Your Faves in 2015

It’s been a fantastic year. A new site born from your requests and my leap to take writing more seriously. The launch of my speaking career and vlogs. The announcement of a new book in the works – written by and with a team of amazing fellow Catholic wives.

Behind the scenes and in our lives, I watched my mother find love again and remarry. My sister and I have grown deeper in friendship. For the first time in 6 years I’m not expecting or nursing. I started homeschooling our kindergartener, Liam. Andrew and I are breaking down walls we didn’t know were in our marriage. We got a puppy for Christmas, which means we’re either the best parents in the world or the craziest.

And I’m excited for more. More of all of it.

I can’t thank you enough for your continued support and prayers. Here are your faves from the last year. Please pray that I write and say what the Holy Spirit wills!

1. How My Husband Handled My Past

“He wasn’t expecting me to tell him my deepest, darkest secrets. Still, I felt compelled. The truth was I had a wound, too. It was something painfully foolish from a long time ago that I regretted and carried around for too long. He needed to know.
…
“Our scars, whether self-imposed or brought on by others, are private and fragile pieces of ourselves to be shared only with those who will regard them as such; and chances are those precious few will not be influenced by them to the point of revulsion. That night, Andrew forgave me for something he didn’t even know about and still doesn’t.”

2. NaPro Technology: Pro-Women, Pro-Marriage, Pro-Babies

“Nobody ever thinks they’ll have issues having children,” Katie Aranda told me. “[The miscarriages] were all hard, but the fourth one really brought us down.”
…
Matt and Mikki Sciba went through testing as well – the results of which pointed to no conclusion at all. “You should be fertile,” they were told. “We don’t know why you’re not.”

A highly successful health science that’s pro-woman, marriage and baby, with a mission to explain the unexplainable is here; an approach that looks at a full range of reproductive abnormalities not as problems on their own, but as indicators of underlying issues.  “This isn’t just Catholic medicine,” Danielle Van Haute told me. “It’s just good medicine.”

3. What I Want for Mother’s Day

Taking a good look at what we’ve got made me want to parent in terms of the future – to love them right now in a way that draws them to us 20 and 30 years down the road. I picture a midday lunch with any one of them – asking how things are at home, at the office, in school, and listening to God’s plan slowly revealed in the details of their lives. I hope they know they can ask us for help. I hope they know we’ll be over the moon when they’re over the moon.

Such an openness and freedom in the future can and must be cultivated in the little years.

4. Mrs. Minimalist: A Different Way to Say Thank You

From the outside looking in, my minimalist/purging efforts are an eye-widening weirdness meriting plenty of good-natured teasing from friends and family; but this quirk of mine is rooted less in cheap thrills and more in fortifying my marriage.

Here’s my take on it: It is Andrew’s task as the breadwinner to provide the house for our family; it is my corresponding duty to reveal to him, through good management, that the home he gives us is enough.

5. Eyes on the Prize: Thoughts on The SCOTUS Ruling

Equality isn’t we can do the same exact things; equality is the freedom St. JPII mentioned – the ability to do what we ought instead of what we want. And by this definition, the Court acted out of turn. They are not the legislature. Similarly, the legal recognition of same-sex union does not equate it with marriage.

Right and left, journalists and commentators assert that marriage has been redefined. Ahem… Marriage has not been redefined. A divine institution will never be redefined because its Origin is without change.

 

Cheers and God bless your 2016! May Our Lord have mercy on us all and grant us peace.