Dear Readers,

I've started a new blog.  Why?  Well, as you all know, my blogging time and motivation took a hit for awhile there.  I keep trying to get back to it.  But every time I open this page to write a new post I feel the weight of all that has been said here already.  I mean, I love all that has been said here already and I stand behind it, but I needed a fresh start. I need a wide open space to just start again.  I'm like that.  I am the chick who has 25 journals, all with pretty pictures on the covers, horses and rainbows that sort of thing, that were only 1/4 of the way written in before they were abandoned for the next pretty little cover that came along.  I hope you will visit me at my new place. You can find it here.  And I hope you will enjoy it as much as you have this one! If you did indeed enjoy this one. Maybe you just started each day with my terrible blog so you could feel better about your own life. That's okay. I will take the numbers where ever I can get them.  Please feel free to curse my new blog too.

Sincerely,
Cassie

Help! I'm addicted to Scrabble, Words With Friends, Hanging With Friends, Lexulous, and possibly just my iPod itself. I waste time just searching for word games and other free apps... But lo, what did I find today? A Blogger app! I have a blog writing app already, and it hast helped me yet, but maybe, just maybe, this one will get me going again. And please someone tell me the antidote for word games. Or better yet, download those apps and invite me to a game!

Back...again

Nothing like 3 months between posts....

Once again here I am determined to start blogging again. Just as before, the immediacy of Facebook has distracted me from this blog. But that's all Facebook is - a distraction. At least most of the time. It is also a wonderful resource and place of good friends, prayer warriors, like minded thinkers, and support. But, 85% of the time, I am playing Scrabble or linking to comics, letting myself be distracted from real life, so I don't have to think. On the other hand, writing, journaling, blogging, is cathartic. It's the exact opposite of distraction because here I am forced to think, and that exercise is good, it's what I need.

This has been a dessert summer for me. I've talked about my depression many times in this blog, but this summer I may have been hit with one of the biggest episodes I've had since after having my first child, when PPD slammed into me so hard I didn't even know who I was or what or who I wanted to be.

I had a miscarriage at the beginning of this summer. Yes, that is sad. I am okay with that though, I am completely resigned to always allowing the Lord's will to reign my life, so that is okay. But what happened was, after discovering I was pregnant I had to change my depression meds - strike 1. I also had to change my sleep meds from an anti-anxiety that just stopped my racing thoughts at night, to an actual sleep aid, which causes lethargy and depression, but does bring blissful, uninterrupted sleep ( a rarity in my life) - strike 2. Then the hormones hit. First the pregnancy ones and then the miscarriage ones - strike 3. I was out. Down and out. On top of that, some other personal events went on in our family life (since those involve others I'll not be more specific). Even my kids were saying this was the worse summer ever.

Then, I lost God. He didn't lose me, I felt that keenly, but I lost Him. And I couldn't figure out how to get back. I wanted to. My soul leaned in the Lord's direction so hard it was painful. It still is. I'm still crawling out of this hole, which is two steps forward, one step back. But I couldn't pray. Intellectually I wanted to pray. I knew I needed to pray. I mean I still talked to God, but I wasn't listening. I couldn't listen. I didn't (don't) know how to stop the constant patter in my head enough to be quiet. I talk about the Lord all day, and I babble at Him, but I never stop to hear what He has to say or to even find out what subject He would like to discuss. I'm the head of His fan club, but I don't even know Him.

My soul knows Him though. My soul has been in His presence enough times to know it wanted to get back there. Like I said, at time the sensation is physically painful, and certainly emotionally painful. How is that? How can getting back to someone you love so much, and someone that you are confident loves you even more, be so painful? How can it hurt so much you have to crawl and take breaks to curl up in a ball and cry?

I have been so thankful for this pain though. There was a time in my life when my soul was dying. I was killing it. If the wages of sin are death, and the Lord has assured us it is, then each sin is a nail in the coffin of your soul. You are killing it. And believe me, mine was a shadow of life, hanging on for all it was worth. It leaned towards God then too, but was so far away it was merely a distraction. Thank you Jesus, thank you my Mother, Our Lady, for bringing me gently back, and thank you Father for forgiving my sins and healing me. I know I am healed because now the loss of God is so agonizing.

Well, anyway, I am getting better. Now instead of two steps and one back, it's like five steps and one back. And I am praying again and sitting quietly with the Lord again, letting Him do the talking. Usually. I still run and hide too. That's part of depression, desperately wanting help and desperately wanting to get away from help too. It's such a selfish disease. Those of you who are reading by this and have been praying for me the whole time - God bless you. You are my life line. I don't know what I would do without all of my beautiful, faithful, prayer warrior friends. Even in the pit I felt the grace the Lord poured down in answer to your prayers. Even in a pit one can feel the rain. Everyone else, could you pray for me too? I pray for grace and blessings for all who pass by this blog and read these words.

St. Dymphna, pray for those afflicted with depression and other mental illnesses that magnify our separation from God. A good priest told me once that there are two kinds of people in the world - those who suffer from depression, and those who know they suffer from depression. For that is what depression is - separation from God, the result of our fallen nature, the result of original sin. Some day there will be a new Heaven on Earth and depression will exist no longer. Pray for us all, that all souls will breach the gap, and will come to the Lord before the end of time.

Know It All

I think I have a serious problem. It's called Need-to-know-it-all-itis. Or something like that. I have this need to know everything, and I literally mean everything. I have to read everything, watch everything, talk about everything, know everybody.... I have books piled up all over the place, some half started, others waiting rather impatiently. I have magazines dog-eared and I've highlighted the articles that I still need to get to. Cookbooks line my shelves and recipe clippings are mounded up in two folders and several zip lock bags (I stopped having time to put them in folders much less cook them!). E-mails in my inbox are flagged and I have TV-shows backed up for weeks on my DVR - especially the documentary-type ones. I can't bring myself to erase those. I've joined every group I can find on Facebook - particularly if they are Catholic, pro-life, and/or political, and accepted nearly every friend request. I am constantly inviting people over for coffee just so we can "chat". I hang around the parking lot at school after dropping my kids off so I can catch up with the other moms. I belong to 2 book clubs, 3 committees at church (and I chair 2 of them), the Parent/Teacher Organization at school, 2 faith sharing groups, and I volunteer at the school every Monday. I don't do any of these things well and I can't keep up with half of it. Even if I didn't have 5 young kids, a husband, a cat and a house to take care of, I still wouldn't have time. But I LOVE it! I can't imagine what I would drop. I would feel like I was totally missing something. Even funnier is that I barely retain any of it. I constantly find myself in conversations where my contribution goes like this: "I read something about that. I think the guy said something like blah blah blah, wait, no, no, no, that was the guy on TV, the guy in the article said blah blah, but I don't remember if I saw that on Facebook or Fox news or News of the Weird." It's pathetic. I wish someone would just invent a way to download info straight to your brain so, like, you could just scan your finger over the book, screen, newspaper, and it would go directly into your brain and you would know it all. Anyone else have this problem or am I the only victim of this terrible disease? Maybe I should go look it up on WebMd....

Update: I forgot to talk about all the Podcasts I download on my iPod and all the movies queued up in my Netflix queue. Sigh....

Feminine dress, Modesty, and Our Lady of Fatima

Funny, I have been thinking about blogging about this topic for awhile now, especially in the last two weeks, and then woke up this morning and feeling like I should really write about it today. Then I saw that today was the feast of Our Lady of Fatima and, wow! No wonder!

So, well over a year ago I started feeling sort of called (for lack of a better word) to dress more femininely. I think it started around the same time I decided to start covering at Mass because I was reading a lot about a woman’s hair being her glory and I became convicted that long hair was pleasing to the Lord because it is more feminine (no offense to those with short hair, this is just me working stuff out in my own head, my personal relationship with God). So that naturally lead to me thinking about dressing more femininely, wearing skirts and dresses, longer hair, etc. Then, just as I began thinking about that, a Facebook friend found this website and was wondering what we all thought of it. Well, I was blown away because it was so in line with what I had been thinking about, but it’s so hard to do! I mean, who has money to run out and change their whole wardrobe?

Fast forward a year, the dress thing has not left my mind and I started trying to incorporate more skirts and dresses into my wardrobe, but slowly. Then, another friend from my group, posts a question about dress because she has found the exact same link!!!! To me, that’s a sign. So I did what I thought I couldn't do before – ran out and bought a whole new wardrobe. Lol! Not really, but I did buy some basics. It’s awesome to see that long skirts are in this season because I was able to find some nice things on sale.

It’s only been about 2 weeks or so since I started wearing dresses every day, but it feels so natural, and when I tried to wear some old jeans to do some house work recently, it felt weird. I haven’t been able to follow Padre Pio’s standards of 8” below the knee on every dress, but they all go at least to my knees, obviously nothing is mini. And I can’t get away from a tank top completely, some of the things I bought have a tank shape to the top, but I bought a loose-knit short-sleeved sweater to wear over top and that seems to work. I can’t go with arms covered to the elbows either, it just gets way to muggy where I am in the summer.

I wouldn’t really say this is something everyone should be doing. I mean the Church isn’t talking about it and I just don’t know if I am satisfied with the answer that this article gives to that. I mean, it’s hard to believe that the Church stopped talking about women and men’s appropriate dress just because people stopped listening – I mean people stopped listening about contraception too, but thank God the Church hasn’t stopped talking about that!!

For me I think this is just a personal calling, just something to help me grow closer to the Lord and to show Him my love and humility in this way. I’ve always loved what Blessed John Paul II had to teach us in his Thelogy of the Body and I think this goes with that, the masculine and the feminine being complimentary. And because I feel it is just between me and God I originally thought that I wouldn’t necessarily make my girls dress this way. But after two weeks of wearing dresses and loving it so much, really feeling it is the right thing to do, I changed my mind and decided to drag my girls along with me. So now I have them in dresses and skorts each day – it really helped that Kohl’s had a skort and t-shirt mix and match sale for $5 a piece! Lol! I don’t know if my girls will keep it up as they get older and I don’t know how I will react if they decide they want to wear pants. I am thinking it will be pretty far down the road because they are only 4 and 2 now so I have quite a few years of influence ahead of me.

You know, the fact that I felt so strongly about wanting to share this with you all this morning and it turns out it is Our Lady of Fatima’s feast day – well, to me that says that God is pleased. And I am so so happy about that!!

I've been de-cluttering a lot lately and it has had a huge impact on my ability to keep my house tidy. That means it is easier and my house is actually kind of tidy. lol! But I still have a ways to go. A friend just shared this post from The Legacy of Home blog with me. Sounds like a plan!! Wanna try it?

My trip to New Orleans

I went to New Orleans last week - the first trip my husband and I have taken without the kids since our honeymoon 12 years ago! It was a business trip for him, but he did have a lot of free time which was fun. I enjoyed the alone time shopping anyway; it's never fun to bring a hubby shopping you know? Even if he is patient, you just know he's not into it.

There were several highlights for me in New Orleans. We went to daily Mass each morning in the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral and Basilica right in Jackson square. Loved it!

And then after Mass each day, we just walked across the square and had breakfast at the famous Cafe du Monde. REALLY loved it!!

Another highlight for me was meeting my dear friend Lisa in person! She is someone I have known for a few years now from my online group Catholic Women Together, but this is the first time we met in person. She and her husband and son drove for nearly 3 hours to New Orleans to meet me and my husband - Thanks Lisa!!!!!! We all went for a river cruise on the Mississippi on an old Steamboat. Despite the unusually cool weather it was a wonderful day! Our families got along great, just like I knew we would, and it was just so good getting to know them better.

The one negative thing about New Orleans, and I'm sure this won't surprise you, is Bourbon Street. Actually, I really thought I knew what I was getting into when we decided to walk down Bourbon. I mean, I've been around and I have seen some stuff, I really have, I used to live in downtown Baltimore for Pete's sake, but I had never actually experienced the pit of Hell until I walked down Bourbon Street. What was truly shocking for me was not so much the drinking (expected that) or the strip clubs (expected that) or even the sex clubs - yes sex!! clubs (did not expect that, but wasn't surprised) - what was truly shocking was that it was the same at 3:00 in the afternoon as it was at 3:00 in the morning! Everywhere else I've ever been, the light has chased the sin into the shadows. It still goes on but it hide behinds closed doors and waits for the dark. But not on Bourbon Street. And now I know the smell of immorality. Yes, it has an actual smell. I am pretty sure that it is exactly what Hell smells like. Really.

Two incidents have stayed with me. One was the family we saw panhandling with their toddler girl (probably 2 maybe 3 years old). I stopped to give them money, but I didn't ask their names. I have made it my habit in the last year to ask homeless people their names so I can pray for them. I try to even hold their hand and look in their eyes. But I am sad to say that I was intimidated by being with a group of people I don't know that well (my husband's co-workers) and I didn't ask. That has haunted me since I made the conscious decision to walk away. The other incident is similar. Walking down the street I saw in the doorway of a club a very sad looking woman dressed in the outfit of a dominatrix doing a little jiggley dance to attract customers. Next to her was a man, totally indifferent to her plight, holding a sign that said (please forgive my bluntness) "Tits and Whiskey". I had an urge to go ask her name, and hold her hand, but again, I let my fear of embarrassment override this command (it felt like that - an internal command) and I averted my eyes and walked away. I felt like I failed her. I can't get it out of my mind. But I know we can waste time on regret, we have to move forward, so I have taken these people to Mass with me since then, and I have kept them in my prayers.

On Bourbon Street there is a world of misery. Sex/strip clubs advertise "barely legal" teens girls and there must be hundreds of them there. Teens, older women, it doesn't matter, all I know is it means that there are hundreds of abused, addicted, demoralized women there, having their dignity stripped from them every day. Their customers too are stripped of all dignity. Everyone is drunk or on drugs, or both, and completely enslaved to sin and lack of self control. In that town, right there with that beautiful Cathedral, voo doo is being hawked, magick is being cast, and people are being enslaved and sold for the "pleasure" of others. We have to pray for that city!! Please keep them all in your prayers.

But at the same time, I saw the beautiful side. The wonderful faithful Catholics at Mass each morning, I particularly noticed several law enforcement officers there - they really need it in that town. I can't imagine being a policeman/woman in that town without the Eucharist each day! And I had lovely conversations in outdoor cafes and in shops. It really is a beautiful city, but I am haunted, just haunted by what I saw on that street. So please keep the city of New Orleans in your prayers.

Okay, I hate ending this on a downer because, overall, I had a great time. I actually recommend New Orleans as a destination spot - just not Bourbon Street. Really, it is a fabulous and beautiful city. And of course, it was awesome being with just my husband for the first time in over a decade!