February 4, 2024
February 4, 2024
Categories

Looking for a miracle? Check out “Stories of the Eucharist”!

Because I spend most of my time behind the editor’s desk, I kind of forget what a rush it can be to sit on the other side. Then … all of a sudden … it hits:  I get to be the author this time! It won’t be in the stores for a few months yet … but I wanted to share my excitement so … here goes: The COVER!  I love the heavenly perspective of the angels around the monstrance. It reminds me when the kids were little, when I told them that their guardian angel always wants to go and join the other angels […]
Do you like it?0
Read more
November 18, 2020
November 18, 2020
Categories

#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 […]
Do you like it?0
Read more
November 5, 2020
November 5, 2020
Categories

#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 […]
Do you like it?0
Read more
May 15, 2020
May 15, 2020
Categories

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 […]
Do you like it?0
Read more
July 23, 2019
July 23, 2019
Categories

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 […]
Do you like it?0
Read more
July 19, 2019
July 19, 2019
Categories

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 […]
Do you like it?0
Read more
June 12, 2019
June 12, 2019
Categories

If You Give a Mom a Cookie …

(With a thankful nod to Laura Numeroff.) If you give a mom a cookie, she will sit in a chair and try to eat it in peace. As soon as she sits, she will look in the kitchen and see Ravenous Teen left the milk on the counter. Again. So she sets her cookie on the table and goes to the kitchen … Where for the next ten minutes she wipes counters, empties dishwasher, and puts dinner in the crock pot. And, yes, gets herself a glass of milk. With a shot of Bailey’s. The scent of Bailey’s inexplicably reminds her that she left of […]
Do you like it?0
Read more
December 27, 2017
December 27, 2017
Categories

Tips for Caring for Parent with Dementia

If you give Mom a cookie … She’ll want another one to go with it. Some days, that’s her idea of a balanced diet: one cookie in each hand. Not always, though. Most days she’s pretty careful to eat and drink like someone with a history of diabetes. But some days, dementia wins and the child in her comes out to play. I’ve decided that caregiving for someone with dementia is a lot like parenting a toddler. Some differences, of course … I would always want to treat her like the adult she is, and give her as much say in the details of her […]
Do you like it?0
Read more
April 26, 2017
April 26, 2017
Categories

The Circular Mercy of God

An old Portuguese proverb (sometimes attributed to Thomas Merton), reminds us that “God writes straight with crooked lines.” While God cannot be accused of pointless meandering or false steps — his ways are perfect, after all — the same cannot be said of us. And because he has given us free will, God sometimes allows us to take detours, taking us in circular routes to accomplish his purposes in our lives. By way of example, I was twelve when I got my first organist gig at this little country church, Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Hamburg, NJ. It was my first taste of liturgy, and the people […]
Do you like it?0
Read more
123...16