"If we do it with Jesus. it is all wonderful no matter how clumsy we are at it." Mom

Grandpa saying goodbye to his sweet 10 month old Evangeline... they became very close in our days there!  She went from giving him a look of unsurity to one of love and devotion!

The look of love!

I finally had a chance to have a nice conversation with my mom... I have longing for this after our great adventure yet the first few days at home have been very full,  They have been following along as best they could with all that we have been doing, so they were happy to hear that our huge undertaking went off as well as it did.  I was surprised myself at how well behaved and easy it was to take the 4 kids along, and with their help getting the dog back to her owners was pretty easy, too!  I survived and am better for it!

Grandma time with my baby girl on the farm, 5 month old Joy... She discovered that grandma can be very determined when she wants to do a photo shoot!  The kitten just was comfortable and not motivated to move, so was a cute addition.


It was super fun to talk to my mom this morning and share some of our exciting news - like John and girlfriend, Bobbie, are on their way to KC for some family time with Nancy and family, time with The Little Sisters of the Lamb (Hallel's community), time to go to the Twins game tonight, and to top it off a Charismatic retreat with SPO!  I will be praying and awaiting an update when they get back.  I joyfully reminded them that "The Holy Spirit is amazing!"  John is well aware that since I was 16 I have been charismatic after my parents laid hands on me to receive the Holy Spirit!
http://familysoulstory.blogspot.com/p/the-amazing-story-of-13-becoming.html

In the week we were gone Joy started to eat!  That magic 5 month mark where the kids started to look for food.  Yesterday she got into the high chair for the first time and had her first applesauce which she liked a lot. 


In my talk with my mother a short time ago, she started to mention some work she is doing on their website.  http://www.catholicdiagramteacher.com/  A website on which both of my parents have put the work they have both done... my dad with alcoholics and my mom with lots of her books and her Bible study of the entire Bible... Hallel has shared with her that her Community has gone there to learn from her! 


Mom mentioned that she is making some fun changes and that she is enjoying it.  "I am doing it with Jesus, and don't we all love that?  Doing anything with Jesus is wonderful, no matter how clumsy and poorly we do it!"  I just had to laugh with delight at the thought and sentiment, which is exactly what I feel about my sharing here every day... humble and small and yet done with total love for Jesus and his glorious Bride, The Church!  Each day is wonderful when I can share here, and I suffer if I cannot due to busyness or distractions crowding my day.  I just have to give it up..

Joy in the clouds and a platter of first day of school snacks... cookies that look like pencils!


The first reading today from Colossians 1... St Paul speaks of this wonderfulness we have if we live our life with Jesus!   "that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will
through all spiritual wisdom and understanding
to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,
so as to be fully pleasing, in every good work bearing fruit
and growing in the knowledge of God,
strengthened with every power, in accord with his glorious might,
for all endurance and patience,
with joy giving thanks to the Father, who has made you fit to share
in the inheritance of the holy ones in light."


Every word is a pearl of Truth!  It is so amazing to have these small slices of heaven here on earth as we share our small things with Jesus through Mary and the Saints! 

Grandma got to hear first about their first day of school as mom was busy bringing home the calves on weaning day.  They all seemed to be happy about school, and we are most grateful for the Catholic School - 4th generation of students as our kids- their mom, grandpa Pat and his siblings, and even their great-grandma Ann went there ahead of them.  Next week 5 year old Rose will be joining them there for her first year of Kindergarten!

The cows in the pasture behind our house mooing for their calves yesterday morning while I picked my tomatoes for tomato soup... today they are more peaceful.

Ruth and I both had 2 pails from each of our gardens.  Tomato soup day, and Pat was around to help which was fun!

We started with this, and in the bags are carrots, onions and celery...


Why do my parents and I joyfully stagger forward down the narrow path sharing our burning love for Jesus and His Church?  Because just as Jesus told Simon today in the Gospel from Luke 5... "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men."  Yes!  We pray that in some humble way we are being used to share The Truth, LIGHT/LOVE/LIFE/Jesus with those few that read what we share! 


We pray that our lives lived may reflect that to all those that only see that and don't see our heartfelt sharing in words.  Mom was speaking today about how my dad has given his all to be a father to my 4 siblings that we adopted when I was 16, after their parents were killed in a car crash.  Such an example of listening to the leading of the Holy Spirit, and then doing all that was required to accomplish it!  A work in progress to be sure.

It sure was special to have Pat in the house helping us with our big soup project, and to have his mom's colander to use..."My mom taught me how to use this."


Jesus, it feels mostly like we fish all night and "have caught nothing, but at your command I will lower the nets for a catch."  We trust that you at work in our humble fishing at your command.  Yes, we are overwhelmed by your love and forgiveness of our weakness and faults, and may we in return give that to those around us, most especially those the closest to us in our domestic Church/family.  In our domestic church/family is where we foremost should be sharing that love and being open to life and raising lights to see the "fruit and growing in the knowledge of God."  Jesus, we trust in you.  Amen and Hallelujah

Jars ready to be filled, Joy has the scraper and a smile while grandpa runs the blender and we here the 156 calves bawling for their mothers from through the open window.  Joy has entered quite an interesting life as a farmgirl!

5 year old Rose is a good helper while we put the vegetables through.  With the blender now it is much easier than when we used to cook them under pressure and then muscle them through the colander!  Almost nothing goes to waste any more.  So yummy!

4 canners with equal amounts of soup = 60 quarts!  We make food for 6 families including our Hallel's community of the Lamb!  We just sent some fresh made soup and salsa with John to take to Nancy this morning.  Bless-bless, Barbara Luke

The fruits of our labors - Pat's mother overheard this recipe on the party line years ago as a young married woman, and once you have it you can't go back to canned from the store.  We love it!!! 

Fixing the fence around a pasture they haven't been in for the entire summer... They were happy for the new grass and it helped them forget a bit that their calves were taken off of them suddenly the day before.

Off to greener pastures...

Prayer to the Mother of Goodness, Love and Mercy :

O Mother, of Goodness, Love and Mercy,
I immensely love you and offer myself to you.
Through your goodness, love and mercy save me....
I want to be yours.
I love you endlessly and want you to keep me.
From my heart I beseech you, Mother of Goodness.
Give me your goodness that I may deserve heaven by it.
I ask you for your immense love to give me the grace that I may love everybody as you loved Jesus Christ.
And I ask you for the Grace that I may be gracious to you
I offer myself completely to you and want you to be with me at every step.
For you are full of grace.
Let me never lose God's grace:
And if I should,
Help me.
Amen

we drove though Montana going and coming home and the smoke was thick in the air!  So shocking to see some of the pictures of where that smoke was coming from.  Praying for much of our country in the midst of such desperate conditions!  Jesus, we trust in you.

Casting Crowns - One step away

When we weren't listening to book on DVD we were listening to Christian music and the kids in the back seat sang along.. so great!

An amazing song that I could hear Simon's and Mary's sweet voices singing as we drove down the road!

busy life after a week away/tomao soup/weaning calves all 156 of them/pasture fence

Look what I came back to... Joy at 5 months and grandma time while mom was helping bring home all the calves (156) off of their mothers yesterday.  Lots of bawling calves makes it hard to hear others on the farm today, but we managed to make 4 pails of tomatoes into 60 quarts of soup.

4 canners including the one we got from Pat's mother... Looks like we needed it!  Bless-bless, Barb

"they obey"... back to the real world today..."Our little acts of obedience give us the occasion of proving our love for him." St Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us!

On the way out to see Maria, we would stop with the dog in tow and explore a bit of the dry mountainous views and marvel... on the way home we were all serious about getting the two long days on the road behind us and get the kids home reasonably rested and...

I am sure that their heads are spinning after the whirlwind times we have shared with their "guy that likes to do things/grandpa Pat."  Mine certainly was when I arrived home travel weary to the bone last night, but it is amazing how sleeping good and long in your own bed can be an immediate cure along with awaking to morning prayer with hubby and then John before he headed off to Tracy school to start a new year as a para/speech coach! 


Pat promised that I would be called upon soon to get the calves out of pastures as all the help is gone to start school including son-in-law, Paul, but as long as the call hasn't come... I am reveling in my peace and time to share from the heart finally after exhaustion and distractions prevented me! 

There was much new sights and beauty, but Pat and I both agreed that the dryness and the mountains didn't appeal to us as longing to stay there... our hearts and happiness are found in the Midwest black soil that is so amazing in how it provides food for the world!  Often Pat would comment on how impoverished the drought ridden countryside was with barely enough for the thin cattle trying to find something to eat!

The only pictures I took on the long trip home were of the black thick cattle on the green pastures we started to see in South Dakota!  Our eyes were ready to feast on the green lush good land after all the yellow barren poor mountain lands with the occasional irrigated green of hay ground in the  bottoms.  Pat would speak of how rich our part of the country is in agricultural plenty!

Evangeline found her mom's box of rosaries, and grandma was there to record it, of course!


I am in complete JOY inside my inner chapel today after reading the many sharings about the Saint for today... St Teresa of Calcutta!  I found that I could pray to her so easily this morning with both Pat and John!  Knowing of how she is praying and working so hard, as she did on earth, to end the horror of abortion, and how she longs for us to bring Christ's love into our domestic Church/families, and how she modeled for us how we are to love and serve the poor!  Yes, she can give us mighty help from heaven indeed!

I love this, for example!!   How I would love to be this for the Lord, too!  I do feel that I am positive for the most part about the beauty of our Faith in Jesus and his glorious Bride, The Church. 

Grandpa wanted to have his arms full of the little ones, and he certainly did manage that! 

I am sure that he will have a withdrawal from his holding his sweet Evangeline!  She certainly got very attached to him, and reached out for him to hold her!

She is a very precious little girl, and it was worth the trip to see her and her family with 4 cousins from the farm!  Traveling for 4 long days together brought out the best in them, with only a few short times of squirrely kids having to be tamed down. 

Princess has lived with us for 8 months.  She traveled well out there, and seemed happy to be with her family once again.  Evangeline was thrilled to have her dog back! 


So much wonderful sharings today from the first reading from 1s Thessalonians, to the Gospel from Luke and then the meditation written by St Teresa of Calcutta, whose feast day it today! 

This wonderful picture came up today to remind me that a year ago for Labor Day weekend we were all together minus Hallel, and now 2 new granddaughters in the last year, in KC, and this picture was taken after the mass in which we celebrated the fact that St Mother Teresa of Calcutta had been canonized in Rome that day! 

A year ago in KC... happy feast day!


The Gospel is of Jesus commanding the evil spirit to leave possessed man and it did!  He Commands and they obey is what St Teresa writes about today;
  Obedience well lived frees us from selfishness and pride, and so it helps us to find God and in him the whole world. Obedience is a special grace and it produces unfailing peace, inward joy, and close union with God....Obedience lived with joy creates a living awareness of the presence of God...  Ask the Holy Spirit to give us that grace.  Only Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus on the cross, can teach us obedience and is by the reality of his own example.  If I live constantly in the company of Jesus, I will look like him and do as he did.  Nothing pleases God more than when we obey.  Let us love God  not for what he gives, but for what he designs to take from us.  Our little acts of obedience gives us the occasion of proving our love for him.
This is what Jesus looks like!


Jesus, how wonderful to be reminded of this amazing help we have from heaven to walk more closely with you, to improve how we serve one another in our domestic Church/home, help in ending the horror of abortion, and just help in seeing you in the poor.  St Mother Teresa of Calcutta, we know of your prayers for us and this world!  We are strengthened for the battle we face each day... may we write with a humble pencil a most beautiful love-letter to all those that listen to what we have to share with the world... St Paul reminds us today - "you are children of the light and children of the day...Therefore let us not sleep as the rest do, and let us be sober and alert... to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, so that we may live together with him."  I Thessalonians 5  As sweet 9 year old Therese reminded us with the 10 virgins - "If we care, we will be ready!"  Jesus, we trust in you.  Amen and Hallelujah

Yes, it was all worth it!  Today I am so appreciating my life afresh again!  It is a lot for a grandma to take 4 grandkids across the country, but they were excellent to take and we all had a most marvelous adventure to be sure.  And we are all happy and ready to get back to our day to day lives on the farm, at school, and reunited in our domestic church/family... mine with my husband and son!  Bless-bless, Barbara Luke

Saint Teresa of Calcutta's Humility List:
1. Speak as little as possible about yourself.
2. Keep busy with your own affairs and not those of others.
3. Avoid... curiosity.
4. Do not interfere in the affairs of others.
5. Accept small irritations with good humor.
6. Do not dwell on the faults of others.
7. Accept censures even if unmerited.
8. Give in to the will of others.
9. Accept insults and injuries.
10. Accept contempt, being forgotten and disregarded.
11. Be courteous and delicate even when provoked by someone.

St. Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us

Yes, I need some major work on these!
This reminds of the litany of humility that St Teresa's Missionaries of Charity repeat weekly!

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me. From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being loved... From the desire of being extolled ... From the desire of being honored ... From the desire of being praised ... From the desire of being preferred to others... From the desire of being consulted ... From the desire of being approved ... From the fear of being humiliated ... From the fear of being despised... From the fear of suffering rebukes ... From the fear of being calumniated ... From the fear of being forgotten ... From the fear of being ridiculed ... From the fear of being wronged ... From the fear of being suspected ... That others may be loved more than I, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it. That others may be esteemed more than I ... That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease ... That others may be chosen and I set aside ... That others may be praised and I unnoticed ... That others may be preferred to me in everything... That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…

---

Happy Feast Day
Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta
1910-1997
Feast Day: September 5
Patronage: World Youth Day, the sick and dying, the lonely, the unborn...

Born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, Mother Teresa left home at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto as a missionary. She took her solemn vows on 14 May 1937, while serving as a teacher at the Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta. She began her missionary work with the poor in 1948, joined by a group of young women, and laid the foundations to create a new religious community helping the "poorest of the poor". At the time of her death, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters, and an associated brotherhood of 300 members, operating 610 missions in 123 countries. Mother Teresa was the recipient of numerous honors including the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize.

On September 4, 2016, Pope Francis canonized Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, saint among the poorest of the poor.
On March 13, 1997 she resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity, and died on September 5th. At the time of her death, the Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters and an associated brotherhood of 300 members operating 610 missions in 123 countries.

A year ago on this day!!!  The day St Mother Teresa was Canonized in Rome - we were together, except Hallel, in KC and a year later we have added two to our family with another on the way!  Always room for more LIFE!

Pat and I with the grandkids - we now have 15 going on 16!

Danielle Rose - Small things with great love

Danielle Rose - Litany of Humility

Her and St Teresa have it right!

"A heart filled with joy is more easily made perfect than one that is sad."
-St Philip Neri

And so, choose joy!

"If we care... we will be ready." Therese after we read the Gospel of the 10 Virgins/Matthew 25

10 month old Evangeline got to hang out with grandma this morning, and we did adorable dress up with Our Lady on this Saturday in Washington devoted to The Blessed Virgin Mary!  Her top knot was put in a half a dozen times and the last time she sat still and so it remained.  When it comes to little girl hair - I am one determined grandma, and they start to realize that they need to give up because I win!

Reflecting on Mary and Joseph in the LIGHT... Too much fun for this grandma!

Talk about reflections in the LIGHT... I have been bursting since yesterday morning when we all happened to be gathered in the living room and I read aloud the amazing Gospel of the 10 virgins - 5 wise and 5 foolish from Matthew 25!  It is all about how we need to be ready for we know not when the Bridegroom will come!  My sweet 9 year old granddaughter said these wise words so concise and TRUE..."If we care, we will be ready."  Wow!  Of course!!!  We love Jesus, we care so strongly and of course we will be ready when he comes at the time we know not when.  He does not ask us to dwell upon when that may be... the virgins all fell asleep... but we need to care enough to be ready no matter when!

Therese yesterday walking into the Pacific Ocean for the first time... it was cold, but they had a great time finding shells and sand dollars.

Lots of running in and out due to the cold.  I failed at getting a group picture at the Pacific ocean, and am kicking myself today...

 Rose digging a hole to the hot center of the earth...

Rose said that they swam with the whales... they whales are out there somewhere, and in the same ocean.  They did see a large crab and many jelly fish!

Grandpa off roading in the National forest to see some mega trees! 

Swimming on the other side of a dam, which had this lake on the other side at the foot of a mountain!  Our eyes are full of the sights, our hearts are full of family time, and our souls care a lot about Jesus and being with him forever and so we are ready!  Jesus, we trust in you.  I am soon on my rosary beads and praying with your beautiful Mother, Mary most holy, whom we have brought into our homes as you requested at the foot of the Cross!  Bless-bless, Barb

It is going to be super hard for grandpa Pat to leave his little precious behind along with her 4 siblings and mom and dad... He keeps teasing the kids that she is coming home with us.  He is only half way kidding.  I keep reminding him that they are our grandkids and not our kids.  I am very tired and ready for my peaceful life back.  Now for 2 big days on the road to get home!  Prayers please.  My rosary beads will never be far away.  I feel the comfort and peace surround me!!!

On our big day of adventure yesterday.  There was a lot of happiness and laughter galore!

Nice to know that it is the entire month!!!  I am gearing up for the feast day on Sept 15, which is a shared birthday - my Patrick #63, and grandson Romeo's #3!  Love Our Lady of Sorrows as she is there for us at our difficult times!

"The Church dedicates the month of September to Our Lady of Sorrows. This devotion recalls the Blessed Virgin Mary’s spiritual martyrdom in virtue of her perfect union with the Passion of Christ. This was her role in salvation history, and what merited her place as the spiritual Mother of all Christians. This is symbolized by a single sword, or seven swords, piercing Mary's suffering heart, as fore...told in Simeon's prophecy. Traditionally the Church meditates on the "Seven Sorrows" of our Blessed Mother: the prophecy of Simeon; the Holy Family's flight into Egypt; the loss of the Child Jesus for three days; the meeting of Mary and Jesus as he carried his cross; Jesus' crucifixion and death; Jesus' sacred body taken down from the cross; and Jesus' burial. The feast of Our Lady of Sorrows is September 15th."

 My painting on the ocean...

Love this so much!

Maria's nickname was house mouse as she was #3, who got into everything.  She has a few mice she collected as a result... Evangeline with one of them is adorable.