Classical Conversations

If you're a mom or a dad and you are struggling with the education your child is receiving or maybe struggling with that expensive private school tuition or maybe you're struggling with a bullying situation I would strongly encourage you to look up Classical Conversations. The mission of education and Classical Conversations is to know God and to make God known. Within these last four years not only have I been learning how my children learn but I have reclaimed my education ...as well. I am declining latin nouns and diagramming sentences and I know where Mesoamerica was/is on a map now. I know all 44 presidents and I can tell you when the civil war began and when it ended but mostly I am in love with learning for the first time in my life. And the MNO (mom's night out) is a fantastic perk because I'm with women who build me up, who build up my children and who strengthen my relationship with God each and every week.

Ringrazio Dio ~ Thanks be to God

He Hears Us

                                                         

                                       




God hears us. Even when we haven't uttered His name. He hears us. Even when we haven't hit our knees. He hears us. Even when we haven't folded our hands. He hears us. Even when we haven't made the sign of the cross. He hears us. I have always been told and read that He knows our hearts and as upside down, twisted, ripped, tattered, broken, bleeding, and inside out as they may sometimes be He knows them and He loves us anyway.

Ringrazio Dio ~ Thanks be to God

 

To Know God and To Make God Known

I am realizing more and more that the very things in life I have wished away or asked God to take away from me, have been the very gifts that have saved me, transformed me, grown me and shaped me into a better person.

One such gift has been my son. From the time he was a baby he had so many digestive issues and I remember asking God, "Why can't my son just eat normal food like everyone else?" Why can't he do this?" "Why does he do that?" I couldn't go on like this. In all perilous honesty, I began to resent my son and God. Life felt so overwhelming with the constant literature of food labels and ingredients that I would have to consume while just simply shopping for every day groceries and juggling two toddlers in a race car shopping cart. As you can imagine, that made for a grueling morning out just to stock our fridge. I actually began having panic attacks and would just leave a full cart of groceries abandoned in aisle 7.

Then I heard a voice say "Erin, what can you learn from this?" "What are you supposed to gain from this suffering?" Everything changed. Life did not become easier but I began to take each challenge on as if it were my homework assignment personally handed to me by my favorite college professor. Through that wisdom not only did my son's diet change but our entire family has benefited from it. So how has this food path related to home school?

In the blink of an eye my son was off to kindergarten trailing right behind his older sister. His first year of kindergarten seemed successful. He had a very loving teacher who loved the kids and her job and we had no complaints. Then a deployment shook our home and our lives in a way you never quite understand until you've gone through it yourself. I had four children at the time. The oldest was 7 and the youngest 5 months and I was alone, in a foreign country and did I mention alone?

At any rate, the phone calls from the school started and I became a pub regular except this was no pub and the happy hour was less than, well, happy. Almost weekly I was summoned to conference with the school's principal and guidance counselor. Before I go any further I want to mention how wonderful they are/were and I think looking back I was lucky to have them watching over our children. However, one final meeting, forced me to force myself to examine the meaning of sacrifice and the meaning of mother hood.

With so many back and forth meetings I had begun to think that home school might be in our future but then I would push, no, violently slap that thought from my head. I would curse it and tell it to stay away. However, I could not. The home school monster was once again rearing it's ugly head.

My husband was home schooled until he was a junior in high school, went on to graduate from West Point, was well socialized and chose wisely when marrying his spouse, me (insert lots of laughter). I knew that removing a child from public school could be done in a well rounded way but I also knew I was not that sort.

I liked to look fashionable. I don't sew or make crafts. I hate glitter and glue and little pieces of cut up messes on my floor. I liked my children but I also loved the sight of that big banana of a school bus pulling up and not pulling back in for at least 8 hours. I LOVED drinking my coffee in peace and only having to juggle 2 kids, for five days a week, for a few hours a day, instead of four kids during a deployment. This sounded almost too good it was hysterical. Wait, I do sing, so home schooling could work.

Now back to what forced me to even to think about home school when I was so clearly NOT a home school mom. When the administration finally mentioned the words evaluation and medication my fear fled and my might strengthened. I knew my son liked to play alone (and never complained about it) and I was fine with that. I knew he lived in his own little world and I was ok with that. I knew that sitting and focusing in a desk with 1000 wonderful distractions for 8 hours was difficult and I was ok with that. What I also knew without a doubt was that he did NOT need medication.

In fairness, teachers do not have the ability to cater to every student and there is nothing wrong with students that can sit in a desk and get the work done that is required of them but my son was not one of them and he was also not a child that needed medication. Rather he needed a world, this world that was right at his finger tips to explore and soak in and get lost in. He needed to be ok to do his homework standing up or flopped over a chair. I also knew that my child was my responsibility and if the local school situation wasn't working out then what? Where should he be?

I left that meeting feeling hopeful and defeated. How is that even possible? I knew that this vocation of both mother and teacher was now creeping deeply beneath the surface penetrating my soul in an uneasy easy manner. I kept thinking maybe I can find one of my friends that home schools and ask her to do it. That might work but no such luck.

I cried. I cried a lot. I was so scared. Knowing my own limitations, my failures, my ignorance, my stupidity, my flaws and the fact that I only had my lowly associates degree, how was I going to sufficiently educate my child? Then the food struggle came to mind and I was lightening struck with a grace. The same familiar grace that God had given me during all of our food wars had returned. Once again I heard God's voice saying "I will teach you how to teach him." "What are you supposed to gain from this suffering?" Those words, His voice paved this path of uncertainty with silk instead of boulders.

I would by lying if I were to say I haven't looked back and if I were to declare that home school was the best and easiest decision we've ever collectively made as a family. The hard honest ridiculous truth is I absolutely hated it the first year. I was alone and trying to do everything on my own. Our curriculum was not a good fit for us and someone, one of us, cried every single day. If I wasn't crying, then my daughter was shedding enough tears for all of us. We were miserable but then I allowed God to show up once again.

We were ready to throw in the towel. I had filled out applications to a charter school in the area and was on my way to turn them in to have my children back in school by fall! Alleluia! Praise God. While on my way to the school I had turned the radio on and on the radio came the devastating news story that broke millions of hearts around our nation and perhaps the world. It was the Sandy Hook School Shooting. Tis true that our decisions can not be made or based out of fear but I felt in my core that there had to be another way. I hadn't exhausted all of my options. There were still thriving home school families out there. What are they doing or trying that I had not yet cracked the surface on?

After much prayer and consultation and to my dismay we decided to give home school one more go around and I am so glad we did. God, in all His glory, orchestrated the success we have discovered with this new curriculum and homeschooling life. We have a community. We have friends. We have joy in education. We have daily mass which my children and I enjoy immensely. We have discovered a love and respect for information the world around us and all of God's abundant creatures.

The very suffering I had hoped to avoid, that I knew I was not capable of conquering, showed up on my door step and with it came a formation and foundation of faith and love for myself, my husband, my children, my God and those around me that I never thought possible.

I am not writing this to say that children shouldn't be medicated and that homeschooling is the best alternative because I don't feel that way at all. To each their own. My motto is "How's it working for you?" If it's working then keep on keeping on. What I am saying is that I knew my son and I knew what he needed and what he didn't need and that whisper of  conviction is not only for me but for all who dare to listen. What I undoubtedly know now is that sacrifice as a mother does not end once late night feedings and diaper changes are finished or once our children reach the school and ripe old age of 18. It's forever. We never stop being parents.

We have a little saying in our Classical Conversation community and it goes like this "The mission of CC is, To Know God and to make God known." Knowing God and making God known is our first priority now above everything else. Those struggles that seemed to viciously make their way into our laps are truly our opportunity to get to personally know God but they are more than that. They are a gift, that if we dare to open, hold for us the way to holiness and sanctifying love.

Ringrazio Dio ~ Thanks be to God

The Word of Life for February 2016 from the Focolare Movement

"As a mother comforts her child so I will comfort you." (Is 66:13)


"This Word of Life is an invitation to believe in God’s loving action even where his presence is not felt. It is a proclamation of hope and challenge that we too might become instruments of consolation.
Who hasn’t seen a crying child throw itself into its mother’s arms? Whatever the matter is, important or not, the mother dries its tears, covers it with tenderness and, bit by bit, it starts to smile again. Her presence and loving kindness are enough. God behaves like this with us, and compares himself to a mother.

These words are how God speaks to his people on their return from exile in Babylon. They had seen their homes and the Temple demolished and had been deported to a foreign land where they felt lost and grief-stricken; now, returning to their homeland, the people had to rebuild from the rubble of destruction.

The tragedy Israel had lived through is repeated by many war-torn peoples, victims of terrorist atrocities or inhuman exploitation. Houses and streets ripped apart, sites symbolic of a cultural identity razed to the ground, goods pillaged, places of worship destroyed. How many people kidnapped, millions forced to flee, thousands dying in deserts or at sea! It looks like an apocalypse.

This Word of Life is an invitation to believe in God’s loving action also where his presence is not felt. It is a proclamation of hope. He is beside the one who suffers persecution, injustice, exile.

He is with us, with our family, with our people. He knows our personal pain and that of the whole human race. He became one of us, to the point of dying on a cross. This is why he knows how to understand us and comfort us. Just like a mother who takes her child onto her lap and comforts it.
We need to open our eyes and hearts to ‘see him’. To the extent that we experience the tenderness of his love, we will be able to transmit it to those who live in pain and under trial, so that we become instruments of consolation.

Paul, too, suggests it to the Corinthians: ‘console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God’ (2 Cor. 1:4).

This was also a deeply personal and specific experience of Chiara Lubich: ‘Lord, give me all who are lonely … I have felt in my heart the passion that fills your heart for all of the forsakenness in which the whole of the world is drifting. I love everyone who is sick and alone. Who consoles their weeping? Who mourns their slow death? Who presses to their own heart, the heart in despair? My God, let me be in this world the tangible sacrament of your love; let me be your arms that press to themselves and consume in love all the loneliness of the world."

Ringrazio Dio ~ Thanks be to God

I went to Ash Wednesday mass for the first time in years this morning. I haven't attended this mass for a few reasons but one being that I don't like all the attention the ashes attract. It's not a holy day of obligation and yet it's one of the most attended masses throughout the liturgical year.

After a conversation I had last night I realized I had actually become a bit judgemental against p...eople that did go to this mass and heard God telling me to dig deep and examine your conscience. I don't begrudge the Christmas and Easter Day church goers, in fact I think it's great that people come to church when they feel the desire, so why was I harboring ill feelings against the Ash Wednesday mass goers?

At any rate, I woke up this morning with the desire to go for the first time in a long time. I had to put my ego aside. Today is a day that we are reminded of our incredible and simple humanity of where we came from and to what we will return. This is the beautiful season of taking up our cross(es) in a more extraordinary way and drawing closer to God.

Whatever you give up or take on this Lenten season and no matter what reason draws you to mass today God is the only one that knows your heart and He uses all things for His glory and His good. So go and be reminded that God wants you to want to be as close to Him as He is to you.

#Hosea #lent #ashestoashes #humbled #grateful #thanksbetogod

Ringrazio Dio ~ Thanks be to God

Blueberry Yogurt Smiles

As I was finishing up my breakfast and strategically wrapping the last of the almond butter around my lime blemished apple slice, I looked up to notice the sweetest image sitting next to me. His tongue began to reach to the furthest corners of the earth, I mean his mouth, as if he were scraping the bottom of a bowl that had just been emptied of the last of the cake batter. Completely  unaware of my fixed gaze he made it his mission to tidy his cheeks in a military fashion. He, is my five year old. He is the youngest of my children and sadly the end of our chapter in Kelley babies.

His blueberry yogurt stained face, with children past, would have made me cringe or even, embarrassingly enough, annoyed me and tragically sent me into a tail spin. That face would have been one more mess for me to clean, one more chore to add to my already chore filled life but this morning I breathed something different. It was a breath of "I know what you are." You are the last. You are the last blueberry stained face that I now desire to wipe. You are the last of the crumb droppers and sleeve smudgers. I found myself smiling instead of cringing and wholeheartedly regretting that there would not be another to come after him.

 

I shared permission with the sun to soak in his indigo stained face and found myself grateful for all the other violet faces that had come before him. I also found peace when I looked down and saw that our kitchen table had become the latest casualty, littered with my son's Van Gogh like art work. Starry Night's got nothing on the wrath of a five year old's finger print blueberry yogurt masterpiece.

This bone chilling February morning, 12 years after I first became a mother, I took my time to retrieve the napkin and savored the moment. I let my eyes light up as his eyes always do and instead of seeing the blue inconvenience of a soul I glimpsed the blue love of God and His gift to my soul. Blueberry yogurt smiles will always be welcomed here.

Ringrazio Dio ~ Thanks be to God.

A Cup of Courage

I believe that most mother's start their mornings off with not only a cup of coffee or tea but with a cup of courage. "I'm going to be happy today. I'm not going to yell. I'm going to answer every question with a "yes honey", a smile and a pat on the head finishing it up with a "go run along now" conclusion. I am most certainly not going to have a break down ugly cry in my bathroom or in front of my children. I really think that's how most of us start our days but that's not how they usually go or at least that's not how mine usually goes and throw homeschooling and 5 kids on top of that and you can forget it.

Some days we make it. Some days I stop and literally look across the table at my son and wonder where time has gone and then there are days like today when I look across the kitchen and I hear "I spilled green smoothie all over your desk upstairs in YOUR room." Never mind that they've been told a trillion times...no probably more than that...that food and drinks are not to leave the table or the kitchen...but a green smoothie?!!!! That's just a punishment of sentences waiting to happen.

So what happens next? All those resolutions I made that morning are gone. With one little confession.......poof, up in flames they go. And in my head I am saying "stop it Erin" "don't say that" "ok now don't say that" "ohhhhhh that's not a good one either".....and what I see vanishing in front of me is almost unbearable. I see my 9 year old son, his eyes starting to tighten, his shoulders raised, his head bowed down, his heart beating...I don't see it but I can pretty much hear it and  feel it....the tears he is trying so hard to keep locked away start to cascade down the soft skin of his entire 9 year young being and I start to see his confidence that we are trying so hard to build crumble with just a few heat of the moment words, that while afterwards I would give anything to take back, but in the moment I can't seem to halt.

I feel in that moment and once it's long gone, like a hypocrite. I now have to stand in front of him again and apologize. I will ask him to start over. I will pray he will forgive me and I know he will, he always does. I will kneel down, seeing my reflection in his eyes, those eyes which mirror so many times my failures, my triumphs, my humanity, my sin festering, the river of forgiveness will stream from his eyes and I will fold him into me like I did all those nights when he was first born, kissing the top of his Charlie Brown head and wondering how someone like myself could be entrusted with such fragility, such innocence.

I once read a book called " Parenting Is Not For Cowards" I get what point the author was trying to make but I have to say at the end of the day I actually disagree. Parenting is exactly for cowards because honestly most of us working this 24/7 gig are courageously cowardly terrified. We are terrified of our reaction to the 50th spill we find our selves knee deep in, we are terrified of the swamp monster deep within us lurking, waiting to rear it's ugly heard, we are terrified of judgement not only from others but from those we live with and love with, we are terrified of taking on our child's education and then being deemed as a failure if they fail and guess what? They will fail. We will fail. We are terrified of the tantrum they throw in the supermarket because we've told them no to the sugary badness that will rot their teeth. We are terrified of the unknown and let's face it this entire parent hood journey is quite frankly the unknown. So YES we are cowards!!!!! However, just like that pansy of a lion on the Thanksgiving Special that graces our televisions every year, The Wizard of Oz, we are not alone.

I am so very afraid. I am so afraid of ruining my children, of being that mommy dearest and while there won't be wire hangers or a movie made about me, God I hope there is no movie. I am fearful there will be something else....a green smoothie kind of something else.

I once had a priest, a kind wonderful priest, tell me to wear a Rosary around my neck each day so that it might better help me in my endeavors to yell less. So I tried that and then I was riddled with guilt because not only was I yelling but now I was yelling with Mother Mary hanging tightly around my neck and over my heart.Talk about feeling like a loser lost cause.

 However, I realized today in that moment of tears, in my bathroom and stripped down to my hiccupping sobs and my simple nothingness that my raw moments, the ones I pray no one ever sees or hears, the moments that have even myself asking "Who are you? What are you? Where did you come from? Where did you go?" while these moments are not my finest, they also do not define me. They do not define the person that I am or the mother I am or the mother and person that I can be.

What they do gift me with is this desire to want to ask the woman in the grocery store if she needs help the next time I hear her yelling at her child, with the desire to judge less harshly when I see or hear or read about a parent that has done the unthinkable to their child, the desire to be able to look at a dear friend and say with ease "I forgive you" just like my wise son says to me so many times and some times so many times a day. 

Parents are sometimes made up of cowards that's just how it goes but when we fail we can always get back up shake the dust from our mouths and our hearts and begin again. Apologizing may not fix or change our hurts, our stabs, our collisions, but it will show our children what sorry looks like and will hopefully help us all remember that as long as we move forward we are courageously, not cowardly, making it on this adventure called parenthood.

Ringrazio Dio ~ Thanks be to God.