Stumbling Through (Introduction)

"Jesus teaches us another way: Go out. Go out and share your testimony, go out and interact with your brothers, go out and share, go out and ask. Become the Word in body as well as spirit." 
            -- Pope Francis

The Great Commission at the end of Matthew has Jesus sending out the apostles, telling them to baptize and make disciples of all men. Part of making disciples is sharing the gospel message with others. There are, of course, many ways to share the gospel message but one of the most powerful is by sharing your testimony -- the story of your life and the impact of the gospel on your life -- with others. I am under no illusions that what I am about to share over the next 31 days is going to transform anyone's life, at least not through my words alone. I share this with the intention of trying to shed light on a difficult subject and perhaps help someone else along the way.

I call this 31 day long writing experiment "Stumbling Through" because I feel very much like it is descriptive of what I'm writing about and how it may wind up being written. I am going to be stumbling along as I write and share my heart on the subject of depression. It is a deeply personal thing for me and has been a struggle for me throughout most of my life. In fact, at the moment that I write this, it is something I am battling and have been for many months now. I could take you back to the very beginning of my journey, but what I really want to focus on during this challenge is my current struggle. It may sound strange to write about the journey of depression while one is still walking that path, but it is something that I think may be helpful to me even if no other soul reads these words. I will warn you up front that there may be times it is difficult for me to write, but I am committing to this and will do my utmost to honour that commitment. If you are on this journey with me right now, please know that there may be times when it is best for you to step away and not read. I will endeavour to tag posts that may be a trigger for some people.

I want to thank all of you who are reading and will read as I write through this. God bless you.

The Momma

Before I Begin

As I have mentioned recently, I am about to take up a 31 day long challenge for the month of October. I don't know exactly where it's going to lead, so I've titled my effort "31 Days Stumbling Through." I have an idea of where I want to go with this, but I'll be honest, I'm scared. It's going to involve a lot of courage to actually make myself write about this and some wisdom to know how best to write the words. I suppose the only way to begin this journey of 31 days is with the first step, so here I am doing some stretches, trying to work up my nerve, taking some deep breaths, and getting my initial thoughts in some semblance of order.

Stretch. Exhale. Bend. Inhale. Stretch. Exhale. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Deep breath.

Begin.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will write my proper introduction as I prepare to begin the 31 days on Wednesday, October 1st.

Silence and Retreat

I have no real wisdom to share today. Actually, I'm finding it really difficult to say much of anything to anyone today. I've been in one of those moods where I didn't want to be around anyone or talk to anyone or have them talking to me. I woke up in that mood and have been unable to shake it all day long. Gray could tell that I needed some alone time, so he very graciously looked after the kids when we got home from church so that I could sequester myself in our bedroom and just be alone to read or nap or whatever. I wound up doing a bit of both. To be honest, I'm not sure it helped all that much. The nap wasn't very restful and I just found myself grumpy and annoyed with everything once I emerged from the confines of our bedroom.

I have more than a good idea of what is going on, but that is a completely different post from this one. To put it simply, it's complicated. One thing I will say is that this isn't a new thing. I sometimes crave silence and alone time. My personality type is extroverted but I suspect I tend toward the lower end of the extroversion scale. I love talking with people and being social for the most part, but when I've been around a lot of people (like a party or other gathering) or if I've been forced to be more sociable than normal for a period of several days in a row, I wind up needing to recharge my batteries by having some serious alone time. If I ignore this need, I wind up very irritable and disagreeable with everyone, no matter what they've done or haven't done and even the tiniest of things can set me off. Today was very close to one of those days. Thankfully, Gray knows this about me and he can sort of read the signs. The silence (furthered by wearing my earbuds to block out extraneous noise) and solitude of our bedroom today helped some, but to be very honest, I need more. I really need some time away from my regular life and responsibilities so that I can refill all my tanks, get some good rest, and try to reset myself so I can be a better momma to our girls and a better wife to Gray. My listening friend, Pendragon, has said that I need to do this for quite some time now and has encouraged me to try to figure out how to do it, but I just don't know how it's going to happen. I just know that it needs to happen before too much longer.

Saturday Dreaming

I don't know exactly what to write today. It has been a mostly quiet day. We ran a couple of errands this morning and Gray mowed the grass this afternoon while the big girls played quietly inside and the littlest one took her afternoon nap. Despite being completely knackered after mowing the lawn, Gray got in the kitchen and whipped up some of his wonderful chicken quesadillas for dinner. I know he was tired and didn't probably feel like it, but he's didn't complain. He's did what he does so very well -- take care of all of us, including me. I have been fighting a headache most of today and a less than stellar mood.

Five Minute Friday: Because

I am staring at the prompt for today and suddenly find myself at a loss for words. I think it might be best to plunge ahead anyway and just start writing. I don't know exactly what will come out of this because honestly, everything in my head is really muddled right now. I can make a list of things though and maybe that is the best thing to do.

Because I look at their three little faces each day, so full of promise and light and life and joy...
Because every time I look down at my left hand, I am reminded of my promise, made almost a year ago...
Because I have put one foot in front of the other for so long, what's another step?
Because this is hard, but He gave it all for me and His pain was harder than mine will ever be...
Because despite my doubts, anger, frustration, and all the raw, soul deep pain, I know somewhere, even if only in my subconscious that things shift and even though the light fades today, it may be lit tomorrow anew.
Because although sometimes it is so very very hard, a part of me whispers that it will be worth the struggle...
Because I am supported by the prayers of Gray, Sif, Chez, Rikert, and so many others...
Because, to quote Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen, "Life is worth living."

Ave Maria, ora pro nobis!

Big Block Sing Song

Yes, my kids probably watch too much TV sometimes, but we do try to keep a close rein on what they are watching and limit them to a couple of channels that are pretty safe. One of those is DisneyJr. I like that channel because there's a wide variety of different programs (although they sometimes seem to run marathons if you look at the schedule) and they don't really run commercials per se. One of the things they used to show a good bit between the various shows were these little animated shorts called Big Block Sing Song. They last about a minute to ninety seconds and they feature a rectangular block shaped character with a face and arms and legs who sings a little song about something. My big girls have long since loved these and find some of them hysterical (the one called "Moose" really is funny), but our youngest, Miss GB has discovered the joys of the Big Block Sing Song and it is really fun to watch her belly laugh at one in particular. I took a video of her giggling with her sisters this afternoon. Here's the video they were watching:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bap_sr7yHQ

Hope that provides a little giggle for you or someone little that you love :)

Wednesday Wisdom

A New Venture for October

October is rapidly approaching (6 more days!) and I am starting a new challenge for the month. Over at Kate Motaung's blog she mentioned a challenge she's going to start and I think it looks like a good one for me to try. It's a 31 days of writing challenge. I've been working hard to try and write in this blog at least once each day and so far I've been pretty successful with it, but I want to continue to challenge myself to further ingrain the habit.

A Little About My Beloved Gray

It's another last minute post today. I started writing something which I think will eventually develop into a kind of thoughtful post, but just couldn't get my thoughts quite coordinated in a coherent way. So here I am again, stuck at the last minute, feverishly typing and trying to at least get *something* posted instead of nothing.

I thought about trying to write something just straight from the heart, expressing my feelings at the moment, but thought that might come across as too sappy or something. Basically what I'm feeling right now is grateful. I'm sitting in our bed with Gray sound asleep beside me, completely oblivious to how much love I am feeling toward him at this very moment. I haven't talked much about him on my blog, but it isn't for a lack of things to say. It is more that I can't talk about him without telling everyone how much I love him and what a wonderful husband and father he is. Like everyone, he has his faults and sometimes he really sticks his foot in his mouth or does something that leaves me feeling really hurt and frustrated, but at the end of the day, he is the perfect man for me. He is who God chose for me. One of the things he told me when we had just been engaged for a little while is that he truly believes that God created him for the express purpose of being my husband. That was the whole point in God creating him -- to be my husband. The Catholic Church views marriage as something that is both a vocation (or lifelong calling) and a sacrament. Gray takes his roles as husband and father very seriously. I have never for a moment doubted that for him, his marriage vocation comes first in everything. He's kinda awesome :)

Miracles

I've only told a few people this, but I've prayed recently for a miracle. I won't go into all the details here, but suffice to say that it is something that, should God in His mercy, decide to grant it to me, would change my life and our family's life for the better. While I wait for God to answer my prayer in one way or another, I have discovered something that I already knew, but I suppose had forgotten.

Common Sense and The Internet

I am a part of an online group made up of people from my local community and it is an interesting cross section of folks. This group is not in any way affiliated with my local government, although it bears the name of our city as a means of identifying (in a very general sense) what the group is about and who it is aimed at. Unfortunately, because of the wide diversity of folks in the group, things sometimes get a little bit crazy. There are three administrators of the group who try to hold down the fort, but they have lives offline too and can't be there to police every single jot and tittle that is posted. When things go pear-shaped, there seems to be a lot of confusion as to what the purpose of the group is, what the rules actually are, and what the administrators are supposed to do about it. A lot of this confusion could be avoided by following some common sense rules. With that in mind, here are The Momma's Rules of Online Etiquette:

Doing Death the Southern Way

Where I live in the Southeastern US, we have four season just like the rest of the country. The difference is that our seasons are Almost Summer, Summer, Still Summer, and Christmas. The upshot of this is that most southerners I know run their air conditioning and/or various electric fans from about late February to early November because it's just so flipping hot. Despite the heat though, life goes on and with it, so does death.

Death in the South isn't just something that happens when someone you love dies (or passes, as we say here). Nope, it's an event. As a child growing up in the South, I have some very clear memories of the unique nature of the aftermath of death in this culture. In the South, the post death protocol is as follows: notification of death, visitation, funeral service, procession, graveside service, and the funeral lunch.

Five Minute Friday: Hold

The weather outside my window is sunny and bright, but the temperature says that fall is on it's way and fast. The leaves are starting to change ever so slightly and as I look at the calendar, I am reminded that September is more than half over and October is more than peeking over the horizon. Hold. I am trying to breathe and remember that it is just that time of year, but I know once October arrives, the rest of the year will flash by in a rapid blink. This time of year is very busy for our family with four birthdays, an anniversary, four Holy Days of Obligation, four major holidays, all the extra shopping and baking and planning that all of that entails, and all of this on top of the day to day things like laundry, homework, dinner, school, and bedtime prayers. Hold. I am trying my best to hold onto something steady so that during this time of busy insanity I keep hold of my mind and spirit, but it is a tough thing to do. Prayer helps and if I'm being honest, I probably could do that a bit more often than I have of late. Keeping the faith by regular Mass attendance and confession and doing the day to day things of faith -- prayer, singing in the choir, reading scripture, other spiritual reading -- are helpful too. They hold me fast when everything around me spins out of control or when it feels like it is spinning out of control. Hold me, O Lord, and keep me close to you. Hold me close to the heart of your Precious Son, Mother Mary. Hold me up in your prayers, all you Holy Saints and Angels. 

Breathe. Pray. Hold.

Why I am Catholic (in 200 words or less)

1. The Holy Eucharist - a fount of graces, never ending source of love, the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ so Truly Present that I may hold Him in my hands and receive Him under my unworthy roof

2. The fact that I can go to church anywhere in the world and immediately feel at home, even if I don't speak the language. The scriptures and responses are the same and Jesus is always, ALWAYS there.

One Week (What I Have Learned So Far)

It's been a week since I started this commitment to blogging a little bit each day and thus far, I have learned a couple of things about myself and about trying to cultivate a regular writing habit.

1. People who do blog on a consistent basis make it look easy. My friend Chez is a professional writer and blogger in the Catholic blogosphere and I am constantly amazed at the volume he puts out on a regular basis. He rarely ever misses a day and often posts several things in a day. Granted, sometimes the stuff he posts is silly stuff (which I appreciate), but quite often he posts something that causes me to think about some aspect of our shared faith in a new way.

Yeah, I Got Nothing

Yesterday I fell off the wagon with regard to writing in this blog daily. Since I did, this is an effort to get back on it. I have tried to keep a diary (in my teens), journal (in my young adult years), and to a lesser extent, blog (as a fully grown "mature" adult) on a consistent basis, but have never quite been able to manage it. As I write this, I have put today's entry off until the last possible moment (it's currently 11:48pm on my computer clock) and so I feel like I'm sort of slapping something together really quick to say that I got it done. I suppose that is, in fact, what I'm doing. Honestly, as busy as I've been the last couple of days, I'm amazed that I thought of this blog at all.

To Veil or Not to Veil?

Lost in Dreams by Friedrich von Amerling (1835)

Something I have been thinking about a lot in the last couple of years is whether or not to wear a veil during Mass or Adoration. Wearing a veil during worship of God goes back to antiquity and certainly there are a number of scriptures supporting this practice. Until the end of the Vatican II Council, it was expected that if you were a woman going to Mass, you wore a veil or a hat to cover your head. I don't know enough about canon law to understand why that changed or if it should have changed, but for whatever reason, after Vatican II, women began to stop wearing a veil or hat to Mass. Eventually, the practice became so widespread that it became the norm rather than the exception. As of today, the practice of veiling is beginning to see an increase in the number of women who do it. Many of them are younger women under the age of 40. I had never really thought about it for myself until a couple of years ago when some women I knew from an online forum had a discussion about it. I started doing some research on the topic and study of both Church history and scripture.

Ora et Labora

"Ora et labora" -- or in English, "pray and work" is the motto of the Benedictine Order. Benedictines take seriously this idea that a well balanced Christian life is ordered towards working and prayer. Some Benedictines are contemplative, some cloistered, some work beyond their monasteries and convents in the secular world, some work in parish churches, and some work in missions, but at the end of the day, all of these groups of Benedictine religious have a strong belief in working with your physical body and being steeped in frequent daily prayer.

Five Minute Friday: Ready

Second grade. First Holy Communion. How did we get here? It seems just yesterday we were rushing to the hospital to welcome you prematurely and a whisper after that, you were being baptised. But as I think about it and look at pictures, I know it was almost eight years ago that you came wailing into our world. M², you have some months yet until you receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament for the first time, but I know that those months will fly past like so much wind. I am not ready. This step forward in your faith journey means new challenges and new blessings. It also means that as much as I joke about putting a brick on your head to stop you from getting any bigger, you are still growing up. I am grateful for the blessing of this new chapter in your life and despite the bittersweet pangs I feel, I know that when at last you approach the table of the Lord, I will weep tears of joy and I will be ready.

A Commitment to Writing

September 11, 2014

This date should give me plenty to write about today, but I find as I begin this daily writing exercise that I don't really want to write about the significance of today's date. I am aware of it, yes, but save for a prayer for the repose of souls and those for whom this day is darkly difficult, I am leaving it alone.

That said, on to other things.

I started this blog some months ago and never really did much with it. I really enjoy writing and as such, am trying my best to rectify that. To that end, I am going to make a written commitment to myself to do the following:

A Note on Pseudonyms

My previous post (Finding My Tribe) referred to a few people in my life by pseudonyms. The reason for this is simple. The web is a big place and there is not much privacy. For the time being, I will be using pseudonyms for those people in my life that I want to mention specifically. To facilitate your ease in understanding who's who, here's a list:

Gray -- my sweet husband, whose favourite colour happens to be gray
M² -- my eldest daughter
AB -- my middle daughter
GB -- my youngest daughter
Sif -- my best girlfriend, Aunt Sif to my girls, and a permanent member of my tribe

Jae -- one of my best friends from childhood
Chez -- my cross country friend
Rikert -- my former teacher, turned friend
Pendragon -- my exceedingly patient, long-time therapist

This list may be updated from time to time as the need arises.

Finding My Tribe

I have always believed in the importance of family. I still do, but the older I get, the more I realise how much family isn't just limited to those you are related to by blood or marriage. I grew up in a family of three. No brothers or sisters, just me and my folks. While there are advantages to this, I always felt a little empty having no siblings to play with. Throughout my childhood, my friends filled in the gap nicely enough, but it wasn't until I got to college that I really craved people who understood me in the deep way that only true family can. Don't get me wrong, I loved my blood family immensely. I just knew that my heart craved someone other than my parents to accept me just as I was. It started when I was a theatre major in college. Theatre majors are a crazy and funny bunch of folks, but they are insanely real and by and large, have some of the biggest and most accepting hearts of any group of people I've ever met. That was the first time that I felt as though I had found my "tribe."

Five Minute Friday : Whisper

Introductory note: I'm going to try to do this Five Minute Friday thing starting today, September 4, 2014, in an effort to actually get into the habit of writing in this blog. The basic gist of the Five Minute Friday is that you use the prompt provided (which can be found at Kate Motaung's blog Headed Home - Five Minute Friday) and you write for five minutes. Here's the thing -- no editing what you write. That's going to be a hard one for me to follow because I'm a bit of a grammar/spelling/punctuation Nazi. I'm going to do my very best though to not edit myself and just write for five minutes about the prompt. What this means is that I will be writing whatever is on my heart and in my head which could mean some very interesting and not terribly blog-theme appropriate Friday entries. I'll try to keep them related to my blog theme (Southern, Catholic, Momma/family) but I can't promise that they won't venture into something else altogether. The other element of the Five Minute Friday is that you're supposed to link your post to the larger Five Minute Friday community, but as I am currently keeping this blog on the down low, I'm not linking up with it yet. I might do that at some point, but for now, my FMF posts will be just here. If you want to link up with the community, Kate gives instructions on how to do that at the link above. Anyhow, without further ado, here's my first foray into the world of Five Minute Friday!
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 Whisper

I hear so many things throughout my day that whisper into my ears, but far more that whisper into my heart. The sound of my children's raucous laughter is a whisper. The whir of the ceiling fan in our bedroom is a whisper. The sound of the sigh that just escaped my lips because my children are fighting over what to watch on Netflix is a totally different kind of whisper. These are all audible whispers and in some ways, heart whispers too. I am trying to be more cognizant of those heart whispers in my day to day life but it is hard. The internal struggles of depression whisper into my head and heart as well. I am well aware of those whispers. Some of them are whispers of love from my husband as he holds me close and consoles me yet again as I am crying. Some of them are whispers of lies that my depressed brain tells me over and over again. Some of them are the whispers of perspective that my "big brother" friend gives me when he and I talk on the phone. Some of them, although not so much at the moment, are the whispers of the Holy Spirit. For me, those whispers are harder to hear right now. Whispers are everywhere if you know where to look.