April 4, 2011
April 4, 2011
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40-Day Challenge: Objectivity (Day 23)

Begin with the Prayer of Abandonment. Most of us bring a certain amount of “baggage” into marriage, and the older you are when you get married the larger the pile is likely to be. It’s important that each of us own our own “pile.” That means not making your spouse pay for someone else’s mistakes … and to recognize that there are some relationships (not all of them healthy ones) that are going to continue even after you are married. Now, to be honest I went into marriage with certain ideas about what a good marriage looks like. It looked remarkably like my parent’s marriage, where […]
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April 2, 2011
April 2, 2011
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40-Day Challenge: Night (Day 22)

Begin with the Prayer of Abandonment. When I first laid out the plan for these 40 Days, “U” stood for “underwear,” how the condition and style of one’s intimate apparel says something about your attitude toward marriage. Then I opened my own delicates drawer and realized I was the LAST one to say anything on the subject. Except: Victoria’s husband must be one lucky guy. Night (can’t believe we’re up to “N” already!) is another test of marriage: how the nighttime falls in our homes. Somedays it’s a ticklish flutter: the children in bed, the cell phones off (with any luck, the computer, too), the last […]
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April 1, 2011
April 1, 2011
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40-Day Challenge: Mystery (Day 21)

“What happened to Day 21?” It’s a mystery … Which brings me to today’s Challenge:  the virtue of “mystery” in the heart of a both faith and marriage, the kissing cousin (so to speak) of modesty. Begin with the Prayer of Abandonment. “Choicest of blessings is a modest wife, priceless her chaste person” (Sirach 26:15). How do you practice modesty, in both words and actions? There is a time and a place to be “naked and not ashamed” – but a certain amount of mystery, especially when it comes to grooming and hygiene, is a good thing. Even in marriage (or perhaps “especially in marriage”) […]
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March 31, 2011
March 31, 2011
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40-Day Challenge: Mercy (Day 20)

Begin with the Prayer of Abandonment. Today I’m afraid I must be brief — I’ve reached the actual deadline on my current project, and the deadline is breathing down my neck. But I didn’t want to let down the team, so here goes! If you’re like me, you have a short list of books, movies, and music that changed how you look at the world. For me, one of those books was Sheldon Vanauken’s A Severe Mercy, a haunting true love story about Sheldon and his wife Davy. If you have never read it, please do. One of the passages that stayed with me was […]
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March 30, 2011
March 30, 2011
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40-Day Challenge: Memories (Day 19)

Begin with the Prayer of Abandonment. I realize this might sound a bit like “Keepsake.” Please bear with me. Creating and preserving the memories of family life is a really important aspect of motherhood.  From baby books and family recipe files to scrapbooks and (more recently) personal blogs, we are the keepers of the important milestones of our children’s lives. Some images are strongly visual: a flour-dusted toddler grinning proudly over a freshly baked pan of sparkly sugar cookies. The chocolate-smeared princess on her first birthday. Craig and I with our two good friends, celebrating my birthday in a hot air balloon. Others are a […]
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March 29, 2011
March 29, 2011
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40-Day Challenge: Longing (Day 18)

Begin with the Prayer of Abandonment. Do you ever feel lonely in your marriage? I think most of us feel a bit isolated and disconnected from time to time. There have been times when I’ve wondered whether I should have stuck with my original plan (the one I was forming just before I met Craig) and joined a cloister – at least then there wouldn’t be so many socks to pick up. What I only recently recognized was that even women religious feel this way about their Spouse – in the book Come Be My Light characterizes the life of Blessed Mother Teresa with two […]
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March 28, 2011
March 28, 2011
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40-Day Challenge: Leave and Cleave (Day 17)

Begin with the Prayer of Abandonment. In Mark 10:6-8, Jesus describes marriage in its most elemental terms. “From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.” In this passage, the leaving and cleaving (or “joining”) is attributed to the husband; in our egalitarian culture, the process is one that is experienced by both the man and woman, each of whom has a personal history that to some extent must be set aside in order to commit fully to married […]
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March 26, 2011
March 26, 2011
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40-Day Challenge: Keepsake (Day 16)

Begin with Prayer of Abandonment. I was well into adulthood — over thirty, in fact — before I had acquired enough “stuff” to need a moving van. Up until that time, everything I owned in the world would fit in the back of my Toyota: a large box of books, another of kitchen equipment, and some clothes and linens. Oh, and one more thing: a large gray suitcase full of memorabilia. Old letters and pictures, yearbooks, t-shirts, scrapbooks, awards, report cards and diplomas, and a Mason jar full of dried flower blossoms from every corsage and bouquet I had ever received. Most of it had no real […]
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March 25, 2011
March 25, 2011
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40-Day Challenge: Integrity (Day 15)

Begin with the Prayer of Abandonment. “Our labor here is brief, but the reward is eternal. Do not be disturbed by the clamor of the world which passes like a shadow. Do not let the false delights of a deceptive world deceive you”  (St. Clare). Socrates once observed that the key to greatness is to be in reality what one appears to be. Perhaps there is no greater opportunity than marriage to attain this consistency of character. In the crucible of family life, it is impossible to hide one’s true self — with all its attending strengths and weaknesses — for long. While there are […]
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