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THE PARENTING DARE BLOGI love, love, love mothers.
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THE PARENTING DARE BLOGI love, love, love mothers.
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Happy Summer! It’s time to relax! I cannot wait to blog again; I have missed you!!
For those of you that are new here (and a big welcome to you!), my name is Lori Doerneman. I graduated from college a million years ago with a middle school education degree; I taught for five years at a fabulous little Catholic school in St. Louis, which I loved. When I had my first child I tried to keep teaching, but it became obvious that my heart was no longer in the classroom.
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In the fall my son David made the basketball team at Bishop Carroll Catholic High School. Having a son in a high school sport is sort of like going into Witness Protection. I basically left the life that I knew and focused on getting my freshman to and from practice (5:30-7:30 p.m. every single night, even Fridays!).
It is now mid-March, and I am reengaging with my life, stepping back into my little routines. I have missed this space. I have missed you. There are some experiences in my life that I'd like to share with you, but they are not ready yet. They are still simmering. So I decided to reach back into my file and share a pivotal experience that happened to me when I still had a lot of young kids in my home. Grab a cup of tea, move the wrapping paper off of the couch, tell the children to play downstairs and give yourself the gift of time to read these reflections on the birth of Jesus. They were written by the 8th graders at Holy Spirit Catholic School in Goddard, Kansas. Instead of going deep into the actual events, I asked the students to reflect more deeply on what it would have felt like to be a certain character. I wanted their inner thoughts. Enjoy!
Confession time: for the past six weeks or so I've been thinking about my children and their people, wondering how the onslaught of the internet is going to affect them long-term. We, as a society, are now tied together yet separate—each person scrolling on their phone, taking in life like a cascading waterfall, allowing it to deluge us with fantastic stories of phenomenal weddings, catastrophic events, sweet moments.
I see the pull of the internet affecting my children and myself. I want more for them, for me, for us. I am getting old, and I’ve been mystified by the changes happening in my body. When I look in the mirror, I wonder who is looking back at me with all of those wrinkles. When I glance at my hands, they have somehow become my mother’s. My skin is getting thin. So, truth be told, I’ve been quietly obsessing about my aging mind and body, wondering how I will handle this obvious downhill slide. I have not really shared this with my people, it's been a quiet sort of bereavement, an ache of the heart.
Friends, in my last post I made the point that our lives are now going at Warp Speed. We are hit with a barrage of information in a single day; it’s enough to make the head swim and the nerves fray. Our souls were not made to live that fast.
I do want to spend time in the next several weeks pondering the ways that we can bring a bit of peace and balance back into our daily lives, but before I go there, I need to address one aspect of the internet: expectations. Good morning. It is early, the kids are sleeping, and it’s dark outside. I love this time of day when everything is new. I am sitting in my prayer corner, a renovated area of my home (it used to be the bar!), surrounded by books, pictures of my people, my favorite Divine Mercy Image, and Our Lady of Fatima. A fresh cup of coffee is steaming beside me.
Knowing that I am making time for my personal writing makes me feel warm inside; I’ve been working to mold 12, 13 and 14 year olds into writers; it feels delicious to just sit and write for fun. I have a friend that I don’t see as often as I would like. Yet when we make the time to hang out, it’s like old times immediately. We laugh and enjoy each other’s company; I think we are comfortable with each other because our shared history binds us. She knows just about everything there is to know about me, yet she still loves me. Because of her unconditional acceptance, I like who I am with her.
I'm going to jump into the deep because there have been MANY TRAGEDIES HAPPENING for people in my circle in Wichita, Kansas, and I feel the need to address this head-on: What Do You Do When Someone is Hurting?
I love being a mom.
Now, before I lose anyone, let me also share that yes, there have been some really hard, difficult, sacrificial aspects of my vocation, like when I had three children in three and a half years, and my husband and I were both still in our early twenties, learning life as well as each other. |
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I'm Lori Doerneman Wife. Mom. Catholic. Idealist with 8 kids, keeping it real. Archives
December 2024
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