Tag: friends

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Graced & Gifted

Today I had the chance to attend a Catholic Women’s Day at St. John the Baptist Church in Savage.  My friends, Sarah and Michelle accompanied me; we really enjoyed the day.  I can’t say I had an “ah-ha!” moment, but did came away with a lot to process.  I have been given 3 opportunities to think about and discuss “grace” this week – two on this past Wednesday and then throughout the day today.  I’m assuming at this point that God has something He wants to tell/show/teach me involving this subject…

There are several points from today’s talks that I’ll be working through over the next few days & weeks:

From Liz Kelly’s talk:

  • When Jesus entered human history, He extended a dignity to women that had never existed before.
  • Jesus is an intimate friend to us.
  • Loneliness reminds us that our hearts have not become so bitter that they cannot break.

From Ann Osendorf’s talk:
Prayer based on Spiritual Exercises by St. Ignatius:

  • G – Gratitude & Praise: praising God opens our heart for Him.  It enables us to appreciate His gifts for us.  Gifts are sometimes in the gift of what we have not received.
  • R – Request for Light & Strength: part of God’s grace is asking for the willingness to do what is difficult.
  • A – Attention & Awareness: grace builds on nature.  We need to recognize the areas in our life that need fixing so that God can give us more grace.
  • C – Charting the Course to Holiness (Contrition & Confession): God’s divine grace is all about love.  We’re either moving toward God or away from Him.  We need to ask Him to not let go of us.
  • E – Entrustment: surrendering the piece of our heart that needs healing.

From Christina Smith’s talk:

  • For what do you hunger?
  • “Nowhere does the Gospel say: ‘Go away,’ but always ‘come to me.’ ” – Mother Teresa
  • “God is with us.  This is our joy.” – Mother Teresa

From Kimberly Hahn’s keynote talk:

  • We all have a place of service.
  • Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it.  – Proverbs 3:27
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We’re learning to share

Today and tomorrow we have an extra little guy at our house.  Friends of ours are attending a conference not far from where we live, so their little man is spending some quality time at the Sheck house.  Nolan and Lincoln think the temporary addition is pretty fun to have around.  They enjoy entertaining him and are doing a fine job showing him how to play in creative ways.

We did have one interesting event today that I thought was worth mentioning.  When lunchtime rolled around, I placed our friends’ son in Lincoln’s highchair.  You would have thought I was giving him Lincoln’s most prized possession.  Lincoln stomped his feet, started crying, and was just about to pull out his tantrum face when I picked him up and walked to the side of the table where we have Nolan’s booster chair.  I asked him if he wanted to sit in Nolan’s chair and the crying stopped instantly.  Who wants to sit in the high chair when Mom offers the big boy booster seat instead?  He was SO proud to sit next to Nolan at the big table and use a placemat.  Now that he’s experienced eating at the table (instead of next to it) we’ll see if he’ll even go close the high chair at meal time again.

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Water & Graces

The boys and I spent time in the backyard this afternoon.  They got to play with squirt bottles while I gave the lawn a quick once-over with the lawnmower.  (It was my attempt to keep the mosquitoes at bay – they seem to really love my kids.)  As you can see from the pictures, Shecklet #1 has the correct form down pat.  Shecklet #2 on the other hand is still learning how to manage the squirter.  Actually, maybe the direction of his bottle is intentional.  He figured out that he can actually squirt the water into his mouth if it’s pointed this way.  Smart boy!

This evening, “Auntie Lissa” (this is how Shecklet #1 says Auntie Larissa) came over so Jake and I could attend a meeting at our church.  We’re part of a small group of people who meet once a month with a seminarian friend from the St. Paul Seminary to discuss a topic of our friend’s choice.  The overall goal of the meetings is to give our friend a chance to discuss parish and family life from the laity’s perspective.  Tonight’s topic was a re-visitation of last year’s first meeting topic, “graces we have received over the course of the summer.”  I couldn’t help but reflect back on how much our family and friends have supported us through prayer this summer and what a huge blessing that has been to our family.  We know that the peace we have felt throughout recent difficult situations is an answer to the prayers being said on our behalf.