New Live Action 30 second spot to defund Planned Parenthood

Go to http://exposeplannedparenthood.net/ and http://plannedparenthoodcorruption.org/ to find out how you can help expose the corruption, lawbreaking, and lying at America's largest abortion chain.

Don't get discouraged

I was feeling discouraged yesterday. I was thinking about abortion, about the same-sex marriage thing which is pretty much a done deal here in Maryland, about some things going on in my own Catholic community....just feeling real discouraged. And I thought, Satan must have a field day with this stuff. He must just laugh his head off all day long. But then a voice in my heart said, Ah, but he cries every time the Host is consecrated and Jesus is made present on earth in the Eucharist! And I realized, wow, and this happens, like, 24/7 around the world really!! Isn't Jesus being made present pretty much every hour of 24 hours of the earth's rotation? So let's never feel discouraged and never forget, we may still be fighting the battle, and it's a real battle yes, but the war has already been won.

Contact Your Senators today!

Incredible news! The US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly yesterday afternoon to strip Planned Parenthood of all Federal funding. As wonderful as this news is, it is, unfortunately, no time to celebrate and certainly not to sit on our laurels. The Senate is still Democrat-run and Obama has already vowed to veto the Pence Amendment. So please call, write, and e-mail your Senators. Let them know that it makes NO SENSE to give taxpayer dollars to an organization that makes billions of dollars on it's own. Planned Parenthood is the largest recipient of federal funds under Title X - over $300 million dollars a year - despite having a billion dollar budget of their own. Let your Senators know that you do not want your hard earned tax dollars funding the killing of innocent human beings!!!

Book Review: "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption"

Okay, so I've never written a book review in my life and, truly, I am not sure I will be any good at it. I will probably resort to some combination of my own exuberance, rephrasing reviews I've read, and outright plagiarism (well, hopefully not). But I have to tell everyone about this book because it is one of the most amazing stories I have ever read - and it's all true!

I am talking about "Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption", by "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" author Laura Hillenbrand. If you've read "Seabiscuit" then you already know that Ms. Hillenbrand has an amazing talent for shaping a world long gone, so that it is so physically and sensibly real to the reader, one can truly feel like they are right there in the middle of the story. And this is some story.

Growing up in depression-era California Louie Zamperini went from juvenile delinquent, to Olympic track runner, to Army Air Corps bombardier in the Pacific theater during World War II. He saw ferocious combat, even surviving an air battle that left his plane with over 600 holes in it and a crash landing. Eventually his luck caught up with him and his plane went down, leaving him and two of his crew mates stranded in a tiny life raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Incredibly, he and one other man survive (one died on the raft), drifting thousands of miles for weeks on end, battling sharks and dodging enemy bullets. They finally land only to find themselves paraded through a series of Japanese POW camps, the likes of which rivaled the Nazi Holocaust camps in cruelty, surpassed only by the numbers killed (millions in the case of the Germans, hundreds of thousands in the case of Japanese POWs). In fact, American POWs under Hitler fared far better than their Japanese counterparts despite the extreme Nazi cruelty towards the Jews. For the first time in my life I finally truly understood why my father-in-law (who served in WWII) refused to buy a Japanese car, and I am grateful that I have not owned one myself in years because I would have felt compelled to get rid of it after reading this story. Nothing against it if you have one, I am just telling you that this book is that powerful.

For me the most amazing part of this story, a story that is chock full of amazing parts, is Zamperini's eventual conversion to Christianity and the total healing he found in the life of Christ and what a testament to forgiveness Louie is. He's also undoubtedly one of the most inspiring and amazing persons you will ever meet in the pages of a book. And it is all true. I don't think anyone could make this stuff up if they tried. The drama is so riveting that I tore through all 496 pages in about 3 days, and though I am a pretty fast reader, I don't usually find that kind of time to read a book. But I couldn't put it down. "Unbroken" travels through heroism, inhumanity, joy, suffering, remorselessness and forgiveness in a way that will move your heart and leave you changed. I give it 5 stars.

Can a tiger change it's stripes?

How much of who we are is habit? nature? learned? innate? choice? genetics? I am the kind of person who makes the same resolutions every New Year's eve, always full of hope and determination, and never succeeds. I am one of those who jumps into Lenten sacrifices full throttle but two weeks into it I'm struggling or I've failed all together. I am one of those who go into the confessional to confess the same sins, over and over. Oh, with the grace of God I've beaten some major ones, but those little ones? Yeah, those trip me up every day. My remorse is real though, so why can't I change?

Here it is February and I am still not able to wake up at 6:00 a.m. like I resolved. I know this seems like no big deal to hear it, but it really is a big deal to me. It's at the heart of my whole problem. I am lazy. I go to bed around 9:00 every night and left to my own devices will sleep until 9:00 a.m., get up, have coffee, throw in one load of laundry and then take a nap. Of course, God knows me all too well and has therefore blessed me with many children, who force me to wake up in time to get them to school, who force me to do more than one load of laundry a week, who force me to go beyond myself. Still, I do everything half-assed.

For years now I have told myself that if I can just wake up earlier (6:00 a.m. as opposed to 7:00 a.m.) my life will be totally different. I will have time to start my day peacefully,quietly, prayerfully before the mad rush. I've tried offering it up for Lent, I've tried making it a resolution, I've set my alarm for 6:00 a.m. every morning for years. Still, I persist in waking at 7:00, or worse yet, 7:15 (from hitting "snooze", you know, 6 times as opposed to 5). And then it's a mad rush.

There is much more to my laziness than just oversleeping. I procrastinate, I take on only little tasks letting the big projects build up, worse yet I slough stuff off onto my husband that I could just as easily do myself. I order take out for dinner. I pull dirty uniforms out of the kids' hamper because I didn't get around to getting laundry done. I blog, I play on Facebook, I talk on the phone. And I've noticed, the lazier I am the more selfish I am. If my kids interrupt my e-mailing asking for a drink of something, I get all bent out of shape. What is wrong with me?

It is true that when you have small children at home it is very difficult to get large projects done. There is so much interruption and so much multi-tasking and so much of having to leave a project unfinished that I know a lot of moms like me who just don't even bother to start them. Some of that is an excuse, some of that is honestly a learned defense mechanism. So I often wonder, how much of my laziness is learned? I've always been lazy it's true, always an underachiever. In high school I once skipped doing a research paper completely because I figured out that with my average currently being an "A", an "F" on the paper would just bring me down to a "C", and that was good enough for me. But in my 20's I managed to keep a tidy apartment, cook healthy meals for myself, hold down a job, and achieve the National Honors Society in college, graduating summa cum laude. So, it's not that I can't do it, I just don't. I think. I mean, taking care of only one person is a lot easier and there was definitely a lot of down time.

Maybe I am making too much of my laziness. I mean, in the end, things do manage to get done. My house is mostly clean, the laundry is mostly done, dinner is mostly home made. I am raising good kids who eat healthy, get good grades and say their prayers every night. Of course I could do better. My kids tend to walk all over me and I have to tell them to do everything 20 times because I'm not a very good disciplinarian - I'm too lazy to follow through. Maybe I am making too much of it, but sloth is a sin, and certainly when it leads to selfishness and impatience it's a sin.

Can a tiger change it's stripes? How much of this is just the way I am and how much of it is habit? There is a song by Switchfoot called "This is Your Life". The words say, "This is your life, are you who you wanna be?" and every time I hear it I think, "not really." I want to be a person who rises early, starts the day with a coffee and the Bible, then patiently helps her kids get out the door to school. I want to come home and mop floors, clean out cabinets and closets, plan dinners, and spends the afternoon in prayer and study, not napping. Can I change? At what point do I decide to stop trying and just love myself? And why can't I just get up at 6 o'clock in the morning?

Celebrating (a bit undeservedly but what the heck!)

I had some wine with dinner tonight to celebrate my triumphant return to blogging. Well earlier I had some wine and that was when I convinced myself that my return is in any remote way triumphant, but once I got going I really enjoyed the moment. I think I may have some dessert too. If this is the reward you just try to stop me from posting!

Sent from my iPod

New Look

I've missed blogging. So sad that I have been too busy to blog, or maybe just too lazy, because I really do enjoy writing when I sit down and just do it. Of course, in the last 1/2 hour, while I've been playing with the look of my blog, I have been reminded several times WHY it is that I don't spend time doing this. In the course of 30 minutes my little girls (ages 4 and 2) have managed to cut their hair with scissors, lose all of their brother's robot pieces (where the heck could they have put them?!), and get into a big mud pile outside only 30 seconds after sending them out there. Sigh.

Anyway, I thought about jump starting my blogging by scrapping this whole blog and starting a new one, but to be honest, I could't think of a new name. I swear, it probably took me 2 weeks to come up with "A Blessed Life" 3 years ago, and that title isn't even that great! So then I decided I would just play with the layout and see how that goes. It's a little busy, but I like the 3 columns because I am thinking of adding a reading list to my sidebar - what I'm currently reading and what I've just read. I would love for everyone to share what they are reading too. Other than my family, praying, and playing on Facebook, reading is the only activity I really enjoy, so I've decided I want to incorporate it into my blogging somehow.

Okay, so look for new posts, I promise (again) that I will be posting more often. Now I have to go rescue the cat...

Check it out

Free book giveaway over at CTS Catholic Compass!!