Category: Your Family Matters

FinalLogoNWC Your Family Matters is the name of a regular article I write for the Northwest Catholic magazine, the official magazine of the Archdiocese of Seattle.

I’m honored to have been nationally honored by the Catholic Press Association over the past three years in the category of marriage and family life:
2015: 1st Place
2016: 3rd Place
2017: 2nd Place

A Pervasive Toxin is Attacking Our Kids

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Parents, as your teens head back to school, you should know that this year they are at a greater risk than ever for encountering a toxic substance proven to traumatize the brain, impair concentration, decrease cognitive functioning, induce depression and anxiety, and reduce pleasure in everyday life. Rising in use each year, this substance is attacking our kids’ ability to learn, thrive and be happy. And you are the most powerful force in their lives to protect them from it.  Continue reading “A Pervasive Toxin is Attacking Our Kids”

Grandparents are a Treasure

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“Tell me about your grandmother,” the director of vocations for an East Coast diocese asks the young man sitting on the other side of his desk for his initial interview at the chancery. He leans back in his chair to enjoy the response, knowing already what it will be.

“Oh, she is the most incredible woman,” the young man instantly lights up. “My grandmother is really special to me, and she is so strong in her Catholic faith. In fact, I think I owe my vocation to the priesthood to her,” he reflects. The vocations director nods knowingly. Every candidate for the priesthood that has come into his office has said the same thing.

Continue reading “Grandparents are a Treasure”

Wine Out of Water

Photo: Courtesy Carrie Anderson

“We had been craving community at St. Monica [Parish on Mercer Island], just wanting some kind of couple’s group,” Bill recounted. “Father Freitag was talking about the dissolution of marriages. … Divorce after divorce. It was on his heart that we need prayers for these marriages, and they need help. So it was something that was on our heart,” he told me.

Inspired during eucharistic adoration together, Bill and Carrie Anderson gathered a group of six couples from the parish to meet regularly for dinner about two years ago. They share wine, laughter and fellowship. After dinner, they pray a rosary. They meet in the spirit of the wedding at Cana, as indicated by their name, WOW: Wine Out of Water. (see John 2:1-11)

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Godparents and Grandparents, Give Gifts that Grow Faith

Photo: Janis OlsonPhoto: Janis Olson

When I was a little girl visiting my wonderful Catholic grandmother in Edmonds, she would often send me home with the gift of a few volumes from Father Lawrence Lovasik’s Books of Saints series. I would pore over them, admiring the color illustrations of the holy men and women. I took note of their feast days and areas of patronage.

My grandma still never fails to give meaningful and beautiful Catholic gifts for all her family’s baptisms, first Communions and confirmations. These gifts have blessed our domestic church and inspired our spiritual life. With Easter, first Communion and Confirmation season upon us, I offer a collection of faith-building gift ideas for grandparents and godparents, aunties and uncles, catechists and parents.

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The Liturgy of the Hours in the Domestic Church

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After turning off the lights in the kids’ rooms at nighttime, Andrew Casad and his wife, Michelle, pray their own ad hoc version of the Liturgy of the Hours’ night prayer together with their school-aged children, Miriam and Joshua. It is the last thing they do together as a family before the children go to sleep. Andrew observed that he and Michelle found, accidentally, that this family prayer ritual “can create a sense of structure.” Night prayer imparts a peaceful, calming sense of closure to the end of the day. Continue reading “The Liturgy of the Hours in the Domestic Church”

Couple Prayer with Scripture

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Two couples share about the power of praying together with the word of God.

You never know when a tentative new habit of couple prayer will turn out to be a lifeline. A reader recently sent me the following:

“About a year ago, shortly after our 49th wedding anniversary, my husband and I began somewhat hesitantly to pray a kind of evening prayer together right after dinner, right at the dinner table and before cleaning up the kitchen. It proceeded in fits and starts until we found a way of making it feel right for us.

“In our case, that meant he would bring out his Bible and devotional book, an ecumenical one particularly good for a ‘mixed’ couple (he is Lutheran and I am Catholic). He would lead us in two or three brief readings of Scripture and meditations, which had impressed him in his own morning devotional time.

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The Challenges – and Blessings – of Bringing Kids to Mass

Photo composite: M. Laughlin/ShutterstockPhoto composite: M. Laughlin/Shutterstock

Six tips for heading off toddler terrorism in the pews

“My brother set the Advent wreath on fire.” Jennifer Fulwiler is a mom of six young children and the author of “Something Other Than God,” which chronicles her conversion from atheism to Catholicism. A year ago she invited her blog readers to share their worst experience taking children to Mass, and she received scores of stories in reply. Stories of toddler terrorism, untimely bodily emissions and utterly mortifying utterances, and yes, even a flaming Advent wreath. As I read through them, I was simultaneously reduced to helpless tears of laughter, bonded in warm and knowing camaraderie with all my fellow Catholic moms and dads in the trenches, and sighing in relief (at least my children have never run careening away from my grasp toward the altar during Mass — yet!).

Continue reading “The Challenges – and Blessings – of Bringing Kids to Mass”

Couple Prayer: The Ultimate Instant Messaging

Which of the following simple, free, daily activities will: 1) make God smile on you and send you powerful help, 2) connect you even more deeply and build spiritual intimacy with your spouse, and 3) dramatically reduce your odds of divorce?

A) Sit in the same room while you each interact with your respective smartphones.
B) Text each other sweet notes throughout the day.
C) Pick up the towels off the floor.
D) Pray together as a couple.

What did you pick? Let’s look at each possibility:
Continue reading “Couple Prayer: The Ultimate Instant Messaging”

A Spirituality for Singles

One of my favorite saints was a single laywoman known for her gorgeous hair. She was independent, passionate and completely transformed by Christ. She lived a rich life full of adventure, prayer and evangelization. Mary Magdalen never married or became a nun, but she lived a joyful life that was “single-hearted” for Christ.

More Catholics are single now than ever before, following national trends of adults marrying later, or not at all. In fact, for the first time in history, more singles than married folk head households in America.
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The Power of Couple Prayer

“Praying together is the most powerful predictor of marital happiness that researchers have yet discovered,” wrote the late sociologist Father Andrew Greeley.

One survey found that couples who prayed or read the Bible daily, in addition to weekly church attendance, divorced at a rate of less than 1 per 1,105 marriages. And while 60 percent of couples who pray together “sometimes” checked the box in a survey marked “our marriage is happy,” that number bumped up to 78 percent for those couples who pray together “a lot.” (All research is cited atcoupleprayer.com.) Couple prayer is a powerful means of drawing close to your spouse and blessing your marriage. But how do you do it? Continue reading “The Power of Couple Prayer”