Walking on Golden Pillars

Ok, I don't know how to make my legs look like golden pillars, but that's not the point.  What I do want to share is this scripture passage that completely floored me last night as I was preparing to begin this blog.  This is it.  This is what I want.  This is who I want to be:

The Blessing of a Good Wife

A wife’s charm delights her husband,
    and her skill puts flesh on his bones.

A silent wife is a gift from the Lord,
    and nothing is so precious as her self-discipline. 

 A modest wife adds charm to charm,
    and no scales can weigh the value of her chastity.

Like the sun rising in the heights of the Lord,
    so is the beauty of a good wife in her well-ordered home.

Like the shining lamp on the holy lampstand,
    so is a beautiful face on a stately figure. 

 Like golden pillars on silver bases,    so are shapely legs and steadfast feet.                                                                     ~Sirach 26:13-18

I have been struggling lately with my identity as a stay at home mom recently, not because I don't enjoy it immensely (it has its bad days of course), but because I wrestle with the question...if my friend Sally Joe works and is still a great and holy mom, then how can I be doing enough?  Doesn't that make me somehow LESS than her?

First of all, comparison is a huge anti-step of the above passage.  We will not be charming and delightful to our husband when occupying our thoughts with what we are NOT (and who we are not designed to be).  We will be like the sun rising in the heights of the Lord; we will have a beautiful face on a stately figure, when we are exactly who we are, who Christ designed us to be.  Maybe it takes me all day to try to be a shining lamp, and maybe it only takes my friend Susie Q. an evening after work to be a domestic goddess and to delight her husband.  I don't know why who is called where and what God's doing in that family and that woman's life all of the time.  What I do know is what He is doing in mine.

I am called to be home, and Heaven will come to me through my obedience to that call, not through questioning everyone else's.  

I love my life, and I know that the correct response for me is not to question God's gifts, but to thank Him for the opportunity and the vocation that He has given me here, now, to love and serve my husband and my daughter, and to carry my son in my womb, all with joy.  I am a far cry from the above passage, but somehow instead of pulling my hair out in despair (which is what I sometimes want to do!), it gave me hope.  This is my purpose.  This is God's plan for me.  I want to run after it as fast as my golden pillars with silver bases can carry me!  

Also, have to include the delightful humor of my vocation.  Usually, I am the one spending prayer time being enlisted by our toddler daughter to safeguard her toys and whatever she finds around the house while she plays with something else.  Today, I walked into the living room to my husband's prayer time:

Finding Joy in the Dumpster

This is the perfect day to start a blog.  For the past few days, I have been agonizing over whether I want to put myself in the spotlight of a digital world as a Catholic wife and mom, sharing my pursuits of sanity and holiness and scattering seeds of wisdom for others to glean upon =)

Shouldn't I be a better person to write a blog?  Like a professional wife and mom or something?  Or worse... what if people think I AM because I made such a bold move to put myself out there?

For everyone who knows me in person, you know I'm a huge work in progress, the progress being a large part of the blog content, but for everyone else...  today God gave me the gift of the perfect disclaimer, the best mommy confession:

Most people know I am a risk taker, and today, I took a risk.  I ran into the basement, leaving my one year old daughter to fend for herself on the first floor (where outlets are covered and dangers are high, up high), while I threw in a load of laundry, threw out a load of laundry, and grabbed a crockpot.   I could hear her saying "mmm" like something was in her mouth, and then I heard nothing.  I hurried up the stairs afraid of what I would find, and there stood my triumphant smiling daughter next to the trash can, wrist deep in coffee grounds and eating an apple core, which were also covered in coffee grounds.  Yes, my daughter chose those 100 seconds to figure out how to open the trash can, and... yes... she was literally eating out of the trash can... and yes... I said a choice word that is not appropriate to say in front of your kids.

I know, I know, while some of you might be thinking thank God I'm a better mom than that! others of you are thinking, I can totally top that story.  So in case you aren't convinced that my life is interesting, I've written some good reasons for me to write a blog and for you to read it.

1. My mom is amazing, and all of the wisdom she saturated me in seems to suddenly come alive with so much sense as I've entered the mom and wife world.  On top of my own wisdom to share, I have my mom's!

2. My mom never told me that the spices at the grocery store are in alphabetical order.  What does that have to do with my blog?  Maybe everyone else knew that, but maybe some people are like me and need valuable pieces of practical information--like that 270 goes in a circle around Columbus or that they've made night time diapers so you don't have to change your newborn every couple of hours--these time saving, stress relieving bits of information, spelled out for them.  I learn a lot as I go, and I want to share it with other wives who are also seeking to have happy, holy, loving homes and to be joyful and loving wives.

3. I want to be holy, not in some elusive saint world where the women are all martyrs, sisters founding convents, or queens and warriors leading armies (although I love these saints!).  I want to be holy, now, today, in my home where God has called me, whether the victory of the day is having a clean home, cookies cooling on a drying rack, dinner on the table with dishes done, and greeting my husband with an amazing, domestic housewife smile that says "you are my hero", or whether the victory of the day is that I did not stop believing God loved me today while my toddler cried on my leg and dumped out a box of cereal all over the floor while I stood helplessly with hands stuck in 8 pounds of raw pork.

4. I want to remember, and everyone who reads this, that the domestic life of a wife and mother is full of joy,  and most especially that a toddler running away with a fragile pair of glasses, chased by her pregnant and exasperated mom, is funny.