Advent Activity Day

Going to the Church Advent Activity Day has over the last few years become one of our family traditions.

There are usually a few different craft activities going on, such as card and decoration making, but always central to the day is the making of the advent wreaths, although ours are not strictly speaking wreaths at all!

The are simply a plastic holder made to hole a round oasis into which is pushed four candle holders (complete with candles) and various greenery.

They are simple and yet very effective and all the more cherished for being blessed before we take them home!

My daughter who is all grown up comes along with my grandson and when she is making theirs she likes to put some of the ivy I have brought along from my garden because she says it makes it more special.

It was a wonderful day which started off with mass and ended with evensong. Although I did go early so that I could go to confession beforehand (nothing like starting off a new year with a clean slate).

As I am writing this I am sitting by my living room window and it is already getting quite dark outside, just a little more and I will be able to light the first candle.

Planning for an Organised Christmas

When my daughter was here the other day we were discussing Christmas activities. I said that I was considering not putting up any Christmas decorations this year because we have so much we need to accomplish in the house and when I added that to my sons illness it all seemed a bit much.

This year there will only be my husband, my son and myself here for Christmas.

My husband does not bother with Christmas decorations and my son is now 15 and his illness makes him sleep an average of 18 or 19 hours a day so I doubt he will even notice the difference.

So you see I can't get away with pretending that I just "do it for the kids"!

But my daughter pointed out that if I don't decorate it will make me miserable and that will make other people miserable too.

So today I sat down and started to make my plan.

I am going to spend the next two weeks carrying on with my cleaning, organising and de-cluttering of the house.

I avoid doing "stuff" on a Sunday so that gives me twelve days.... That's twice round the house and two shopping days.

The following six working days will be for decorations, get them out, put them up, put the boxes away.

That means the advent decorations will be out in time and the rest up and the mess tidied away by the first Monday in December.

That means from then till Christmas week I can concentrate on my big homemaking project which is to swap our bedroom into the largest room and make our old room into a room for fostering.

We did originally use the biggest room for fostering, but once we had a child in place I realised that I did not have anywhere to have my quiet time in peace.

The young man we had in place wanted a smaller room anyway so when he moved into another room I made the corner of the large room into my prayer place.

It is going to be a big job to get the two rooms as they should be, but if my decorations are up then I will have somewhere lovely to relax in between working on them.

Why I am Pro Life

Today I received a request to pray for two ladies who are considering an abortion.
I will keep them in my prayers....
and this is why....

I myself had an abortion at 18.

I fell for the lies of the devil that it was only a collection of cells and that I was not doing anything wrong.

Thirty years later I still cry for my baby.
It is the one thing I would go back and change, the one thin I am truly ashamed of.

I know that I have been forgiven because of the wonderful sacrifice of Jesus, but coming to terms with it is a different thing.

It does make it easier to forgive others when I put what they have done beside what I have done!

When my girls where 12 and 13 were were sitting round the dinner table and I told then that I remembered being their age and the girls having a conversation about what there parents would do if they ever got pregnant.

The common opinion was "My patents would kill me/ throw me out".

I explained to the girls that this is not what we would do...

First we would cry...

Then we would support them and care for them.

I also explained that no matter what they chose to do it would effect the rest of their lives, having an abortion would not be the end they would have to live with the decision they had made.

When (if) they had other children they would not be able to look at them without thinking about what could have been for the other baby.

I had this conversation with them before I was a Catholic, in fact before I was even a Christian.

Some women are pro life because they would never have an abortion.
Some women are pro life because they understand what it means to have taken an innocent life.

When life gives you scraps... make quilts

Attitude can often be the difference between being happy and being miserable.

Today my daughter came to see me and told me something which shows that she has certainly learned to "make quilts"!

When my girls were little I used to collect pocket dragon ornaments. By the time they left home I had a lot of them. I gave them to my eldest daughter who eventually got bored with them and passed them on to her younger sister.

Because they were limited addition they have grown considerably in value.

So today my daughter and I were discussing this and whether she would ever sell them. She said that she wouldn't unless it was for something really important - like to put towards a deposit for a house.

Over the years some of them have been broken and mended so those she would not be able to sell, but she said these were the ones she would not want to part with because they meant more to her than the others did.

I thought this was a bit strange until she explained that any damage had been done by her and her sister and that even though I had saved to get them and collected them for a long time I never got angry with them if they broke one. She said that this made the broken ones special!

Mothering Means More Than Meals

Next to protecting my relationship with my darling husband I need to include plans for quality time with my children especially my son who still lives at home.

He needs special care at the moment because he has been ill since Christmas and his symptoms are quite complicated and make life difficult because he can sleep anything up to 20 hours a day on a normal day (he has even had some days when he has only managed to stay awake for about an hour).

I am having to make sure that we make the most of the time when he is awake. It would be so easy to just manage the practical stuff, sometimes it is hard enough just to get enough food and drink into him in a day and this can take over.

I want our relationship to be more than that! This means planning round getting him to church, reading the bible together, helping him to do some school work when he can and balancing all this out with trying to have some fun times with him even if this is only watching a film or having a joke together.

Taking Care of My Other Needs

Now that I have a plan for taking care of my spiritual needs its time to tackle my other needs...

In order to meet my calling I have to learn to look after myself. Enough sleep and rest, good quality food, exercise,family time, fellowship, fun and creative pastimes. These are the things I need to add into my plans in order to be at my best and be able to then give all that I can.

Difficult Times

It seems like forever since my last post.

My sons illness which started after Christmas continues and although we have seen improvemnets in some areas, the fatigue he suffers from went from bad to worse. Now the medical people have come to the conclusion that he has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Life has been very difficult and worrying to say the least.

On top of that our fostered child has moved on to a new placement and we don't feel able to take on a new one until things are more sorted out for our son. This of course puts us under more pressure financially.

With all the added stresses I have become very worn out myself and life has become very disorganised and even getting to church has been very difficult.

I realised that I needed to sit down, take the bull by the horns and reorganize every thing and I do mean everything!

But I know that its ok.... I have help!

As long as I put my trust in the Lord, he'll get me through ANYTHING!

This doesn't completely get me off the hook though I still have to do my part to fulfil the vocation that He has called me to.

I have the comfort and assurance of knowing that as long as I do what I can He will do what I can't!

Why I Stopped Blogging...

This is a hard post to write....

I stopped blogging because I had a broken heart....

On the day of my birthday the 4th of July 2009 I suffered a double bereavement. Then on 21st of that month the little man who lived in my house (my grandson) when to live with his mummy. This was unplanned and unexpected. He had lived with us since he was 5 weeks old and we though he would be with us until he was grown.

At that point I could not write beause I could not think, I could only trust and pray.

At this time my eldest child also went through major surgery.

I also found it impossible to carry on attending the church we had been so happy in because certain things there had changed and I knew it was no longer the place for us, but leaving was so hard because so many of my needs were being met there and it had been a big part of our lives.

A few months later I started a new gardening blog - the posts from that are now on this blog on there own page.

Hopefully I will now be blogging regularly again and have started this blog in order to pull everything together

MOMMY HOMEWORK: Strategies for Tight-Knit Families!

Warning! Warning! Don’t do what I did!!

When I first became a Christian I was very misguided and spent every evening involved in church activities, while leaving my poor children and unsaved Hubby at home.

Thankfully this did not last for ever, but it does serve as a great example of how not to have a close knit family!

The reason I changed what I was doing was not because my family complained, but because I found out what God’s picture of a woman, a wife and a mother really looks like.

Fathers may be the head of the household and, therefore, the leaders of the family, but as mothers we should be the one who guide the family along behind him. If we are not close behind him how can we expect them to be.

So this is where we need to start. Invest time and effort into your relationship with your husband. This is the second biggest gift you can give to your children (the first is of course to invest in your relationship with the Lord). This is how the wise woman builds up her home (instead of tearing it down with her own hands).

Take advice from older (more mature in the Lord) women about how to love your husband and children and take care of your home (this is not my idea - it’s God’s).

Pray, pray and pray some more…..
Study your family and become an expert on there needs and the things they enjoy. Then act on your knowledge.

Never compare your family to anyone else’s. This is the family the Lord blessed you with thank Him for them regularly and enjoy them because this is your perfect appointed place.