Those Conversations You Don’t Want to Have with Your Kids

William (age 10) hit me with a couple of difficult topics right in a row the other night.  This post is part one. Many parents struggle with how to talk to their children about where babies come from.  When I was growing up, I had many friends whose parents completely ignored this essential topic, leaving [...]

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Got baby?

Because I’m on vacation (where I envisioned I would have uninterrupted to hours to blog, but that isn’t happening) here is another column reprint for you: Billboards. They are everywhere in our town and in our state. Their unsightliness mars the beauty of rural roadsides, and adds to the ugliness of already overdeveloped commercial strips. [...]

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It’s a baby, stupid: Why personhood is moot in the abortion debate

Time for another reprint from the ETC–yes, and I know, time for some NEW life issues writing; I have ideas, and I promise a new one is germinating.  This column appeared, I believe, in 2007. Anyone who has been really involved in the abortion debate for a long time has got to have realized that [...]

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Big Catholic Families

I’m posting this column reprint as a followup to my “Why Stop at Two” post of a few weeks ago.  In that post, I talked about why we’ve chosen to have a big family; this post focuses on the Catholic Church’s teachings on family size.  This was too long for the East Tennessee Catholic in [...]

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Grace through suffering

This originally appeared in the East Tennessee Catholic about three and a half years ago.  It was late at night–later than a twelve-year-old should have been awake–when Jake discovered me crying in front of the computer. Like all children, he doesn’t like to see his mother cry, and he asked me what was wrong. I [...]

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Books that change lives

I want to do some book blogging here from time to time.  I’ll share some of the books that have been important in my life, or that inspire me, or that I just enjoy.  And I hope that in the comments you will share some of your favorites as well.  The topic today is the [...]

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Who gave you life?

Just one more column reprint tonight, this one from Springtime four years ago, because it fits in with the slowing down and enjoying life theme.     Today is my “baby” sister’s 29th birthday.  My mother reminded me today that Anne owes her existence to her two big sisters. I remember well how much we begged and [...]

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The Secret to a Happy Life

The following is a reprint of a column that appeared in The East Tennessee Catholic in 2002. When I was pregnant with my third child, friends, family, and strangers in the mall all seemed desperate to know: “Was it planned?” At first I answered, “I’d have to be crazy to plan this.”  (I had a [...]

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