Thursday after Ash Wednesday...Choose LIFE by taking up our Most Cherished Cross and follow Jesus

Oh Grandma having fun today!  Knowing that I would have some time with these two, I had fake plans to get some of the two of them looking cute and special!  Even with watching a cow calf, a tea party with Joy while Tom took a nap... suddenly it happened!  One of the best and a cause for a happy smile by this old grandma!

Tom Tom and his pretty pretty mommy before she left.  He is not too sure about this old lady.

Handing him off while I watched a cow having her calf in the barn.

Joy set the table for a tea party with grandma and grandpa... when grandpa stepped in and asked if he could come to the tea party too?!  Complete with adorable flower tea pot, a Valentine she made at school, and Tom Tom on the day of his Baptism seemed to make a wonderful centerpiece.

Then grandpa got busy in the barn with a new calf, so he had to miss our tea party.

Our 2nd calf today - I think we are up to 14 now.  

Joy got dressed very pretty for our tea party, and grandma got to do her favorite thing - do her hair!

Tea party selfie... Joy talked about how she and her mommy have many tea parties.  "Because Joy wants to have a tea party every day." She smiled and nodded her head.  I told her that her mom has been having tea parties since she was about Joy's age, so that equals 38 years!  That is a whole lot of tea parties, Joy!

At a tea party all other distractions need to be left behind and you need to visit and share with one another.  Joy told me that when she smiles she laughs!  She is named rightly and she smiles and laughs a lot -- she is so full of JOY!  Our Lady joining in by the window was very special too!

My dad today in morning prayer... Progress as we are now in our second day of Lent!  The readings today are amazing!  

The first reading from Duetertomy 30

Moses said to the people:
“Today I have set before you
life and prosperity, death and doom...

Choose life, then,
that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God,
heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.
For that will mean life for you,
a long life for you to live on the land..."

In this world we live in where the culture of death is so worshiped and followed... how we cling to the True value of human LIFE from conception to natural death!  The Culture of LIFE is what we choose, O Lord!!!  How did it ever come to this crazy mixed up mess where we are looked down upon as being judgmental and close minded if we LOVE LIFE and Choose LIFE?

A beautiful poster mother and child - Ruth and her precious 7th child, Thomas Robert!  Ruth's amazing story of being told no more children after her second ruptured her uterus after trying to Vback.  The Catholic woman surgeon, who saved her uterus told her if she allowed her uterus to heal between pregnancies that she should be able to have others with close supervision.  5 children later!  Jesus, is in control and answers our prayers!  

Family Soul Story - Choose Life!: Now the stories of John's 4 sisters...Ruth, Nancy, Maria, and Susan/Little Sister Hallel!

I came home with 50 pictures... I am obsessed, but Ruth just told me that thanks to my obsession she has plenty of pictures of all the kids now up to Tom Tom.  

Joy sang a sweet song about Jesus to her baby brother and he quieted and listened to her sweet voice.

The dance - soon to be 5 year old Joy with her soon to be 4 month old baby brother.  Having siblings is the greatest gift of all!  there is no comparison to stuff or things or trips to Disney Land... Growing up on the farm with a lot of siblings is the BEST!

The Gospel today is how we find LIFE/LOVE/LIGHT in our lives and our homes and our domestic Church and our worship and prayer...  By embracing our Most Cherished Cross we find it to be the tree of LIFE where we learn how to LOVE and we are brought into the LIGHT!

Then he said to all,
 “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world
yet lose or forfeit himself?”  Luke 9:22-25

Wow!  Take up our Cross daily is so true in our marriages and families and our Church!  I like to claim that I am so weak that I drag my Cross, but I do want to slowly move is down the narrow path after Jesus towards heaven forever with Jesus, Mary, the Saints, my parents and sister and brother, and all my kids and grandkids - all 13 of them!  But also Jesus reminding us that all that the world tells us is so important like power or money or stuff... no, we need to leave that behind and die to self so that Jesus can dwell within us and we may be his hands and feet - CHOOSE LIFE!

Trying to comfort her baby brother.

And to choose the trappings of this whole world and limit or deny children in your marriage is sad and lonely and not allowing your marriage to be fruitful as The Church asks of us. 

According to “Theology of the Body”, love and sex, within the context of sacramental matrimony, is designed by God to be a direct reflection of Christ-like love, which is Free, Total, Faithful, and Fruitful.  Yes!!!!  Once again we are asked as Moses asked the people to Choose LIFE!

A peaceful moment side by side on mommy's beautiful afghan.

This pose did not work so well... give it a few months or so.  Another goal for grandma to have another photo shoot in the future.  My work is never done - especially with 3 new grandchildren in the last year!  So blessed!!!

Joy feeling the kittens inside of Sweeties belly.  "She will probably have the kittens on my birthday March 31)."  She did have her kittens on Joy's birthday a couple years ago.  How they love to have baby kittens in the house.  So much like her mommy when she was a little girl!

Her mommy Ruth at about Joy's age and with quite the resemblence other than the red hair.

Joy showing me the bread/Body of Jesus she made in the monstrace.  

Even going to Catholic Preschool is teaching them about their wonderful Catholic Faith!  How we LOVE our Catholic School - Holy Redeemer where Joy's older siblings and Tom Tom will go, her cousins Jude and Birdie, her mom and siblings, and Aunt Bobbi, her grandpa and his siblings and even her great grandma Anna Louwagie Verly!  Such a strong and beautiful farmily heritage of Faith/Family/Farm!!!  

"They aren't real jewels and diamonds, but they are shiny and pretty."  

Hallel called from France while I was there and she talked to both Ruth and I!  Yes, it is Lent but with all that is going on in our family over these last 6 months she has been given special permission to call us during Lent!  So grateful to hear her happy voice from France!  It has been Little Sister Marie's 80th birthday yesterday, and they celebrated it the night before due to Ash Wednesday.  "There were 100 Little Sisters here for the day, and it was very busy!"  

I wept a few tears as I heard Ruth and Hallel share some experiences during adoration.  So powerful that we have such a wonderful spiritual connection with our nun, who spends so much of her days in prayer, mass and 2 hours of Adoration after morning prayer and evening prayer!  "The Lord told me to abandon all to Him."  they shared.  It was a powerful reminder to me, also, and a good way to go into Lent!  "No one loves us more than Jesus does, so we can know that abandoning all to Him is good and that he is the one in control."  Yes!  Lord!!!

Watching cow TV - a cow calved while I was on duty.  I am so absolutely in love with the beautiful mother and child all 3 of my married daughters currently are!  They are all so beautiful and glowing and so effortlessly care for their new babies!  The model they are to the older children is so beautiful to behold!  Thank you, Jesus, and Jesus we trust in you.  Bless-bless, Barbara with the 48 - 33 here and 15 in heaven including mom and dad, who are especially close to my heart these days!

Can't get enough ashes pictures - 9 year old Bernadette in her Catholic School uniform with her baby sister, Regina Maria, who is 2 1/2 months old and so peaceful with her big sister!  

Daddy Bill with new 3 year old, George.  George is the first of our 3 boys in 6 weeks to be 3!  In a week Hector wil join him, and then Jude on March 26th!  LOVE our groups of cousins that grow up as cousin/friends for LIFE!!!

This is so True!!!  I have always thought that huge in our children making their Catholic Faith their own was the joy we shared when we worshiped together!  We always went to mass together even with a newborn, and the trip to and from was always goofy and joyful!  LOVE!  

Jesus we LOVE and adore YOU!  

 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor,

serving the Lord.  Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction,

faithful in prayer. - Romans 12:11-12

 

"The offspring of this intensity of love

for our Eucharistic Lord

should be a consuming zeal for the 
gathering of souls into the fold of Christ.”

 

St Katharine Drexel

American ~ 1858 - 1955
Heiress, educator, founder of schools
Entered religious life at age 31

Foundress - Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament

aka 'the anti-Margaret Sanger'
(We need St K's special prayers in these days!)

Feast Day - March 3

 

 

“And here is the passive way –

to be filled unto the fullness of God. 
The passive way – I abandon myself to it, not

in a multiplicity of trials, extraordinary penances

accomplished, practices of great works – but in

peaceful abandonment to the tenderness of Jesus, 
which I must try to imitate,

and by being in constant union with His

meek and humble heart."  - St Katharine Drexel

Danielle Rose - She has written a song for every decade of the rosary

Tauren Wells