Posts for Chocolate For Your Brain will continue over on the Catholic Channel of Patheos at Chocolate For Your Brain!  I started this week and am still learning the ropes of adding photos and proper posting.  It's going to be a learning process. So it's a renewal of my blog but with some new bells and whistles.   Welcome to the Renaissance of my writing...I hope.     ..read more

 It is a terrifying thought, and my brain plays little games, like when we die, God shows us all the ways in which we were harmed by sin, by others sins, that we are given one more opportunity to be merciful and forgiving as He is, and that allotment we allow, we use towards those who hurt us, is then used as a weight against the ways in which we've hurt others.  That puts it in stark contrast ..read more

We're half way through Lent. I realized, I haven't quite managed to find a rthymn to my devotions or my prayer life. It has remained organic and impulsive and not entirely focused. This is not a confession of a bad Lent, only a reality of how this Lent has thus far progressed.  1) So today, I recommitted to my Lent.   Things were hard, but less so, because that's how grace works.  It makes it ..read more

 When I first started out as a mother, my journals bear out my worries, that having a second or a third, would lead to not paying attention to the individual needs of these new people, that numbers would preclude treating each child's interests and taste and talents and gifts as unique. Now, that I have ten children, four dietary menus, six different musical instruments being played or not,an ..read more

 So this week, as we continue the theme of everything deciding after a year of only living with us, the machines are all quitting, the furniture followed suit.  Out one bed and a few drawers, we opted to do as the Swedes do...and went to that store known for three things...making Americans follow a maze without having a ride at the end, selling furniture Mjollnir like in temperment, refusing to ..read more

1)  I've been writing, and my first piece in a while is at Catholicmom.com and called Go Deeper In.   2) I'm editing.  Slowly.  Grudgingly.  3) I'm exercising.  Slowly.  Grudingly.   4) A brief shout out to all of you who hear when others don't, that someone is hurting more than they wish to admit, thank you.  This morning, a friend felt devastated that her attempt to help someone who voiced a ..read more

 Years ago, I ran Small Success Thursday every Thursday for Catholicmom.com. It's now on Instagram and I'm not, so I'm going to just restart posting Small Success Thursday each Thursday to force me to hold to my 500 words  a day, no outs, no excuses mantra until I run out of words.   Small Success Thursday is about taking stock of the prior week to see the little victories that help one be ..read more

I mean besides being able to possibly avoid a very contagious potentially deadly disease...There are as many crazy therories as there are theorists, but I'll try to outdo them all. When news broke that vaccines were approved, I wanted to sign up right away, but the state is deciding who gets the shots and in what order. I get it. I'll get to get it. I've received half of it, and in two weeks ..read more

 Today, we learned, we're not alone.  Oh, we know that Covid keeps all of us six feet apart, but there is one universal thing that knits all hearts together, a thing universally loathed...telemarketers.  They've managed to evade the do not call lists, such that the home phone rings almost exclusively with apologies from a non existent electric company, notifications about our car warranty and ..read more

These days, as the world starts to open up, and all of us feel the jitters, the stress of returning to the more that life demands, we need to be careful with ourselves and each other.  We need to practice kindness, with our words, our deeds, and even our non actions. We need to have gentle words, gentle acts, and gentle arts, gentle responses to the hardest of things and the ordinary hardness of ..read more