A Franciscan Heart in a Material World

I am part of the Madonna generation. And know, I don't mean Mary. I mean the once ubiquitous popstar, whose famous song "Material Girl" still gets regular play on the radio. In my mind, her music was synonymous with the excess of materialism and general love of excess that pervaded the 80s and early 90s. We could do what we wanted, have what we wanted, and there was no such thing as too much stuff. I was just a kid during the most of this time, but as a kid I was on the receiving end of a certain amount of vicarious excess. Our parents generation had grown up on simple stuffed toys, Barbies that you could sew clothes for rather than buy, and the reality that the ingenuity of a well fed imagination was more valuable than anything. When we hear songs about Christmas days of the past, there's no talk about Cabbage patch, Polly Pocket, Thomas the Train, or Furbies. Even in the world of claymation, all the kids wanted was a dolly, a train, or a scooter. Pretty plausible stuff for Santa and his hard working elves to make with rudimentary tools. Flash forward to my childhood (and every Christmas since) and you'll have no problem finding video of otherwise reasonable people knocking down strangers for some battery operated monstrosity that they will grow tired of only 24 hours before their kids do. We are in the material age. There's no denying it.

I confess even my family isn't immune to it all. This past Christmas I saw evidence in the strewn wrapping paper on the floor that while the kids didn't expect much (a Barbie or two, some Cars dinkies, and some slippers were the requests), they were inundated with so much stuff they didn't know what to do. Now almost  month later the favourites have emerged, and not surprisingly it's what they asked for. Baby girl is drawn to books and simple wooden toys. Big girl wants to play with the Barbies. The boys spend all day playing with their Cars dinkies. Everything else is background noise and has already fallen to the bottom of the toy pile (and yes, it's a pile). Partly it's because they're the only little kids in the family on both sides (they have a preteen cousin who is well beyond the trendy toy age, and has moved on to music and art. Well done!). This lends itself to a certain amount of spoiling from one particular set of Grandparents *coughmyMomcough* who seem to have 20 years of pent of Christmas shopping they unleash under our tree every year since we've had kids (and let's be fair, any other said Grandmother sees something she thinks would please the kids). It comes from an honest desire to express love and to leave a lasting impression on the kids. My fear is that the impression it's giving isn't of love, but of entitlement and privilege. They are young enough that they don't have an expectation for how many gifts they have, or the financial value they can place on the stack of gifts they receive, but it's only a matter of time before their real needs get crowded around by the wants society teaches them are essential.

So what do we do? Do we roll over and accept the materialism of this world? For myself and my family, I say no. The riches of this world are worthless when I think about what their hearts really needs. I've learned over the years, that what my heart needs is something I can't find on the shelves at Walmart. I need God. The only one who will feed my soul. The same way that pair of shoes will give me only a moment of joy, I know that the pile of presents under the tree will give a momentary thrill before leaving their hearts more empty. If I could give my children any gift at Christmas, their birthdays, and every other day of the year, it would be a Franciscan heart.

For me, a Franciscan heart is one that relies on Providence. It is a heart that gives everything to God, even our suffering, with joy and trust that even if we can't see it, God is making good of our lives. A Franciscan heart rejoices in the moments of grace, and turns to God for comfort when this world strikes us down. It is a heart that hungers for the love of God and seeks to share that same love with everyone else. If I can have a Franciscan heart, I will not be ashamed to accept charity, but also be compelled to give everything I have to a stranger in need. I will work hard to provide for my family, but trust that when I am struggling to make ends meet, God will teach us to need less, and send those with a heart for the Spirit to answer our prayers before we know to pray them. Even if to others we appear little or poor, if God will teach me how, I want to give my children a Franciscan heart rather than any other material thing the world says they need. That is a gift that they can take with them throughout this life, and into the next.

Baby 5: Week 21

How Far Along: 21 Weeks and 2 days (18 weeks and 5 days to go!)

How I'm Feeling: A little off today. I had kind of a crazy day yesterday. As you may have noticed if you live in the same hemisphere as me, it's winter. Now that Christmas is over, we've finally got some real stick to the ground snow. How does this apply to me as a preggo? Well for one, I hate the cold and am usually ridiculously under prepared for it. I have everything and then some for the kids, but for some reason can't keep a pair of gloves to save my life. And don't get me started on hats. Anyway, there was a snow fall two nights ago, and they still haven't cleared up the sidewalks, so when I walked to Church pushing the tandem stroller I was pushing through tiny snow banks most of the way there while my nuckles and ears got quite frozen. After I got home from our very worthwhile trek to see Jesus and have some fellowship with our Parents & Tots group, I spent the rest of yesterday feeling very tired, cranky, and ridiculously tense. My stomach was tight and aching. Not to mention my back. I can fully admit my back would've been sore from pushing a double stroller uphill on unshovelled sidewalks even if I wasn't pregnant, but with the weirdly tight stomach, I spent the rest of the day feeling so awful. I was freaking out. Today I'm tired, but the tenseness in my stomach is just a mild sense that I clearly overdid it.

What I'm Thinking: I'm mostly thinking that I need to be less crazy. I should have taken the bus both ways, and taken my time getting up the hill at the end of the day. I'm also VERY excited that I can now regularly feel this tiny baby working on some pretty sweet kung fu moves in my belly. My stress from yesterday melts away when I feel my little baby kicking and punching. Besides that, we've had a real run in with Providence. Yesterday, we had two beautiful moments that were reminders of how much God loves our little family, and how he uses those with good hearts to bless us. I feel so undeserving of the amount of love and caring God lavishes on us, and so much gratitude for those who answer the call in their heart to be ministers of grace and mercy to us.

What I've Done This Week:  I've been working on cleaning up after Christmas. I feel like every time I finish the kitchen, I realise I need to clean the livingroom, then the kitchen, then the livingroom, etc. Despite that I manage to go through the kids toys to sort out ones to give away. I'm trying to be ruthless. With 4 kids out and one on the way, we're starting to look like a derelict toy store.

What I Hope To Do Next Week: Dear friends of ours just welcomed their third baby, so my plan is to speak this next week getting some meals ready for them and then out to their house. I love cooking for other people, so I'm going to use it as some personal therapy after the day I had yesterday.

Natural Family (Un)Planning

Let me start his off by saying that I love Natural Family Planning, or NFP. Many of my friends are complete pros at using it, and I find myself in awe of their faith in action. That being said, I must confess we're not exactly the best with NFP. We've done the reading and figured out the rudimentary facts of how it works. I have been able to look at it objectively and see that it is a wonderful, natural and intelligent way of looking at the gift of our fertility. Subjectively, however, I just don't feel that it's right for our family. From before we got married, my husband and I have always felt moved to simply let things come as they will. Any attempt to plan has always led us into great spiritual frustration, which is fruitless for ourselves and our family as a whole. When we have simply lived our lives according to the daily movements of our spirits, we have felt closer to God and to each other. I believe that God inspired the good people who worked out the science of NFP for the sake of His people. He created each of us, and so I trust that He has a plan for each of our families in how we should approach our fertility.  In my heart of hearts, I believe that when He created my husband and I, He created us knowing we would be happier following the voice of our spirits instead of the signs of NFP.

I know that I will accept whatever God gives me. I know that this is the same for my friends who use NFP. Let me clarify that we're not going to go above and beyond to try to conceive 100 children or whatnot. Thus comes our ideology of Natural Family UnPlanning (which I will not abbreviate, as it doesn't have the same clean sounding name as NFP). Even that's a bit of a misnomer. I realise that while I may not be trying to plan my family according to my means, circumstances, and the calling in my hearts, I am depending entirely that God has a plan for our family which He is revealing as we continue on. I guess the difference is that we're completely handing over the control over the scheduling to God. A great example is that right now as we speak, I, for the first time since the 2nd month of our married life, am not pregnant. My body needed a break, and our growing family needed extra attention, so God has worked in His plan that I won't be pregnant for now. This means that, as my husband is suffering with some medical issues, I have been able to devote my love and energy on him without shortchanging our kids. If I was pregnant right now, I would, knowing my history of pregnancy, be overly tired and cranky (okay, I'm still be cranky) and probably increasing in width as I decreased in my ability to do the physical tasks needed to help him cope with these medical issues. God has blessed me with a lack of fertility right now. If He chooses to bless me with fertility later, I will embrace it, and any children that come from that.

As I went in to tuck my little monsters in to bed when I got home from grocery shopping, I was struck by the immensity of God's blessings. If we had used NFP to observe our fertility, I wonder if we would have each of them. The only time we actively tried to have a baby was with our first child, and that was because we felt so strongly called to have her at the time. After her birth we researched NFP, but dropped our books in favour of simply allowing whatever would happen to happen. With 4 little miracles in our 6 years of marriage, I feel that we made the right choice to trust our fertility to God in this way. He took our simple offering and, as He does with all things, has made something greater than we could have imagined. He made us a family. A big, noisy, very messy, blessed family. I have never, not even once, regretted any one of them, even when they're acting insane and I'm feeling like I'm the ringmaster of a three-ring (or is that a 4-ring?) circus gone awry. I'm left at the end of each day exhausted, a little relieved, and a whole lot of thankful for each of them (even the one who has recently taken to biting. Ouch!).

When we were Franciscans, our Superior taught us that the greatest calling of spiritual poverty was to be able to trust entirely in Providence. I guess a part of us never let go of that little lesson, tucked into every homily, every formation day, and every chat we had with him. We've never had to go begging on the street like our holy brothers and sisters, but God has made us the benefactors of His great and continuous Charity through the hands and hearts of so many friends, family and even strangers. Our children have always had a roof over their heads, we've always had transportation, and we've never lacked for food. While we may lack patience some days (and often are at the bare acceptable minimum of clean socks), we always have an overflowing store of love in such abundance that I can easily imagine God doubling our family and still having more. So long as we're called to live this way, I know we will continue to rest entirely on God's mercy, trusting as always that His plan for us is for our good.

My Plans and Yours

If you want to make God laugh, tell Him about your plans

I like to think of myself as a person who really goes with the flow, and that's at least partially true. Whenever life throws me a curveball I try to run with it. I do my best to follow God's lead in my life. But there's another side of me. The side of me that's a meticulous planner. I get that side from my Dad. He has a wild streak too, and has a long history of making good of what he's given, but for the most part he's the man behind the scenes, bringing an extra fruit tray (just in case) and making sure you've got the right number table settings for your wedding reception. It's an example I'm happy to follow in my own way.

The funny thing about me is that I can get a little carried away by either going with the flow, or organising things to death. Planning wise, you should see our family budget. I have every penny coming in and going out for the next year budgeted in an excel file that I check every day or so. As for meals, I buy all our ingredients on the weekend for set meals I already planned. When we were moving, I had a file where I kept a list of how many boxes we had, as well as what was in each box. I also packed as much as I could weeks in advance and wrote right on the boxes what room they had to be placed in when we moved and numbered each box. (That's probably why we waited so long to unpack the basement. I knew what was in the boxes so I knew we didn't need most of it.) Our day also runs on a very specific schedule, from when we wake up, to when we eat, naps, etc. Some of this is sheer necessity as we have four children and more planning meals less time for craziness to erupt. To guarantee they get what they need it takes planning. I know God made me very detail oriented to deal with the life He had planned for me.

Now on the other side there's the part of me that just goes with the flow. Our 4 kids weren't planned. Not to say they were unplanned either. We were just open to the fact that we could have children. And have them we did. 4 beautiful, wanted, and beloved babies in under 5 years. I also took my discernment with great seriousness, but when I felt that God was leading me in a certain direction, I just let go of my plans and went with the flow. History proves that that served me well, as my trusting in what was clearly a God-sent path led me to my husband via my old religious community. I very rarely find myself saying that something is too good to be true, because God has been so good to me in the most unexpected ways. When it comes to big picture stuff like where we're going to live, how we'll make another baby work, or even who I when I would fall in love, I knew God would give me what I needed to make things work, so long as I followed His lead with as much trust as I could muster.

I think the reason the two sides of my personality, both the detail-oriented list nut and the happy to take it as it comes side, work so well together is that in both cases there's a plan. In the first case it's my plan, working out the little things to make everything flow. In the second case it's God's plan, working out all the little things for my greater good. While I don't always do it perfectly, I'm trying to use my obsession with lists, schedules and details work towards the bigger picture of God's plan for my life. It takes a lot of trust for me, because I'm definitely the type to write out the 5 year plan down to the day. After 5 years of being married, my husband and I are not where I thought we would be. As it turns out, by the grace of God, we are somewhere infinitely better. Most days I look at my life, when I have a second anyway, and find myself in awe of all the good God has made of my attempts to plan out every moment of my day.

Thank you, God, for trusting me even more than I trust in you, and for loving me more than I could ever love you.

The Lord's My Shepherd

Recently you may have noticed our family is on a home made kick. Baby girl is 6 months old now, and I'm back to my characteristic level of energy and enthusiasm. We've been spending more at our local farmer's market than at the grocery store, which is a good sign that I've been doing more from scratch. With the exception of one loaf this week, I've made all our bread, pizza dough, and rolls entirely from scratch. Today, with the help of the three big kids (if you can call a 22 month old, a 3 year old and a 4 year old big), we made some beef stock from scratch. With the exception of a little bit of rice or pasta here and there, everything is made fresh from food we're picking up at the market. I don't want any of the busy and harried folks out there to think that I'm badgering you about it, or that I think you absolutely have to do it. First of all, it's not my business what you all do in your kitchens. It's a lot of work, it takes a lot of planning, and really forces a change of diet pretty much immediately if you go all in.

I'm not bragging, trust me. My dedication to our new meal plan really would have waivered and probably failed by now if it weren't for a few circumstances that have forced me to dig in my heels and make it work. First of all, we've gradually emptied our pantry and freezer of processed or ready-to-make foods. It's hard to reach for frozen pizza when there isn't one. With 4 kids and 2 adults, it's not exactly cheap to hit the fast food chains either. With that, I'm left with whatever is fresh that we bought. It's forcing me to follow my meal plan and I must admit I love not having to think about what's on the menu. There's no last minute running to the store for a missing ingredient, which is another bonus. Secondly, baby girl has started on solids, and I absolutely refuse to use bottled or packaged foods for her. Ignoring all the recalls on that stuff lately, I can't get behind all the added preservatives and things. What's wrong with a few sweet potatoes and an ice cube tray?

The biggest reason we haven't been stocking up on frozen pizza, canned goods, and questionable grocery store meats, stems from recent instructions from the dietition trying to help my husband through his stomach issues. He's a type 1 diabetic and has recently been blighted by paralysis of the stomach. It's not a highly common complication, but once the doctor's figured it out, it was like the puzzle pieces of the past 6 or 7 years fell into place. When I met my husband he wasn't well, and was having problems understanding random low and high blood sugars unrelated to meal times. It turns out his stomach has been holding food, and most of the time only allowing it into his intestinal track as much as a week later, which was causing random jumps in his blood sugar. He's been losing weight lately and in terrible pain. Luckily, the doctors have been able to prescribe him a cocktail of drugs that are working together to make his stomach contract so that it can empty. The medications are only one side of his treatment. The other side, the side that is the long lasting treatment, is a drastic change in diet. First on the list was to eat smaller, more nutritious quantities of protein. The second was to reduce the quantity of fiber he was ingesting (these days even most white bread is fortified to have higher fiber content, thus our homemade variety is safer). He also has to stay away from anything with a high fat content. They also suggested he eat more soft cooked veggies, particularly in the blended form in soups, and to avoid processed foods whenever possible. I could be wrong, but to me that sounds a lot like the meal plan my husband and I worked on together. With baby girl well on her way with solids, a lot of these foods were on our list for her too.

Once again I sit in the face of what should have been a sudden and scary situation that would have changed our lives drastically in a matter or days, but instead of fear I'm left with the deep convictions of God's providence. God has once again led us, so gently, so slowly, to exactly where we needed to be, having armed us with the knowledge we need to do what's right. When we first got the phone call about this major dietary change we were scared and upset, but as the days went on we realised we were already there. If I needed any more proof of God's abiding love and faithfulness to us in a time when all else is falling apart, here it is. In every hour, I find God holding me, carrying me through the rough times.

For our wedding mass, we chose the psalm "The Lord's My Shepherd". I feel like we have made that psalm the motto of our marriage. Thank you, God, for leading us gently, and for loving us in times of fear and struggle. Perhaps instead of 40 days and nights in the desert, God is choosing 40 days and night of rain for our lives. Either way I know at the end God's promise stands firm, as a rainbow in the sky and the Cross on a hill faraway.

I will trust in you alone. I will trust in you alone. For your endless mercy follows me. Your goodness will lead me home.

Disorder and Order

After over six months of living here, my husband and I have finally unpacked our basement. Excluding a weekend when we first moved here, the entire bottom floor of our home has looked something like a shanty town. Dishevelled piles of boxes, random articles of clothing, and mismatched furniture were strewn in mighty stacks wherever we tossed them while moving in. We didn't care so much about how it looked. We had no real plans for it. It was too humid to make much use of safely with the children and with a baby on the way neither of us had the time or the energy to make any real headway in the large room that takes up most of that floor.

What really convinced us to make the time to sort things out was that we finally, truly decided we were staying here for more than a year. We had the opportunity to look into buying a home in the country at what looked to be a fair price. This house, that of my maternal grandfather, was nothing less than my dream house. A six bedroom house on a fairly large piece of land, that has the kitchen of my dreams, a layout I adore for our young family, and plenty of room for my husband to ply his trade as a cabinetmaker and finish carpenter. We could have our own garden, a shed for any animals we'd want to raise, and, perhaps best of all, we would be surrounded by my extended family, whom I have seen far too little of in the past years. In spite of this very overwhelmingly positive prospect, we took it to prayer and found our thoughts turned to staying in the city, in our current home. It wasn't without a twinge of sadness that I let go of the idea of the big country home in which I spent so many summers and holidays. I had to let go of the cheerful front door with a hummingbird captured beautifully in its stained glass window, the true sign that we were at our second home, a place where my grandparents would be waiting for us with expectant smiles and the smell of fresh bread.

So, we decided to stay here. In our cute city townhouse. Four bedrooms, big living area and lots of ugly shag carpet and wacky paint (sorry Dad, but I'm so over the pumpkin orange with green trim in the livingroom. Tuscan villa this ain't). We couldn't help but see so much potential within these four walls. A little paint here, some new flooring there, perhaps a workshop in our basement... And that's when it hit us. If we were really staying here, we couldn't live in complete order upstairs while the downstairs was in complete disorder. To be fair, a lot of items are in the wrong room or even the wrong floor because we had been hesitant to fully unpack. So at last we decided to give in, and in a few short days things started to come together. Suddenly, our basement has furniture that is there with intention. The small room is set up artfully with all of my husband's tools. The main room is starting to take on a very nice atmosphere as either a games room or even a second playroom for these winter days when going outside isn't an option, but a mere change of scenery dispells our cabin fever.

With no regrets, we unpacked our last box this weekend. If this can be home, even just for now, let it be so. No more holding back. If this is where we're meant to be, we will be, living wholly in this moment and, hopefully, enjoying it.

Moved

After months of waiting we finally moved into my parents' old house. Life is ever changing and I think always for the better. We payed movers, which made life so much easier, but then promptly got to the work of ripping up the million year old carpet on the main level ourselves. A week and a half later, with the help of hubby's Dad, almost all the new laminate is down. We also discovered that the stairs are read solid wood stair-tread underneath. With a little TLC they can be returned to their natural glory. We've discovered some mold (from a leak that a previous contractor swore up and down he fixed), some questionable plumbing (no Mom, duct tape is not the answer to a mis-matched pipe for the sink. Nice try!), and an some trim in the living room that is painted no less than 3 colours in our pumpkin orange living room. I feel like hubby and I are finishing up a lot of half-started projects my parents had once dreamed but never had the time to get to, but in our own way. My parents finally have their dream house, and we, many years younger, have the bare bones of ours and the will and talent (though maybe not the cash flow all the time, haha) to create ours. We're doing our best to make lots of little improvements where we can to make our home our own. Thanks to my parents we have some leftover flooring from their (dare I say gorgeous???) renovations that will help us over the next year to have many full weekends doing over hallways and bathrooms without any financial cost to ourselves. The living room and dining room (which are attached) are getting all the real attention as we want it safe and ready for our kids, playdates and some dinner parties with dear friends we sorely missed.

While our house is blossoming around us, it's hard to ignore that the kids are blossoming too. With more room to roam and bigger bedrooms their imagination and creativity are growing faster than my belly. This is going to be a great summer. We're finally next to a big, useable park that they can just run their wild energy off in, we're walking distance to the library, and best of all we're a 5 minute drive from the greatest friends a family could ask for. I'm also closer to many old friends and some new ones just down the street. Our beautiful, friendly, little neighbourhood from the past 2 years was perfect for our family before, but this is starting to feel right now. Already we've seen more of our friends than we did for months on end at our old home. The visits from my boys' future wives (just kidding!) and my girl's best friends and their parents, truly great friends to us, has made this not just my parents' old house, but our home. Once everything is unpacked and set up I can't imagine how much more comfortable we'll feel!

And then there's the other matter of our marriage! After some struggles to figure out what our family would become, I find myself closer emotionally than ever with my dear husband. He's been working himself to exhaustion day and night to bring home the bacon, and then he works nights and weekends to make good of our renos. His father has been no less than a saint helping him lay down the flooring and I can't thank him enough. I have the best intentions, but being ponderously pregnant I'm about as useful as a bag of hammers with our renos. So, thanks to Hubby's Dad! Meanwhile hubby himself has been quietly doing his best to accomplish the hundreds of necessary little tasks to makes this all work. While I sit in the recliner complaining about Braxton-hicks he's got an open ear while he plods away taking out an outdated and useless closet he will make into a hutch/display cabinet/toy storage. I love him more in his quiet dedication to our home and our family. He is truly the King of our family, and it shows in the eyes of our children. He is now the preferred parent for boo-boos, story time, and play time. Being big and preggo this of course suits me fine. Seeing our wee boy reach up with little squeals of "Da! Da!" is the finest moment of any day. We are so blessed to be a family.

After a lot of rambling I'm left with the profound sense of how blessed I am. Blessed with shelter, family, friends and a wonderful marriage. My complaints and rants (trust me, I've had a few) are overwhelmed by my sense that Providence has always been with us and always will be. With God so clearly leading us through our sorrows to constant joy we will surely be fine!