Humility

Humility - Freedom from pride and arrogance.  Enables one to have a sense of one's own unworthiness through imperfection and sinfulness.


Wow - Did today's gospel touch anyone else?  The basic lesson for me was humility.  It was the parable about the Pharisee and the Tax collector praying in the temple.  The Pharisee spends his prayer time boasting of all the wonderful things he has done while the tax collector humbly acknowledges his sinfullness and unworthiness before His Creator and begs for mercy.

Have you ever prayed the Litany of  Humility http://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/Litanies/humility?  Red Flag Alert:::: don't pray it unless you are truly prepared to practice that virtue.  It is a very difficult one.  I have been practicing that virtue for almost 20 years and feel that I am no closer to being humble than the day I first prayed that Prayer. I struggle greatly with humility because 1) I am a first born child and by definition, bossy, in almost every sense of the word b) God blessed me with 16 years of being a single Catholic women.  AT which time, I learned as much as I possibly could about my faith.  The second is not where I struggle.  I have  a love and passion for my faith that bears in me a strong desire to share it with others.  However, the combination of  1 and b can make me look like a bossy know-it-all at times.

Practicing the virtue of humility requires you to possess a full knowledge of your sins, failings, weaknesses, skeletons in your closet, etc. while at the same time maintaining a firm confidence in your dignity as a child of God made in His image and likeness, graced and blessed by Him, your Creator.  If you tip too far to one side, you can fall into despair, the other side, self-righteousness.  Maintaining that balance is not easy.  The freedom comes in the fact that I cannot do it alone and I am, indeed, in need of a Savior who lovingly died for me 2000 years ago.  When I am able to acknowledge that and allow Him to save me, I am, at least a little, practicing the virtue of humility.

PracticingVirtues

My newest adventure with Jesus is practicing virtues.  A very good friend of mine recently introduced me to The Virtue Store www.thevirtuestore.com.   It's a discipline (for lack of a better word) program designed to help your children identify and build virtues.  I immediately LOVED the idea, ordered the program,  and spent days waiting by the mailbox for it to arrive. 


For me, it's important to sow those seeds of faith and develop that relationship with Jesus as much as I can.  With the way today's society and culture is heading, I sometimes fear for their souls if I don't.   I want to help provide them an anchor and as many tools as possible for when they hit those teen - young adult years.  I try to stay grounded in prayer myself and am constantly begging the guidance of heaven.  I recently heard Scott Hahn say that at night before he goes to bed, he sometimes goes into his children's room and prays to their guardian angels, asking for them to help him to know the best way to bring his children to Jesus and heaven.   Beautiful.  I started doing that and not long after was when I discovered the Virtue Chart.  


What surprised me (not sure why it surprised me, I should have expected it) was that I found myself in desperate need of practicing the virtues right alongside my boys.  God is so good and I am so happy to say that I am always eager to embark on any adventure He puts in my path.  


So, here we are, practicing our virtues.  Please pray for us, especially me.  

Pumpkin Patch

Photos are finally download from way back in October.  Some catching up to do.

We took a day trip with friends to our favorite pumpkin patch.   Although there are several pumpkin patches near town,  we have been traveling a little over an hour to this one for 3 years now.  Bruce likes to search the internet and plan Sunday day trips to the most obscure little places around Texas.  We always have a great time and this is no exception.  Obviously there is face painting, hay rides, pumpkin painting, hay and corn mazes, and lots of home bakes pumpkin goodies.  There is always this cute little bluegrass band which Bruce and I particularly enjoy.  Of course, there are pumpkins.

Andrew as a tiger.

Which, of course, meant Mark had to be a tiger as well.

Mark driving a tractor.

I just had to include the entire sequence of shots in the pumpkins because it depicts Andrew's personality so well and is so funny when viewed in sequence.

This is boring.  Hurry up, Daddy.

Dad, do you need help because I know how to take excellent pictures?

Time to readjust. Just give me a minute.

Silliness sets in. 

Whoa!! Did you see that?

Not sure what's going on with the tongue, but did anyone notice that Mark has barely moved?  

My sweet Markie

Markie:  Can we go to the park now?

Mom:  I'm sorry.  We're not going to go to the park.

Markie: You said we going to park.

Mom:  I know I said maybe we can go to the park, but I changed my mind.  Sorry.

Markie:  Can we go to the park when you done changing your mind?

Sickness in the Our house

Sickness has fallen upon the our household.  This strange thing is that it has been a variety of illnesses, unless it is the same, but evolving.  AT least one person in the our household has been sick or recovering from sickness almost every day since September 2.  We may have had 2-3 "good" days this whole month.

Andrew and I have had the stomach bug.  Mark, Andrew, and I have had a fever/cold-like symptom thing, and I have even had pink eye.  Yes, you heard that right.  Not my 2 and 4 year old boys, but me.  I recently purchased new glasses and suspect that I picked it up trying on 20 or so frames.  Here's the difficult part about this entire thing.  Mommy has been sick just as much, if not more than the boys.  It's tough enough having sick children, but when Mommy is sick, the whole house almost falls apart.

Andrew and I missed our church festival, Aquinasfest, yesterday and were so disappointed, especially since we missed last year due to sickness.

If anyone reads this, please pray for our family.  I suspect there is a lesson in here somewhere for me.  When I'm well and things have settled, Jesus will tell me what that lesson was.  I have some ideas already. I know that our entire life here on Earth along with each experience is meant to bring us closer to Jesus and our eternal home.  So this whole experience is just one more step up the mountain.

Cute little toes

I remember when Andrew was about 4 months old.  WE were attending a city festival in Geneva, I believe.  Anyway, a lady approached us and was cooing and admiring Andrew.  She was looking at his toes (evidently he didn't have shoes on) and she said to me, "Enjoy these cute little toes, because one day you'll turn around and they'll be big and hairy" .  I thank God for the gift of my boys and their (currently) cute little toes.

Mark's cute little 2 year old toes.

Mark's handstands

Ok, Mark's favorite position these days is upside down in a handstand.  These photos were taken over the course of just 2 days.

In the evening after bath.

 The next morning.

That night!

I'm thinking I should put him into gymnatics.