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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.

What’s your soul time of day? Mine is right her

What’s your soul time of day?

Mine is right here. Dark before dawn. Quiet house. Cup of tea. Good words. Blank page.

Seasons come and go. Time ebbs and flows. Other needs come first: new babies, sick kids, changed routines. I learn to let go, trusting I will find my way back. I pray on the go. I carve creativity into other corners. I warm up the cold tea.

But here is when my soul settles, content and calm.

Theologically I cannot claim there’s more of God here. Everywhere and always, full and brimming, is Emmanuel. But here and now I slow down enough to notice.

When I was younger, wilder, freer by the world’s definition, I loved the electricity of evening. The excitement of getting ready to go out. Anything could happen tonight.

Now I need the possibility of fresh mornings and new light. The promise of a broken world beginning again. The prayer of peace’s calm current running deep.

We are made for different times and places, early birds and night owls. The God who never slumbers or sleeps watches over us, each one, each hour.

What time of day brings you home?

Count the ordinary. Make it count.

Right now we’re in the slim stretch of Ordinary Time, caught between Christmas and Lent. Ordinary because it’s ordered (“ordinal” means “counted”). But ordinary off the calendar, too.

Ordinary because the decorations are packed away and the world looks plain again. Ordinary because (ironically) we aren’t counting down. Ordinary because time tends to slip by unnoticed. Another school week, another work deadline, another month flipped on the calendar.

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd has a simple way of teaching children about liturgical seasons and colors—with a depth that most adults miss. Purple is for preparing (Advent and Lent). White is for celebrating (Christmas and Easter). Green is for growing (Ordinary Time). Growing time matters because this is when we live out the great feasts. When we let Christmas take root in our lives. When we fold Easter’s mysteries into our everyday. When we let ourselves be transformed, over mundane Mondays and weary Wednesdays, into new creations.

Right now I am wrapped in growing time, edging toward the end of pregnancy. Each week my face is rounder, my thighs thicker, my belly wider. I cannot escape ordinary growth.

But tucked inside this ordinary/ordinal season is extraordinary growth: from two cells to two kicking legs and stretching arms. The most mundane countdown since humans began. Yet mysterious each growing time.

Here, too, is God. In the growing and the ordinary. In the between and the not-yet.
How can we make this time count, too? This plain green, this quiet growth, this steady chronos?

Watch the cold milk streaming as you fill the cup, miracle from farm to fridge. Notice how morning sun goldens even drab office buildings. Marvel at tiny birds perched on electric wires, protected by nature from what shocks us.

Incarnation and Resurrection echo around us. If you can’t hear them, unplug everything (including you) and listen slower. God loves to grow in the smallest spaces and places. “It is really through ordinary human life and the things of every hour of every day that union with God comes about.” (Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God)

What is seen and unseen. Watching breath is one o

What is seen and unseen.

Watching breath is one of my few favorite parts about frigid winter.

The invisible becoming visible. Split-second ghostly white. Life’s essence, exposed.

What is thin becoming thick. What is hidden becoming held in mid-air.

A mundane mystery, caught at the gas pump as I blow on my gloves against the bitter cold. How a new season can reveal what was once buried within. How the God we cannot see is glimpsed in the everyday ephemeral.

What is seen and unseen.

Every Sunday I stand up and say strange things out loud with strangers. Like this lovely line: I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life.

Instinctively, through these years of swelling bellies and kicking babies, I reach to rub my side as if to remind us both: you were Given.
You who are now within, out of reach, out of sight. You who are holy, given from Holy.

Still invisible. Still unseen.

In mere weeks his lungs will draw breath and push it back. Fragile and strong.

We will bundle him into winter wind as our own breath freezes. Foolish and brave.

But here we are, each of us. Once invisible, now visible. Each life given from Life. Breath and soul, body and spirit. What is seen and unseen.

What if we could open our eyes wider? What else is waiting to be seen in this strange season before us?

In the heart-sick of infertility. After the divor

In the heart-sick of infertility.

After the divorce.

When your mom died.

As you fell in love.

When you relapsed.

During that beautiful summer.

As you stared at the pregnancy test.

After the cancer diagnosis.

In the midst of depression.

When you dropped out of school.

During that crazy move.

As you quit that job.

Once the truth became clear.

After you lost your faith.

When you found it again, anew.

In all those times and places, seasons and stages, God was there, too. God is here now.

This presence is the most powerful fact of our existence—and the hardest to believe.

If you've ever wandered lost, wondering where God is or does God care? This book is for you. If you're so full of joy and hope that your heart might explode? This is for you. If you fear that no one else knows the darkness where you are, this is for you. If you want to know where God is calling you next, this is for you.

Truth is, this book is for all of us. Because Lent is for all of us. Because stories—in Scripture and in our lives—are what make us human.

Because God is with us, everywhere and always, Emmanuel.

#bislent #heretoobook

Here’s the brand-new Lent book from @blessedissh

I’m exhausted every night, crawling under covers

I’m exhausted every night, crawling under covers at a child’s bedtime.

I have the worst pregnant-brain of my life. I forget details, leave things in strange places, can’t remember obvious to-dos of daily life.

I’m achy and big. I can’t get comfortable, no matter what I try.

And yet my brain is on FIRE.

For all that my body feels trapped and tired in the 3rd trimester, I could write for hours (and do). Whatever creative forces are putting finishing touches on baby are firing at full force in my mind, too.

I’ve never been this tired in pregnancy, but I’ve also never been this generative. I marvel at how it’s coming from outside me, even as life is growing within me.

I know what’s coming: a year of sleepless nights and running on fumes. So I have no shame in seizing every spare moment I have to let the words pour out. Whatever they become later is not my concern.

Every season brings pains and possibilities. But we get to choose what defines us.

No matter where these words go, I will remember they were born here. Amid aches and pains and a hundred exhausted nights. 💛

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