by Mary | Dec 8, 2021 | Advent
For the longest time, I considered myself more of a Lent person than an Advent person. The journey through the desert felt familiar, the three-prong practice of fasting, prayer and charity was concrete and easy to grasp. As I age, I find myself learning to love this season of waiting, a season plunged into physical darkness but centered on the Light of the World. The paradox of Advent is not limited to the play of darkness and light. We find it in the Scriptures, too, as we prepare for both the coming of the Savior swaddled in a manger and the coming of the Savior at the end of time. We find it as the world around us rushes to wrap presents and play Christmas music, even as we are called to step outside the fray and sink into silence and wait.
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by Mary | Oct 13, 2017 | Life Lines, retreats
I was recently sitting in a log-cabin chapel on a beautiful lake in the lower Adirondack Mountains when the woman next to me offered a prayer intention during Mass: “For all those in the process of dying.” Although I had a dear friend who would die that very night and for whom we had been praying throughout the weekend retreat, I heard those words not only in relation to my dying friend but in relation to myself and to all those around me, because we are all in the process of dying. (more…)
by Mary | Jan 8, 2016 | grief
I had a great time on today’s episode of A Seeking Heart with Allison Gingras of Reconciled to You. We covered a lot of bases, including three of my seven books: Everyday Divine, Parenting a Grieving Child, and Walking Together. It was a smorgasbord of my writing with a lot of fun and serious conversation mixed in. Thank you, Allison, for being such a wonderful supporter of Catholic writers and of this Catholic writer in particular.
If you missed the show, you can catch up here. And if you go to Allison’s website, you can catch an entire week of shows devoted to my books — Everyday Divine on Tuesday, Parenting a Grieving Child on Wednesday, and Walking Together on Thursday. Here’s the show:
by Mary | Aug 6, 2015 | family, grief
My annual post in remembrance of the baby I never got to meet:
For the past few days I’ve been looking at the numbers on the calendar, growing more and more introspective as we inched closer to August 6. It was 17 years ago today that I learned the baby I was carrying, my second baby, had died 11 weeks into my pregnancy. (more…)
by Mary | Apr 12, 2014 | family
Today is the 26th anniversary of my mother’s death from colon cancer. What I find most unusual this year is that the grief seems a little stronger — perhaps because of where I am in my life personally and spiritually — and yet I don’t feel compelled to write anything about her. I feel like I’ve said it all, which is saying something coming from me. I miss her. But I always miss her. And I find it unbelievable that it’s been 26 years since I heard her laugh, saw her smile, smelled the scent of her. Sigh. That’s enough. Here are some photos of my beautiful mother, who was my very best friend when she died. (I wrote about her recently HERE, if you’re interested.) (more…)
