A few more days...

The deadline for this little beauty to show her face is officially May 4th. Then... let the Pitocin commence!

While I'm thrilled to have an End In Sight, I've mostly received condolences from friends. The idea of an induction must be off-putting to most people--it's so unnatural! But it's all I've known with my other two children. Miriam was late and had dangerously low levels of amniotic fluid. Bella broke her little water sac, but my body didn't want to go into labor.

And needless to say, after the weeks of hyperemesis, the last day of pregnancy, full of needles and drugs and bedrest, is rather par for the course.

And then. It is finished.

The whole process of human reproduction is really the oddest thing to me. It's so earthy and awkward, full of all the extremes of physical, emotional, and spiritual pleasure and pain. Physical motherhood can only change us forever, whatever the circumstances or outcome of the pregnancy, because we are human. Body and soul. Such a traumatic (both good and difficult) physical experience can only also transform the inner person.

However many times.

It is an Easter sort of thing: If we have died with Christ, the body is dead (and, oh, does it feel dead!) because of sin. But the spirit lives because of Him. Alleluia.

I am so grateful to be human: that this body, so beaten and triumphant all at once, is truly a little "elevator" to salvation (as Therese would say). Here's to giving everything! Here's to doing it more graciously than before! Higher up and further in.

Getting there.

It's been a long time. Yes, I'm still pregnant. My response to every inquiry: "How are you doing?" "Oh, we're getting there."

The past few weeks have seen still more doctors' visits for all of us and more antibiotics for everything from strep throat to pneumonia. Pregnancy seems like a piece of cake after all that!

I wish I could say I've accepted every moment with grace and cheer. Like the great saints, "she never complained and always had a smile for everyone." But alas! It has not been so. My biggest hope at this point is that I make a good Confession before this baby appears!

Bella and Miriam are my little role models: It can't be easy to have two parents in and out of bed for three weeks. But they still smile and laugh to see us emerge--unshowered, grumpy, lacking in any energy. They still play and sing and even fetch diapers, their own snacks and crayons.

"Unless you become like little children..."

Miriam said the other day, "Well, when I grow up and sin against God someday, I will just lift up my face and smile at Him to show I am so sorry. He will forgive me and bring me to heaven then!"

Ah, yes. Lift up my face and smile. So simple, so true. Make me again like a child, Lord. I'm getting there.

Miriam's smile: Over Jesus' empty tomb!

Higher up and further in.

A blessed Easter Octave to everyone! Lent unintentionally turned into a blog fast for me--the bigger belly, various virii, puffy fingers, and a husband in the final throes of dissertating were all welcome contributors.

And Holy Week was... outside time.

The Scientist Dad defended his dissertation on Monday: He is now officially a PhD! It was a little Easter-before-Easter for the family. Then he whisked me off for three days at the beach--just the two of us (plus in utero child). And, just like our honeymoon, we pretty much just napped the whole time.

Then it was Triduum. I've been getting sick again at night--not hyper emesis, to be sure, but some extreme nausea--so we split Holy Thursday and Good Friday. I went to the Mass, and he hit the Good Friday liturgy. But we boldly (brashly?) took both girls to the Easter Vigil Saturday night. It was very good. Miriam got punch-drunk at about 9.30pm, and Bella spent most of the night in Daddy's arms in the back of the chapel. But both girls seem to deal with exhaustion by getting quieter, rather than fussing, which was a blessing! Miriam was captivated by the three adult, full-immersion baptisms as well as the nine confirmations. She's been chanting the saint names repeatedly for most of this morning.

It was a great grace to watch the children experience the Vigil Mass and the joy of Easter morning. The added weight and aches of late pregnancy have drained me of the usual emotional gifts of the Triduum--the highs and lows just weren't there.

But that in itself is a great gift: So many adults commented last week about which liturgies make them "feel right" or which songs they "simply have to sing at Easter." I know. I am the same way. Good Friday without "O Sacred Head" just seems wrong. And the butchered version of "Adoro Te" (why can't we just stick to Hopkins' masterful translation?) was a real let-down on Holy Thursday.

Things aren't going to be perfect this side of the Jordan. The hope and goal is to grow, not so that our feelings become more acute and not so that our emotions feel ever greater pleasures, but rather so that we grow into other Christs, alter Christus.

In the neuroscience world my husband inhabits, "religious people" are often dismissed as being "those whose brains activate the religious feeling more than usual." The world tells us it's all about the feelings.

The feelings are a gift and great pleasure, but they are always at the service of a greater good: Drawing closer to the person of Christ, who is alive. "Closer" means that our wills are more and more in conformity with the Father's. Our lives are becoming an ever more prevalent "YES" to every moment He gives us--with or without the feelings.

This was my Lenten lesson.

Alleluia!

A blessed and joyful Easter Pasch to all! May the risen Christ release us from death and fear, heal our wounds, and be our all.

Passion Sunday 2010

All glory, laud, and honor, to thee Redeemer King! To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring!

"Only by self-abandonment, only by the disinterested gift of the “I” in favour of the “you”, only in the “yes” to the greater life, the life of God, does our life also become broad and great. Thus this fundamental principle established by the Lord is ultimately identical to the principle of love. Love, in fact, means letting go of oneself, giving oneself, not wanting to possess oneself, but becoming free from oneself: not retiring into oneself – (what will become of me?) – but looking ahead, towards the other – towards God and towards the men that he sends to me. And once again, this principle of love, which defines man’s path, is identical to the mystery of the cross, to the mystery of death and resurrection that we encounter in Christ." ~Benedict XVI, Homily on Palm Sunday 2009

Annunciation: FIAT!

I always remember my dear sisters in the religious life today, perhaps because of the radical way their spiritual motherhood reflects Mary's virgin motherhood. (I was blessed to have three of my four bridesmaids--among others--enter convents within a year of my wedding! No reflection on the quality of my spouse.) There were some awesome orders entered: the Nashville Dominicans (three friends), the Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ (maid of honor), the Sisters of Life (one friend), and the Servants of the Lord (three entered, two stayed). May their tribe increase!

Here, via the Anchoress, is a reflection from a Dominican nun from 2009.

"Mary and Eve were the only two women in history who were given the opportunity to choose the good without the hindrance of disorderly passions, the effects of original sin. Mary was completely free, as Eve was, to choose the good. Whereas Eve doubted God’s fatherly love for her, Mary fully believed that God is Father, that He could conceive the Child He promised within her womb."

How to make/renew your consecration.

Act of Consecration

If possible, you should go to the Sacrament of Penance and receive Holy Communion on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, the actual day of consecration.

Consecration of oneself to Jesus Christ, Wisdom Incarnate

O eternal and incarnate Wisdom! O most amiable and adorable Jesus! True God and true man, only Son of the eternal Father, and of Mary, ever-virgin! I adore you profoundly in the heart and splendors of your Father during eternity; and I adore you also in the virginal heart of Mary, your worthy Mother, in the time of your incarnation.

I give you thanks, because you annihilated yourself, taking the form of a slave in order to free me from the cruel slavery of the devil. I praise and glorify you, because you were willing to submit to Mary, your holy Mother, in all things, in order to make me your faithful slave through her. But I have been ungrateful and faithless; I have not kept the promises which I made so solemnly to you in my Baptism. I have not fulfilled my obligations. I do not deserve to be called your child, nor yet your slave; and since there is nothing in me which does not merit your anger and rejection, I dare not come by myself before your holy and divine Majesty. So I have recourse to the intercession of your most holy Mother, whom you have given me for an intercessor with you. It is through her that I hope to obtain from you contrition, the pardon of my sins, and the acquisition and preservation of wisdom.

Hail, then, O immaculate Mary, living tabernacle of the Divinity, where the Eternal Wisdom willed to be hidden and to be adored by angels and by men! Hail, O Queen of Heaven and earth, to whose empire everything is subject which is under God. Hail, O sure refuge of sinners, whose mercy fails no one. Hear the desires which I have of the Divine Wisdom; and for that end receive the vows and offerings which in my lowliness I present to you.

I, N_________, a faithless sinner, renew and ratify today in your hands the vowsof my Baptism: I renounce forever Satan, and all his works, and all his empty promises, and I give myself entirely to Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Wisdom, to carry my cross after Him all the days of my life, and to be more faithful to Him than I have ever been before. In the presence of all the heavenly court I choose you this day for my Mother and Mistress. I deliver and consecrate to you, as your slave, my body and soul, my goods, both interior and exterior, and even the valueof all my good actions, past, present and future. I leave to you the entire and full right of disposing of me, and all that belongs to me, without exception, according to your good pleasure, for the greater glory of God in time and in eternity.

Receive, O good Virgin, this little offering of my slavery, in honor of, and in union with, that submission which the Eternal Wisdom deigned to have to your maternity, and in homage to the power which both of you have over this poor sinner, and in thanksgiving for the privileges with which the Holy Trinity has favored you. I declare that I wish henceforth, as your true slave, to seek your honor and to obey you in all things.

O admirable Mother, present me to your dear Son as His eternal slave, so that as He has redeemed me by you, so by you He may receive me! O Mother of mercy, grant me the grace to obtain the true Wisdom of God; and for that end receive me among those whom you love and teach, whom you lead, nourish, and protect as your children and your slaves.

O faithful Virgin, make me in all things so perfect a disciple, imitator and slave ofthe Incarnate Wisdom, Jesus Christ your Son, that I may attain, by your intercession and by your example, to the fullness of His age on earth and of His glory in Heaven. Amen. ~St. Louis de Montfort