Hope: It Means so Much More

When I was little, I thought the best gifts came in big boxes. If they were both taller and wider than me then I knew with certainty there was a great gift inside. Once I discovered shiny trinkets, I felt quite the opposite. It was tiny boxes that magnified the glimmer of something costly and precious that I most coveted.  Nowadays, I just buy my own gifts and I am not very particular about the shape or size of the box. I give them to my husband to wrap so he has an inkling of what he bought me, giving him special instructions to put any clothes in a gift bag in case I happen to need to wear them before Christmas.

I don’t pretend that any of this is romantic or that the Three Wise Men would be impressed with my self-giving. It just seems like a practical solution to the pressures of gift-giving. And, there’s so much pressure. So much of gift-giving feels transactional. Christmas lists have been replaced with links that specify everything from size to color. We ask people what they want so they won’t be disappointed or so we don’t waste money on something that would otherwise end up in the top shelf of the hall closet. Just as often, we give money as a gift because we’ve been conditioned that it’s the one-size-fits-all solution to the woes of the world.

We look to material things to convey the genuineness of our love and affection, and inevitably they feel inadequate. Perhaps that’s what the Grinch realized when he said, “Maybe Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas…means a little bit more.”  Yet it isn’t a little green man that I think about at Christmas no matter how wonderful it is that he converted from greed and grumpiness. It’s a baby in the manger. Read more

Change your Tune: Better Self-Care

Hi all ~ Fall seems to be a particularly busy time of year for most of us so I thought this might be a good reminder to take some time to rest in God’s mercy (and also give you a reason to avoid hosting a dinner party!) Love and prayers to you all ~ Lara

I took piano lessons as I kid until the instructor told my mom she was wasting her money. The only thing he taught me to play was “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” which no one thinks is impressive no matter how passionately I play it for them. As such, I don’t claim to know much about music – other than I like it.

At home, I often ask “Alexa,” to play music for me. Alexa is the virtual assistant who likes to pretend she can’t hear me when I give her a command. She’s also a spy for the federal government who is convinced that me talking to my cat is some kind of secret code. Anyway, one day I was picking up around the house and I asked Alexa to play classical music. (When you play classical music in a dirty house the mess doesn’t feel as ordinary and since my family makes extraordinary messes it’s fitting background music.)

A few songs in, I heard a strange caterwauling sound, like two stray cats mating despite having a terrible time. I asked my husband where the peculiar sound was coming from and after a few minutes of concerted listening to these intermittent moans we realized that the sound was coming from Alexa. (We don’t have a cat named Alexa, so I am referring to the virtual assistant.)

It turns out, when I asked Alexa to play classical music, she picked a genre of music known as Classical Erotica. I was horrified. I briefly imagined the embarrassment of having people over for dinner with erotic music for ambiance. I added this to my long list of why I should avoid cooking.

But the whole thing made me wonder what else is seeping into our consciousness. What messages chosen by technology, the media, promoters, and influencers impact us in ways that if they were better examined actually contradict our values? What do we read, watch, or listen to that seems positive but is infiltrated with lies that are counter to what we know of God’s word?

One such message that comes to mind is the self-care movement that society uses to market everything from cosmetics to Caribbean vacations. On the surface there isn’t anything wrong with things that make us feel better. If God didn’t want us to rest, he would not have given us the Sabbath and commanded us to keep it. He wouldn’t have poured out his mercy to soothe the ache of hardships. Jesus wouldn’t have died for our sins if he was indifferent to how much it hurts us and others. He wouldn’t have shown us so many examples of compassion if he didn’t value the need for its respite.

Embracing these things, embracing Him, is the highest form of self-care we can experience. Immersing ourselves in His word, asking for his forgiveness, accepting his mercy, spending time in prayer, and emulating his gentle and generous Spirit offers a sustaining renewal that we can’t get from worldly things.

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Fly: An Easter People

Hi all~

As we go into the Easter Triduum I wanted to share this post with you. Holy Week reminds me so much of life. The coexistence of hardship, sacrifice, and sorrow with the joy of our faith, redemption, and forgiveness.

How can both things be true? How can life be so maddeningly hard, painful, and desolate and yet still be such a gift of grace with its merciful laughter, love, and promise? Jesus’ death is so sad and yet opens the door to a glory like no other. It’s really fantastic. 

So whatever season of life you find yourself in or however many seasons of life you are experiencing simultaneously, may you take this Easter Sunday to feel nothing but unparallel joy. Alleluia is your song, sweet friend. And, blessedly, it’s mine too. ~ love, Lara

P.S. — I just received an email from my publisher, Our Sunday Visitor,  that they are running a special on my book, Simple Mercies, until Friday. The book is $5 which is just about as cheap as dirt (unless you buy fancy potting soil kind of dirt. Then it’s even more of a bargain!)

Maybe pick some up for Divine Mercy Sunday gifts, book club, or heck, everyone you know!  Here’s their message and link: Get these books for only $5 each through Friday when you use promo code FIVE23 at checkout. Get free shipping (in the continental United States) when you spend $20 or more!

Fly: An Easter People

Sometimes I feel like a tiny bird with an injured leg from an encounter with the claws of a crazed cat.  I know how lucky I am to be here and how much worse things could be; yet, still, I carry a limp from my wounds that sometimes keep me tethered to the ground.  (I might start telling people that when they ask me how I am doing.)

Life is so messy and most of us try terribly hard to tidy what we can.  In its constancy, life can feel like a marathon, and like the tiny bird, we merely hop along.  One of my favorite quotes is from Saint John Paul II who said: “We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”  It conveys such unparallel joy – a skyward ascent of heavenly praise.  It hardly makes me think of hopping.

Indeed, we are an Easter people and we are meant to rise.  Lent is a time to unload the burden of sin we carry.  It’s a time to shed the miscellaneous and the excess.  It is a time to reconnect to God by disconnecting from our distractions.  Sometimes the Lenten experience feels empowering like a strenuous workout or the purging of an overstuffed closet.  Other times, it just feels hard.  All the emptying, sacrificing, and sustaining from a 40-day reflection can feel too austere for a hallelujah song.  No sweet little bird chirps that indicate winter’s hibernation is over.  Just a half-hearted hop, hop.  Yet Easter is coming – not just at the end of this Lenten season.  Also, at the end of our lives.  In between, in the thicket of life’s doing and undoing, we rise.  Amidst the momentary affliction of life’s messiness, we remain upright.  “Arise, for it is your task, and we are with you; be strong and do it,” (Ezra 10:4).  Even when it’s hard or feels impossible — when there is not enough money, not enough time, not enough of your poor tired soul to go around — be strong and rise.

Jesus did the impossible.  He did the miraculous.  He transformed death.  The finality of it was made infinite.  Hallelujah is our song.  It may not always feel like it, but our time on earth is nothing but a rising.  We are enduring people.  Our suffering does not define us. Our injuries do not bind us.  Challenges, adversity, and wounds cannot stop our ascent.  “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise,” (Micah 7:8).  We are the Easter people.  It’s not just Christ’s resurrection we have to celebrate, it is the possibility of our own.  Easter isn’t just a day culminating the end of Lent.  It’s an everyday.  The shedding of our burdens, the surrendering of suffering at the foot of his cross, and the unification of our souls to his, is what makes our rising possible.  It’s what helps us to remember that even in our brokenness, we are an Easter people and we still have wings to fly.

Hallelujah. 

Ugly Tree, Happy Memory: Birth of Redemption

Hi all ~
If you’ve experienced suffering (and who hasn’t) then maybe you already know how God can transform it into something beautiful. It took me a while to figure this out but now it shines bright like 1,000 twinkling lights on a puny tree in things that I know — really know.
May you know it too. And, rejoice!
Merry Christmas! ~ Love, Lara
In high school, I remember driving to the Christmas tree lot with my mom. It was close to Christmas so by the time we arrived the only trees left looked like they belonged on the Island of Misfit Toys — assuming the island’s castoffs were conifers instead of spotted stuffed elephants, a wannabe dentist elf named Hermey, and a choo-choo train with square wheels. These trees were lopsided and skinny with dehydrated needles that fell off if you brushed against them.  Even in the dark with the blurring glare coming from street traffic and the strings of lights snaking their way from the mouths of fluorescent orange extension cords, you could tell the trees were ugly.

So, of course, my mom bought one.

And, I know Charlie Brown’s sparse Christmas tree with a single red bulb ornament evokes a certain sort of nostalgia that reminds us of the true meaning of Christmas. But I was a teenager. I hadn’t lived long enough to acknowledge there is beauty in the broken. I still saw the world as two-dimensional. Black and white. Good or evil. Generous or selfish. Happy or sad. All of the color that exists between things just felt chaotic and confusing.

I had yet to reconcile how Jesus could be born a King in the midst of smelly farm animals or why he would love a bunch of sinners or give us free will to decide whether to love him back or why he would choose forgiveness over justice.  Basically, I didn’t understand redemption, neither the ugly Christmas trees nor my own.

Over the years, I’ve experienced the way our sufferings — those unwelcome feelings of loneliness, loss, rejection, and disappointment can be transformed into something beautiful. I’ve seen how we become strong in our weakness; compassionate in our sorrow; and how hard times soften us. All of life’s brokenness that we don’t want, don’t deserve, and didn’t ask for, has a way of making us more whole when we let God’s love and mercy transform our suffering. We celebrate Jesus’s birth at Christmas and it is new and shiny and hopeful. But he didn’t come here to be shiny. He came to save. The reason we celebrate his life is that ultimately, he redeems ours with his death.

That’s heavy stuff to ponder when we can easily focus on stacks of presents, twinkling lights, or perfectly decorated Christmas trees.  But I tell you it’s the best part of Christmas – this realization that redemption is continuously available to us. This knowing that with God there’s a place for misfits and that no matter what we’ve done or how far we’ve strayed, God isn’t going to isolate us on some snowy island. He’s going to embrace us with the warmth of his love. Transformation that adds color and dimension to the pieces of our hearts which have become flat and jaded is possible. This is the redemption that is born on Christmas Day and that is available to us throughout the year.

This is the redemption that I couldn’t recognize as a teenager but that I see all these years later when I think of my mom as a single parent taking me to pick out a tree. On the car ride home, we laughed about the mostly dead evergreen we just bought. We decorated it and with its gaping holes and spindly leaves, it stood as a lopsided witness to that year’s Christmas.  All these years later it still stands in my memory – an ugly tree; a happy memory.  In between, the birth of redemption.

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True Gratitude Can’t be Captured in a Glossy Catalog

Happy Almost Thanksgiving! 

If you are in frantic, freak-out mode, please know that’s how I feel every night when I have to cook dinner! And, yet somehow we all eat.

Below is my most recent post in The Florida Times-Union. It’s all about sturdy gratitude – the kind that’s imperfect and the kind we tend to need most because life can often be more freak out than fine china.

Enjoy this holiday and the many blessings in your life. And, know that I count you among mine. ~ Love, Lara

On Thanksgiving, it’s easy to wonder why the picture of your holiday sometimes looks like a dysfunctional diorama instead of a page out of the Pottery Barn catalog. The mute, lifeless images of a burning hearth, spice-scented candles, tables set with garlands of leaves, vases of burnt-colored flowers, and origami-shaped napkins folded into gold leaf-embossed rings set an impossible standard.

Sometimes I wonder if they look so perfect because there aren’t actually people in those images.

As the annual host of my family’s Thanksgiving, I send a group text the Sunday night before the big holiday and ask everyone what they are bringing. We push two picnic tables together in the backyard and set up another folding table with mismatched chairs. Because I’m fancy and I read my mom’s discarded issues of Southern Living magazine, I cover the tables with tablecloths and do my best to make some kind of centerpiece out of what I can find in the yard or lanterns that I keep in the garage. I buy paper plates with harvest designs along with complementing cutesy paper napkins and I congratulate myself on my hosting skills.

And, I’m grateful.

It’s not that I can’t appreciate all of the fineries. It’s just that one of the things I’m most grateful for is that I’ve learned to accept imperfection and even see the strength in it. The way it shines despite being more Goodwill than good china.

It’s easy to think of gratitude as only the best things in life — the pretty pictures and perfect settings. The prestigious titles, gifted children, and magazine-perfect houses – any of the colorful accolades or achievements that we can fan like prize turkeys are easily recognized as blessings. But genuine abiding gratitude, the kind that sustains us through loss, disappointment, and failure isn’t showy so much as it is sturdy. It’s the kind of gratitude we cultivate by noticing the way big things appear small like the simplicity of a goodnight kiss or how the hungry feel after a hot meal no matter how mediocre it tastes. It’s the gratitude the grieving feels to have loved so deeply; the appreciation the lonely have for the person who for a moment made them feel seen, or the relief a young person experiences when they feel accepted.

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I Ran into a Tree

Hi all,

The post that I am sharing with you this week is one that ran recently in the Florida Times-Union. I’m sure it was a proud moment for my mom to have an article in the newspaper where her daughter writes about running into a tree with her face. But, I like to keep her humble.

This post is really about the pain we carry and I hope it resonates with you (not because I hope you are in pain! It’s just that if you are, you will know you aren’t as alone as it may feel.)  Sometimes, I think we all need that reminder. ~ love, Lara

Read the post here. 

 

Don’t Stop Believing: The Magic of Christmas

This is an excerpt from my book, Simple Mercies, that I wanted to share in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s Feast Day this past Sunday.

During one Christmas season, I was reminded of the power of prayer when I became one of the prayer warriors trying to get a forty-nine-year-old man named Joe out of prison. I know that doesn’t conjure the same feelings of drinking hot cocoa in footed pajamas by the fire like your typical Christmas story does. Still, it’s a powerful reminder of what can happen when we believe – not only in God but in one another.

As one of six boys, Joe grew up next door to my friend, Cecy. Despite having three young kids at home, she worked for years trying to get her childhood friend out of prison. Joe had been arrested for buying cocaine for personal use and was charged and sentenced as a trafficker. His punishment was twenty years with no chance of parole. He had already served thirteen.

Joe had made appeals all the way to the Florida Supreme Court — each one denied. The only hope he had was clemency from the governor to commute his sentence. That’s when the ordinary became extraordinary. Joe was finally granted a clemency hearing. Sadly, his mom passed away less than a month before his hearing. Joe learned of her death from a prison guard and was unable to attend her funeral. The tragedy of it hardly made me think of the word, believe. Yet when his hearing was finally held, I was visiting New York City where over the Macy’s store on 34th Street, a huge sign in brilliant white lights said only one word: Believe. While I wasn’t sure whether I believed our prayers would be answered in the way that we wanted, I was inspired by the people who believed Joe deserved another chance and did something about it. I had faith that no matter what, God would use the situation for good. I had already seen how many people it had united in prayer and I felt the shared hope that a miracle was possible. I very much wanted to believe. Read more

Seeking Advice

This post originally appeared in The Florida-Times Union: https://www.jacksonville.com/story/opinion/columns/guest/2021/10/31/guest-column-some-problems-cant-solved-writing-dear-abby/8475262002/

When I was in junior high, I had an advice column I shared with another girl.  Our last names both began with the letter C so while the national newspapers ran syndicated columns of Dear Abby or Dear Ann Landers, my catholic grade school featured Dear C & C.  Quite honestly, I think we were just as good as Abby and Ann too — even if we did make up most of the questions in order to fill the mimeographed page.

Sometimes I think things were more progressive in the eighties. I can’t imagine a 21st century school letting kids publish their own advice column.  They would worry too much about legalities and the social/emotional consequences of two twelve-year-olds doling out advice. I guess there were some advantages to my generation despite the massive amounts of Aqua Net hairspray we inadvertently inhaled, the high-fructose corn syrup and red dye we consumed along with our Little Debbie’s snack cakes, and Kool-Aid, and the Crisco oil we slathered on us to sunbathe.

I loved reading advice columns even if most of the topics had little to do with me.  I didn’t have a mother-in-law to take issue with and I didn’t have houseguests who left wet towels on the floor.  Still, I liked the reassurance of these columns — knowing that someone had answers, that every problem had a tidy well-written solution, and if we ever needed help, we just had to ask. Read more

Death Isn’t the End

I’ve often thought about death.  This puzzles my generally upbeat husband who sometimes wonders if he didn’t marry Morticia from The Addams Family, the television sitcom with the catchy theme song: “They’re creepy and they’re kooky; Mysterious and spooky; They’re altogether ooky; The Addams Family.”

He never understands how the topic of death pops into conversations about everything, from me questioning if, after I die, anyone will wipe the crumbs off of the kitchen counters to what about my life will have mattered (besides ensuring clean countertops for an indifferent-to-crumbs family). Recently, the longtime retired pastor of our parish passed away. It was sad. People were sad. I was sad. And I couldn’t help feeling like his passing was just another in a multitude of deaths that we have all experienced during the past two years. It’s been a long season of loss for many of us. People we love and who have left an indelible mark on our lives are gone leaving us to live on the morsels of treasured memories which never come close to being as satisfying as having our loved ones with us. Read more

Mercy: Not for Sale

Hi all,

This is an interview I did on Smart Catholics. In it, I share how mercy has changed my life and how it can change yours too.

I feel like that sounds like an ad for a wrinkle cream or a magic diet pill but I’m really not hawking anything (unless you want to buy my book, Simple Mercies! But I know you probably already did that because you love me and you want to see me on Oprah someday. Okay, I know Oprah is not on network television anymore but I don’t really know who the cool talk show hosts are and I guess that’s because it’s not 1984 and now everyone has a podcast. I really am just trying to keep up).

Anyway, the point is mercy isn’t something I can sell. It’s free. It’s yours. And practicing it, I dare say brings better results than diet pills or wrinkle creams.

Oh, and if you haven’t bought the book yet and want to support my dream to be on Oprah and also go back to the eighties here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Mercies-Works-Mercy-Fulfillment/dp/1681924536/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=simple+mercies&qid=1632184275&sr=8-1

Mercy works. Try it.

Love you all ~ Lara