1st Communion and Spiritual Communion

This will be a very special year for Dominic because he is preparing to receive Jesus in the most holy Sacrament of the Eucharist in the Spring.  I am so thrilled that he has a fun and faith-filled teacher for his 1st Communion class on Wednesday nights.  His teacher is one of my best friends named Beth.  Beth is a convert to Catholicism and her soul is simply aflame with love for Jesus and His Church.  One of the benefits of having my friend Beth as Dominic's teacher is that I get to come help in the classroom occasionally.  I found some great 1st Communion craft ideas at the blog:  www.catholicicing.com, and I asked Beth if I could help the class make a monstrance craft to remind the kids that Jesus is really present in the bread that they will receive for the 1st Communion.  The craft was simple, yet stunningly beautiful, and Dominic was so proud to have his mommy be the helper!  :o)

I hope Dominic and all the 1st Communicants will remember what a precious gift we have as Catholics---the gift of receiving God Himself into our bodies at every Mass, and the opportunity to be physically near Jesus every time we visit a tabernacle or a monstrance at a Catholic Church!  To paraphrase what Mother Teresa once said, "Time spent adoring Jesus in the most Blessed Sacrament is the best time you will ever spend on earth!"

Another enormous blessing we have as Catholics is that we can make a spiritual Communion with Jesus any time we want to!  I recently learned about this profound privilege in the book, "Jesus, Our Eucharistic Love," by Fr. Steffano Manelli.  I had heard about spiritual Communion before, but never fully appreciated its merit until reading this book.    Here is a little excerpt:

"Spiritual Communion is always available for lovers of the Eucharistic Jesus.  By means of spiritual Communion, the loving desires of the soul that wants to be united with Jesus, its dear Bridegroom, are satisfied.  Spiritual Communion is a union of love between the soul and Jesus in the Host.  This union is spiritual but nonetheless real, more real than the union between the soul and the body, because the soul lies more where it loves than where it lives, says St. John of the Cross.

As is evident, spiritual Communion assumes that we have faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the tabernacle.  It implies that we would like sacramental Communion, and it demands a gratitude for Jesus' gift of this Sacrament.  All this is expressed simply and briefly in the prayer of St. Alphonsus:

• My Jesus, I believe that You are really present in the most Holy Sacrament.  I love You above all things, and I desire to possess You within my soul.  Since I cannot now receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart.  I embrace You as being already there and unite myself wholly to You.  Never, never permit me to be separated from You.  Amen.

Jesus once said to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the saint so assiduous in directing her burning desires to Him within the tabernacle:  So dear to Me is a soul's desire to receive Me, that I hasten to it each time it summons Me by its yearnings.  

Many of the saints adopted the practice of making countless spiritual Communions every day, and even woke themselves up in the middle of the night to make more spiritual Communions!  Let us learn from the saints.  They would like to pass on to us some spark of the love burning in their hearts.  Let us undertake to make many spiritual Communions...  Then soon the fire of love will enkindle us.  As St. Leeonard once said:  If you practice the holy exercise of spiritual Communion several times each day, within a month you will see your heart completely changed.

Let us all embrace this holy practice of making many spiritual Communions each day!  May our hearts be changed...transformed into hearts burning with love for Jesus and love for all souls (especially souls who do not love Jesus yet)!  This change of heart could change our families, our communities, our world!  I love being Catholic...I love Jesus in the Eucharist!!!  I hope you are growing more in  love with Him this Advent season, too!  :o)

Still Searching...but getting closer perhaps!

Those of you who have followed my blog for long (or who know me well), know that I have been searching for joy and fighting anxiety and depression for quite a few years.  Years of trying to pray myself through the clouds just has not cleared them away, and when I have tried to seek advice from doctors I have found the experience frustrating when they simply hand me a prescription rather helping me find and fix the source of the problem.  My hunch all these years is that unbalanced hormones have a role in my struggles because I have a history of low progesterone during my pregnancies (which may have caused my 3 miscarriages), and low progesterone is also known to cause postpartum depression (which I suffer from every time I have a baby).  When I asked my OBGyn about checking my hormone levels a year ago she told me that "hormones are just too tricky to test," but she was happy to offer me prescriptions for contraception pills and anti-depressants.  I kindly declined and left feeling stranded once again.  A year has gone by and I have kept on praying, clinging to Sacramental graces (especially the Eucharist), and uniting my suffering with Christ's---all of which has helped me to love Him more and rely on Him more (which I am eternally grateful for!).  But, I finally reached a point about a month ago where I felt God asking me to search for a doctor who might be able to help me find some healing so that I can be a happier wife, mother, and woman again.

So I picked up the phone and called a natural doctor in town, and I learned from his secretary that he specializes in treating women's hormones.  I was overjoyed!  My first appointment with him was so different than all of my other appointments with traditional doctors.  This doctor truly listened and shared a wealth of wisdom with me.  He asked me to explain all my symptoms, and then he looked at my medical history and family history thoroughly.  He immediately suspected low progesterone and had my hormones tested that same day!  He explained all the different ways to test hormones, and he said that reading the results is easy for doctors who understand the normal fluctuations in a woman's cycle to determine the correct range that her hormones should be in (I am baffled why my OBGyn was unable or unwilling to do this!?!?).  The next week the results came back:  my progesterone was slightly low (surprise, surprise)!  Therefore, he put me on a bio-identical progesterone cream that should help balance my hormones (and moods!) tremendously.  He said that low progesterone results in estrogen dominance which can lead to all the symptoms I had mentioned, and ultimately it can lead to fibroid uterine tumors and a complete hysterectomy, which is exactly what happened to my mom and all of her sisters.  I was so relieved to know that balancing my hormones now might help me to avoid a hysterectomy in the future!

The other huge thing that the natural doctor honed in on is the fact that I have 3 blood clotting disorders:  MTHFR (which stands for methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase), Factor V, and Prothrombin.  He immediately wanted to discuss the first one on that list (MTHFR) and it's possible connection to the symptoms I've been having.  He explained that people who have MTHFR have an inability to process folate and folic acid (folic acid is the synthetic form or folate) and this causes all sorts of negative side effects (miscarriages, blood clots, high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, etc).  I explained to the doctor that ever since I got diagnosed with my 3 blood clotting disorders I was told by my OBGyn to take mega-doses of folic acid and the B-vitamins, as well as taking a baby aspirin, which should help to prevent future miscarriages (the reason I got tested for these clotting disorders was because I just had my 3rd miscarriage).  Here's the kicker...  The natural doctor went on to explain that those high doses of folic acid that I've been taking are probably a huge part of the problems I am having!  Apparently, people with MTHFR have trouble processing folate and they have an even harder time processing folic acid because it is synthetic and is not the "activated" form that our bodies really need.  The human body has to convert folic acid into folate in order to use it.  But if you have MTHFR, your body can't convert the synthetic folic acid and it builds up in your system causing things like:  anxiety, depression, hormonal imbalance, thyroid problems, cancer...and the list goes on and on and on!  I never knew there was a difference between folate and folic acid (and the sad thing is that most doctors don't understand the difference which is why my OB has inadvertently been telling me to take mego-doses of something that is bad for my body!!!).  However, all the research shows that there is a HUGE difference between folic acid and folate, and for people who have MTHFR, the difference can be devastating.  What makes it even more devastating is that since 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been requiring food manufacturers to ADD folic acid to all grain products, such as cereal, bread, flour, and pasta.  It has also been added to almost all multi-vitamins on the market.  Basically, folic acid has been marketed as a "good" thing by using the terms "enriched" and "fortified" on the label, when it really is un-natural and bad for our bodies, especially people with MTHFR (which happens to be over 60% of the population!)  Grrrrr!

So, to make a long story a bit shorter, folic acid is a big NO-NO for me and I now have to avoid it as much as possible.  Yes, that means a nearly gluten-free diet...YIKES!!!  The natural doctor told me to take natural activated folate supplements (L-5-Methyltetrahydrofolate) instead of the folic acid supplements I was taking, and to eat as much folate-rich foods as possible:  spinach, lentils, asparagus, beans, broccoli, citrus fruits, avocado, nuts,  etc.  He also recommended a natural supplement of 5-HTP (5-Hydroxytryptophan), which is a chemical by-product of the protein building block L-tryptophan.  Yes, tryptophan is the stuff in turkeys that gives you the sleepy-happy feeling after the Thanksgiving meal... :)  Apparently, it also helps people with anxiety and depression by naturally triggering the production of serotonin.  Heck, if it's like having a tasty Thanksgiving meal every day, it's worth a try!

Perhaps learning about my low progesterone and my MTHFR disorder are two very important pieces to my "happiness puzzle."  Perhaps there are other missing pieces that I still need to discover.  And perhaps it's simply God's will for me to have a little bit of suffering in this world to help me grow closer to His Sacred and Suffering Heart.  If the latter is the case, I will strive to embrace His Divine Will joyfully, but in the meantime, I am very grateful that God has guided me to this natural doctor who may help me find some healing and happiness on this side of heaven.  My motto will continue to be:  "Jesus, I trust in You!!!"  :)

There are so many great articles I stumbled across while researching my MTHFR disorder.  If you have MTHFR and would like to read more about it, here are a couple of my favorite websites:

http://www.freshideamama.com/mthfr-since-40-60-of-the-population-has-this-condition-and-it-is-the-underlying-cause-for-many-chronic-illnesses-shouldnt-we-all-be-getting-tested

http://www.mthfrsupport.com/mthfr-facts/

http://mthfrliving.com/health-tips/mthfr-avoid-folic-acid-in-food/

  

Thanksgiving among Friends

The icy, snow-covered roads always make it too dangerous to travel home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but thankfully the Lord has blessed us with an abundance of friends here in Helena who feel just like family.  This year we were invited to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends who we have much in common with:  same Catholic faith, same school, same love of all things outdoors, and the same gender of kids--ALL BOYS!  Rick and Jen have us beat, however, in the number of boys.  They just had their 6th son, so Paul and I have some catching up to do!  :o)  Our boys and their boys are the very best of friends, and we honestly could not have picked a better bunch of friends for them.  They are funny, faith-filled, and true gentlemen all the way around.  It was so fun to watch the crew of 11 boys interact with each other.  The older boys played board games and laughed so hard they cried.  The younger boys played with trucks and blocks and just had a blast making a massive mess.  And us adults were able to eat, sip wine, visit, and simply bask in all that we have to be thankful for.   All in all, it was a blessed and happy Thanksgiving!

a dose of encouragement

I love it when God sends a little love note or words of encouragement just when I need it.  It has happened to me many times...either through a Bible verse, or a song on the radio, or a phone call from a friend, or a quote that I stumble upon that day.  Well, it happened again this morning when I flipped over the page on my daily calendar and read these healing words from Ann Voskamp:

I may feel disappointment and the despair may flood high, but to give thanks is an action and rejoice is a verb and these are not mere pulsing emotions.  While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all tings, because He knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of giving thanks.  And true saints know that the place where all the joy comes from is far deeper than that of feelings; joy comes from the place of the very Presence of God.   Joy is God and God is joy and joy doesn't negate all the other emotions...joy transcends all the other emotions.

Dear Jesus--may these words sink into my soul and become not just an idea but a way of life for me (and all who may stumble upon them on my blog)  :)  Grant us true joy as we learn to give thanks to You for everything!!!

Son #4 turns 4!

Nathanael, our 4th son turned 4 this month!  Our son with the dimpled chin and perpetual grin.  This sweet boy is a delight to everyone around him and our family would be amiss without him.  His birthday party this year was simple, but he didn't seem to mind.  He was surrounded by the love of his closest friends, his crazy family, and his caring God who somehow (although I don't know how!) loves him more than me...it doesn't get any better than that if you really think about it.  Here are just a few sweet pics of this contagiously boisterous boy!  I dare you not to smile!  :o)

Double dog dare you!  :o)

To veil or not to veil?

I know it sounds crazy, and perhaps I really am crazy, but I bought a mantilla (commonly called a chapel veil) and I am prayerfully considering wearing it at Mass every Sunday.  There are a few women at our church who wear a veil, and every time I see them, something in my heart leaps because I think it looks so beautiful and holy and reverent in the Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.  So I started doing research on the topic…and nearly every article that I read also made my heart leap and further convicted my mind that perhaps the Lord wants me to wear a veil too.  So then I ordered one online, and when it arrived this week, my heart leaped again as I pulled the soft ivory lace out of the box...  

I am so excited about veiling, but I’m crazy nervous about it.  

Why?  

Because I worry what people will think of me.  I worry that some will shake their head and think I’m being self-righteous and holier than thou…which is the opposite of what wearing a veil is all about!  Veiling is about humility and showing our awe and submission before God.  Veiling is not about drawing attention to ourselves.  It’s about drawing attention to JESUS, Who is "God-with-us" and so gracious to let us be in His Presence and receive Him into our bodies at Mass!  But how can it NOT draw attention to ourselves!?---it’s odd, it stands out, it's counter-cultural.  How I wish I could wear the veil and be invisible at the same time!   I wish I didn't care what people think.  I know I should only care what God thinks.  And right now, I think He wants me to veil to show my crazy-love for Him.  So, that is what I will do until He tells me otherwise.

Catholic women have been veiling for over 2000 years, so why does it sound so crazy now?  St. Paul strongly encouraged veiling in 1 Corinthians 11:1-17, and it is my understanding that it was the Jewish and Christian culture for women to veil during worship since the time of Jesus.  In my research I found that the 1917 Code of Canon Law included a requirement that women veil in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament:

Canon #1262:  "Men should attend Mass, either in church or outside church, with bare heads, unless approved local custom or special circumstances suggest otherwise; women, however, should have their heads veiled and should be modestly dressed, especially when they approach the table of the Lord."

This requirement was removed in 1983, and women quickly discarded the custom even though the church never discouraged the tradition--the church simply made it optional.  The more I read about it, the tradition of veiling sure sounds like a holy tradition--just like the tradition of receiving the Eucharist on the tongue, or praying the rosary, or lighting Advent candles.  I wish I had learned about veiling long ago, and I am praying that it leads me ever closer to Jesus who had such crazy love for me that He died for me.  The very least I can do is return my love for Him by doing something a bit crazy for Him. Veiling will be a way for me to show Him love and reverence, and I think that's worth being called crazy or anything else people may call me.  I made sure to ask my husband and my spiritual director about this crazy idea, and they both gave their "thumbs up"... So, here I go! Sunday will be my first day in a veil...  Would any of you like to mantilla with me?  :o)  Or if you already do, I’d love to hear about your journey!

If you’d like to read more about veiling, I highly recommend the website where I bought my beautiful veil:  www.veilsbylily.com.  In particular, I this article really touched my soul:  http://www.veilsbylily.com/jesus-swept-me-off-my-feet/

A Saintly Celebration

This was our 8th annual All Saints Celebration, and each year I am more and more convinced that this way of celebrating is TONS more fun than the secular way our culture celebrates Halloween...but I'll admit I'm a bit biased! :)  This year was extra fun for our family because for the first time ever we didn't have to host the event (which takes a load of stress off of this anxiety-prone momma!)  :)  We were so blessed to spend Halloween night with 2 of our favorite and most saintly families we know.  Between our three Catholic families, there were 18 saintly kids running around and having a splendid time (except for one of my sons who ate too much candy at school and felt sick most of the night...natural consequences are a bummer, but at least he learned a valuable lesson) :}  But aside from one tummy ache, the night was filled with saint games, heavenly food, a pumpkin pinata, a plethora of candy, edifying saint reports, a litany of the saints prayer, and hours of holy fun and fellowship.

This year in particular, I felt like our culture went overboard on decorations and costumes that seemed to celebrate evil and gore.  Many of our neighbors spent hundreds of dollars on creepy blow-up yard toys, and it was disturbing to me how many people seemed to decorate there homes more for Halloween than they do for Christmas.  I try not to be judgmental because I know that many people are just having innocent fun, and I grew up trick-or-treating like all the rest.   But now that I'm an adult with children whose hearts I am trying to point towards heaven, I tend to see the secular holiday in a different light.  Quite frankly, the holiday seems absent of light and glory for God, which is why we try to celebrate it in a totally different way, a way that I hope made Jesus and the saints smile from up above on us crazy Catholics down below! :)

Here's some evidence of our crazy Catholic fun:

Our "saintly" boys:

Dominic as St. Martin of Tours

Michael as St. Juan Diego

Nathanael as St. Michael the Archangel

Isaiah as St. George

Joseph as St. Thomas Aquinas

Our boys with their saintly friends...

(there were 6 more kiddos that arrived later and missed the photo opp) :(

Max, the fiercely adorable dragon, with St. George, the dragon-slayer, in the background!

Dominic playing the St. Christopher game!

Joseph, Eric, and Josh competing to see who can keep 3 balloons suspended in the air the longest...

after all, saints require persistence in this crazy world, right!?

Joseph and Eric cramming right before giving their saint reports :)

Happy All Saint's Day!

P.S. Don't forget to ask for the saints' intercession this month,

and also to pray for the holy souls in purgatory!!!