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everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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turning a corner

7 Comments

Tomorrow I’m giving my first presentation on my book, Everyday Sacrament.

We’ll be talking about spirituality of parenting and simple practices to connect with God in the chaos of life with children. The sacrament of parenting.

This morning I’m brimming with energy: a little nervous and a lot excited. Tomorrow will be a whole new way of sharing my book with the world, all these hopes and ideas and dreams I’ve pondered in the late-night hours while nursing babies and washing dishes and folding laundry.

imagePouring time and energy into writing about everyday parenting as a spiritual practice is a solitary way to spend one’s days.

Lots of stolen moments holed up in my office. Lots of late nights curled around a cup of tea. Lots of wondering – amidst the wildness of chasing three little boys – how God speaks to us in ordinary moments.

It’s not the slickest subject for a blog, not the sexiest subject for a book. But this work resonates so deeply with who I am and what I believe that I know it is a worthy way to spend my time. I know it is a calling.

So I’m eager to make this move now, to shift for a season from writing to speaking. Hoping to invite more people into conversations about the deeper meaning of our vocation as parents.

I’m ready to turn this corner.

. . .

I was so relieved to turn the calendar page to January this year.

2015 feels like fresh air. Deep cleansing breaths. Every slow and simple metaphor that reminds me to pause and take stock of where we have been and where we are going.

The end of 2014 was frantic and frenzied. No child care, lots of work, husband abroad, everyone sick, holiday rush. We lived at an unsustainable pace, and our minds and bodies paid the price. We limped into New Year’s knowing that we needed January 1st.

Maybe more than ever.

Ever since we hung fresh calendars on the kitchen wall, I have felt the turning. We rounded a welcome corner, and we are all better for a new start. The kids are calmer after the holiday sugar-fest has ceased and the presents are put away. The house is settling into sparser, simpler space as we take down decorations.

And I’m relearning the power of inversion. Starting with the important, not the urgent. Catching myself before I slip into old, agitated ways. Watching with wonder as life falls into place more peacefully than when I wrestle with anxious desire to control.

I’m turning habits inside out. Putting people ahead of tasks. Trusting that God will provide the time and space for good to happen.

And it feels so right. Like the awakening inhale of cold morning air that clears the head and opens the eyes.

. . .

image

We all need to turn corners.

This is why resolutions resonate with us, year after year, isn’t it? Our shared dream of carving out more space to become the person we hope to become.

Sabbath offers us a weekly turning, too. A reminder that we are made for rest, not rush. A call back to God’s ways, not our ways.

I hope you are finding spaciousness in your new year. I hope you are settling into January’s clear horizons with hope.

I hope you are turning corners, too.

The new year always brings us what we want
Simply by bringing us along – to see
A calendar with every day uncrossed,
A field of snow without a single footprint.

– from “New Year’s” by Dana Goia 

P.S. I’ve also freshened up the blog’s look for the new year! For all you lovely email subscribers, I hope you’ll click over and tell me what you think…And if you haven’t yet subscribed to Mothering Spirit, sign up to receive new posts right in your inbox!

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. K. Woll says

    17 January 2015 at 12:11 pm

    Congrats to Laura, and good luck! So impressed by what you have created and continue to create …

    Reply
  2. Abbey @ Surviving Our Blessings says

    17 January 2015 at 6:39 pm

    Prayers and warm thoughts for you as you turn your corner and start your speaking career. 🙂 I really like the new look here, but I miss seeing your smiling face at the top!

    Reply
    • Laura says

      20 January 2015 at 12:36 pm

      🙂 Thanks, Abbey! Actually I miss the photo of the boys more…still have to find a new home for those cuties.

      Reply
  3. Laurel Muff says

    17 January 2015 at 7:04 pm

    I LOVE THE UPDATE!!! So beautiful! Are you coming to California to speak?? My mothers’ group is going to be reading your book for our get togethers this year. Can’t wait to dive into it! 🙂

    Reply
    • Laura says

      20 January 2015 at 12:36 pm

      Laurel, you are awesome! 🙂 Thank you for your encouragement & support. I would love to come to CA (and not just b/c it’s winter in Minnesota). I’ll keep you posted! Can’t wait to hear how your mothers’ group finds the book, too!

      Reply
  4. Faith Yassick says

    18 January 2015 at 9:10 pm

    Laura: So inspired by your book. I received it for Christmas. It is a must read for all new mothers! Congratulations

    Reply
    • Laura says

      20 January 2015 at 12:34 pm

      Thank you so much, Faith! I am so touched by your words!

      Reply

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About Laura

I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

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thismessygrace

thismessygrace
If our daughters had lived, we never would have pl If our daughters had lived, we never would have planted this garden. 

There are pockets of beauty in my life today that could not have existed if they had survived.

Acknowledging this does not mean I accept their loss. Or that I wouldn’t trade it all to have them here instead.

But the grieving know this strange, stubborn, saving truth: that goodness can grow in the gaping holes left by the ones we love.

I don’t know any simple ways to make sense of the hard times in which we’re living. As a porous soul, I feel it all and it breaks my heart, even as I cling to what I know is true.

But loving and losing my girls has taught me that life is both heart-breaking and resilient, that surviving is more complicated than we suspect, that most people are walking around shattered beneath the surface.

Sometimes I can catch a glimpse of it, searing as sunlight: the grief in someone’s eyes behind their anger, the burden sagging their shoulders, the past that’s poisoning their present. Few things have transformed my life more than learning to recognize pain in others.

Grief is a long letting go of a life you thought you’d have. Most of us are carrying more of it than we realize—or remember when we’re dealing with each other (especially when we’re tearing each other down).

Go gentle today. Practicing compassion and generosity of spirit will crack open more of the world and its confounding struggles. You might lose the satisfying clarity you clung to before life broke your heart in complicated ways, but you will find more of God in the messy, maddening middle.

I have learned this much from the garden I never planned to plant, from a version of life I never dreamed.
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
Since June is a month for graduations & celebrations, I’m delighted to help you celebrate with @grottonetwork .

Grotto Network shares stories about life, work, faith, relationships, and more. Check out their videos, podcast, and articles to help you reflect on where you are in your journey.
 
Grotto Network has generously given 2-$100 gift cards to Bloomin’ Brands Restaurants (Outback, Carrabba’s, Bonefish Grill & more) to help you celebrate this month with friends & family! It’s a huge giveaway, because we all need to savor and celebrate whatever joy we can find these days.
 
To enter the giveaway, follow @grottonetwork and @thismessygrace and leave a comment below about what you’re celebrating this month. Tag a friend for extra entries (up to 3).
 
Rules: Open to the U.S. only. Entries will be accepted until 6/11/22 at 11:59 pm CT. The 2 winners will be chosen at random and announced on 6/12/22. Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram's terms of use.
“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
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