Welcome, friends. I am SO thrilled to have you join us for this new series. Through Mom So Hard: Finessing the Intricacies of Your Modern Catholic Family, we will be taking a detailed look at the everyday practicals of the domestic Church – YOUR domestic Church – and help you incorporate time for Jesus, tips, strategies, and even wine and chocolate time – YAS – into your everyday. While the pieces will be largely written from the point-of-view of your average stay-at-home-mom (me!), I will do my best to give advice and tips that Catholic women of all walks of life – working, single, married, moms of large families, moms of small families, etc. – can glean something from the practicals shared.
Um, why you, Martina?
So, who am I and why do I want to write about this kind of stuff? Well, I am Martina and I am the creator of Catholic Sistas, a blog that is centered upon sharing the Faith. You might be wondering why a series like this fits inside the mission of the blog. The short answer is, if you’re at all like me, and not naturally organized or struggle to find some kind of organization and balance in your life, you will appreciate ALL of the mistakes I’ve made over the years. Not that I don’t make mistakes anymore – HA! – but in certain areas of my life, I really let things slide that I should have tackled and made a priority before drowning in children. 😉
Another reason for the series is a small detail that has helped keep this apostolate afloat for the past 7.5 years. As the foundress, and as a team, part of the mission of the blog has been that whatever work we do for the blog does not compromise our primary vocation as wife, and for many of us, as mothers. We respect that life happens and writers need to step back and take care of the home front – and that spiritual work ethic has lent itself toward, I believe, writing that really strikes at the core of who we are as women and mothers. It’s hard to do the things you love well when your house is “on fire”, so to speak.
At the heart of the matter
A friend and I were chatting on Facebook a few months ago and we got to talking about garage space. I was SO excited to share my newest ideas that I did a quick video and uploaded it to our chat. She was like you HAVE to write more about how you do things. Moms like me need that, she said. Moms like her being that she is a young momma in her early 30s and apparently my old, battle-scarred self might just have something of use to offer other mommas like her – and maybe you, too? 🙂
So, what makes me even qualified to speak on the matter beyond being old and learning from mistakes? I don’t really know, but maybe because I resisted the idea of being organized for many many years, insisting that I could just hobble on by with my rag tag ideas. The truth is, my methods (which were, duh, disorganized) caused a greater stress than actually coming up with a system and sticking with it. But…it’s amazing what desperation, necessity, and a little ingenuity can lead to…and now I look at my children and see the fruits of being able to gradually implement some systems that work in our large family. I’ve come to realize that my greatest stress was a result of persisting in disorganization. And maybe that’s you, too.
It starts with a witness
In my first post, I will share my story – what prompted my way of thinking in 2002, and how I manage our family of nine these days.
You might just be thinking to yourself, yeah that’s nice, but right now while I’m trying to read this for like the fifth time, my toddler is busying himself dumping flour out all over the place and my other kids are crawling the countertops and smearing peanut butter all over each other. HOW is something like this series supposed to stop the madness in my house?
Look, I get it. I really do. We’re going to cover feasible solutions that you can apply to your life and it will be a gradual process for some of you and others, it will be like a light switch. The series will be geared toward shifting a mindset towards a greater sense of peace in your home which, in turn, will lead to reducing stressors and more time to really glorify God in those mundane chores that everyone seems to have, whether you work outside the home or not.
So, I’m going to turn things over to my lovely co-conspirator in this series, Lisa Canning of Blueprints for a Beautiful Life who specializes in time management strategies for the busy momma. And aren’t we all busy? She and I will be taking turns tackling various topics that will take your home from cray to ahhhh, from chaotic to peaceful, from scattered to intentionally prayerful.
Hey!
I’m Lisa and for the last eleven years I have balanced running my interior design business and raising small children – we have now been blessed with seven kids!
Before I became a mom, I had many preconceived notions of what being open to a large family was going to be like, and what life with lots of kids was going to be like. I thought raising a family meant that I was giving up on my personal goals and dreams, or any form of a career, and that there was just no way the pursuit of both was possible.
And what God has shown me, is that when we trust Him, and we trust that He has the BEST plans for our life, that pretty incredible things can happen. We just have to be open to what He has to say, and walk forward in faith even when it seems impossible.
I bring to this series my experience of working both outside and inside of the home, the juggle and struggle that comes with pursuing career excellence and home excellence, and how I finally figured out that time management isn’t really dictated by a clock, but by a correct ordering of your true priorities.