New article and new project

I have an article up at CatholicStand called  "Christian Projects: a Drop in the Ocean of Negativity" here:

http://www.catholicstand.com/christian-projects-drop-ocean-negativity/



In this article I talk about a project I am volunteering for. It's called "Protege o teu coração" (protect your heart) and it's a sexual education program for grades 5-12. I am doing the training this month to be able to go to schools next school year. I do not have loads of time on my hands, and hate having to leave Addie with my in-laws for extended periods of time, but I decided to take on this project for several reasons. Most of them were practical, and I felt God was clearly calling me to this, and some of them are because it's a good project and has good people working for it. I talk about what I consider characteristics of a good project in the article.

This program is basically Theology of the Body without talking about God and if you are a parent or teacher here in Portugal you can request it at your school. Or even parish or youth group. I've added a link to my side bar. <--

A Little Mother

(Flowers for Mary in our prayer corner for the month of May...)

Happy Mother's Day tomorrow in the US of A. We celebrated it here in Portugal last Sunday, for whatever reason they picked the first Sunday of May here.

I really liked this article called "A Little Mother Prevents Big Brother" here. And here are some of my favorite quotes:

"Motherhood is the first and last line of defense against totalitarianism. If you think this statement sounds over the top, you ought to ponder why the family has always been the ultimate target of tyrannical systems of government such as communism. Advocates of cultural Marxism tend to view families as akin to subversive cells that get in the way of centralized state power."

"A mother begins this task as only a mother can: through the mysterious pull of love, by forging bonds of personal loyalty, and under cover of the hidden sphere of private life. Tyrants have openly targeted these positive forces at least since Karl Marx essentially declared them totally incompatible with socialism. Lately we see devoted mothers—particularly traditional, stay-at-home mothers—increasingly mocked and challenged as cultural throwbacks. Even President Obama has criticized them in policy speeches, including his 2015 State of the Union."

"Motherhood obviously goes way beyond the act of giving birth or providing legal guardianship. It works in mysterious ways, sowing the goodwill and self-reliance. It’s the stuff that real villages are made of."

"Real motherhood is an instinctive and spiritual call to arms against any force that would undermine the well-being of one’s children. That means combatting the forces of harm—physical, emotional, and especially spiritual—while a child is most vulnerable to them. It means having an instinctive distrust of those forces, with the instinctive ability to detect them, to preempt them, and to destroy them whenever she is confronted with them. As her children grow, the astute mother instills strength and battle-hardens her children so that they, in turn, can confront and destroy those forces in the future.

So civil society always starts with encouraging and respecting strong mother-child bonds. They are the source for cultivating a climate of trust. One-on-one and face-to-face conversations based in mutual trust will always have the greatest impact on our perspectives and our lives."

Coffee cake and footnote 351

I still remember about a year ago going to an American's house here in Portugal for the first time. She had a beautiful drizzled orange cake on a cake plate in her kitchen, just waiting for its grand entrance after lunch. It looked so organized.

I thought about that this weekend when we had two back-to-back dinners at our house. (Still trying to do everything on my to-do lists before baby shows up...) I had my cakes ready to go sitting calmly among the bustle around them.

For the second dinner I tried out another Pioneer Woman recipe and it turned out delicious. It's called Coffee Cake, Literally. No one really complimented it, but I spend the entire time complimenting it myself. Possibly my favorite cake to date. It goes especially well with a scoop of icecream. I made half of the recipe for the cake and 1/4 of the frosting recipe. I'm not a big frosting fan. And I crumbled some oreos on top.

My husband was super tired for the first dinner, unfortunately. Rough week and day. But the second dinner we stayed up until 2am discussing footnote number 351 of Amoris Laetitia with my theologian friends. It was awesome. Life needs more nights like that.

Babymoon

The LORD’s acts of mercy are not exhausted, his compassion is not spent;

They are renewed each morning — great is your faithfulness!

Lamentations 3:22-23

We went on our first "babymoon" last weekend. We abandoned Addie with her grandparents and spent THREE nights alone near the beach. I got this idea from blogs... of course... and I assumed it would be good not only to rest before baby arrives but also because doing things alone with my husband is always good.

It was really worth it. Even the constant worry about if Addie missed us terribly and wasn't sleeping at all was a minor detail compared to how happy my husband was and what a great opportunity it was to reconnect. He got to swim in the ocean, which is what he likes, and I got to eat non-Portuguese food (and not cook!), which is what I like. See delicious Indian food above. If you are ever in the Algarve, we highly suggest the restaurant Indian Ocean in Albufeira.

We've been doing date nights and such, but I didn't realize how diferent a whole weekend alone would be. It made me realize how much attention Addie demands from us and how easy it is for me to focus on her and not my husband. I realized how much I still need his attention and how it's good to want to win his attention back. It made me think of Bible verses where God says he renews his love for us everyday. Love isn't a one-time, guaranteed thing. It really is something that needs grows over time, but needs lots of cultivating and renewing.

The Pope's instagram

"Old age is a time of grace, in which the Lord renews his call to us!"

Sometimes I am not sure if I should invest so much into this blog, reading other blogs, etc. Maybe I shouldn't invest so much in virtual relationships and expression, to invest more in real-life ones...
But then I find things like Pope Francis's instagram and my heart melts. How cool is it that the Pope has pictures of his daily life on instagram? I've put it on my sidebar. I especially like the picture above, and also the ones of him going to confession (himself!), in meetings and praying the rosary. Pope Benedict XVI started using Twitter, which this Pope continues, but I'm more of a picture person.