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Mothering Spirit

everyday parenting as spiritual practice

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After Loss
- what to do when a friend loses a baby
- what to do for kids when their sibling dies
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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

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

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The tomatoes ripened under my nose. I didn’t even notice.

Green from the garden, too hard and unripe. Could autumn’s thin sun make any difference?

Turns out two neglected weeks were all they needed to surprise me with rosy red.

People ask me how I’m doing, long past the point where most pregnant women can chirp, “Great!” My auto-response is “still sick” with a sigh. But now I catch myself.
The tomatoes remind me to tell the truth. The ripe, round work of slow change.

I don’t fall asleep on the couch after dinner any more. I’ve cut down to half my dosage on the dreaded anti-nausea meds. I don’t get sick every day. So even if I don’t feel good? I feel different.

Change worth noting.

Even if it’s still on the way. Even if it’s not the end I crave.

How often do we forget to notice growth ripening under our noses?

Think back on the past month or the last year. You’ve changed in ways you haven’t stopped to see. You’ve grown in places you hadn’t expected.

November is a thanksgiving month, but too often the obvious is what we mention around the holiday table.

What about the hidden, subtle changes? What about our hopes that we haven’t shared with a soul? What about the surprising ways God is turning over the hardened soil of our hearts?

You can ripen in winter sun. You can transform before your own eyes.

Growth surprises us—where it’s not supposed to happen, outside the normal bounds of expectations.

How summer-sweet is that truth, even as winter winds blow?

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“I’m doing that this year!” I yelp at the library display, startling my sons who are walking out the door, laden with stacks of books. They turn wide-eyed, confused why I’m yelling where they’re supposed to be quiet.

The 8-year old squints at the typewriter, suspicious. “What is it?” I babble about typewriters and computers and getting up early and writing a book in a month.

He eyes the number at the top of the sign. “So you’re writing 50,000 words?” “Well, no,” my heart sinks a little. “I’ll never write that much. But it’s writing every day that counts.” “How many words,” he juts out his chin. Statement, not question. “4,000 words this week, I think?” Suddenly I am toe to toe with a tough editor. “And you’re writing a novel?” “Well, no. I don’t write fiction. But it’s still a book.” “Oh.” He turns, bored, and follows his brothers out the door. Unfazed, unimpressed.

Meanwhile I am delighting, crowing at the dim display. Meanwhile I am remembering the thrill of writing when no one else knows, reads, cares. Meanwhile I am wondering who else might be sitting in the library each day, typing out a dream.

Meanwhile I am remembering that this is what turns passion into calling. You do it when you have no time. You slog through alone but leap when others are with you. You do it for no practical reason. You lose yourself in the doing. You are most yourself while you do it.

I am doing something new! whispers the soul voice deep inside. It’s nothing like I’ve done before, and it’s not on anyone else’s deadline, and it’s waking up part of me that has long laid dormant.

Praise be to the unknown creation, the crazy ones up at dawn, the weavers and wedgers of precious free time. Praise to the beginners, the dreamers, the wanderers. Praise to the truth that cold dead earth is alive under our feet, preparing already for another spring. Praise for dark mornings and late nights and sitting down in the worn chair to see what might creep up. Praise to any small good by month’s end that might not have existed otherwise. Praise to dreary Novembers, praise to fresh dreams, praise to skeptical 8 year-olds, praise to NaNoEverything.

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Our latest ultrasound pictures tossed atop on the book we wrote about miscarriage. (Who can carry all that?) A crumpled Zofran wrapper next to the chai celebrating the halfway point. (Who’s still sick by now?) Ironic comments from strangers, eyes bulging. (Are you sure it’s not twins?) Pregnancy for me is a pile of contradictions. Loss heightens each one, makes it sharper, bolder, impossible to ignore.

How to be both? Mother and mourner. Expectant and anxious. Sick and healthy. Hopeful and hurting.

When I was younger, I expected the world to become clearer. Now I see the muddled grey: tensions, complexities, contradictions. But I also find God in-between, the cracks and crevices, the shards of light in darkness.

November is a month for gratitude. And a month to pray for our beloved dead.

Can we do both? Live on opposite sides?

Of course. Because life is not a neat equation. It’s an experiment, an evolution. Grace brings growth, not always the answers we seek.

Every day of this pregnancy, impossibilities surround me. And every day I remind myself:
good thing that ours is a God of impossibilities. ✨gorgeous hand-lettering from @fawnlyprints ✨

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I wrote it for you.

True confession: every single time I write here, I push "publish"—and then cold sinking regret seizes my stomach.

Cue the inner voice of resistance:

That was so stupid.
People are going to laugh, or tear it apart, or tell you you're an idiot.
The Internet is mean, and you should leave.
None of this makes a difference.
You have nothing new to say, nothing of worth.
You should be quiet.

I have gone enough rounds with this evil liar to know it's not a holy voice. I hush it down and try to get back to work. Over the years it's quieted a little, but it's brilliant at rushing back. I bet you have an inner voice like this, too.

But then something miraculous can happen. One stranger reaches out and says: thank you. I get this. I needed this today.

That's when the evil voice shrivels up and scurries back to the dark dank corner. I let out a breath and remember: that's right. I wrote it for you.

Everything I write, I've learned, is that way. It's scary, vulnerable, daunting, doubt-filled—but then only one person reaches out to say: me, too. And I realize all over again: I did that for you. I do this for you.

One cold cup of water. That's what He asked us to give each other (Mt 10:42). It's a word or a smile or an hour of our time. It's a meal served with love, a ministry of presence, a good work given for another.

I wrote this for you. I poured this water for you.

I cannot change the world, right the wrongs, fix the broken, save the oppressed, turn what is twisted back on its axis. But I can write one small truth for someone who might need it.

Whatever your gift, you can give it to one person today, too.

One voice can be strong enough to lift another. One small act of love can turn a life around.

You should never have wasted your time, whispers the lie.
I did it for you, speaks the truth.

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All Saints. All Souls.

For the first time, I hear these feasts as a rallying cry. God’s hope. God’s dream.

The radical vision that all souls might became saints. That the banquet of heaven might be stretched farther than the human eye could ever see.

Fear makes us Pharisees. We want to count ourselves in, so we count others out. We narrow our vision. We constrict our mercy.

But ours is a God who leaves the righteous to seek the sinner. Who cares about the lost coin, the wayward sheep, the prodigal son. Who runs out to meet us while we are still a long way off.

All Saints. All Souls. I hear them today as the simplest statement of faith. Humans have a knack for complicating what God made wonderfully simple. There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, and it is for all souls, all saints.

I find it fascinating, our fear that widening the circle means watering down the truth. That if others have more mercy, I will have less. What about a theology of abundance, not scarcity? What about a stance of compassion, not fear?

All Saints. All Souls. It’s a completely crazy notion. We want to tug it back down to earth, wrestle it into something less radical. A Few Saints. Some Souls. The Rest Out.

These feasts of Hallowtide stand among the holiest days of the year. Thin places in the calendar, where the veil between heaven and earth might be pulled back for a shimmering second to let us peer through. Imagine our surprise when we get to the other side and find who’s there, too.

All Saints. All Souls. What if these names were less definitional and more aspirational—who we are called to become? Held together as God’s great vision. The dream of Jesus who shared the table with sex workers and slimy politicians. The Christ who feeds billions every single Sunday with his own bread-become-body.

If I lose sight of the radical way of this Lord, if I close my ears to the cry of those that God calls me to serve, if I limit the love I’m willing to dole out in God’s name—then my only prayer is that God’s mercy is as wide as I hope.

All Saints. All Souls.

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I wish we lived each day the way we live tonight.

Caring as community for our children. Opening the door to strangers with a smile. Sharing something sweet. Asking nothing in return.

I know it’s easy to get cynical about Halloween. Commercialized. Gory. Consumerist. Dark. Unhealthy. Exploitative.

But I choose to see it a day of practicing what it means to be neighbor, in the smallest way possible.

I’ve been hanging around Benedictines too long not to be haunted by the good saint’s words: that all guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.

If I believed that, would it change how I opened the door?

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