November 26, 2020
November 26, 2020
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A Morning Offering, Thanksgiving Edition

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink…
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November 18, 2020
November 18, 2020
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#PrayerStories Home Is Where You Are

Yesterday was Mom’s 80th birthday. She requested pepperoni lasagna and angel food cake with strawberries … a rather convoluted menu, to be sure, but she dug in with relish to the pasta and had two slices of the cake. Diabetes be damned. My favorite part of the evening, however, was when she sat down in her chair and my father’s dog, Gracie, came upstairs to find her there. Gracie came to stay with us on Saturday — I drove down to Tennessee to meet up with my sister, who did not want Dad to come home from the hospital with a house full of hyperactive […]
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November 9, 2020
November 9, 2020
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Happy Birthday, Dorothy Day!

These sober words were recorded by Dorothy’s granddaughter in a 2017 issue of America  magazine, recounting how difficult it was for Dorothy to see her dear daughter walk away from the Catholic faith — the daughter whose birth had lured Dorothy into its fold. Whether the crisis of faith is that of a loved one or our own, it is seldom experienced in a vacuum. And whether the source of that disillusionment is from a temporary setback or the culmination of a season of unspoken angst, Dorothy reminds us that the solution is the same: solidarity, compassion, and intercession. St. Dorothy, pray for us.  
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November 6, 2020
November 6, 2020
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Mommy Monster Grows Up

Nearly two decades after venturing into the wonderful world of foster-adoption, I look back on the road my husband and I have taken, shake my head, and give thanks that we really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. I don’t have THAT much courage. It was a bit like our recent trip to Acadia National Park, when my husband made me heave myself over boulders the size of refrigerators in order to get to the reward at the top of the mountain: “You think THIS is hard? Just you wait!” Here … take a look at the first post. One morning when […]
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November 5, 2020
November 5, 2020
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#PrayerStory A Matter of Trust

Like many women my age, I am a “sandwich mom,” constantly struggling to juggle the demands of a vocation with more layers than an onion. One day my husband looked at me and said, “I feel bad about this, and I know it’s crazy, but some days I see you cutting up your mother’s dinner and wonder, ‘What about me?'” I understood exactly what he meant, and it broke my heart. My husband and children have not had my undivided attention, and have dealt with the associated stress of caregiving, for going on four years now. I am so grateful to Craig, in particular, for […]
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November 4, 2020
November 4, 2020
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Calvary Love

If when an answer I did not expect comes to a prayer which I believed I truly meant, and I shrink back from it; If the burden my Lord asks me to bear be not the burden of my heart’s choice, and I fret inwardly and do not welcome His will, then I know nothing of Calvary love. (If, by Amy Carmichael, p.48).   A prolific writer and missionary to India, Amy Carmichael (1867-1951) founded Dohnavur Fellowship, where she served for 56 years, rescuing dozens of “temple children” to know and love Christ. Elisabeth Elliot’s biography of “Amma,” A Chance to Die, was such a […]
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May 15, 2020
May 15, 2020
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An Essential Caregiver Resource: The Caregiver’s Companion by Debra Kelsey-Davis and Kelly Johnson

At six this morning, I heard it: the whirr of my mother’s chair lift coming up from the basement. She was fully dressed, and had her bags packed, which means she must have been up since at least three. “It’s time to go to the train. Judge says I have to go to Vermont.” That damned Judge — the one in her head, who keeps giving her these untimely messages — is getting on my last nerve. Now, some experts will tell you that when someone with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia has hallucinations like these, it’s better to go with them to their […]
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July 23, 2019
July 23, 2019
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Dancing with a Porcupine: Essential Reading for Foster and Adoptive Parents

If you are even thinking of becoming a foster parent, you need to read this book. Like many people who decide to become foster parents, Jennie Owens and her husband, Lynn, were confident that love would conquer all. The trauma. The anger. The pain and loss experienced by every member of the family. And like many such couples, they never knew what hit them. The isolation. The bone-chilling fatigue. The mental strain. Most of all, the unrelenting inner refraing that keeps on and on: Am-I-going-crazy? I wish I had had this book fifteen years ago, when I needed to have someone explain to me why self-care […]
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July 19, 2019
July 19, 2019
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Voices in the Night

Craig is gone this week on business, and Chris and I have been spending some quality time in the evenings. Around midnight last night we were watching Medium (the Hulu reruns are his new favorite program) when we heard a slow thump … thump … thump coming up the stairs. (Now, this is exactly NOT the program you want to be watching at midnight when there is a thump, thump, thumping going on). “I think it’s Mammy,” said Chris, peering over his blanket and not moving a muscle to investigate. (Man of the house, indeed.) So I got up to check and, sure enough, my dear mother had […]
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