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ten years

6 Comments

Exactly ten years ago this month, I started a blog.

I told exactly no one. Not even my husband.

My first baby was six months old. I was working part-time, overwhelmed and tired. I craved connection and community. I wanted breadth of thought and depth of prayer.

I couldn’t find anything like what I wanted to read. So I decided to write it.

I started writing quietly, typing one-handed in the dark, plodding out post after post that no one read. I didn’t care; I loved it. My brain started spinning again.

After a few weeks I did tell my beloved. After a few months I got brave and shared the blog with a handful of friends and family.

I never expected it to amount to anything. Just a place for me to practice writing, to ponder spirituality and parenting, part of my transition from theological studies to new motherhood.

Then a funny thing happened along the way. Writing turned into a calling that changed my life.

. . .

Readers will ask me now how to get started. How to turn their passion into pages in a book. How to transform pain into words for others. How to get noticed, get paid, get published.

Never does my imposter syndrome flare higher than when someone asks this question. I have no idea, truthfully. I had no plan.

I kept going only because I’m curious and stubborn and happiest when I’m curled up in a corner with words and God.

But after 10 years, I do know this much. You don’t need to be an English major or get a MFA. You don’t need to sound like everyone else or earn anyone’s permission. You don’t need connections or clout, a platform or a plan for marketing.

You just need a deep sense of calling that drives you, even into the darkness.
That blaze will keep you burning even when others fizzle out. That flame will fuel you through frustration and rejection, weary weeks and fallow seasons.

A stubborn streak helps, too. So does the sheer pleasure of playing with words.

Because you don’t do creative work for anyone else. You don’t do it to get rich or noticed or successful. You do it because you were created for it. You are a happier, healthier human when you carve out even the smallest time and space to pursue whatever quirky creative passion you love.

Blogging led me where I never expected. The chance to write books, yes. But I discovered God in ways I never imagined. I made connections who became dear friends. I found readers who wanted the exact words I needed to share.

All because I was lost and lonely and let the quiet calling voice inside me lead me out of the wilderness, over and over.

. . .

Happy anniversary, little blog. Happy birthday, writing life.

You brought me more than I ever expected: a calling that changed where I was headed.

So here’s to all the hours spent in this space. Here’s to Saturdays at coffee shops, early mornings and late nights while everyone else was sleeping. Here’s to learning how to write in the chaos of life with kids. Here’s to every good “yes” and good “no” that made space for this vocation to grow.

And here’s to my deepest, wildest hope that the last ten years were only the beginning.

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Comments

  1. Erin says

    17 February 2020 at 10:00 am

    I’m so glad you created this blog! Your words are always beautiful and I find God in what you share.
    (I quoted you on my website too, btw).❤️

    Reply
  2. Susan Balling says

    18 February 2020 at 5:57 am

    OMG- I remember St John’s In class, maybe 15 years ago, in the Dr “Deacon”.. I’m Susan, remember? You are very young and smiling a lot!! Lol take care Laura, Chaplain Susan ❤️

    Reply
  3. Jennifer says

    22 February 2020 at 9:01 am

    Laura, I’ve read your blog for many of the past 10 years (when I started reading, I had no idea how long you’d been posting, but I’m SO glad I found it). As a fellow Domer, and a woman struggling with aspects of fertility and parenthood, your posts have delved where I needed them (and where no place else could touch). That blog you started 10 years ago, the one you wrote because you couldn’t find anything else like what you needed to read, has been SO MUCH of what I have needed. Thank you for filling the gap! Thank you for giving voice to tender emotions and for wrapping faith into these deeply felt topics!

    Reply
  4. steph says

    23 February 2020 at 1:17 am

    It takes a lot of courage to pen down your thoughts and share them with the world without caring about how people are going to judge you. Ten years is a very long time to keep doing it, more power to you and Happy 10th Anniversary to your blog.

    Reply
  5. Anna says

    28 February 2020 at 9:54 am

    Thank you. That was very beautiful. I needed to here that.

    Reply
  6. MARGARET GROSSMAN says

    9 May 2020 at 6:02 pm

    Your drift into writing books made me smile because I had practically the opposite experience in more than one way. When I was a bout 30 I felt compelled to write a beautiful children’s book about the Eucharist because I struggled with my 9 small children’s questions like, “In God’s house where is God”? “Jesus is behind those tiny doors?” Etc. I never felt I was convincing and needed some “show and tell”. I never found what I needed but was determined at least to help other parents!! It took me many years but “God’s Greatest Miracle” finally happened. I have so many great testimonials including one from the bishop. If you are interested you can see a sample video at http://www.godsgreatestmiracle.com . We dearly miss these days that holy Host, that physical Jesus. 🙁
    PS . My family knows St. John’s well!

    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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Watch me try not to laugh while my kids are scream Watch me try not to laugh while my kids are screaming upstairs at my spouse while I muse on motherhood & creativity 😝

Check out @grottonetwork for thoughtful reflections on relationships, work, faith, and life’s big questions. And let yourself thank someone this week for the creative work of nurturing new life in you!
Pilgrimage update! I shared in my last newsletter Pilgrimage update! I shared in my last newsletter that we were able to add Chartres & Mont-St-Michel to our itinerary, plus an extra day in Paris. Three of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, so I can’t wait to pray there with you on pilgrimage in October. Check out my bio for details.

Want to hear more about the trip? Join me on Friday, May 6th, at 1:30 pm CT for an Instagram Live with Claire Swinarski - founder of @thecatholicfeminist & leader of last year’s pilgrimage to France with @selectinternationaltours 

Claire will share her experience on pilgrimage, her favorite places in France, & her wisdom for anyone thinking about joining us this fall. 

Have you ever been to France? Or made a pilgrimage? I’d love to hear your favorites!

#pilgrimage #travelwithselect #holyplaces #travel2022 #france #thesacredway2022
For years these words hung on the wall of my offic For years these words hung on the wall of my office. A reminder to behold the beauty in the ordinary.

I took them down after grief tore apart my world. Normal days, what a joke.

But years later I pulled the words out again. Turned out they were true, of course.

I had always caught my breath at the line about war, barely able to imagine longing for boring days from bloody battlefields.

Today I keep the wise words before my eyes again, as a way to keep praying for Ukraine.

For all the places where war or violence make for (ab)normal days.

May the common rock of any ordinary day we’re given remind us to remember all whose earth is upheaved right now.
The sun came out for the first time in days (weeks The sun came out for the first time in days (weeks? gloomy where you are, too?).

So I followed every ladybug in the bedroom to the window, closed my eyes and sunned my face. I could have curled up like a cat for hours. But the sun slipped back, retreating behind the grey wall as quickly as it came.

May today hold a gentle reminder to turn wherever you find the light, to let it warm and delight you. The spiritual practice of sunning ourselves (for a whole holy second!) is not trite or toxic: we are creatures who crave what is good and this is not wrong.

If you linger there for a moment, to remember God and grace and any good gift that has been poured out upon you, unasked or undeserved, you can return for a flash to the Source of your Being.

All the Psalms about the sun sing the same. We were made for the Great Light.
I spent years wondering about the opposite of grie I spent years wondering about the opposite of grief.

Would it be joy? To hold happiness again, to have tears turned into dancing?

Would it be gain? To find what was lost? To have arms full again around the ones I love?

Would it be peace? To breathe into the space of calm? To soak up healing as balm?

This morning I rose and realized: the opposite of grief is Easter.

Joy, gain, peace, hope, love, healing—all of it rolled into one and heaps more besides.

You know that awful feeling in grief’s first weeks, after someone you love has died, when you rise and remember yourself back into reality, and the grief-pain of loss washes over you again? The terrible turning moments that torpedo the day.

Easter Monday was the first morning that humans got to experience the utter opposite.

The undoing of what seemed undone. The resurrection of what looked impossible to restore.

The flip side of every grief and loss.

This morning I pictured the women rising again on Monday, the first ones to find and preach the Resurrection.

What joy & delight & hope & astonishment must have washed across their faces in their first few moments after waking, as they remembered themselves back into a world made new.

This is what every single one of us has yearned for, in the impossible imagination after loss. What if I could wake up and they would be back here again?

Exactly what all who loved him found when they woke up on Monday morning.

Now we only taste it, glimpse it, grasp it for a moment—but one day it will rise for us and never leave.

The opposite of grief is here.
To see others in pain while you are in pain— To To see others in pain
while you are in pain—
To reach out to the grieving
while others are grieving for you—
To lift up the least
while you are the greatest—
To speak to the suffering of women
while your own body is suffering—
To stop for others
while you walk the hardest road—

Until now I never noticed how much it meant that Jesus stopped for the women of Jerusalem.

He stops for the women of Ukraine, the women of Juarez, the women of Afghanistan, women everywhere who suffer and grieve and mourn.
 
He stops for them and for us. He tells us not to weep for him but to weep for this world, not to despair of the present but to steel ourselves for the future, not to lament unless we are willing to change.

What is he calling me to grieve? How is he calling me to change?

What might he see in us—our lives, our sorrows, our griefs, even our bodies—that we have not let ourselves lament?
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