2012

On the first morning of the first day of the new year, I cried.   It was ridiculous really. Ed and I were planning to go to Mass at an 11:30am service in town rather than the 9:30am Mass at our local church.  We had to pick up Katie from a sleep over - the family wasn't together for New Year's Eve and we wouldn't all be together for Mass that morning.  So why did I get so upset when my seventeen year old daughter walked out of her room ready to go to the 9:30am Mass? Shouldn't I have been happy that she went to her first New Year's Party with her very sweet boyfriend, came home safe and sound by 12:30 am, and still got up to take herself to morning Mass?

Ridiculous.  Absurd.  But the tears flowed anyway.  And this being the Feast Day of Mary, the Mother of God - the priests homily was all about - motherhood.  I could feel more tears welling up but I willed myself not to cry in the middle of Mass - I was mostly successful.  My dear sweet husband thinks I am too hard on myself, he thinks I am a good mother.

But it is not that I  think I am a bad mother, I have just reached a point where I just don't know how to do this anymore.  At home with babies, toddlers, and young children - that I could do.  Not that I always felt I it did well all the time but I had some kind of compass in my heart that generally showed me the way.  Now I am in some kind of magnetic storm of teens and older children and my compass is just not working like it used to.

How do I keep doing this?  It seems to me only a question I will be able to answer for myself - I think there is a reason we don't hear anything about the Holy Family from the time Jesus is the age of 12 until he is what?  Thirty?!   Heaven help me. And Heaven will help me - I only have to keep asking and ask I will.  From today's Midday prayer (Psalm 40).



I waited, I waited for the Lord
and he stooped down to me;
he heard my cry.

He drew me from the deadly pit,
from the miry clay.
He set my feet upon a rock
and made my footsteps firm.

My resolution this year - firm footsteps.