Advent Week 1: Prayers & Practices for Parents

Advent practices for parents

Easy Advent Practices: Week 1 This year we’re sharing simple (and free!) ways to deepen your prayer as a parent in Advent: an activity to share with your children and a Scripture verse for you to pray later. Light a candle when you get up in the morning, in the bathroom as you get ready…

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Complicated Joy

pregnancy complicated joy

For all of the beauty found in celebrating the liturgical year, I find that marking milestones by these holy seasons and rituals has a tendency to make whatever experience that much more intense and emotional for me. Pregnancy announcements during Advent—potent. Witnessing conversion and Baptism at Easter Vigil—stick a fork in me. Gifts of selflessness…

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Finding Light in Darkness: Your Turn

finding light in darkness as mother

This Week on Mothering Spirit Gina’s essay shares how antidepressants deepened her relationship with God and her joy as a mother. Kimberly’s prayer (in Spanish and English) asks for God’s help to choose love even in our struggles. Resources to keep reflecting Gina mentions the prayer “Hail, Holy Queen” in her essay. Find the whole prayer here. Sarah…

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Your Joy Remains

At a local laundromat, I realized something. My mind is constantly racing. There’s not a moment when I don’t have thoughts running through my mind. More often than not, those thoughts are negative. More than I would like. But today I caught myself thinking and feeling something new. I have found joy here. Here, in…

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come, the still-joys

He laughs now, this rolling plump of a babe. Chortles like a chuckling gentleman when I tickle under his chin. The laughter is intoxicating; we are all addicted. His doting brothers swarm the changing table for a chance to coax out another. In the instant when his round eyes brighten and his soft mouth opens…

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Joy, Meet Relief

the joy and relief of birth

Can you hear it in their voices? Once you cut through the baffled wonder and divide the nagging disbelief and set aside the stuttering astonishment, there it is: relief. He is risen. He is risen? He is risen! It’s not a matter of simple punctuation. There are a thousand reactions to surprising news, and the Gospels cover nearly every one. Mary…

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