Gotta Love Grandma and Grandpa!

My parents came for a quick visit last week, and, as always, every moment is filled with fun.  My kids couldn't ask for better grandparents!  From baking cookies, to teasing, to playing card games, to tickling, to buying toys, to taking the kids out for treats...they just shower our kids with love and attention every second they are here.  What a blessing grandparents are!  I wish we could spend more time with them, but I guess living far apart sure makes us treasure the times we do get to spend together even more!  Here are just a few pictures of their last visit...

Isaiah and Grandma Theresa baking cookies together!

From the looks of it, Grandma was letting Isaiah snitch some of the cookie dough!

Grandpa Pat ticking and teasing Isaiah.
Grandpa loves to tease all the boys at every opportunity!

Everyone gathered for our traditional fish-fry:
My dad always brings some walleye that he caught in SD to cook for us...YUM!
(Someone needs to teach my teenager to smile!  Joseph truly is a happy kid,
he just is going through a "need to look like a cool-guy" phase in photos) :}

A tasty close-up of Grandpa's walleye feast and some homemade bread!
Man does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes from God...
AND on the love that comes from Grandmas and Grandpas!!!  :)

Some Poem

Sometimes the depth of my shallowness drowns me
Sometimes the breadth of my narrow-mindedness confounds me
Somehow the invisible thread of mercy I cling to holds me
Somehow He loves me despite me
Someday His arms will surround me
Somehow that's enough for me

House Off the Market

We officially took our house off the market this week.  Bittersweet to say the least.  The past 7 months of trying to keep a house immaculately clean with 5 young boys living in it equaled 7 months of stress for me.  I learned I don't wear stress well.  I become like the Wicked Witch of the West.  I'm quite certain that if one of my boys would have dumped a bucket of water on me the day of a house showing, I would have instantly melted into a puddle and vanished forever.

So, needless to say, it feels like a huge relief for our whole family to have it off the market!  We became quite efficient at cleaning, but that doesn't mean we learned to like it :)  It is a bit disappointing though, that after so many months of diligent prayer and hard work, we were unsuccessful at selling our house.  However, we prayed very specifically for God's will to be done, so we are trusting that He has a better plan than ours that He will reveal to us in His perfect timing.  We will probably list our house again in the Spring.  Until then, I will simply try to enjoy these months of not having to worry about toys on the floor, dust on the furniture, or melting into a puddle! :o)

"JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU!"

Retreat Recap

Well, it has taken me a few days to process all of my feelings about my silent retreat, but I think I can finally put my thoughts into words (and pictures, of course!)  :)

The retreat had positives and negatives...  I'll start with the positives and try to be brief and charitable about the negatives :)

The best part, by far, was sitting with Jesus in the church and just being able to rest in His Presence.   Honestly, I wish I could have just brought a sleeping bag and slept right there at His feet in front of the Tabernacle.  But, alas, I was given a warm, comfy bed next door to the church, in a room filled with all sorts of feminine frillies :)  It was a lovely room, and it did feel nice to be pampered in pink for a change! :)   And best of all, I could run over to visit Jesus next door whenever I desired!

I also loved being able to go on nature walks while praying the rosary or the chaplet or just taking in the beauty around me.  The retreat was in Sheridan, MT, which is a tiny community, surrounded by gorgeous mountains.  Everywhere you look, you feel like you are being hugged by the infinite arms of the Creator.

The food on the weekend was absolutely gourmet, and what a gift it was not to have to cook, or cut up anyone else's food into bite-size pieces, or clean up the dishes!  Again, the feminine touch was apparent at every meal, with fresh-cut flowers, a different table cloth, and fine china dishes!  I loved the silence during the weekend, but it was a little awkward at mealtime...  Imagine 4 women sitting at the same table and not being able to chit chat!  It was like an act of penance as we were all preoccupied with trying not to chew our food too loudly or make eye contact (because that would give the urge to talk) !  :)

My sweet and holy friend Renee, who was the amazing cook and helper on the weekend,
 and Linda, who organized the retreat and gave spiritual direction

Another highlight for me was having the freedom to be able read to my heart's content!  At home I rarely take the time to read because there is always something more urgent to be done; plus, by the time the kids go to bed I'm exhausted and ready for bed too!  :o)  What a blessing it was for me to be able to read a couple of spiritual book that have been sitting beside my bed for months, and to finish them entirely!  My favorite book of all was Jesus Our Eucharistic Love.  This book truly set my heart on fire for Jesus, and I wish I could give it to everyone I know so that they can fall more in love with Jesus in the Eucharist too.  The book inspired me so much that I am now reading it to my boys at night.  May it help our whole family to set the world ablaze with love for Jesus!

Other special moments were sitting around the campfire contemplating how to keep the fire of my love for Jesus burning in my heart at all times...

...and praying the rosary beneath this gorgeous tree in the early mornings.

This is me with the other retreatants, who I never really got to meet due to the silent nature of the retreat.  It would have been neat to get a glimpse of their spiritual journey, but perhaps the Lord just wanted us to focus on Him alone.   And honestly, I found great freedom in that.

And now for the parts that I struggled with...  I don't want to share too much for fear of offending anyone, nor do I want to dissuade others from attending this retreat because they might have a completely positive experience.  That being said, I did have a difficult time during my daily hour of spiritual direction with the woman who organizes the retreats.  I tried so hard to keep my heart and mind open to what the Lord wanted to share with me on my retreat, but I felt like the spiritual director kept taking me on a detour from where I felt the Lord wanted me to go.  Linda, who was the spiritual director for my retreat, is certainly a faith-filled woman passionate about serving the Lord.  But I think she and I are just two very different people with very different spiritualities.  During my prayer time and reading time, I would feel my heart just burning with love for Jesus.  And then I would go to spiritual direction, and my zeal would suddenly evaporate into clouds of confusion.  This caused many tears and much frustration for me.  But I trust that God allowed this for some reason, for I believe that He uses all things for good.  One good that came out of my frustration was that I found myself clinging to Jesus, Mary, and the Saints.  By focusing on God's unchanging Truth, I knew I could not be led astray.  I also learned that it's OK to be frustrated, confused, and lost in the thicket sometimes, for as long as we keep searching for the Lord and trusting in His love for us, He will find us and lead us back to His Sacred Heart.   

Thank You, Jesus, for being with me on my retreat,
for drawing me closer to Your Sacred Heart and closer to Your mother too.
Please stay with me always, even when I feel frustrated and confused.
I place all my trust in You.

P.S.  Next year, I think I will create my own retreat...  I'll find a nice hotel located near a Catholic Church.  I'll sleep in, take bubble baths, read books, eat at nice restaurants, and go visit Jesus in the Tabernacle many times throughout the day.  Anyone want to join me?  :o)

Prayers Appreciated...

Tomorrow I am going on a 4 day Ignatian Silent Retreat.  This will be the first silent retreat I have ever attended, and I am so thrilled by the opportunity.  Before I got married I spent a few years seriously contemplating a vocation to the religious life as a cloistered nun, so this retreat might give me a small taste of what that would have been like.  My husband is slightly worried that I might not come home  :}  I know I will miss him and our boys within a day of being gone, so he has nothing to worry about!

But truly, I would appreciate some extra prayers over the next few days.  Please pray that I can rest in God's presence and use the quiet to hear His whisperings in my heart.  I often spend my prayer time peppering the Lord with questions and talking unceasingly about my worries and ideas that I never even give Him the chance to respond.  So please pray that I can just shut-up and listen! :)  I feel like God has been trying to lead my soul down some new paths, paths that confuse and frighten me.  But I am hoping that this retreat will give me some clarity, peace, and also some healing.

Oh, and please pray for Paul and the boys too!!!  They might need the prayers more than I do!  :)

Picture Day (our own silly way)

Up until last year, my boys did Picture Day at school just like every other kid...  They smiled a cheesy smile that didn't capture their uniqueness, they stoicly stood in front of a generic blue backdrop, and they gave the photographer a very big check before knowing if the pictures would even turn out.  But last year, I decided I was tired of spending so much money on pictures that I really didn't like enough to display on the wall, so I started taking my own pictures.  I readily admit that I am not a great photographer.  I've taken only 1 class (and that was 15 years ago in college learning how to develop negatives in a darkroom!).  I honestly don't know much about shutter speed or aperture.  But I do know how to look for an authentic smile and a gorgeous backdrop--plus, I have Photoshop--and that's good enough for me!  :)

It's alarming to me how much the boys have changed since I took their photos last year.  My oldest son and my youngest son especially look so much older to me.  But oh, how I love these boys and watching them grow into such holy gentlemen!  May the Holy Spirit give my husband and I the graces we need to guide their souls to love and serve God in this crazy world!  And May Our Blessed Mother watch over them, protect them, and guide them ever closer to her Son!

St. Therese Wisdom and Cupcakes

Yesterday was the feast day of one of my favorite saints:  St. Therese of Lisieux.  So in her honor, we had a feast of cupcakes!  I found this simple idea of rose-topped cupcakes on the blog "Catholic Cuisine," and I was happy to find a fun (and easy) way to remind my kids of St. Therese's sweet love of Jesus and her heroic life of sacrifice.  The more I read about St. Therese's spirituality, the more drawn I am to it and the more I pray that the Lord will give me the grace to fully live it.  St. Therese makes "the little way" of loving Jesus and loving others sound so easy, but I am finding it to be SO HARD!  I keep re-reading the profound book about her spirituality called "Joy in Suffering" by Bishop Noser, and I know deep down that it is what God is calling my soul to embrace, but I am just so weak.  When I read about the myriad ways she finds joy in suffering, my heart exclaims: "Yes!--that's it, that's what I'm going to do!" and then I try to do it...and fail...over and over again.  I am thankful that our God is patient and full of mercy.  So I will just keep picking myself off the ground, dust off the "knees" of my soul, and try again.  St. Therese, pray for me to live the Little Way!

For just a taste of St. Therese's spirituality, here's a paragraph from the book I mentioned above:

Having such an almost boundless confidence in the tender love of her heavenly Father, St. Therese surrendered herself entirely to Him.  By "abandonment" she understood the embracing beforehand, blindly and with joy and enthusiasm, of all that it pleased God to send her, no matter how great the suffering involved.  Her life was like a blank sheet of paper at the bottom of which she affixed her signature and then placed it in the hands of God, to let Him write thereon all that might please Him, accepting in advance, with joy, whatever He would write, not knowing what it might be, but convinced it would be only for His glory and her own spiritual good.  "The good God," she said, "wills that I surrender myself like a very wee child who does not trouble himself as to what will be done with him."  In her illness St. Therese confessed:  "I am now sick and I shall never recover.  But I am at peace.  For a long time past I have not belonged to myself; I am wholly surrendered to Jesus.  If it please Him, I am content to have my suffering prolonged for years... Ever since I have given up ALL self-seeking, I lead the happiest life possible."  (page 58)

St. Therese, pray for us to have your childlike faith and trust in God,

and such boundless, contagious JOY like you and my sweet son Nathanael have!  :)