I Did Not Leave the Catholic Church

Typically when someone utters the phrase "I grew up Catholic" it is followed by disparaging comments or bad experiences.

• It was boring
• Too strict for me
• I didn't learn anything
• My parents made me

    ..... and a litany of other reasons.


This is not one of those stories.

Yes, I grew up in the Catholic church. I loved the Catholic church, and to this day I hold so many aspects of this faith near and dear to my heart.  Growing up in the Catholic church is easily defined as one of the building blocks of who I am as a person.

You see, I was devout. As I grew older this devotion grew, but was based solely in the Catholic faith, the traditions, the practices and the expectations. This misguided placement of devotion was not the fault of anyone within the church, not my parents, not society but it was my own.  My heart and soul was seeking the fulfillment that only a personal relationship with our Father can provide.  I sought to fill this hole by devoting myself to the Catholic church.  When this emptiness grew I turned to the comforts of the world. Then back to the faith I knew, seemingly the only way to fill my heart.

I became a young mother, and ran back to the church bringing my sweet baby girl.  In my heart I just KNEW that I was a lost cause, but this sweet baby, this precious little soul that saved me from myself, she would get it right!  I just had to bring her to the church and the faith I had always known.  Soon after I welcomed a sweet and round baby boy.  My heart was so full.  I had been blessed beyond measure and every direction I turned I saw signs of our Father's favor. But that void, that lack of fulfillment in my soul? It was growing.  A life of constant conflict.  Obviously, He loved me and I loved being so loved!  Just as a recipient of flowers from a secret admirer seeks to know the one who sends their affections, I sought The One who loved me.  I needed to love Him back!

As with so many of us, the world got in my way.  I consumed myself and my family with keeping up with the ways of the world.  As my children grew and my blessings multiplied that emptiness that had lived within me began to leak out.  I began to see it in my children.  Particularly, I saw it in that sweet soul that had saved me from myself more times than I deserved. Her spirit was so sweet, so bright. Yet, even before middle school the world sought to sour her spirit and dull her sparkle.

When did it begin to change?  Sitting at my sweet and (still) round baby boy's flag-football game, a fellow football mom turned to me and said "Do you go to church?" Immediately I responded "Well, I grew up in the Catholic church....." As if she could see that emptiness consuming me, she gently responded "Me too, but I no longer attend, and that's okay.  Let me tell you my story"  Her testimony was filled with the trials that throw us down on to our faces and the triumphs that lift us safely into His arms. The clincher, the light-bulb moment for me?  The grace she experienced between the trials and the triumphs, that is where we fill our souls with Him.  I don't remember saying much but when she invited me to attend her church I heard a little voice squealing with delight "I WANT TO GO TO CHURCH!!!!!" While that voice easily could have come from the depths of my soul, it was actually my daughter.  At 6 years old she WANTED TO GO TO CHURCH!

We went to church.  I vowed to myself to let my children's journey in seeking a relationship with our Father guide our church going decisions.  We visited many times. A dear friend invited us to her church to witness her son's baptism.  From the moment we walked into the doors of Westview Baptist church I felt something stirring inside of me.  Perhaps it was all of the sincere and warm hugs from people that only knew one thing about me: they didn't know me.  They wanted to know me.  It was Him, our Lord knew me and He wanted me to know Him. Following the lead of my sweet children we joined this church and made it our home.  This past Spring, during a Revival service, no one in the room could have held my little girl back if they had wanted to.  She heard His message and she had to let Him in! She declared in front of a church full of teenagers and adults that she had accepted Jesus Christ as her savior.  That spirit and that sparkle was on full display and has not dimmed since.

Knowing that it was my duty to guide her and my son in their walk I began to seek more time with Him.  I can not and will not tell you that I am perfect in my walk and my relationship with our Father.  I fail Him daily, sometimes multiple times a day. Yet His love, His blessings and His will for me as a daughter, wife, mother, sister, friend and child of God wrap me up every single time and fill my emptiness.


I did not leave the Catholic church angry. Not filled with disgust.  Not filled with any ill memory.  When I found my emptiness being filled, it just didn't happen to be in the Catholic church.  Making such a declaration can be scary.  But I walk in the shield of His love, and the judgement of others simply won't penetrate that armor.

The Reality of Family Pictures: Bribe, Threaten and Don't Forget to Smile

                Y’all! Look at this:

                Oh, and this one:

                I still get giddy over these oldies but goodies:

                And the latest addition to my wall:

What you are probably thinking while looking at these: “Geez, this woman is picture obsessed!”

What I am thinking looking at these “How many more of these can I squeeze in before the Bigs graduate and move out? They’ll come home for family pictures, right? Of course they will! Wait, what if they don’t? Can I make them?  Will bribery still work when they’re adults?”  I will stop there.  My thoughts will ramble on and on and I actually have a point here.

                Why are family pictures so important to me? It is such a deep and personal explanation. 

  Through out my childhood my teenage years I was chubby girl.  Not surprisingly, I despised seeing my reflection and absolutely HATED the idea of being in a picture.  Don’t believe that I was that chubby? I won’t go on and on about my body/body image journey.  I will just drop this right here…

      Once I became a mother I couldn’t get enough pictures of my amazing children.  My little people are the cutest/funniest/best people ever to grace this planet.  Okay, okay, okay at least to me they are, and I totally understand if you don’t necessarily agree. <just keep that to yourself, mmmmkay?> How could I expect them to smile when I ask for a picture instead of moan and groan if I myself refuse to be in pictures?  Simply put, if I want pictures of them I need to be in pictures as well.  And if I am going to be in pictures, why not hire a professional? Why do I prefer to hire a professional? Because if I don't the only pictures of me would be the ones my children have taken with their electronic devices, without my permission, pre-coffee and outside of the window of time that I look some-what put together.  Not at all how I want to be remembered.  Outside of selfies on my phone with my little people (I call them “weezies” self --> selfies  we --> weezies) it is impossible to be IN the picture if another person is not taking said picture.  Hire a professional as often as you can. It is an investment that will only grow in value over time. I mean it. I really, really, really mean it.

                My mother lost her mother before I was born.  I love hearing stories of similarities between Mimi and myself, even though she and I never had the pleasure of meeting.  During one of these conversations I witnessed it hit my mother like a ton of bricks: “I wish I had more pictures of my mother; especially pictures of me AND my mother.”  My parents are amazing people and even better parents. I will always have the pictures to prove it, remember it and scream it to the hill tops. Why wouldn’t my own children deserve the same? They do deserve it, so they will always have it.  

                Family pictures taken over the years tell the story of your family without requiring words.  One can easily document the growth and evolution of your family unit through these images.  My mind takes that one step further (or a few hundred steps further).  My goal is that one day my children will look back at these pictures and the life-altering revelation will suddenly hit them: “I remember that…. I guess my parents weren’t that bad were they? We actually had a great life didn’t we?”  And then they will call me and we will talk for hours and finally build a friendship from our lifetime of parenting and defiance.   Like I said, my mind takes that a few hundred steps further, but I have this all played out in my head. It will happen! And looking at old family pictures will start it all, I just know it!

                A woman I have considered a friend since High School tragically lost her sweet baby boy.  Her story is not mine to tell but as a mother I eagerly wait for and eat up any ounce of advice she drops regarding valuing the time we are given with our precious children. She recently shared a picture of a location that she had once tried to take a picture of her son, but in true little boy fashion he didn’t cooperate so she didn’t take the picture.  Let that sink in, y'all. She did not take that picture. Three years later she took a picture of this location and told the world “Take pictures folks.. Even when the situation isn’t perfect.. If they won’t look or smile.. Take the picture.”  I am listening for every piece of advice she has, and I heard her.  My soul heard her. Please hear her and “Take the picture”

                 

             Will every picture be worthy of a 40x32 canvas to hang on the wall for years? Probably not, but it only takes one out of a few hundred to strike gold.  Will your kids always want to do it? Not likely. Bribe them. Threaten them. Heck, put their college education on the line! Whatever it takes. (excluding abuse!)  Will your husband (or significant other) be as fired up about taking pictures as you are? Uh, if so make sure you put that at the top of your “Today I am thankful for….” list.  My husband spends most of these family picture sessions cursing me out through the clenched teeth of his “smile”.  Has that stopped me? Not even once.  Our two Bigs HATE family pictures but have learned that it is best to smile and cooperate, because the sooner I am satisfied with the pictures taken, the sooner they can go back to whatever it is that they would much rather be doing. Oh, and bribery…. Bribe them with ice cream, uninterrupted tv time or a day free of chores. You know them, so you know what it will take to get that smile.  Even if you know that smile is faker than bright pink Easter grass, get that picture.  

In the end most of the pictures won’t be perfect.  Don’t you DARE dispose of them!  These “bloopers” or “outtakes” have become some of my favorite pictures. Why? Because they perfectly display the reality of family pictures. And that is certainly worth remembering.

             

Gotta give credit where credit is due! Photo credits:

MirandaLeaPhotography- http://mleaphotography.com/#

Sara Clance Photography- http://www.saraclance.com/

Sarah Royer

J. Langley Photos- http://www.jlangleyphotos.com/

Tiffany Hess Photography- http://www.tiffanyhess.com/

We Can't be Friends....

We can’t be Friends… I have Celiac Disease

Let me start by saying that I have AMAZING friends.  I am amazed that in my short time on Earth I have had a great experience in picking random people, finding common ground and building relationships that never fade.  Seriously, I know how to pick ‘em, and those that I pick do a great job of loving <tolerating> me.  Since August of 2012 I have been on a long journey to regain my health.  My health that likely was never where it should be. It all started with a doctor telling me “Ooooh, your eyes…. You should try a Gluten Free Diet… Yeah, you should definitely do that”, handed me a referral to a dietician (if this person could actually be classified as a dietician) who told me what local restaurants had “Gluten Free stuff”.    Fast forward two years and I have had my gallbladder removed, been diagnosed with Celiac Disease and am uncovering more and more things about myself that aren’t just right.  No more bread and pasta to organ removal and the cellular health of a geriatric patient.   And I’m taking everyone around me down with me!

                 

         What does this have to do with my sweet friends?  We are Southern. We eat. We eat by ourselves. We eat together.  We use eating as an excuse to spend time together.  Our lives together revolve around food! I am certainly not complaining, because Lord knows I still LOVE to eat.  However, eating and what we eat has the very real potential to turn me into a whiny, happy then angry roller coaster She Hulk.

Portrait of me after ingesting Gluten

(close enough)

               

            Now a-days if I am feeling up to leaving the house after a long day I have to be picky about restaurants, hog all of the wait staff’s attention (sometimes even the manager) and 90% of the time turn back in to the She Hulk by the next day because many restaurants just don’t understand why I need them to get a clean spatula and why croutons can’t simply be taken off of my salad.  My She-Hulk self wants to get angry with these establishments, but in reality what I eat is in my control so I can only hold myself accountable. 

               Easiest solution for me? Avoid eating out and only eat food I have prepared for myself.  Easy enough, right?! Wrong…. Y’all, EVERYTHING revolves food.  Get togethers, celebrations, meetings, even shopping somehow comes down to food. I can’t begin to explain the panic I feel preparing myself to go into a restaurant.  Or the self-loathing reluctance I have when I have to question my own family about every ingredient and what types of cooking utensils were used. I am such a pain! And let me tell you, it’s a pain being such a pain.  I once tried to attend and just not eat.  Apparently that is rude and makes the WHOLE ROOM uncomfortable. 

                 

             A select few friends have educated themselves to the point that one might think they had just been diagnosed with Celiac disease.  But the unfortunate truth is the Celiac disease is not always easy to explain and can be even harder to understand.  I certainly do not hold it against those that love me but still really have no idea why I can’t shut up about gluten.

               

              To those that consider me a friend, please understand I am not TRYING to avoid you.  I am just having a hard time reconstructing a social life that does not revolve around food.  So, let’s just meet for coffee?  Yes, I will ask the barista at Starbucks to let me read the ingredients of the syrups and other components but I swear that will only take fifteen minutes!  

Milennial Moms: "Super Mom" is the New Norm

I have seen and heard countless studies, surveys and articles reference Millennials, also known as the "Lost Generation Y". One simple Google search and you can learn all about how Millennials function in society, what a lost cause they are and even  how to manage Millennials in the work place.  This generation is so fascinating and hard to handle that corporate CEO's are taking training courses on how to deal with them. Millennials are generally marked by an increased use, familiarity and dependence on communication, media, and digital technologies. 

These studies, surveys and instructional courses tell you all about how Millennials can't find jobs, how they can't put down their cell phones and how they are all living with their parents.  But they missed something. They don't tell you how we parent.  That's right I am a Millennial.  I am a mom.  I am a Millennial Mom.

Many members of this generation have babies.  In fact, we have school aged children as well.  Now, not all is lost and the world isn't going to 'you know where' in a hand basket just because we are raising the next generation... Well at least we sure hope not.  I became a mother at the ripe age of 20. 6 years, 3 more kids and a lot of mistakes later my perspective has changed.  Now more than ever I see what we are doing right, I see where were are falling short but mostly I see the challenges we are facing.

The biggest challenge Millennial parents face is fulfilling the promise that we can have it all.  We can go to school and get whatever and however many degrees we want.  Never-mind the massive student loan debt we are drowning in, we can be anything we want.  Then we intern, serve our time at the bottom and climb the corporate latter.  We can have the careers previous generations only dreamed of.   We need those jobs after all to make those student loan payments, buy the latest gadgets and to compete with the lives of everyone on our social network friends list.  We also need those jobs to keep up with the rising cost of living, rising taxes and do our part in rebounding an economy that has tanked in half the time it took previous generations to make our economy and government the first-world big brother it is today.   For many Milliennials gone are the days of a one-income household.  Many of our households send both mom and dad to work.  When we head to work do our homes clean themselves? Are those perfectly balanced meals magically on the table when we get home? Are holidays and events planned and arranged by a fairy? Do our children get themselves ready for school, care for themselves and provide their own guidance and wisdom?  Unfortunately the answer is NO.  Trust me, we Millennial moms have fantasized about this magic fairy and it just doesn't exist. Millennial moms have those careers but we also have the next generation at home.  Somehow we are supposed to drop off our children to school in pristine condition, pick them up on time, be instantly available at any moment, attend every school function, be president of the PTA, get them to every practice all while advancing our careers to heights that are ALMOST to where we want them.  Oh, and those children? They MUST be perfectly behaved, perform perfectly at school and all sports they participate in.  How do they become perfect?  We must never lose our patience, we are allowed no mistakes, we are forbidden from spanking and our children must always be made to feel that they are better than the rest. Somehow we must be the perfect parents and raise the perfect children. Baby-boomer and Generation X parents did this without a hitch didn't they? 


If that isn't enough pressure we also have social media competition. That Facebook mom that you went to High School with that has the perfect family, job, figure and life? As much as we fight it, we strive to be her.  Heck, our subconscious dream is to out do her.  In that pursuit we become her and then we create another right behind us.  Before we know it we find ourselves in the Mom Games.  We scroll Pinterest for the BEST birthday party ideas for our 3 year old who honestly could care less that his face is on the bottled water, he just wants to open his presents. We see our friends on Facebook taking spectacular family vacations and before we know it we are dragging our poor miserable husbands to "That place _____ went to, but don't let me forget to Instagram it!" Mommy games are not new to our generation but they have been magnified and broadcast all over the world through vessels like Twitter, Facebook, Mommy Boards and Pinterest. How can we call ourselves friends when our main objective is to out-do one another?

Call me mad (many do) but may I propose a revolution? Can we compliment one another with out plotting how to "do it better"? Can we allow others the freedom from criticism to discipline their children in public? Can we snap pictures of the working mom's kid at the school function she couldn't get off of work to attend? Can we cover for the mom at work that needed to take off to care for their stomach-virus inflicted child? Can we cook dinner for the mom who looks like she is one bad day away from a breakdown? Can we wait at the end of practice with the kid who is mom is late without judgement? Can we overlook the clutter at the home of the mom that invited us over for wine and adult conversation?

Millennial moms are not all bad.  We can balance almost everything and then tell you about it in our blog (don't forget to Instgram it!).  We are Super-Moms.  But that doesn't make us any better than the next mom because in our generation Super-Mom is the new norm.

Hey Hey, what do ya say?! Let’s take a vacay!

Ooooooohhhh, vacation.  As a child it was a fun family obligation.  Now vacation entails months of planning, saving and in my case dreading.  Considering our past experiences of packing up the Mad Mini-Van with all six of us and driving for hours to go work 10 times harder than I do on a typical day, I was very apprehensive of what was to come. 

First Trip to Florida- New born and 1 yr old with a stomach virus the entire way there.  I don’t believe I need to go any farther in this explanation.

Second Trip to Florida- 1 year old and 2 year old contained in their car seats with restlessness no amount of Dora the Explorer could quell.

The worst part was always the drive home.  Cranky kids with their cranky parents confined in a small silver casing for a millennium (or so it felt).

Brace yourself! I have a confession……

I WAS WRONG! WE CAN HAVE FUN ON VACATION!!!!!!

Through our latest vacation I have confirmed a long standing theory-

“If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”

(not my grammar, that really is how the saying goes).

 I was determined to be happy, live in the moment and have fun.  And if I couldn’t?  Fake it!  Some moments my faking was deserving of an Emmy, but we had fun darn-it!

Perhaps it was the ambiance of this-

Yes, I took that picture! We went to the happiest place on earth!  Here is a break down from each member of the Mad Mini-Van’s perspective:

Teenrager (15 yr old male often found with wildly unkempt hair ): 

  Not one for rainbows and butterflies but is quick to smart-a**’d comments at unappreciated times (typical teen eh?)  Not one for wake up calls before noon.  Not one to leave his bat cave of technology (aka- his room). He. Had. FUN!

My favorite comment from him?  After leaving Universal Studios late at night on a Monday he proclaims:

“This is the first Monday I have ever actually enjoyed!”

Yes, my husband and I gave ourselves a mental high-five

Tweenrager (11 yr old female that is convinced she is far older than 11):

Here lately she is adopting similar behavior as that of her brother, Teenrager.  The minute I walk through the door she makes a hastey retreat to her bedroom to work on being the next Taylor Swift. (I will admit, she is getting very good with her guitar!)
My favorite moment with her?

Her tears of anticipation while waiting to get on to her first roller coaster!  Tweenrager is typically very quiet and doesn't get worked up over anything.  

This moment was golden, and yes I plan to tell it to all of the boys she brings home for the rest of her life 

Diva Darling (5 year old female often found making even the calmest of moments as dramatic as she possibly can):

I would almost say she had the most fun out of all four of the mad-children.  Albeit her drama fueled meltdowns, demands of being carted around in a stroller and constantly reminding us all- "I'm hot. I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm thirsty"  Other than that she embraced the entire trip with the same enthusiasm of those children you see on the Disney World commercials.  Her unusual height for a 5 year old was an added bonus, from which my favorite comment came during the middle of Space Mountain (roller coaster):

"I WANT THIS TO BE OVER!!!!!!"

followed by:

"NOOOOOOOOO, I DON'T WANT IT TO BE OVER!! LET'S DO IT AGAIN!"

Baby Boy (4 yr old male often found getting into mischief and then easily charming his way out of it):

Poor poor poor sweet baby boy.  He celebrated his birthday while we were on vacation, but unfortunately his height hasn't caught up to the amount of years he has been alive.  Just as we taught him to get on his "tippy toes" to meet height requirements (checked by Disney and Universal staff) it was time to come home.

My favorite comment from him:

"We are coming back when I get bigger... So those meanies will let me ride the rides!"

Don't have to ask me twice baby boy, I can't wait to go back!

Other highlights in pictures:

Baby boy turned 4!

 I got to meet the Gremlins! (well kinda...)

We took lots of self portraits while waiting

Jaws ate my kids.... At my request

We saw many live shows

Road Rides

We danced

And Finally the Light Parade!