At Considerable Cost

All three of my children started school this year.   All three.   Thomas is now a proud kindergartner.   Clare is in second grade.   Emmeline began intermediate school which means a locker and schedule to remember.   My house is nearly silent during the day and it feels very empty and lonely.   I have to stop here and step off any pity train, though.   Every school day, I climb into my car and get to pick up my babies from school.   Then, I get to spend the rest of the evening with them, along with the weekends and holidays.   My house is not always empty.   It's not the same as the seven years we waited for the sounds of children to fill our home.   The idea of returning to homeschooling has been very appealing to me recently.   It's been appealing because I want my children with me all the time.   I honestly miss them.   My head soon takes...

When I was an Elementary Education major at university, I was asked to serve as a student representative on a committee of the College of Education.   The committee's purpose was to improve practical classroom experience for education majors and to strengthen our relationship with the cooperating classroom teachers who served as our mentors.   The best part of being on that committee was the time before the meetings when I had a chance to speak with two classroom teachers who were also on the committee.   One day, the topic of conversation turned to math instruction.   I was in college when the use of manipulatives was being integrated into instruction to replace rote instruction alone.   It was the first time in my life that math excited me and I wished I could have been taught in that manner.   Topics were introduced through concrete activities, with real-world connections and then paper-and-pencil practice would follow....

Today is the feast day of one of my favorite saints, St. Therese, known as the Little Flower.   Along with St. Jeanne d'Arc, she is Co-Patroness of France and one of only three women officially given the title "Doctor of the Church" because of the profound truths and teachings contained in her spiritual writings and more importantly, in her life.   Her writings are few, memoirs of her life and spiritual journey she wrote under direction from her superior at the convent.   Her life was short, only 24 years, ended by tuberculosis.   However few and short her writings and years, the love, power, grace, and glory contained in them is limitless.   She is still teaching and touching lives today, 115 years after her death. I began a devotion to this great saint before the birth of our oldest daughter.   We gave her the middle name, Therese-Marie, when she was born so she would have the intercession of two powerful patrons, St. T...

Two books and a movie.  An author, a saint, and a fictional character.   They've all been tossing about in my mind over the past few weeks.   I recently completed two books, Lizzie's War and Shirt of Flame: A Year with Saint Therese of Lisieux .   Both books--one fiction, the other non-fiction--dovetailed to prompt pondering about vocation, love, and desire. Lizzie's War , by Tim Farrington, is beautiful in its rawness and reality.   Set in the late 1960s, the book alternates the story of Mike, a Marine in Vietnam, and his wife, Lizzie, left at home on her own battlefront, trying her best to run the family in his absence and to not lose herself in the process.   For the past few years, my reading has consisted of theology, especially apologetics, and classics, such as Dickens, Austen, and Shakespeare.   All good, but combined with the preoccupation of taking care of my father and dealing with estate matters, ...

from Chapter July, page 177, Coventry Patmore on a saint: "...he will mostly likely dwell with reiteration on commonplaces with which you were perfectly well acquainted before you were twelve years old; but you must make allowance for him, and remember that the knowledge which is to you a surface with no depth is to him a solid ..." "A solid"--firmness, foundation, support, unwavering, not prone to or dependent upon fashions or whims.   Something which I honestly have felt myself lacking for months now.  "Rock solid" is a cliche we often use, and the book Shirt of Flame has been a rock of sorts--a pebble-- in my life since it arrived on my doorstep.    Two forms of a pebble--the one-- that aggravating pebble in a shoe that makes its presence known with each step you take until you finally stop and deal with it.   And the other--a smooth, beautiful pebble, held in your palm, as you turn it over and stroke it, an aid to your contemplation, ...

I have not been this excited about an approaching Lenten season since 2003, right before we found out we were expecting Emmeline.   Since then, it seems I've either been pregnant or nursing, so the food-related aspects of Lent weren't as much a part of the observances.   That seems to affect the whole season, no matter what else I might have given up or added.   I'm sure it's because I pushed the boundaries by including foods like chocolate that were not necessary to a healthy diet for pregnancy and nursing. This year, our family will be going through unavoidable chaos and activity during Lent, but we are anxious to make this a fruitful time for our family.   We've had a rough year.   A rough six years, but the last year seemed particularly rough.   When I told my friend Amber that I didn't understand why it felt much worse, she reminded me that the events of the previous five years unfolded over that time, but last year we...

"WHO TOUCHED MY MEAT MALLET?" No longer will that question be uttered in our house.   I am typing this post on my NEW LAPTOP!!!   Let me introduce you to my last, rather cherished connection to the outside world: My power cord was frayed and would no longer stay plugged in unless pressure was applied.   For the past few months, I managed to prop it up, finally using a prop from beneath with weight applied from above.   In the photo, a Tide pen, a meat mallet, and an antique candle holder serve to make the connection!  There were other problems, too, that added up to the cost of a new one.    I can be a little frugal and I put it off as long as I could, but I am delighted with my new computer.    We bought it today and I'm up late playing with it while my little ones sleep. WE HAVE A BIKE RIDER! E wanted her training wheels removed and she began to ride on her own by the second day.   She went s...