Have fun when you go for your next jog — hope you don’t die!” (I’m paraphrasing, but that is how I interpreted it.)

The best part was what came next, which I unfortunately could not capture in the screenshot: An admonishment that read “DO NOT PANIC!!!” (copied in the exact style it was written). OF COURSE!!! WHY WOULD I PANIC WHEN YOU ARE TELLING ME NOT TO, USING A BOLDED FONT AND THREE EXCLAMATION POINTS?!?!?!?! SOUNDS LIKE A LAID BACK SITUATION TO ME!!!

— 6 —

I recently downloaded a great album called The Covers, in which Christian artists cover classic popular songs. To get an idea of the effort that went into putting these songs together, check out Audrey Assad’s post about the song she chose to cover, Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. This is one of my favorite albums I’ve bought in a long time.

(Which I discovered thanks to Marc Barnes, who, as far as I can tell, is becoming one of the most popular bloggers in the solar system.)

— 7 —

Don’t forget to take some time to read others’ Quick Takes posts on the list below. There’s always some great stuff there! It’s always a bright spot in my weekend to grab a cup of coffee and see what everyone else has to say.

I’m off to not sleep while not thinking about the scorpions and rattlesnakes that surround my house. Have a great weekend!

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ON THE CALENDAR

• Saturday, May 12 I’m excited to be speaking at a moms brunch at St. Thomas Aquinas parish in College Station, TX. For tickets or more  information, call 979-693-6994.
• Friday, August 31 I’m honored to be giving a keynote presentation at the Catholic New Media Conference in Dallas, TX (along with my friends Elizabeth Scalia, Brandon Vogt, and a bunch of other great folks). Come join us!

GOOD STUFF TO CHECK OUT

• A family has been called to adopt a special little girl named Harper who has both HIV and Hepatitis C. Here’s an opportunity to help them raise the funds to make this happen, as well as having the chance to win great prizes. (You can see a picture of sweet Harper at the link as well.)
• Fr. Joseph Homick (whose blog is one of my favorites) has a special call to pray for people who have lost faith, specifically that they will come to know God in the last moments before their deaths. Check out this post for details, and to find out how to contact him to send him names of folks who need these kinds of prayers.
• The Benedictine Daughters of the Divine Will is a brand new order with a neat mission, which you can read about here. They need some funds to build a monastery. If you feel moved to help them with that, you can donate here.

FROM MY BLOG AT THE REGISTER

•  10 things I learned in our first full year of homeschooling
• Men’s real vocations are not their careers
• Why do we call it a “culture of death”?
• Thomas Merton’s prophetic warning about social media

Work as if everything depended on you, pray as if everything depended on God.

Love that! What it seemed to be saying was, “Work hard, pray hard.” This really resonated with the way I like to do things.

Then I got some emails from readers saying: That is probably not the correct version of the quote. Evidently, what St. Ignatius actually said was more along the lines of:

Work as if everything depended on God, pray as if everything depended on you.

I haven’t been able to find a source for the quote either way, so I’m not positive that this second one is correct. But quite a few knowledgeable people have emailed me to say that it is accurate, and it’s given me a lot to ponder. There’s a surprising amount of wisdom contained in this second quote. Consider:

Pray as if everything depended on you

Imagine that the leaders of the ten most populous countries were going to gather for a meeting about how they could usher in an era of peace and harmony, and they were going to invite one speaker to come and give them advice: You. Through some crazy circumstance, you were the sole person picked to address this group, and the FATE OF ALL HUMANITY hung in the balance of what you said. Can you imagine how hard you’d pray? I don’t know about you, but I don’t know if I would do anything but pray.

The thing that works about this advice is that high-pressure moments bring our weaknesses into relief. In daily life, it’s easy to try to control everything, to think and act like we have to need of God, because we are gods. But then when we are put in positions where we’re actually in charge of high-stakes situations, our mentality shifts. We see with startling clarity just how feeble we really are, and how unworthy we are of being in control of much of anything. At least in my experience, rarely are my prayers more passionate and sincere than when I end up in control of an important situation, and I feel like everything depends on me.

Work as if everything depended on God

When I first heard this version of the quote, I interpreted it to mean, “Be lazy.” It tells you a fair amount about my personality type that I thought, Sweet. If that’s true, then I can sit around and do nothing and trust that God will handle everything. I’m not wasting time on Twitter, I’m just following St. Ignatius’ advice and working as if everything depends on God (i.e., not at all)!

But I think that maybe, just maybe, I misunderstood what that advice is getting at. The quote, if correct, doesn’t say, “Don’t bother doing any work, because it all depends on God anyway.” Rather, the spirit of it is that we shouldn’t work in a frantic, controlling way. We should work diligently but peacefully, and not be afraid to rest when it’s time to rest.

Over at the Country Monks blog, Fr. Mark Stengel summed it up well when he wrote:

If I pray as if everything depends on me, I would have to pray with a greater sense of urgency and need, recognizing my own inadequacy. I would have to pray for the wisdom and strength that I will need. I would need to seek forgiveness and humility, so that my past sins and my present flaws might not be stumbling blocks for those I am trying to serve.

If I work as if everything depends on God, then I will go forward with greater confidence and energy, since the work to be done is in more capable hands than my own. If the outcome is in God’s hands, then I will perhaps be able to persevere in the face of opposition and apparent poor results. If it all depends on God, then I will not hesitate to “step out of the boat,” out of my own comfort zone, as I try to serve. And if God is in charge, then He will not allow my mistakes to ruin His work, but will make all things work together unto good.

Anyway, again, I’m not positive that the second version is even right. But even if it’s not, I think it contains a lot of rich food for thought. Which version makes most sense to you? Does anyone know for sure which one is correct?