“Why would you want to start blogging again?”, an earnest question asked by my 13 year old. Each of my children give me a gift, Hannah gives me thoughtfulness. The question forced me to think. Why write? Why write and “put it out there”? The answer really comes down to this: when I write I am a better me.
The reason I chose Simply Catholic as the name of my blog is that those two words encapsulate not just who I am but also so much of what I intend for myself and what I strive to become more of. They are more or less the essence of my best self. The more I can align myself with those two words the more content I am and the more fulfilled I am. Writing and the act of putting it out on the internet helps me keep the perspective I need on my own life. If someone else enjoys it or finds it useful — all to the good.
My life is a Catholic life. I will honestly confess that I am “bad-Catholic” but with the grace of God I am a Lioness; the love of Christ infuses me as warm as the sun, as gentle as the moon and as merry as a stat lit sky. God has placed on me certain burdens and difficulties – I have no delusion that I am in any way unique in the weight or number of those burdens although sometimes I do forget that and feel sorry for myself. As much as I despise the platitude “ God never gives you anything more than you can bear” I do find that when place those burdens on the yoke that Christ gave me I am able to bear them with ease – Christ’s yoke makes all burdens light. When take things into my hands and take too much to heart, when I attempt to carry the burdens too close it all overwhelms me. Practicing my faith makes dealing with the rest of my life possible. When I am writing about my faith I think about it more deeply, center myself in it more firmly and find more about it to love.
The other theme of my life is simplicity. When you have seven children simplicity is just a matter of practical survival. Simplicity as a lifestyle and as a movement is something I am drawn to because I have a tendency to over-think everything and allow stuff to take over too much of my space and commitments to take up to much of my time. It is very easy for me to let perfect become the enemy of good and to get so wound up in non-essentials that the essentials don’t get done. There is a vicious cycle where my mind is cluttered which makes me less attentive to my external world which leads to my space and time being cluttered which makes my mind more cluttered. Mindfulness and prayer clear my mind of the thoughts and worries that chase around inside my head. Simplicity is the outward manifestation of mindfulness and the external support that buttresses inner peace. Writing about it helps keep me accountable to myself and It helps me stay organized and at peace. It helps balance and calm the spiritual, material, emotional, cognitive and temporal aspects of my existence.
When I was younger I really failed to appreciate how quickly life flies by and how easy it is to forget even things we know in the moment we will always remember. “I am way to busy living my life to document it” I said at one point scoffing at my mother-in-law, Dana, when she complained that I didn’t take enough pictures. But now, of course, I wish I had documented those things better and journaled more. Journals and pictures are repositories of memory and after watching both my grandmother and my mother-in-law, Irene, deal with memory loss I find myself very much aware that memories of are the gold of life. So I will journal more so that I can capture memories in text and keep them for that time when my mind fails to hold fast to those most precious things and I will take more pictures even though I am no longer able to share them with Dana.
That is why I am starting to blog again. As silly as even saying the word “blog” might be I live in a modern world and this is the tool that I have. Bless you if you have read this; I know it is just so much navel gazing – but sometimes that is ok.
Simply Catholic 