'Tis the Season

So I was going to sit and write something profound.

Was.

Instead I'm sitting here desperately waiting for kids to go to sleep, trying to remember what the heck profound thing I was going to write about. #BecauseChristmas.

See, Christmas is that magical time of year when I lose brain cells. In fact I think my brain cells die every Advent and then are finally Resurrected on Easter. Its like....my brain has its own interpretation of the Liturgical Year.

Someday I am going to miss all this. The frantic pace of keeping up with extra choir rehearsals and violin practice. Remembering to send Christmas Cards .... oops. #fail.  Giving a card and some small gift to the kids' instructors. Crocheting gifts and trinkets until I give myself carpel tunnel. The sneaking, the hiding,  the all-nighters, the imaginative explanations for why Mommy is so tired, the midnight coffee so I can drive home from Walmart, the midnight coffee so I can stay awake to wrap just a few more.... the coffee. The coffee. Did I say coffee?

So here I am, listening to my kids talk across the hallway about what Santa might bring, eavesdropping to make sure Santa got it right, and mentally encouraging them to fall asleep so I can remove the last of the boxes from the truck and make sure Santa's helper named Amazon Prime got it right too.

And yet....

And yet, the most important moments will be the ones in silence. The ones with family. The ones helping others. When Santa has done his job and I step back to admire the tree and all the gifts underneath, knowing that in a few short hours (OK, last year it was AN hour) there will be happy children and total chaos. Its when I go outside around midnight and stand in the stillness, looking up at the sky, finding the brightest star (which actually tends to be Venus) and wondering what it was like when the sky filled up with Angels. Wondering what the Shepherds thought.  Its when I snuggle with my kids on the couch in our Christmas PJs and eat cookies and watch the movies Santa wisely brings. Its when my husband and I tuck in the kids, crack open the champagne, and toast a job well done, and a happy family. Its when we drop off the gifts for the giving tree. Its when we hand out granola bars and shelter info to the homeless man on the corner. Its hearing the kids sing their solos for a packed Church. Its paying for the stranger's meal just because. Its not sleeping for 3 nights straight and wondering how Mary and Joseph made it to Egypt after fleeing Bethlehem. Its realizing that Christmas, all of it, happens because HE LOVES US.

For me that is the biggest thing. He comes, despite us. He comes whether or not we are ready. He comes not because we have done something, but because He knows we need Him. He comes quietly and we might miss it if we don't stop for just a minute and take it all in.

I guess that is as profound as I can manage at the moment considering one of my dear children just came out to quiz me on Christmas. And Santa. And the North Pole. And Elves. ANd if Santa dresses like a Bishop on Christmas Eve. And if Santa got to hold the Baby Jesus. *sigh* I'm gonna miss this....

Merry Christmas,
Love,
Your Fairy Godmother

A Quick Thought...

"It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal."

- Pope John Paul II

❤️

Ps: I love you guys so much I published this from the plane I'm sitting in, waiting to take off 😘😉🛫✈️

Why Moms Can't Get Sick (Or Take Medicine)

This post is purely for your entertainment, dear Godchildren. It may serve as a reminder that your Godmother is not only human, but that she regularly needs large doses of humility.

I have been sick with an ugly cold all week. After canceling kids' activities, quarantining the house, and imposing strict handwashing rules on my cooped-up kids, today I ventured to break out of our self-imposed prison to bring Noah to his violin lesson.  So I loaded up on tea, cough drops, and most importantly, Alka-Seltzer Cold & Flu Multi-Symptom. (I like how it fizzes in the glass, and I hate swallowing pills!)  I sort of forgot that cold and flu meds make me a little spacey.

Off we went. 

Except Noah's teacher didn't show up. Darn it. I even put on mascara in an attempt to not look like a plague survivor. 

After waiting for her to show up for 40 minutes I had the bright idea to give her a call. No answer. So I left a message and we headed to the supermarket for bread and more cold and flu meds. 

Grocery stores are notoriously places where, if I haven't yet been sufficiently humiliated, I can make up for it. 

As I stood in my post-medicine stupor staring at too many options for hand soap (foaming, not foaming, vanilla + peppermint scent, peppermint + holly scent, Christmas scent, organic, non-paraben, glycerin-free, lavender and chamomile, bar soap, soap on a string, pump soap.....) I notice out of the corner of my eye that Noah is curious about the price of something in the freezer case. So curious in fact, that he is climbing it. 

Now I'm sure somewhere in my brain it registered that this might not be a good idea, but that thought took a while to make it into my conscious mind, especially since my head was still trying to figure out what paraben-free, glycerin-free, fragrance-free, gluten-free, milk-free soap was actually made of. Plus, let's face it, I know he is a good climber, so my brain obviously didn't register "danger." (Trust me, when Mommy brains sense danger its like a full on possession by body-building-ninja and moms can leap tall building and take out anyone and anything in their path to save their kid from said danger). 

Anyway, as I am slowly coming to the realization that I should tell Noah to not climb the freezer case, an elderly lady shoots me the look of death and says "is that YOUR child?"  

You know that saying, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all?"  Yeah, that's my life motto. Because in my head I had already responded, "No, is he yours?"  followed by "what child?" and "I leave my children locked in the car with no heat or air while I shop."  So instead of replying to the woman I blinked at her slowly as my Alka-Selter mind caught up to the present situation and shook off the soap question. (who needs ingredient-free soap, anyway?) and I looked at Noah who was quite proudly announcing what the price of the eggnog in the freezer case was as he nimbly stretched across it. "My son could be a gymnast. A mountain climbing gymnast," I proudly thought to myself. Then I blinked at the lady one more time, still couldn't come up with something worth actually saying, smiled at her, and then said, "Thanks for telling me, Noah, lets go get cheese."  And my mountain climbing gymnast extracted himself quite quickly from the freezer case and grabbed my hand to go find his favorite food.  

Did I mention that we went to the store with Ben dressed as a Knight? And that he was speaking in an English accent pretending to be a Dwarf a la Lord of the Rings who was leading an expedition against the Orc army? I may or may not have asked him to "command his troops to follow him as he protected His Lady, Queen of the Dwarves, as she hunted food for her people." (I always wanted to be Snow White....)

Did I also mention that Noah had "I love my Mom and Dad" written on his FOREHEAD at the time of this encounter? (His siblings tattooed him and he was so proud of his statement of love for his mom and dad he refused to have it wiped off. "But Mommy, I want EVERYONE to know I love you!" How can you argue with that? Apparently when I'm sick, I can't.)

After our little excursion, which, while it may sound rather extraordinary, was actually pretty normal (for us), we headed home for lunch. 

Keep in mind that at this point I feel rather sick, am coming off the Cold and Flu daze, and have a pounding headache. 

We get home and as everyone is getting situated I walk into the kitchen to find children in varying states of "don't let mom see" panic. What did they not want me to see? Just the blue tempera paint smeared all over my floor. How did it get there you ask? Because a curious, unnamed child (They close ranks when they think they are all to blame) wanted to know what it was. So of course, he squeezed it. And when you see a giant blob of blue paint on the floor, you try to clean it up. With your hands. So you smear it. And well, after that, its like finger painting and the more you try to "clean it up" the more it smears. Everywhere.

This is one of those many motherly moments where you have a choice: Get angry, or realize that your children are very imperfect little people whose best intentions almost always end in messes. I chose the latter (its a habit now) and decided the silver lining was that I now had a totally legit excuse to make my kids mop and clean my floor. #winning

I managed to get lunch made and served for everyone, and was delegating clean up duties when Noah decided he needed more pickles, so he perched himself inside the fridge and tried to open the pickle jar. Well. The good news is he did. The bad news is he opening it with such force that pickle juice spilled all over the fridge. All over the floor, and all over him. 

By now my head was approaching migraine territory so I dutifully took more medicine. Then I noticed that the pickle juice was mixing nicely with the blue paint. I may have had a fleeting thought that "it looked pretty" as it swirled. Until I remembered it was on my floor. I extracted Noah from the fridge and we traipsed to the bathroom to give him a bath (silver lining here: no more forehead tattoo!).  

After cleansing himself and my bathroom floor (Yay, I don't have to mop that either today!) Noah was once again dressed and ready to......make crystals on my couch. Yeah, not sure how that happened exactly but in the time it took me to wipe down the bathroom he had managed to find Gabe's crystal growing kit and got down to business on the nearest surface that was a sufficient height. 

I had to make a split second decision to either start throwing a toddler style tantrum and yelling "I DON'T FEEL GOOD EVERYBODY STOP!" or brewing more tea and turning this into a science lesson. It was a hard decision. Really hard. 

Science won. 

We relocated to the Kitchen. 

And wouldn't you know, as soon as I said "school" no one thought crystal growing sounded that exciting anymore. Which was fine with me, because I had a floor that needed to be washed! 

So there you have it. The inner thoughts, the daily struggles, and the reasons why moms simply can't get sick (or apparently take Cold and Flu Medicine).

Love,

your (sniffling, coughing, feverish) fairy Godmother

PS: yes, you were supposed to laugh at this. 

Fake It

We've all heard it. "Just fake it."
We've all done it.  Fake it, I mean.

But I want to suggest that there is only ONE time when its actually OK to "fake it."

No. Its not at the family party you didn't want to go to. (Gasp! How did she know?!  I'm in the same family, remember?)

No, its not online. (Umm photo editing apps, anyone?  Add enough tint and EVERYONE looks perfect)

No, its not at school. (What?! But if they knew the real me I wouldn't have ANY friends!)

The only time its acceptable to "fake it" is when it comes to faith.

What the wha?!  (Pssst. We got a reject Godmother. She is telling us to fake faith!) 

So aside from faking Faith, which we will get to in a minute, lets say why its NOT OK to "fake it" in other circumstances. The short answer is because God created you to be authentically you. Only YOU can be the person He created you to be. Only YOU can fulfill the purpose He has for your life. Being fake just mucks it all up. He doesn't want you to be fake. He wants you to be YOU because - are you ready for this - because THE WORLD NEEDS YOU.  I am so not exaggerating. 

It might sound like a Youth Group Cliche, but its totally true that God made you to be YOU because He knows that the world needs YOU. But it needs REAL you. Not Fake you. Satan LOVES to confuse young people. He lies to them and tells them that aren't good enough. Aren't pretty enough. Aren't strong enough. Aren't smart enough. Aren't popular enough. Aren't worth enough.

LIES!!!! LIES!!!! Think about it. If any of those things were true, the devil would't try so hard to convince you of them!

You know, I love Pope John Paul II (shocker, I know). He was loved by SO MANY young people. And one of the reasons why was because he saw who they were, and he told them they were GOOD! In his eyes, no one needed to be fake. No one needed to put on an act. No one needed to fake it.  He saw young people the way God does. GOOD! BEAUTIFUL! GIFTED!

If God thought the world didn't need you, didn't need what you have to offer, He wouldn't have created you the way you already are. 
Whoah.
Mind. Blown.

So. Be YOU. Authentic, imperfect, sometimes awkward YOU. And a funny thing will happen.

You'll be happier. You'll be freer. You'll be less stressed (lets face it, faking it is exhausting. So is worrying about people finding out that you're faking it). You'll discover more about yourself. You'll make BETTER friends. You'll have deeper relationships.

But you still have to be polite at Aunt Gertrude's family party. Being real doesn't mean you get to be rude. (Yes, I know we don't ACTUALLY have an Aunt Gertrude but wouldn't it be sort of cool if we did?) 

So back to faking faith. 

Its actually not my idea. I got it from the Bible (uh.... We're Catholic, we don't read the Bible. < bad joke> ) 

Throughout the Bible we are reminded that we are to have Faith. But what do you do when you feel like you don't? You make an ACT of faith. To put it bluntly, you basically fake it. And then a funny thing happens. It comes. Faith isn't a feeling. Its not magic. Its not something you can even consider tangible. Its a gift. And the fastest way to get God to give you MORE of this gift is to get His attention by acting as though you already have it.  Here's the trick: don't give up. Decide. Do I lack faith? Do I want more or deeper faith? Then I shall simply go about my life as though I already had it. I PROMISE He will give you all the faith you lack AND MORE.  Its one of His favorite things to do. 

John Paul II gives us a great reason why its totally worth it to "fake it" when it comes to faith:

We ALL want to be happy. If Jesus is what is going to ultimately make us the MOST happy, and we need to have Faith in order to know Him, well then, lets start Faking it! 

(Actually, I thought of ONE MORE instance when its totally legit to fake it. When your God mother asks you if you like the blog and you think to yourself, "actually its kinda lame" FAKE IT and instead say "I LOVE IT. ITS AWESOME!"    ;)   )

Love,

Your fairy Godmother

Let's Get This Party Started!

So I had the idea to write this blog for my GodChildren. Because blogs are cooler than letters. And cooler than emails and (eek!) much cooler phone calls. (Wait, does anyone say "cool" anymore?)

A blog is kind of anonymous but not. I mean, I am never going to actually SAY the names of my Godchildren, so who knows, you could know them. You could go to Church with them. One of them could be your BFF - and you'd never know. Its like.....its like I have Ninja Godkids. (you're welcome.)

So for anonymity's sake (and to keep the to the code of the Ninja Godchild) I will simply sometimes refer to them with nicknames. There is the adorable G-man. (He can't read yet). There's Mo, and there's Helen. They are going to forever hate me for giving them these unflattering names. However, they can be SURE their identities are protected!

So. Welcome to blog you-know-who-you-are.
Stay tuned,
This is going to be fun!

Love,
Your fairy Godmother