“What if the Catholic school in your area was just phenomenal?” a friend recently asked me. “If they did a fantastic job, wouldn’t you prefer someone else do all that work?” 

My toddler is screaming, so it must be Tuesday. His face is scrunched, anger etching hard lines onto his normally round face. His complexion flushes red as he hisses out a frustrated, “No,” through clenched teeth. 

It isn’t a refusal to acquiesce to my request. Quite the opposite: his is a refusal to accept my refusal. 

Except, I haven’t said, “No.” What I said was, “Not right now.”

If you clicked on this expecting a feel-good piece about God’s graces overflowing, I apologize for the story you’re about to hear. This story is about as unspiritual as it gets. This is a story about a toilet. 

It’s quiet in the dark, except for the screaming. I hold my one-year-old, skin hot from fever, as he writhes against me. “No, no” he cries, little hands trying to force me away. He wants neither down nor up. I’m used to being the touch that soothes - a useless gift when everything hurts.

I laugh as the line turns pink. Earlier this week, I told my husband that although we had been trying to conceive our second child for a few months, just one week of juggling night school, full-time teaching, and taking care of our 2-year-old daughter had made me reconsider.

When I open the door and see my mother-in-law standing there, something inside cracks and tears escape down my face. I’m not dressed. Toys and bits of food litter the floor.

The heat is creeping towards 100 degrees today, so ice cream sounds like a good idea.

It could have been a good idea if my toddler had gotten her nap.

“Watch me, Mommy!”

This is the single line of the chorus I hear all day long. Whatever task I am occupied by matters little to my daughter who burns to show me her latest accomplishment.

“I hate you. I hate you!” my daughter screams from behind her door. Her words cut me, but this is hardly the first tantrum that we’ve weathered. I stand outside, deaf to the sound of kicks and screams. They used to break me inside; familiarity has numbed their sting.

"Book!" says my toddler as he hobbles along, dragging a board book behind him. I take it from him and gather him onto what's left of my lap, shrinking away as the new baby grows within it.

It’s December 27th and the house is as quiet as the snow that silently blankets everything outside of our windows in the predawn blackness. The only light in the room glows from our Christmas village where it sits merrily on the mantle, high above greedy fingers whose enthusiasm threatens to crack its delightfully delicate rendition of an idyllic Christmas. The sight the villagers look down upon, however, is another story.

I can’t visit her. I’m taking care of two kids and I’m pregnant. It’s too far, I brush the thought away, and she probably wouldn’t want the company anyway.

But you did.

My voice comes out in a low hiss, dripping with venom. My daughter’s defiant stare is a dagger that pierces my heart. The somber tones of the “Sanctus” beckon us to prayer, but I am paralyzed. I’m done.

Do I love you enough to let you suffer? This road you walk is a painful one. Each of your wounds I feel in my own body. How, why, Lord, does it have to be this way?

What did you feel when you saw him standing there, finally found? The rise of anger? The wash of relief? Was it then, in that moment, when you knew he was not yours to keep?

My first birth tore me open. For a month, I could barely shift positions, let alone walk and care competently for our colicky newborn. I was still taking heavy painkillers to dull the pain, and the weight of failure hung around me.

My toddler loves dandelions. He wanders to them, one after the next, gathering their wispy heads close to his lips. Sometimes the seeds stick to his wet lips as he tries to scatter them with his breath, to blow and spread their wild beauty on the breeze.

My daughter’s skin is all patches of pink. It cracks from dryness, little rivers of red flowing where her fingernails have etched tiny scratches. I feel the pain of her eczema in my own body.

I didn’t love the way I looked in a bikini before I had children. I fretted over perceived imperfections, poured time and money into fixing them. I drank green juices…

My daughter’s body is curled on my chest, hot with fever. She is 18 months old, just discovering the joy of running everywhere, but this week her little legs lay still. She opens her eyes some, vaguely aware that Dory is getting lost for the 18th time on the blue of the television screen.

Can a baby be addicted to nursing?

I wonder. My daughter, my first child, is a few weeks old and gaining weight steadily. And it’s no wonder: she eats, she sleeps, and she cries.

We are scheduled for an 11 pm induction.

The house is dark and quiet, and somehow feels more hollow with my daughter sleeping at her grandmother’s instead of her little bed. My belly aches

There will be no nap today.

The realization hangs heavy around my chest as I watch my plans evaporate. Some days, I’m ready to embrace the opportunity.

At a recent panel on the Dobbs decision, Professor Roberto Dell’Oro, director of Loyola Marymount University’s Bioethics Institute, defended legalized abortion through the first trimester.

It’s Pride Month, and controversies over gender ideology are raging. The release of the documentary “What Is a Woman?” by Catholic political commentator Matt Walsh is causing a stir, revealing deeply disturbing facts about the dangers of pediatric gender transitions. These dangers are the reasons states such as Arkansas, Ohio and Florida are moving toward bans of pediatric “gender affirming” care, with Texas even attempting to prosecute some cases as child abuse.

Netflix’s recently released documentary “Our Father” follows the rabbit hole down just one of the new quandaries the fertility industry has introduced to parenthood. The documentary details the journey of Jacoba Ballard in her journey of uncovering the truth: that she and at least 93 others had been conceived using not donor sperm, but that of their mother’s fertility doctor.

On June 1, the Ohio House of Representatives followed Arkansas’s lead in passing a bill that blocks medical gender transition for minors, protects parental rights, and prevents biological males from competing in women’s sports. While critics of House Bill 454 claim its passage will “threaten” the mental health of Ohio’s youth, there is reason to doubt these “experts” are considering all the facts.

Far from being a basic “right,” abortion is deeply damaging to women; it is not the means to a level playing field that its avid supporters believe it to be. This faulty perception relies on decades of accepting a poor societal “solution” to the “problem” of women’s fertility.

In January 2020, two couples in Los Angeles found themselves exchanging 3-month-olds after discovering that their embryos had been switched during in vitro fertilization (IVF).

Pro-life and pro-choice circles alike are abuzz over the newest attempt to limit abortion in the United States. Texas Senate Bill 8 (“The Texas Heartbeat Bill”) prohibits abortion of a fetus with a detectable heartbeat. Pro-life advocates see the bill as a win, while pro-choice activists mourn what they see as an attack on women’s freedom.

What exactly does our Church have to say about how to live out the vocation of motherhood?

In a tragic turn of events, the state of New York has recently legalized commercial surrogacy. While its citizens find themselves preoccupied with a state-wide shutdown, shouldering the lion’s share of the U.S. coronavirus burden, New York’s legislators have taken it upon themselves to pass the widely-battled legislation that feminists argue is harmful to women, children, and families.

According to the March of Dimes, the premature birth rate in the United States has been increasing over the past several years. In response, researchers focus on the prevention of this issue, as well as on treatments and solutions. Among these solutions is the potentially life-saving artificial womb. Although it is still only a theoretical possibility for human gestation, artificial wombs have been successfully tested in animal reproduction…

In 1933, Aldous Huxley imagined a Brave New World in which human reproduction was entirely artificial. No longer science fiction, the use of “artificial wombs” is news of the past. Researchers demonstrated the capacity to gestate animals in 2017, when a team at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia published the results of their study growing fetal lambs in what they termed a “biobag.”

One of the hazards of bearing a baby bump is the avalanche of advice on how best to raise your children. Friends and strangers suddenly feel the impulse to touch you without warning and share harrowing stories of traumatic birth experiences. And they always want to know, “Are you going back to work?”

For some mothers, this choice is easy, and their circumstances and desires align. For others, “choice” is dictated by circumstance. For many, this question is not simple, the answer is not apparent, their desires conflict, and the matter is never fully settled.

The word discernment is like the word vocation. We hear it and immediately think of the priesthood or religious life - something specific and set apart. We do this even though we know that God is calling us, too. Yes, we are all called to a life of holiness, and some of us live that out by taking specific vows. But discernment is not only about hearing God’s call in the “big picture” decisions of lives. It is a much broader practice of becoming attuned to God’s call as it manifests in our everyday lives.

Yesterday was the feast day of St. Catherine of Siena. She was a medieval mystic, and one of the first female Doctors of the Church. Her influential writing on prayer and politics transformed the Church of her time and continues to inspire us today. She even wrote letters chastising the pope and changed his mind. Basically, St. Catherine was a badass.

She also had issues.

I stumbled over the toys strewn across the living room floor before sneaking into my daughter’s dark room to kiss her goodnight. I had looked forward to this night “off” all week, but now that it was over, I found myself coveting missed bedtime cuddles.

I found myself crying in the dressing room. All I wanted was to find one thing I felt beautiful in, one thing that I could slip into and become that confident woman who used to lure her husband with a pair of stilettos and a bat of her lashes. Now, the mascara from those lashes was running down my face.

Mere moments on Twitter are enough to alert us that our culture is plagued with demons. We live in a culture that responds to polarized politics and social values with contempt and hateful accusations that serve only to drive us further from one another, rather than seeking common ground. Even voices claiming to speak for our good God are raised in accusation and derision. Among so many voices and so much anger, through all the noise, how do we hear a God who whispers? Why doesn’t God speak more loudly, to be heard above the hate, or better still – to silence it forever?

I am not a person who waits. I take my time to think, to research, to plan and to pray. But once I reach a decision, I do not like to delay execution. When I made the decision to enter the Catholic Church, I did not want to wait. The image I have of my excitement is Harry’s line at the end of When Harry Met Sally: “Once you realize that you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” I wanted to receive Jesus in the Eucharist as soon as possible.

My daughter is in a “why” phase. Lately, our conversations go like this:

“Why is my sandbox so wet?”
“Because you left it out in the rain.”
“Why did it rain?”
“Because that is how God feeds the thirsty plants.”
“He’s a bad Jesus to make it rain in my sandbox!”

Simple meals with delicious flavors for to satisfy and nourish a family with minimal prep time!

Enjoy these tips for bringing a more contemplative spirit to your holiday preparations.

I’ve never been one to wait idly. I’m methodical in my approach—thinking, researching, planning, and praying are all part of my process. But once I’ve made a decision, I’m eager to act on it. This was especially true when I decided to become part of the Catholic Church.

I kept calling to mind Harry’s line from “When Harry Met Sally”: “Once you realize that you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

That’s how I felt about receiving Jesus in the Eucharist. I wanted it — Him — immediately.

Enjoy these tips for bringing a more contemplative spirit to your holiday preparations.

It’s All Saints Day and I find myself at Mass alone. It’s the year of the pandemic, and the only place I’ve been without my children for months is in the shower. And I do feel alone. Maybe it’s all the covered faces, or all the space spreading us out across this outdoor armada - a space meant for gathering that we’re using to spread us apart.

When we’re called to abstain, how do we make it through? I share my thoughts as a high-risk mama.

I sat on a large rock, knees pulled up, arms stretched behind me for support. The dry desert breeze whispered past as I gazed at the stars hovering overhead. Majestic and distant, they magnified the smallness I felt confronting larger-than-life questions I could no longer ignore.

We’ve given up a lot this Lent, haven’t we? Mostly, I’ve been struck with gratitude for what we do have: a comfortable home, enough food to eat, a yard for the kids to run around, financial stability. Still, even for our family whose sacrifice in staying home is minimal – This. Is. Hard.

It’s hard to give up Mass. It’s hard to give up spending time with our loved ones. It’s hard to change our routine, to give up small comforts, and to adjust our lives so dramatically. It’s hard to wait in the anxious unknown….

Dear Priest,

When we met, I wasn’t Catholic. I wasn’t part of the people you are called to care for. But I came to you, and you spoke with me, I suppose because “even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the Master’s table.” You did not give me the sacrament of confession. I was not prepared to receive it. Instead, you gave me the gift of your presence.