Speaking of being overwhelmed and it impacting your prayer life, I got some great advice from my spiritual director recently. I was describing the many occasions on which the words I read seem to fly right through my brain without seeping in at all, explaining (okay, whining) that it often seems like I'm going through the motions at prayer time. He pointed out that setting aside time for God is always time well spent, even if it doesn't bring great insights or consolation, but sympathized that it's difficult to keep going when your prayer life is so dry. He pointed out that our intentions matter when we pray: Is our intent to connect with God on an intimate level? Or is it to just check a...READ MORE

I love New Year's resolutions. I relish putting together long lists of ambitious goals every December 31st, and waking up on January 1, ready for my new, perfect, problem-free life! Needless to say, I never have quite found the resolution list that actually accomplishes all of that; in fact, I usually end up forgetting half of my New Year's goals, and only partially hitting the others.

Nevertheless, I still find making resolutions to be a fruitful exercise: It's a chance to take a high-level look at where my life is compared to where I'd like it to be. It's a day to sit down and ask hard questions about whether or not my actual priorities are in line with my stated priorities. And, even...READ MORE

Yesterday was my big day to mail Christmas packages. For some people, saying "I'm going to mail packages at the post office" might be a statement roughly equivalent to saying, "I'm going to pick up a carton of eggs at the store." For me, it's up there with announcing that I am going to attempt to build a space shuttle and land it on the moon this afternoon: It's an activity that requires intense planning, careful timing, superhuman mental and physical effort, and has a high risk of spectacular failure. 

First of all, I had to choose a time when the post office wouldn't be too crowded (oh, how I cackle bitterly as I remember thinking this morning, If I skip the lunch and after work...READ MORE

Yesterday was one of those days when it's hard to pray. I was fighting a mild case of food poisoning, exhausted from pregnancy, and the house was a mess. Our Advent calendar and wreath were buried under mountains of clutter that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. And, of course, there was the horrific news out of Connecticut, so crushing that I fell into a sort of mental and spiritual paralysis any time it came to mind.

When I finally got in bed at the end of the night, I knew I should to pray. It was one of those all-too-rare moments when I understood on a visceral level that I needed to pray, that connecting with God was the only way I'd find the fuel to face the coming week. But...READ MORE

Last week I had the privilege of hearing Daniel Cardinal DiNardo speak at a benefit dinner for the John Paul II Life Center in Austin. His keynote address was engaging and thought-provoking, and ranged from humorous to serious. The Cardinal made so many interesting points that I ended up filling multiple scraps of paper with notes (all the while lamenting that I hadn't had the forethought to bring a pen and a notebook), but there was a particular story he recounted that I've been thinking about ever since.

Cardinal DiNardo told us about the amazing experience of his first ad limina visit to Rome back in the 1990s, shortly after he'd been made the bishop of Sioux City, Iowa (including...READ MORE

I'll never forget the day, back in 2009, when I was getting overwhelmed almost to the point of a mental breakdown. It was late in the third trimester of my fourth pregnancy. I had three young children; when this new baby was born in a few weeks, we'd have four kids under age five. I had no babysitting help. My husband was gone 12 hours a day. The kids and I were all fighting colds, our youngest had woken up fussy at 4:30 AM, and I was in a fog of exhaustion. I felt like I was drowning.

I was zombie-walking around the kitchen that afternoon, cleaning up from my sad attempt at "lunch," when I thought I heard something on the front porch. Was that a knock? I couldn't hear well since my...READ MORE

Sooo...I have a reality show that debuts next Thursday, the 13th. It's called Minor Revisions, and here's the trailer if you want to check it out:

There is no non-awkward way to make that kind of announcement. When friends asked me why camera crews were following me around everywhere I went for that week earlier this Fall, I tried mumbling something about being involved in a "docu-reality special," but after enough confusion I finally relented and admitted, "Fine! It's a reality show!" (which inevitably leads people to wonder with suspicion and concern what you have done to earn the dubious honor of being considered "reality show material").

This was the kind of thing I worried...READ MORE

The other day I was flipping through books in a bookstore, and I came across an essay by an American author who had stumbled across a secluded Buddhist monastery while traveling through Asia. The writer, who was not religious, eloquently expressed the sense of reverence and awe that filled him upon witnessing one of the monks' blessing rituals. The scene he encountered struck him as being so beautiful, the words filled with such wisdom, that the man was filled with the awareness that he was beholding something special.

It reminded me of the way my friends and I used to view some foreign belief systems when I was younger. Even though I was an atheist, I had a kind of respect for certain...READ MORE