It's my Birthday and I have a present for you!

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It's January! Time for a fresh start, a new devotional. Just a few minutes a day to Think. Pray. and set an intention to Act accordingly. 

Here's today's entry:

Think

"It is above all in the home that, before ever a word is spoken, children should experience God's love in the love which surrounds them." ~ Blessed John Paul II

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Pray

Dear sweet Lord, before I open my mouth to speak, help me to relax my shoulders and smile. Then, let whatever comes out of my mouth be an expression of your love.

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Act

How do your children experience God's love in your home? When we smile, our faces relflect the joy we have in knowing we are loved unconditionally by our benevolent Father.

Smile at your family today--often.

I have five copies of Small Steps for Catholic Moms to give to you today. I'd like to autograph them for you or for a special mom in your life. Would you give something to me? If you want a copy of the book, please leave a comment with your favorite inspirational quote-- a favorite Bible verse, a quote from a saint, something really great from C. S. Lewis. Tell me what speaks to your heart. 

Five winners will be announced on Monday:-).

needle & thREAD

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{all photos credit: Katie}

This week, I tried to sew all the things that I've been promising the girls we'd sew "this summer." I didn't even come close. Karoline had a sweet piece of needlework long finished, that I'd suggested for a pillow. She chose fabric from the stash and pieced together a bit of a log cabin square. I referred to my pillow tutorial and she made a sweet cover. Delighted doesn't even come close to capturing how she feels about it (and herself). Bonus points: she happens to have a matching sundress. Everyone matches their dresses with their throw pillows, right?

Then, we made some notebook covers. The girls each have a new compostion book for the new school year. Sarah and Kari are using their for journals. Katie calls hers a "conversation book" and she's begun a dialogue with Kristin. Very cute. Kristin's thinking deep thoughts while barfing, by the way.

I've used Rachel's tutorial every time, embellishing a bit differently with each cover.

All in all, some fun playing with pretty fabric just before the school year kicks into high gear. That lofty list of sewing goals? Oh, dear. Time is closing in quickly.

 

In the reading department, this volume has become available at Amazon:-). I've been reading through (which is so not the way it's intended to be read) and pondering ways to create community online around folks who are using the book along with me. There was a book club suggestion on Instagram. Not sure what that would look like. I'd also like to find the way to make the Small Steps Companion Journal available to you in some form even though it's not going to be republished. Thinking thoughts. Dreaming dreams. Dream along with me? I'm happy to hear your thoughts.

What are you reading and sewing this week? 

I am eager to hear!

  Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo (or more) and a brief description of what you're up to? Will you tell us about what you're reading, also? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much.

    Make sure the link you submit is to the URL of your blog post or your specific Flickr photo and not your main blog URL or Flickr Photostream. Please be sure and link to your current needle and theREAD post below in the comments, and not a needle and theREAD post from a previous week. If you don't have a blog, please post a photo to the needle & thREAD group at Flickr. 

       Include a link back to this post in your blog post or on your flickr photo page so that others who may want to join the needle and thREAD fun can find us! Feel free to grab a button here (in one of several colors) so that you can use the button to link:-).

Joy

Joy. Pink, sparkly letters glint the word from my mantel.They’ve been there since Gaudete Sunday and they will remain there through January. Joy. That Christmas morning joy. I want to hold it, keep it, live it  well past the last few notes of “We Three Kings.”

 

Christmas is exhausting. Who’s with me here? Moms? There’s so much heart and soul and effort and energy poured into the tastes and treasures and traditions of the holiday. Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of the soul-gift we are  given.  But when the afternoon light is bouncing off the ornaments and bits of paper and ribbon remain in the corner beneath the tree and I have a moment to sit and be still in the quiet giddiness that comes after Christmas morning, I know joy. I hold it close, examine it carefully, tell myself not to forget.

And then, there is the after-Christmas. This year, in our family, the days after Christmas were filled with even more joy. Our first child was married and the weekend was filled with light, song, and utter delight at the blooming of God’s love. To be married in the octave of Christmas, on the Feast of the Holy Family-- of course that is joy.

 

The happy couple got away for a few days and then returned home to establish their new family in a new household. Meanwhile, back in my household, we prepared to take Patrick to college for the first time. He went a semester early and his leaving caught us a bit by surprise.  He’s bursting with enthusiasm for the adventure. I’m watching bedrooms empty in my home with astonishing speed and helping the children left behind to understand that love in not bound by time or space.

And then there’s the flu. It came to visit, too. Virginia, it’s not Christmas any more.

If it’s genuine joy though, can it be lost? In the tired and the cold and the mundane of the post-holiday days, do we really lose joy?

St. Francis of Assisi wrote “When spiritual joy fills hearts, the Serpent throws off his deadly poison in vain. The devils cannot harm the servant of Christ when they see he is filled with holy joy.” When Christmas fills us, when the Baby truly enters us and stays there, even January is joy.

Mothers, especially, are guardians of joy. Whether we intend to or not, we set the tone in our households. I watch my children carefully and I see the serpents circling. What to do? How to fill their hearts with spiritual joy and banish the serpents from my home? Blessed Mother Teresa gently reminds me that “Joy is infectious; therefore, always be full of joy.” Later, she says, “Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. “ It begins with me. I must fill myself with joy so that it spills into every crevice of my home.

Joy is the Small Steps virtue for January. This January, I'm resolved to teach it, to share, to live it together.

New year’s resolution? To fill heart and soul to overflowing with Jesus so that joy is contagious. To listen to Him daily in the Word. To thank Him always, affirming that He is the font of all blessings and that He is even God over adversity. To trust in His sovereignty and willfully make Him lord of all. To worship Him daily in the Mass. To gratefully take Him into myself in Communion. And to remain in constant conversation. Contagious Christmas Joy. All year ‘round.

Part one here.

needle & thREAD

Hello, sewing friends!

I welcome you to needle and thREAD. What have you been sewing lately? Or are you embroidering? Pulling a needle with thread through lovely fabric to make life more beautiful somehow? Would you share with us just a single photo (or more) and a brief description of what you're up to? Will you tell us about what you're reading, also? Would you talk sewing and books with us? I'd love that so much.

Make sure the link you submit is to the URL of your blog post or your specific Flickr photo and not your main blog URL or Flickr Photostream. Please be sure and link to your current needle and theREAD post below in the comments, and not a needle and theREAD post from a previous week. If you don't have a blog, please post a photo to the needle & thREAD group at Flickr.

       Include a link back to this post in your blog post or on your flickr photo page so that others who may want to join the needle and thREAD fun can find us! Feel free to grab a button here (in one of several colors) so that you can use the button to link:-).

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I finished up the machine sewing on last week's tunic. All that remains now is the handsewing of the facing all the way around the front and back yoke. Um. As soon as I learn what a whipstitch is. Alrighty then.

When we read (and read and read and reread) Crafty Chloe, I promised my girls that we would make doll dresses just like Chloe did. I planned to do all three on one day, letting each of them help with their own, but  I only finished Karoline's. It's amazing how much more slowly this project goes with help;-) Katie does have one from the fall. Sarah Annie doesn't have an 18 inch doll. She's got some lovely baby dolls, though. I need to find a pattern for a baby doll outfit. Anyone have one of those?

It turns out that Karoline's doll will match two of her outfits: both her twirly skirt and her Easter dress were made from Ruby by Bonnie and Camille. Since Karoline chooses that fabric every time she has a choice, I think it's safe to say she's a big fan. And she's got excellent taste. I probably would have chosen a different color thread for the ric-rac, but hey, can't argue with "that's my favorite color ever" and "it matches my eyes." I did, however, deny her request for a matching sundress, even though the pattern for girls is free, too.

I loved working with this free pattern so much. May I just pause here and tell you how much I appreciate Oliver + S and Liesl Gibson's patterns? I've made the Lazy Days Skirts, the capes in Oliver + S: Little Things to Sew, those wonderful Easter dresses, and two of these doll Popover Sundresses. In the context of working with the patterns, I've learned so much. There is just such attention to detail. It seems that every project I've tried has taught me a skill I've carried into projects that aren't Liesl Gibson patterns. I've got to think that's the mark of a good designer, a good teacher, and a good writer. I'm so grateful.

In the reading department, I'm trying to read quickly through a substantial stack of gardening, small plot farming books:

The BackYard Berry Book

The Backyard Orchardist  

The Family Kitchen Garden

The Edible Front Yard

The Essential Urban Farmer

Ooh, and I see The Paper Garden snuck into the picture, too. I saw that at Beth's during a needle & thREAD visit. Tucking away to little read a little of that gem, here and there;-)

So, what about you? What have you been up to this week? Reading, sewing, embroidering? Do share.

Small Steps Together: Patience

It's been ages since I did a Small Steps Together post. I beg your pardon! I decided this morning to begin with today's devotion and just roll with it a bit. I don't have a copy of the book--I've long sold all of mine--so I'm pulling the quote from the manuscript. It very well may be that this quote was edited into another day. If so, I'm going to just assume that God wanted me to think about this one today and go about my merry way.

 

Think: "And when night comes, and you look back over the day and see how fragmentary everything has been, and how much you planned that has gone undone, and all the reasons you have to be embarrassed and ashamed: just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God’s hands and leave it with Him." -- Edith Stein

Pray: Jesus, You fell three times while carrying the cross. Help me see my weaknesses as a call to lean on Your strength and grow ever closer toward You. 

Act: Before you go to bed tonight, write down all of the things you did wrong or failed to accomplish in your day. Pray over your list, asking God to complete you where you fall short. Then crumple up the paper, throw it away, and get a good night's sleep before tackling a new day.

Whew. I've had a lot of nights like this one lately, a lot of fragmentary, embarrassed, and ashamed nights, many, many worried nights, a lot of dreams where all the bumps of the day crowd out peaceful sleep and I awake feeling defeated before I've begun. When I reflect on the plan as it was written in the last few days of August and compare it to where we are today, I am astonished. So much of the landscape has changed in such unexpected, sometimes painful ways! 

I wonder, is this the particular cross of meticulous planners? Do we get nailed more often than those easygoing folks who haven't much of a plan from the beginning? Or, is it a big family thing? In a big family, as children get older, there are so many outside influences on a mother's life. While I can merrily plan away for my own largish brood, I can't really begin to predict how the friends and teachers and coaches and employers in their lives are going to act. Throw in unexpected medical issues. Multiply it out by the number of children in a large household. And there you have it: guaranteed nights of reflection upon fragmentary days. 

But what about the embarrassed and ashamed part? Those are the pieces torn away from the one piece life. If all of life is either sacred or profane, the embarrassed and ashamed parts are where we have greeted the interruptions, the unexpected, the uninvited in a manner that is not sacred. They are the places where we've stumbled under the weight of the cross and instead of accepting the grace of the Savior, we've either tried to throw the cross from our shoulders or we've tried to carry it under our own strength. 

My life is not a seamless garment. I've lived long enough to see that now. I cannot cut from the fabric of my life the patches that are rougher than the others, the colors that are just a little off. No matter how embarrased or ashamed of them I might be, they cannot be ripped from the fabric. But they can be stitched into His masterpiece. I can give them to Him and trust that over time, He will piece together a garment that takes those dark pieces and frames them just so, rendering the finished product beautiful beyond anything I could have imagined.

God intends it to be holy. All of it. What He wants at the end of a fragmented day is for me to see--clearly see--the many fragments and how they are of my own making. And then, He wants me to ask. He wants me to know that He can take the fragments, even the seeming dissonance and He can make a one piece life of my many scraps. It can all be for His good and to His glory. If only I hand Him the pieces.

But what does all this have to do with patience? Everything. At then end of a day that was all ragged fragments, a day where truly the beauty in the design is utterly incomprehensible, I am called to hand the pieces to him and just wait. Trust. And wait. He's got a plan.

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How is He teaching you patience this month? Small Steps focuses on patience this month. Would you share your thoughts with us, let us find you and walk with you? I'd be so grateful and so honored to have you as a companion, to pray with you for patience. Please leave a comment or link to your blog post below and then send your readers back here to see what others have said.You're welcome to post the Small Steps Together banner button also.