Beware of the Facebook Trap

By Sarah Halbur
Guest Contributor

I rarely scroll through my news feed on Facebook. But tonight, as I opened the social media hotspot, an interesting article caught my eye. I stopped to read it, and then I kept scrolling to look for more interesting articles. Several nuggets of wisdom popped onto my screen, but mixed in between were posts more akin to nuggets of time killing. As I scrolled, and the time slipped by, I realized what a time killer Facebook could become for me if I made a frequent habit of scrolling.

I'm not trying to say that Facebook is evil. In fact, if used well, it can be quite good - a means to reconnect with faraway friends and family, a useful networking tool. But it can also be a trap - a temptation to live more in the virtual social world rather than to be fully present with the people around you, a tendency to post useless things and spend hours gaping at others' useless things instead of using those hours to be purposeful, to serve, to make a difference in someone's life.

I'm not yet married or a mother, but I recently heard a young mother wisely warn against the Facebook trap. It dawned on me that I could see how easy it might be for young mothers, especially when exhausted, to sit at home and browse Facebook too often...instead of going outside and playing with her children, or reading stories, or even going out and spending real time with other young moms.

As women, we have a beautiful natural gift of connecting with other people, of nurturing others. One of the valuable articles I did read recently on Facebook was the 2014 commencement address given by a navy seal admiral. In it, the admiral noted that if each of the 8,000 students in the graduating at University of Texas changed the lives of just 10 people in their lifetime, and each of those people in turn changed the lives of 10 others, then in just one generation the whole class will have impacted the lives of 800 million people. That is powerful!

Think of how much good we could do if we were to positively impact one person each day, even by something as simple as a smile, or a helping hand, or cooking a homemade meal for our family or another family in need.

Here's some food for thought: The next time you go on Facebook, ask yourself if you are there to positively impact yourself and others, or if you're only going to kill time. If it's the latter, consider closing the news feed and opening your door instead to find the person just waiting for you to share your gifts with them.




Sarah Halbur is a communications director for Thomas More Society, a national pro-life law firm based in Chicago. She enjoys star-gazing, making music with loved ones, and creatively evangelizing, especially to children.

Work for family-minded women

By Mary C. Tillotson

Image by Plaid for Women

A few years ago, a nearly-finished homeschool mom (her youngest was in high school) ran across this article, The Bride who was Groomed for a Career, and it sparked a conversation among her nearly-finished homeschooling friends. They had all given their daughters a solid education and grounding in faith and morals, but had they taught them the skills they’d need to be wives and mothers?


At the time, I didn’t know that mom (or my opinion) well enough to say anything much, but it’s been on my mind for a while. When I was in college, I hardly felt like I had any direction, career or otherwise – college was just what you did after high school.

I turned this question over at length with my women friends in college. One friend was thinking about law school, but didn’t see the purpose in getting a law degree if she was just going to get married, get pregnant, quit being a lawyer, and homeschool her kids. She’s been out of college for a few years now and has a great career in a different field, but (as far as I know) no marriage prospects. She seems happy. Other women set out to find and follow their career passion, knowing that if they got married and had kids, they’d give it all up, but at least for now they might as well pursue their passions. Other women studied in the classic liberal-arts way, majoring in some higher-things-oriented field without thinking about careers. Of those, the ones who aren’t moms are teachers. Other women didn’t finish college because they got married and pregnant before graduation.

I graduated, worked as a small-town reporter for a year, got married, spent the next year doing odd jobs to make ends meet, and now I’m back in journalism, and I’m not (at the moment) raising kids. I think I’m finally starting to find answers.

My advice to family-minded female college students?

Be aware that there are plenty of unknowns. You might dream of being a homeschool mom of many but never find a man you want to marry; you might dream of an awesome political career but unexpectedly meet the man you really want to raise kids with. You might marry and realize you and your husband aren’t able to conceive children, temporarily or permanently.

I have anecdotal evidence from talking to my friends and statistical evidence from seeing polls: a majority of mothers want to work part-time in some professional field. A few want to work full-time and a few don’t want to work professionally at all, but most want to keep being professional while reserving most of the day for their kids.

When you’re in college, I think it makes sense to do what you love and pursue a career in that field. Keep in mind the usual factors like how much the field pays, whether jobs are available in that field, whether you’ll have to go to grad school (and if it’s worth the time/money), etc., but also consider how flexible that field can be. If you’re a journalist or writer, it’s very easy to do that full-time or part-time. Teaching can go part time pretty easily too. Other fields don’t flex into part-time near as easily. I don’t mean you should avoid them; I do mean you should think about that.

Do you have the skills it takes to raise kids and keep house? I don’t think this should be a big concern. A mom of six with two in diapers told me no matter how prepared you are for motherhood, you make 90 percent of it up on the spot. I suppose it might help to have enough exposure to kids that you aren’t afraid of them, but from everything I’ve seen, taking care of babies is hard work but not complicated. As they get older you get wiser and read more books and talk to more people about it; I don’t see how a lot of pre-marriage preparation would be helpful. The rest of keeping house is mostly cooking, cleaning, and paying bills – none of that is hard to learn, and anyway I think men and women ought to have these basic skills before college.

I know a lot of you readers have different experiences than I have. Some of you are moms, some of you are single, some of you are in college, some have careers and some don’t. What do you think about all this?

'Why Is That Girl Wearing No Pants?'

By Joy Pullmann

Yesterday I was at the grocery store with my two toddlers. Before us walked a young lady in brightly bolored volleyball shorts, which is to say, underwear people call pants. My three-year-old son gaped at her and said, entirely innocently, "Mom! Why isn't that girl wearing any pants?"

I fumbled about trying to think of a thing to say that would be true but not close off future conversations on the subject. I came up with, "Because her mother did not teach her to wear pants." My son accepted this but was still quite confused as to why anyone would walk around in public with no pants. (And this little boy is no prude—for one, he whips down his pants in the front yard when he needs to urinate. We stopped that one, though.)

Usually when we see a young lady wearing really scandalous clothing, her mother is not too far behind, and the mother's dress makes it obvious that neither of them has any clothing propriety. In this case, the mother looked normal. But I know that mothers nowadays have lost the ethos and habit of training their children in what is right and wrong, in dress and in everything else. This is probably both because it's a lot of work to enforce morality on young barbarians, and because nowadays people falsely believe that there is no right and wrong—in appearance, or anything else. As a consequence, people really never become true adults.

"Go play!"

By Mary C. Tillotson

When my grandma died this spring, I felt like something had unraveled. She had been a kind of locus of unity in my extended family – she was how we were all connected. She was widowed a few months before I was born, so in my experience, she always stood alone as the pinnacle of the family tree. There was Grandma, then her three children and their spouses, and then us twelve grandkids. We would all go to visit Grandma, and we would all be together. Then she died, and I felt unstable, somehow. Would we all just drift, like astronauts untethered from their spaceship?

Grandma must have foreseen this, because she made sure it wouldn’t happen.

Caroline, Anne, Mary, Ellen:
The CAME club at my 2012 wedding shower.
They were my bridesmaids.

My family (two boys and three girls) lived about 20 minutes from her, and my Michigan cousins (four girls) lived within a couple hours, so we visited several times a year. The four of us little girls formed the CAME club, the best word our initials would spell. We ate ice cream out of little plastic cups and tried to turn them into toy boats to float down the river. Inspired by the paintings on her wall (which she’d painted) we held art contests in her basement, drawing sunsets with colored pencils on copy paper. We went for walks around her block. We ate the M&Ms, lemon candies, and pink candies she left in dishes around the house. We played house and fort and boarding school, crawling through the cupboards under the basement stairs and climbing over the wooden fence in the backyard, fortressed by a protective pine tree.

I still don’t know what the big kids did, other than exclude us, but we weren’t big kids and they weren’t little kids, and nobody seemed to mind. But there was another problem: our southern Indiana cousins. All three were boys, and two were little kids. We saw them once a year, for a few days just after Christmas, and we mostly avoided them. We didn’t know them, and they were boys. Plus, the initials of their first names – the two younger ones, I mean – spelled B.M. Ew!

Grandma had been close to her cousins when she was a kid, and she wanted the same for her grandkids. When the oldest was about 14 or 15 and the youngest was 3 or 4, she rented a lodge on Houghton Lake in northern Michigan, the beginning of a fifteen-year tradition. It was a two-hour drive for us Michiganders and a day-long trip for the Indiana family. We arrived, unpacked, and ran around doing kid stuff. The twelve of us grandkids fell fairly naturally into the six big kids and six little kids – some parent told the CAME Club we had to let the younger boys (B. and M.) play with us, and after some adjustment we found a way to fit them in.

A handful of us taking the boat out.

We spent the week doing all the things you’d expect from kids at a big lodge on a beach. We played hide-and-seek and capture-the-flag. We played water football and went tubing behind my uncle’s motor boat, affectionately named after my late grandpa. We drove into town to buy rubber band guns and suction-cup bow-and-arrow sets at the Indian store, then yarn and beads at the craft store. We rode the rusty old bikes to the park for tennis and the playground. We opened wintergreen leaves to smell them. We fought over who got to sleep in which room upstairs. One year we made chalk out of eggshells; another year we decorated popsicle-stick picture frames with glitter and buttons. The Mountain Dew flowed freely and we never ran out of Doritos. Our parents took lots of pictures.

Grandma wasn’t bubbly or extroverted. She would do crafts with us (the photo of all twelve grandkids standing in age order has been on her fridge for years, in the handmade popsicle-stick frame) and she would sit on the beach chatting with my mom and aunts, drinking something we weren’t allowed to try. Mostly, though, I think she enjoyed watching all of us be kids together. Then we were teenagers together. Then we started getting summer jobs and couldn’t take a week off, so while our parents stayed the whole week, we’d be in and out as we could make it. Finally, the youngest cousins were in college and the oldest ones were working entry-level jobs with no vacation time. Grandma had an empty nest.

Six little kids and Grandma at Houghton Lake, 2011

Almost three years after the last Houghton Lake week, Grandma died. Her grandkids were scattered all over the eastern half of the country. Four spouses and four children – one of them newborn – had been added to the family. But all twelve of us returned to our parents’ hometown in southern Michigan for the funeral. We hugged and cried and then went back to her house to be together. It was the first time we’d all been together in three or four years, and it was the last time we’d all be together at Grandma’s house.

The six little kids – now mostly grown up, with the youngest in college – were playing cards while trying to assign the responsibility of buying the lodge at Houghton Lake when my cousin David came into the room with a serious look on his face.

“Guys, we need to make some promises,” he said. “We always have to love each other, and we have to stay in touch.”

We all agreed, but the room was too merry (in that way reunions are) to consider them with the gravity David had intended. But we didn’t need to. All of that was an unspoken given – including buying the lodge, though it will be years before that’s a possibility. Grandma had wanted all of us to be friends, and she made it happen. Her tactic was simple. She took us all to the beach and said, “Go play.”

And we did.

Mothers Day: Sadly, Overcommercialized

By Joy Pullmann

I do not like to receive gifts for Mother's Day or Valentine's Day. And don't even think about Sweetheart's Day or whatever else they're calling further additions to the list of "buy crap no one wants because commercials made you feel guilty."

Mother's Day advertisements on my Kindle and email sidebars began a solid three weeks before Mother's Day. It may have been four weeks. Whatever it was, it was indecent. Mother's Day is not even on the A-list of holidays. That, for me, includes Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. And maybe the Fourth of July. Those would be the top two Christian holidays and the top two American holidays. (By the way, President's Day and Labor Day are also stupid.)

The Kids Come First

By Joy Pullmann

This week my husband and I made a big decision. It was to take a big pay cut and leave a job I enjoy so I can keep my kids from outside childcare. Right now, as readers know, my husband stays home with the kids most days while I work most days. I am comfortable with my children being cared for by their father if not always by me. But he will go to graduate school this fall. For a few months, I was not exactly sure what we would do with the kids, but my plan involved finding regular childcare, from either an extended family member or some nice local lady. I was not extremely pleased with the idea but was ok with our three little ones spending about 15 hours a week with someone who was not their mommy or daddy.

Long story short, another job offer came along, and I've been given the gift of cutting our income in half, which still pays our basic expenses, while continuing to do some of what I love. But, most of all, I don't have to outsource my children. And that means the most to me.

Home is Wherever I'm with You

By Julie Baldwin

It's a funny topic Mary and Joy write about - home. I currently live 13 hours away from home - or is it my home town? Can one have multiple homes? I hope so.

My husband and I have been married for almost 16 months. The first six months, we continued to live apart (except on weekends) while he finished medical school in Louisville and I continued working in Cincinnati. Then, in June, we moved South to New Orleans. We had visitors three months later when our daughter was born, and then two home visits for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then a long drive back South, where we are staying till our move to Pennsylvania in June for residency (for three years!).

Almost 75 percent of Americans move every five years; that's about 40 million Americans per anum. I lived in three houses growing up; I'll have lived in three different places by my second wedding anniversary.

I grew up thinking I'd go to college, maybe work/live in Washington, D.C. for a few years, and then live the remainder of my days in Cincinnati. Now the possibility of never returning to my home town is just as possible as returning. My husband's family is much more transient, so he's far more open to moving where the weather suits him. I'd like to be close to family and friends, at least reasonably. I'll get my way in Pennsylvania.

It's time for me to re-evaluate what "home" means, and how I can best cultivate a lovely one for my husband, our baby daughter, and myself.

Privacy and Isolation when Life is Tough

Appearing calm; paddling frantically.

By Mary C. Tillotson

When I was in college, a Difficult Thing occurred in my life. I don’t see any reason why the internet at large needs to know the details, in part because it’s personal and in part because plenty of other people were involved, and I don’t think it’s fair to them if I share personal details from their lives. Suffice to say something had been brewing for a while and it came to a head when I found out there would be undeniable physical proof of what had been brewing. I had to figure out how to transition from pretending everything was okay.

What made it more difficult, as you might expect from your own experiences with the Difficult Things in your life, was my belief that nobody else struggled with anything like this. I remember walking to the cafeteria with some friends the day I found out, silent and mentally absent from the conversation. Mostly I was ashamed: all these people with Perfect Families and Perfect Lives hung out with me now, but how could they even relate when they found out about This? Would they assume a bunch of other stuff that wasn’t actually true? Would they start treating me differently?

After dinner, I finally accepted an offer from a friend to talk about it. I cried. She listened. To my surprise, she related: she had a similar Difficult Thing in her life, and so did several other people we knew. It just wasn’t coming to a head in everyone’s life that week like it was in mine.

Have you had that experience? Probably. I think most of us have: we face a Difficult Thing, feel ashamed and isolated because we’re probably the Only One dealing with it, then find out we’re not alone and at least feel better (even if the Difficult Thing isn’t resolved).

This brings me to a question: where is the balance between oversharing and isolating?

Whether it’s an embarrassing medical problem, a misbehaving family member, a marital conflict, an anxiety or depression disorder, sexual abuse, or whatever, sometimes life is just really tough and it seems like there’s no one to talk to. It’s an isolating Catch-22 where no one wants to air their dirty laundry, but we all desperately need someone else to air theirs so we know we’re not alone.

Some find a solution in talking frankly, openly, and publicly about their Difficult Things. This can be helpful, but I don’t think it’s always the best solution. Sometimes a Difficult Thing touches multiple people, and I don’t think it’s fair to say publicly “such-and-such a family member did this horrible thing, and I’m really suffering from it” because, if it’s my uncle (for illustration; all my uncles are actually really good people), maybe my mom or dad doesn’t want you to know that about his or her brother; maybe my aunt doesn’t want you to know that about her husband. Sometimes Difficult Things really are personal; they involve a kind of intimacy that the whole world really doesn’t need to know about. And while one blogger may feel comfortable telling the internet at large about her anxiety disorder, other people with anxiety disorders need to feel that it’s okay not to tell people if they don’t want to.

The solution I think best is friendship. Relationships secured by a deep trust can be safe places to confide Difficult Things.

But it takes time to build these kinds of relationships, and most of us young people end up moving again before we’ve had time to get to know anyone that well. We often live in cities or towns that don’t have very good getting-to-know-people structures; we’re often too busy with work and family to have energy for the historical society or some church group that doesn’t sound all that interesting but might have people who could be really close friends if we kept going for three years, maybe.

I don’t know the answer. What do you think?

Image via Rhymes with Laundry

Marriage Doesn't Have to Be Hard

By Brittany Makely
Guest Contributor

Everyone who is engaged or married has heard the warning – Be prepared. Marriage is hard. Maybe that’s true, but can someone please tell me what stage of life or life-altering decision does not include a challenge? It seems like too many people (intentionally or not) paint a picture of marriage as a toilsome, yet worthwhile, endeavor. Let’s be honest, being single is often at least as toilsome as being married. Staying in school and graduating takes roughly 18 years of focused, often-hard work. Succeeding in the professional world requires dedicated effort.

I’m not necessarily saying that marriage is or should be easy. What I am saying is that I think the seemingly inevitable “Oh, marriage takes a lot of hard work” from all the aunts at your bridal shower, coupled with those knowing nods and glances sends the wrong message. On some level, the fact that our society continues to proliferate this line about marriage contributes to a cheapening of the permanence of the institution. Part of what got us to a point in our nation where no-fault divorces are as common and accepted as corner coffeeshops is the mindset that says, “Well, it’s really hard, so you really can’t fault them for trying and failing.” WHAT?! No parent tells their 5^th grader that because fractions are hard, they can just quit taking math. The roundtable response when a niece announces a promotion at work during Thanksgiving dinner is not “Wow, that is going to be a lot of hard work.” It seems like marriage has become one of the only “difficult” things in life that we as a society have decided to let use that difficulty as a partial excuse for quitting.

Marriage is hard, but don't panic

By Mary C. Tillotson

Blessing of the Young Couple Before Marriage
by Pascal Dagnan Bouveret, 1880
Public Domain

After complaining about all the “marriage is hard” reminders I got during my engagement and rounding up two other married women to write notes of encouragement to young, frightened brides, I found myself typing an email to a college friend of mine, telling her that marriage is, of all things, hard. Perhaps I ought to forgive the older wives. Perhaps, like I was, they were trying to be helpful.

Most young brides are naive and doe-eyed about marriage, and I think we should let them begin their marriage doe-eyed and trusting! Marriage is a risk, and new wives will learn soon enough that love this deep carries the potential to be hurt this deeply. Don’t lecture them with horror stories or pass on your jaded view of marriage. It’s wrong to needlessly undermine their ability to love and trust their new husbands.

In college, worried about my ability to be a decent mother someday, I asked a mother of six to teach me how to change a diaper. While we were chatting over her wiggly six-month-old, she told me that no matter how prepared you are for motherhood, 90 percent of it you make up on the spot. I think the same is true of marriage. At least so far, mine’s been like that.

It’s impossible to describe to a new bride what marriage really entails, because some things can only be learned through experience. Even if it were possible to communicate to the new bride exactly how it feels to confront one’s own pettiness (and that of one’s spouse) in the inevitable argument over how to fold towels, what would that accomplish? She will still have that argument. And she will have it with her husband, not anyone else’s; she will bring her personality and experience to the table, not anyone else’s. She and her new husband need to learn how to make their relationship work, not anyone else’s.

I think young brides do need to hear that marriage is hard, but not from jaded or micromanaging wives. Marriage is hard sometimes, and it’s startling, at least at first, and it’s comforting to know that there’s no need to panic. Here is what I started writing to my friend:

Marriage is going to be difficult in ways you can’t imagine right now. It’s going to test you and try you and stretch you and call you to a kind of love that doesn’t even make sense to you, at least right away. You’re going to become painfully aware of your own immaturity and pettiness, and of your husband’s. You will find yourself failing over and over, and him, too; you will be tempted to despair and wonder if you made the right decision.

But don’t dwell on that right now. Right now, be joyful; plan your wedding and look forward to many long, happy years together. If you both work together and cooperate with grace, that’s what your marriage will be. Believe in love, because love is real; you have every reason to believe you will have a great marriage.

Tuck away those reminders that marriage is hard. Don’t stress yourself out over it. Soon enough the two of you will hit a bump in the road, and you’ll be surprised that marriage could be like this. Think back on what you heard, and take courage: this may be the hardest, most painful thing you’ve been dealt up until now, but many other women – many other marriages – have dealt with this kind of thing before. It is normal. Work through it and you will find a kind of love and joy and peace that you can’t imagine right now.

What do you think? Married women, what advice do you think would be helpful for young brides? Engaged women, what kind of encouragement could you use?

Shadows on the Rock

By Rebekah Randolph
A Mad Tea Party

Last year, I read Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather. She has become one of my favorite authors, not least because of her attention to life's small things. In this book, I was struck by how the "small things" of homemaking, in particular, became the spine and spirit of a community.

The story follows a young girl in the French colony of Quebec circa 1700. The French settlers have been uprooted from their homeland (albeit willingly) and set down in a place entirely foreign to them. All their comforts derive from the traditions they have managed to carry across the Atlantic.

Quebec's homemakers therefore play a far more meaningful role than is apparent on the surface. They function as guardians of a more refined way of life. Through their everyday duties, they infuse reason, warmth, and stability into a world otherwise marked by ignorance, crudity, and violence.

Ash Wednesday, from the Mouth of a Child

By Joy Pullmann

I was trying to be a good mom two days ago by telling my three-year-old son about Ash Wednesday to help him prepare for and understand why we would be going to church and getting ashes on our head. I told him that's what would happen, and he asked why.

"Because we need to remember that doing bad things means we must all die," I said. Then, I hastened to add the good news: "It's ok, though, because Jesus will make us be alive again after we die."

My son started to pout. "No, I hate dying," he said, grumpily. "I don't want to." Yes, son, neither does just about anyone.

7QT: Seven Ways to Save on Family Healthcare

By Joy Pullmann

Linked up with Conversion Diary.

Since my husband and I are both self-employed, we have to pay for our own health coverage. So, since saving money is very important (every bit saved goes towards paying off our mortgage early or giving to charity), and since we work hard we can't claim money the government has forcibly taken from other people who work hard, we have discovered a number of ways to save money on healthcare costs, even amid our country's expensive, cumbersome, and non-transparent healthcare system.

1. Try alternatives to health insurance.* We purchase catastrophic health expenses protection through a sharing program called Medishare. It works similar to insurance, but is not insurance: So we have in-network health providers, with whom Medishare has negotiated lower rates, and out-of-network health providers, just like typical insurance, but through Medishare members' monthly fees (ours for a family of five with a deductible of $5,000 is approximately $350) literally pay other members' health expenses. Insurance providers try to make money on top of that. I'm not against people taking risks in order to make money, but buying health insurance from a company would cost us at least twice what we pay. There are downsides: For one, Medishare doesn't offer preventative care incentives that might reduce overall costs like a no-copay annual physical; and for two we get put in this catch-22 where if we declare an expense and have health providers bill Medishare, we still have to pay the final bill out of pocket because of our high deductible and then we end up paying insurance rates, which are typically higher than cash rates. But if we pay in cash, we don't get the expense applied to our deductible, so we have to actually pay a lot more in health expenses than our deductible to go over our deductible and start to have our coverage kick in.

Frozen Is My Favorite Disney Princess Movie

By Brittany Makely

In January, my husband and I took our almost 3-year old daughter to see Frozen. My sister tagged along because why bother being an aunt and godmother if you can’t use your niece as an excuse to see the newest princess musical movie that features your favorite Broadway star, Idina Menzel from Wicked? Plus, I had been hearing rave reviews from young and old.

Taking toddlers to the movies is the best. If you haven’t done it, you are missing out on one of life’s most enjoyable experiences. From their excitement at carrying a booster seat into the theater, to choosing the perfect spot among those hundreds of seats, and watching their eyes get silver-dollar big when the screen goes dark as they reach for daddy’s strong, reassuring hand. Then they laugh and giggle at the most wonderful times, reminding the rest of us how simple, innocent humor is hilarious. That is, between fistfuls of popcorn that they are not sharing, but that’s ok because it’s getting kind of goopy now.

But I digress. Frozen fulfills my need for an amazing musical score in animated films, and teaches a much better lesson of true love than the princess movies of my own childhood. It is now possibly my favorite princess movie of all-time for three reasons.

WARNING: Spoilers follow.

“How Does She Do It?” Facing the Fear of Family Life

By Mary Stanford
Guest Contributor


I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t want marriage and family. I remember being teased about being “boy crazy” in 3rd grade. Yes, third grade. (The really embarrassing thing is that I remember being annoyed in kindergarten that marriage seemed like such a long wait.) So, you might say that fear was never really an issue for me. On top of that, I came from a happy home, filled with lots of kids. My parents made the whole deal seem easy. I was ready and had no fear.

Flash forward to the year 2000, when my time finally came. A bit later than expected, as I was already 25 and beginning to wonder if I might not rot on the vine. Once again, no fear—so happy was I to have found a person so suited to me—and so willing to fulfill my dream of being married and having babies. So excited to enter into marital bliss that I didn’t even panic that he hadn’t secured a job yet. A charming graduate student with a bright future; that was enough for me.

The first glimmer of fear that I remember experiencing was when I held our first baby in my arms the following spring. It was the first time in my life I had ever contemplated the thought that one baby might just be “enough” for me. I was prepared for the pain of delivery, for the surrender of so many little freedoms that accompany motherhood, but I was not prepared for the “worry.” I had been caring for babies since I was a kid— how could this be any different? Oh but it was. Nothing can prepare you for the sickening, never-ending worry that settles in your soul the moment your own child enters the world. Not some baby you can hand back to its mother—no, the one that comes home to stay is the one that changes everything. I had always thought that it would be such a shame if I were only blessed with one child; suddenly it seemed that my fears for this child consumed me. How does anyone handle more than this?

Well, I learned, gradually, that that initial fear was never totally going to subside. It would instead, like some sort of baggage, be something that I would carry along with me. I would walk with it, and gradually come to accept it. As I tried to wrap my head around this feeling, I became aware of one other aspect of family for which I was not entirely prepared: the love. I loved that little girl so much that I felt guilty. I felt unfaithful to the young siblings that I had once adored—and still do adore, of course-- but with a sister’s heart, not a mother’s heart. I felt guilty even contemplating another baby—when this one seemed to demand and deserve everything that I had. I used to watch her start to wake up from her nap and pick her up before she even cried. It just seemed right. I didn’t complain, I didn’t count the cost. She was worth it.

Then I would see other families at church—big families-- and wonder how they did it. How did they attend to everyone? How on earth did many of them home school? How did they survive? Fear would begin to bubble to the surface again.

Flash forward 13 years. Somehow, some way, I’m “doing” it. Perfectly? Oh dear no. (Is there such a thing?) No, but happily, and surprisingly sanely. Most days. Suddenly all tables have turned and I have young wives and mothers asking me how I do it. The truth is, I don’t know, and if I tried to concoct some answer it would most certainly come back to haunt me. What I will share is that, with five more babies, and 8 years of homeschooling under my belt, I have learned that those two overwhelming emotions, love and fear, have tended to balance one another out.

The love that almost takes your breath away is what keeps you invested. No one can understand how Mrs. X can deal with her extremely difficult 4 year-old because no one sees him like she does. No one can prepare you for how much you are invested in your own child. No one could convince you what you might be willing to undergo for that child’s sake. The “pride swallowing siege” (thank you, Jerry McGuire) that is parenthood is eminently do-able because you love that kid more than your own self. You’ll do just about everything including cutting off your right arm. That’s why it’s is so sad when people forego having children because they find other people’s kids irritating. They never gave their own kid a chance to win them over. And he always does. Nature is funny that way.

As far as my own life goes, I attribute our ability to thrive as a family to something beyond just the natural. As a Catholic, I believe in a little something we like to call sacramental grace. Read the catechism: besides enriching our souls with the life of sanctifying grace, each sacrament also imparts sacramental grace, a special gift which corresponds to the purpose of any given sacrament. My marriage is a sacrament; it imparts to my husband and to me a special assistance—not a general help, mind you—but a very specific help. It helps us to live out our marriage. It helps him to put up with me, and me to put up with him. And it helps us to deal with all these babies. At those moments when I am tempted to judge another family’s parenting decisions, I have to bite my tongue. No one has the grace to raise those kids except for them. No one has the tailor-made divine aid that accompanies their sacramental marriage except for them. I have my job to do, and they have theirs. And frankly, I find that quite liberating.

So, fear not, my young friends. Okay, I immediately retract that imperative. What I meant to say was: have no fear about being able to handle my life. The fact is: you just might not be able to swing it, but you can handle yours. You will feel the weight of fear, heavy at times, but the pull of your own miraculous love, that bond of affection which gives you the courage to walk through the Valley of Death (or at least a valley of vomit) for your loved ones, will kick in and you will be able to face whatever comes your way.

Mary Stanford earned a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Dallas, and a M.A. in theological studies degree from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., graduating summa cum laude from each institution. She is married, and is the mother of six children, whom she educates at home. A frequent speaker on topics including marriage, contraception, femininity, and the theology of the body, Mary also teaches as an adjunct instructor in the theology department of Christendom College.

Image by Redboxweddings.
Family photo courtesy of the author.

I do not want men in my bathroom or locker room, thanks

By Joy Pullmann

In college, I stayed at the University of Vermont for two weeks for debate training. The dorms were co-ed, but we figured that was fine until the first morning. I distinctly remember going to the bathroom for a shower, undressing, and hopping in the shower. A few minutes later, I noticed hairy man legs in the shower next to me. That was a wake-up far more alarming than ten cups of coffee. The bathrooms were co-ed, too.

Utterly embarrassed, I left as quickly and un-exposed as possible, furtively grabbing my towel from outside the shower and dressing in a toilet stall.

Now judges in Maine and California, and lawmakers in some seven other states, want to make thousands of little boys and girls feel like that, and worse. They are demanding that schoolkids be allowed to use whatever bathroom, locker room, and sports team they want. As Owen Strachan writes:

After 30+ years of marriage: "Oh, you'll love being married!"

By Elizabeth Petrides (Mary’s mom)
Guest Contributor

You can do it!

My daughter, married a whole year and a half, tells me that too many young people are afraid of marriage. Perhaps they’re afraid of the challenge, afraid to fail, afraid of not having any fun. And while marriage is a challenge at times, mostly it’s wonderful. And at the end, when you’ve survived money crunches, schedule crunches, toddlers, and teenagers, it’s wonderful.

I still remember when my husband and I had been married for about a month, and my brother and his girlfriend came over for a short visit. They told us that they were going to get married the next summer. The first thing out of my mouth, before I even thought about it, was something like this: “Oh, you’ll love being married. It’s so much fun!” At that point, I realized that I hadn’t really expected to be happy being married. My parents weren’t happy with each other, at least not that I could see, and my in-laws seemed not really well-suited for each other. I had been prepared for all the disappointments, challenges, and sacrifices involved in marriage, but I hadn’t really been prepared for happiness.

How To Be The Best Godparent

By Liesl 

spiritualworkoutblog.blogspot.com

I was holding Robert, my youngest baby cousin, for the first time when my aunt and uncle asked me to be his godmother.

Close from a young age!

Of course I said yes!

Robert responded by spitting up all over my shirt.

Apparently he agreed with his parents' choice... I had been chosen. 

That was almost 9 years ago, and at the time, I didn't realize what an important role I was taking on. It wasn't until a few years later, when I started to grow deeper into my Catholic faith, that I realized what a big deal it is to be someone's godmother.

Think about it for a minute. 

You can have a great marriage without any superpowers. (Right?)

by Mary C. Tillotson

Marriage is hard, everybody. Really hard.

Luke and I dated for a while, then he proposed and I said yes and we were engaged. We glowed for a few days, and then the bad news started coming in droves.

"Marriage is hard, you know," I heard. Over and over again.

This one retirement-aged lady from church: "Marriage is really hard. You know, my sister-in-law got married before we did, and she told us the first five years were the hardest. At the end of five years, I called her and said 'At least we're through the hard part!' And she said, 'No, the first 10 years are the hardest.' At the end of 10 years, I called her again and she told me the first 15 years are the hardest. You know, it's really all hard."

Let me describe that conversation in two words: Not encouraging. Or seven: Not what engaged people need to hear.

She was laughing in that way moms laugh about kids throwing up all over everything and ruining your life goals and your priceless, inherited-from-four-generations dishes. If you want to commiserate with people who have already experienced the same thing, go for it, but don't talk to me about it! You're just making me doubt whether this is really a good idea after all.

We turned out okay: for one thing, Luke is the sort of man you don't not marry when he asks, and for another, we had very supportive parents so we could mostly deflect these kinds of comments. But aside from our parents, we mostly heard two messages about marriage:

Our Home Is Not Wisconsin, Montana, or Indiana

By Joy Pullmann

So Mary's homesick. I can identify some, because I also want to live where we'd get free babysitting and the ability to actually participate in our extended family's life rather than catch glimpses by phone or Facebook. I have five semi-grown siblings, half of whose lives I've missed while away at college or, now, married and with kids eight hours away.

Before both sets of my grandparents died, their homes were our community centers. One lived five minutes from my house, and another 45 minutes away. Growing up, we spent countless weekends and holidays and Sundays and weeknights and piano recitals and random hellos together. Until about age 14, I grew up in the company of a boisterous family that, even if they lived in Minnesota and Illinois, frequently congregated at the halfpoint between the two: Grandma's house in Wisconsin. And then people divorced, and others died, and others moved away. Then we were all on our own. College cemented that separation. Then it was off to the East Coast, thankful to have found a good job, let alone any job given my graduation smack in the middle of the Great Recession.

But even when I got a job I can do from anywhere, we didn't move back. Our biggest reason was that we had searched every time I visited my parents, but there simply were no good churches within at least an hour radius.