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everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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Seasons of Church & Home

let’s retreat together for Epiphany

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Happy New Year! We're on the cusp of change, one of my favorite places to be. While turning the calendar to 2021 won't miraculously bring peace or healing, I do love fresh starts and new beginnings. So I pray this new year will bring true goodness and lasting joy in the days and weeks to come. Because I'm a lover of New Year's, I always want to spend this time in prayer and reflection. Like many of you, I'm craving connection and conversation in the midst of life at home. So as I prepared for what January might bring, I dreamt up the idea of a virtual retreat. Epiphany: A New Year's Retreat will come to you in the comfort of your own home from January 7-10, 2021. Find out more here. Together we’ll explore the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew: surprising dreams, unexpected visitors, turbulent times, and life-changing callings. These Scripture stories will come alive in new ways as we bring them to prayer, reflecting on our own lives, questions, and challenges.  The … [Read more...] about let’s retreat together for Epiphany

Here, Too: the new Lent book

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I remember where I was sitting when I got the idea. In the middle of a writing workshop on time and place in memoir. How to deal with challenges of chronology and context. As often happens, my mind leapt from the question at hand to a brand-new idea. What about a book on the times and places that God meets us? I mentally wandered away the class for fifteen minutes, scribbling in the back of my notebook. Metaphors and memories, stories from Scripture and stories from our lives. On the road. In the desert. At home. In the storms. I scanned the list, satisfied. Something there, for sure. But I remembered my own time and place, turned back to the teacher, closed the notebook, and forgot all about it. Until Jenna and I got to talking about Lent last year. Thanks to the work of a team of beautiful writers and a brilliant designer, that book is now brought to life. Here, Too: Where We Meet God is the Blessed Is She Lent book for 2020. A journey through seven places … [Read more...] about Here, Too: the new Lent book

looking back, looking forward

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I have no shame in confessing: I love New Year's. It's a holiday that many love to hate, artificial or over-hyped. But I adore looking back and looking forward, pondering what was and planning for what might be. (I also love champagne, resolutions, countdowns, goofy party hats, and cheesy crowd songs at midnight. So this time of year is my JAM.) As part of my New Year's affection, I will read any top-10 round-up. Movies I didn't see, books I didn't read, sports I didn't follow? Who cares. I love a good best-of. So for my own amusement, I pulled together a review of the most-read posts on Mothering Spirit in 2019. But first: a preview of what's new for 2020 Big changes are on the horizon. A new baby due in March, and lots of shifting our lives around to make room for him. As our family grows, I've been deep in discernment. How can I keep making time for the writing I love while still caring for the family that also calls me? That's where you come in. In … [Read more...] about looking back, looking forward

the whole story

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The told story is not the whole story. We tend to grasp onto moments as the whole. In a culture obsessed with tiny tweets and shiny surfaces, it's easier to outrage or comfort ourselves with sound bytes that echo the thoughts between our ears, daily dulling our curiosity. We take the smallest sliver for the encompassing everything. But look closer. Deeper. Longer. What you see or hear or read is never the whole story. We hear this exhortation to empathy often now, in our dealings with loved ones and strangers alike. To remember that so much hides below the surface, that you never know the depths of another's struggles. But every story holds this same mystery. Take one small line from Scripture. Did you ever notice that Mary and Elizabeth spent a whole trimester together? The Visitation was not a mere afternoon or a split second of joy. It lasted three long months. Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home. (Luke 1:56) A single … [Read more...] about the whole story

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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

Mother, writer, wonderer.
Seeker of God in chaos & life with kids.
Author of Everyday Sacrament & Grieving Together.
Glimpses of grace & gratitude.

thismessygrace
True confession: I never noticed Epiphany. We thr True confession: I never noticed Epiphany.

We three kings, endless rounds at church. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh; got it. Magi made it to the manger; let’s clean up now.

I mistook it for a child’s story, a charming end to Christmas. I missed all the angles of light it waited to shine.

Scripture offers a thousand doors by which to enter any story. If you think you’ve got it All Figured Out, turn around and try another. The Word holds infinite mysteries we have not yet uncovered.

You might discover truth you never expected—an epiphany waiting for you.

(And if you want to dig deeper, I’d love for you to join us on retreat this week!)
Spent the second day of the year staring at these Spent the second day of the year staring at these two hard, glorious truths. Winter makes the most beauty from the coldest nights, and what looks like death is often the beginning.

I stared up into frozen trees for five full minutes, looking like a fool, and I stared into tiny roots of the dying seed for even longer.

Here was God whispering the same truth, with wind blown ice crystals and wheat stalk seeds. You can only glimpse a sliver of the creation you are becoming. Just wait till the wild full bloom is born.

#newyearprayer #catechesisofthegoodshepherd
A viral poem. A premature baby. Birth and death, m A viral poem. A premature baby. Birth and death, masks and murder, a jarring jumble—like nearly every day in 2020.

But still the joy of new life at the center, even with the hard world edging all around.

I expected none of it, all the news that turned the year upside down.

But neither did I expect the truth and hope I found from so many here.

I tagged a few of the friends and voices I have been grateful to listen and learn from this year, changing from what they are teaching me.

Let their words & work & witness encourage you.

Drop your favorite accounts in the comments below, so we can follow them, too?

Here’s to hope, brimming on the horizon. The new year won’t change everything, but it will change us—and we can change each other.
Reminding myself today, to bear light & hope into Reminding myself today, to bear light & hope into a weary world. 🕯
It took all of Advent for me to notice us behind t It took all of Advent for me to notice us behind them.

Beholding in our own exhausted joy.

We never could have prepared for the suffering surrounding that birth. We had no idea how much harder everything was about to turn, on the cusp of the world about to change.

It took all year for me to see that they were showing us that way, too.

Through the impossible.
Through the dark.
Trusting together.
We use short-hand for “the shortest day of the y We use short-hand for “the shortest day of the year” as we inch toward the solstice, but it feels like the opposite.

Darkness stretches longest.

Once upon a time when I used to drive to pick up kids from school (and to think I grumbled! what I wouldn’t give now), December always brought the days when I had to gear up to turn the transmission.

Yes, it’s already dark at 4:30 p.m. Yes, you can venture back out. Yes, you can do this.

Even in these longest, darkest days, you can keep going.

I am writing in the dark right now. Not just because 5:00 a.m. is the sole silent hour left in my day, in a house brimming with humans, every last one prayed for. But because I don’t know what comes next.

None of us do.

The anxiety and uncertainty that dawned last March have become a way of life, our eyes glazing over headline and headline, one unbelievable story after another that would have stopped us in our tracks in years past.

We joke, we snark, we sigh or scroll—all signs of overload. Our minds and bodies cannot take anymore.

What will next year hold? What will Christmas feel like at home, alone or apart? Will New Year’s bring hope?

I don’t know.

But I know we can learn how to do much more in the dark than we thought possible.

So here’s to the longest darkness of the year. Tomorrow will bring more day and we will find more light. The smallest slivers and merest minutes mean the most now.

May we hold tight to the light. May we trust that darkness will not overcome it.
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