Why I love kids

I got forwarded this as an email and thought it was really cute...

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to the two most important men in my life!

The Spiral Staircase

I often feel as if I am not making any progress on the path towards deeper Christ-likeness. Just when I think I have broken out of a pattern of vice and sin and walked some distance away from it down the path to Christ-likeness I find myself back in the same place and I realize that I have not walked straight down the path, I have just walked around in a circle and am back where I started. Obviously, this is usually a demoralizing realization.
I had this same experience recently and it had a different effect on me because I suddenly saw it in a different light. This "path to holiness" appeared less like a straight path (the straight and narrow path) and more like a spiral staircase where you pass the same basic scenery over and over again but if you are making progress then the scenery gets farther and farther away as you get higher up.
God "knitted me together" with a particular personality, a personality that has certain tendancies and will have those tendancies till the day I die - and beyond, I suppose. Those tendancies are all two sides of a coin - one good side and one bad side. So, it makes sense that I will pass the same sort of temptations and sins throughout the course of my life on earth - the key is to keep going up and not get sidetracked by the monotony of the scenery. It seems that when I keep my eyes looking up then I will not notice the same temptations being thrown at me over and over again - I will just notice how much closer Christ looks from this height then it did last time I went past this side of the spiral. Here hoping...

Bathing Beauties

Grocery Store Lingo

I've never considered myself the linguist of the family. David's family has several accomplished language-learners and he takes after them but I have never had the knack for communicating in any other language then English. I had to teach middle schoolers English Grammar this past year and that about did me in so you can imagine me trying to learn some other language. That being said, recently I have felt myself to be quite the expert in a brand new language - it's definitely an immersion technique to be stuck in a house with a 2 1/2 year old all day.
Today on a trip to the grocery store I took special note of some of the translations...

Moses Speak: Oh! Wadeed hoc! Oh yes! Wucky Addy!
English Translation: Oh! Chocolate milk! Oh yes! Lucky Moses!

Moses Speak: WeezWeez, baback!
English Translation: Lily, pasta!

Moses Speak: No mommy, no pishy
English Translation: No mommy, that's not fish (in reply to my trying to teach him the name of the of the flounder that I bought)

Moses Speak: Mommy! Pishy!
English Translation: Mommy! Fishy (refering to a box of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish)

Moses Speak: Lellew hoc, mommy?
English Translation: Yellow milk, mommy? (in reference to the Orange Juice that I bought - the kind that comes in the same type of half-gallon jug that the milk comes in)

Vid Stories, Part 1 of ?

I have a 5-year old brother (boy on the left - my son Moses is on the right) who has always been the source of much laughter. His pronunciation has always been a little sketchy and has resulted in many racy comments that I don't think I can post on this family-friendly blog. I was visiting my mom today and he is home for the first time since school got out last week.
Vid: Do you know what grade I'm in now?
Me: Yes! Your in 1st grade!
Vid: (incredulous) How did you know?!
Me: Well that's what comes after kindergarten. So, are you excited about 1st grade?
Vid: (hesitatingly) Weelllll...yes, but I don't know if college is going to be fun or not. I just don't know.
Me: Well, you've got lots of time before college - 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th...12th grade and THEN college.
Vid: So college is last.
Me: Yes.
Vid: Do I have to go away to college? Because I don't know where it is and I just don't know if it's going to be fun.

Wisdom from Anne with an "e"

We recently got TiVo. It is mainly for me while I'm nursing but since getting it I realized that the only shows that I really enjoy are crime-dramas and as much a fan of them as I am I can't really have CSI, Law and Order and Bones on during the day with Moses running around. Plus if you watch too many of those shows it you get preoccupied with thinking too much about how you would cover up your crimes and how that one hair in the shower drain would give everything away. So, I've moved on to re-reading the Anne of Green Gables books. The other genre that I love.
There is something so comforting about returning to those books that assisted in your formation as a young lady and to take a look at those characters who you emulated. It's so familiar. At the same time, your place in life colors what stands out in each new reading.
I recently read a section in Anne of the Island that I had formerly skimmed over and this time I can't seem to get out of my head. Anne is home for the summer and finds out that her old school chum (side note: every time I read these books Anne-ish words seem to make their way into my vocabulary for weeks afterwards), Ruby Gilles, is dying of consumption. Ruby and her family won't admit the reality and continue to make plans for her future. Finally the night before she dies she tells Anne that she knows she's dying and that she's been afraid to acknowledge it because she's terrified to die. She says:

"I get so frightened - and - and - homesick. Heaven must be very beautiful, of course, the Bible says so - but, Anne, it won't be what I've been used to."

Here are Anne's thoughts on that last point:

"It was sad, tragic - and true! Heaven could not be what Ruby had been used to. There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous life, her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great change, or make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and unreal and undesirable...

"Anne sat in a pain that was almost intolerable. She could not tell comforting falsehoods; and all that Ruby said was horribly true. She was leaving everything she cared for. She had laid up her treasures on earth only; she had lived solely for the little things of life - the things that pass - forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity, bridging the gulf between the two lives and making death a mere passing from one dwelling to the other - from twilight to unclouded day. God would take care of her there - Anne believed - she would learn - but now it was no wonder her sould clung, in blind helplessness, to the only things she knew and loved...

"Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight...[in her] the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different - something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth."

I struggle in remembering to hold on to the perspective that we must become familiar with heaven through our earthly life so that passing on will be going from "twilight to unclouded day". At a retreat I was on a couple years ago Sr. Ann Shields (wisdom from another Ann :)) asked, "how often do you think about heaven? How often do you imagine it? Do you dwell on heaven?" I try, feebly, to keep an "eternal perspective" so I appreciate the reminders that pop up when you are least expecting them - like in the Anne books. I don't think that I'd have gotten the same sort of admonition if I had continued my indulgence of crime dramas.

Better News

The patient who needed the transplant got one and so far is doing well. That's something salvaged at least.

A tragedy touches home

On Monday evening a plane carrying an organ transplant team and a pair of lungs crashed into Lake Michigan (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,278432,00.html) and the track/cross country coach for David's highschool (Fr. Gabriel Richard) was the nurse specialist in charge of getting the organ ready for transplant. Richard Chenault had just led the girl's track team to 2nd place in the State competition and coached several of the girls who broke records.

The plane, the four passengers, the two pilots and the lungs have not been recovered and they are all presumed dead. Now the patient scheduled to get the lungs is in danger of dying also. Obviously this is a tragedy that touches so many different lives and it is even more poignant since these 6 people died while trying to save another's life with an organ of yet another person who had just passed on.

Grant eternal rest unto them O Lord, and may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.

St. Albert the Great, pray for us. (patron of medical tecnicians)