Essays
Why I Stay
There are days when I wonder why I’m still in the Church. Days when I am so jaded by the politics and hypocrisy and scandals that too often haunt our Christian communities that I wonder if there is anything left of the Church worth staying for. Is there anything left for my children to learn,…
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Fighting For Our Lives
“I am very frustrated. I don’t understand why you can’t just be confident in our care!” My perinatal specialist yelled these words to me when I was around 24 weeks pregnant with quadruplets. Why? Because I was asking her questions about what my children’s birth might look like. Up to this point, no one had…
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Becoming Mama Bear: How losing my husband introduced me to a ferocious divine love
When our children were young, my husband Rob and I often took them for hikes in the nearby Cascade Mountains outside our home in Seattle. Home to approximately 20,000 black bears, Washington’s mountains required a healthy respect for wilderness, and we taught our kids how to do it. A hearty “Hey, bear!” alerted furry neighbors…
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She Never Regretted Her Yes
During the June after my triplets’ junior year of high school, I signed up for a five-day silent retreat about three hours north of my home. Right off the bat, I thought twice about going since I knew we were heading into their senior year, the last year they would live at home. Part of me…
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Forever Intertwined: Generations Together through Birth and Death
2021 was a gut-wrenching year for our family, but it didn’t start that way. On a late January evening, my husband and I went on a much-needed date, talking over tacos and margaritas. I remember thinking that my period was late, and when we got home from our date, I took a pregnancy test “just…
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The Courage in My DNA
I grew up as an only child, born to a single mother. For most of my life, until I became a mom at 16, it was just me and my mom. She grew up in extreme poverty raised by a mother who had been raised in even more extreme poverty, and each of us had…
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Befriending An Introvert
A handmade wooden sign hangs front and center in my living room with the words “we belong to each other”—a visible reminder that God created us for relationship. The snippet is from a longer quote attributed to Saint Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa): “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that…
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Complicated Joy
For all of the beauty found in celebrating the liturgical year, I find that marking milestones by these holy seasons and rituals has a tendency to make whatever experience that much more intense and emotional for me. Pregnancy announcements during Advent—potent. Witnessing conversion and Baptism at Easter Vigil—stick a fork in me. Gifts of selflessness…
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Sacred Remnant: Discovering A Hidden Treasure in My Grandmother’s Life Story
In the thick of the global pandemic when the whole world was wearied by the constant weight of pivoting to carry the newest very hard thing, our family lost its matriarch. My maternal grandmother, Margarita “Mague” Moreno, passed away on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in December of 2020. Although stricken with grief,…
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Finding Rocks on The Way
No cloud in sight, the sun shines and sparkles on the water. Isaac runs ahead of me and perches on the side of the creek, his shoulders resting on his knees with his hands clasped together. He holds this posture, like a scientist pondering the workings of the world. I come beside him and sit…
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Forgiving when you want to burn the world down
We live in a world that is based on relationships. Not many of us are called to live the life of a hermit, and that means that we interact with people on a daily basis. Most of those interactions are favorable and bring us nothing but joy and good feelings. Other interactions are more transactional…
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Who is Our Neighbor?
I was hurrying, for no reason, really, except that that’s what grown-ups do. My four-year-old and I were taking another pandemic-necessitated walk around the block, passing houses, gardens, and cars we’d already seen dozens of times. Maybe hundreds. Judging by my son’s exclamations and endless stops to examine things, though, it may as well have…
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