Melanie Betinelli is a follower of this blog who has a much more widely read blog than this one, called The Wine Dark Sea. You might call it a Catholic mommy blog, but this doesn't completely do it justice. True, you're likely to find any number of posts about potty training, or cute drawings done by Melanie's little ones, or the perennial ups and downs of homeschooling or managing children's behavior in church. But interspersed among these you'll find commentaries on T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, or adult book reviews, or meditations on the Psalms of the Liturgy of the Hours. So although I'm a bit beyond the age of the target audience for Mommy blogs, Melanie's is one I keep coming back to.
Today, Melanie shares her worries about not having done too much for lent this year.( Since she was still be post-partum on Ash Wednesday,Melanie had, in my opinion, all the excuse in the world. But-- you know mothers. They'll still worry and feel guilty no matter how many legitimate excuses they have.) She goes on to describe the miseries of last night, when several children rendered her pretty much sleeples. Then this morning she stumbled through Morning Prayer and found the Psalm 77 ("you withheld sleep from my eyes") was a perfect match for her experience.
In retrospect Melanie found that maybe God had provided her plenty of lenten opportunities without any need for her to have planned things out:
When all our attempts at penance and self mortification fail still we may find that we suffer agonies nevertheless. And perhaps those opportunities to suffer are themselves a sort of gift? Is it crazy and upside down to see them in that way? A Father giving me a chance to die to myself, to undergo the merest shadow of Christ’s agony in the garden?
Today, Melanie shares her worries about not having done too much for lent this year.( Since she was still be post-partum on Ash Wednesday,Melanie had, in my opinion, all the excuse in the world. But-- you know mothers. They'll still worry and feel guilty no matter how many legitimate excuses they have.) She goes on to describe the miseries of last night, when several children rendered her pretty much sleeples. Then this morning she stumbled through Morning Prayer and found the Psalm 77 ("you withheld sleep from my eyes") was a perfect match for her experience.
In retrospect Melanie found that maybe God had provided her plenty of lenten opportunities without any need for her to have planned things out:
When all our attempts at penance and self mortification fail still we may find that we suffer agonies nevertheless. And perhaps those opportunities to suffer are themselves a sort of gift? Is it crazy and upside down to see them in that way? A Father giving me a chance to die to myself, to undergo the merest shadow of Christ’s agony in the garden?
Read the whole thing here. It's good.
