The Rest of the Story

So you may be thinking, Birthday?  Dedication? Confessions?  What's the big deal?  It's just a blog.  Of course, as I've said before, there really is no such thing as "just an"....anything for someone who lives with purpose.  Blogging is serious business to me because I invest my time in it regularly, time that I could spend in a million other ways (fitness for instance but we won't talk about that).  Each of my posts is a small work of art and blogging has fulfilled a need in me that I didn't even know I had.  You see, I love to write.  In graduate school, I spent hours working through the problem of how to prove a thesis and then choosing the best words to do it.  Since then though, my writing has been sparse.  The problem is that, although I have ideas for larger writing projects, I don't have the freedom to focus as intently as I need to to tackle them.  I know that some writers discipline themselves to write fifteen minutes to a half hour a day.  That would be difficult for me because I am driven to work toward closure.  In other words, once I get started, I will want to hole up in a cave with no need of food, water or companionship until the work is completed--which is what I did as a grad student only we called the cave "the stacks".  Obviously that doesn't go well with family life.  The blog has offered the perfect happy medium.  It has allowed me to meditate on my life and its meaning but is immediate enough to pull me back to the present moment before I get too carried away.

What you don't get as readers of Frodo Seven is "the rest of the story".  I have read other blogs that, in the interest of honesty in journalism I suppose, show the messy side of life.  I probably have as many bad habits, junk drawers and disastrous closets as the next person but my focus has always been more on inspiration.  The point is not to hold our family up as a model or to make ourselves look better than we are.  My hope is that by sharing the joy we have found in our Catholic faith and our devotion to family, we inspire people--you--to turn your thoughts to your own faith and family.  Frodo Seven is about setting hearts on fire so that they can live...with heart.  And I'll talk more about that mañana.

For now, another gift for Frodo Seven--a patron saint.  It is traditional for Catholics to put endeavors under the protection of a specific saint and for awhile now, I have been leaning toward choosing St. Ignatius of Loyola for Frodo Seven--more on him later.  But something happened this week to change my mind.  I heard a song at Madeleine's Christmas program that I had never heard before.  It is called "Joseph's Lullaby" by Mercy Me.  I won't print the words here because you have to hear it for yourself.  It got to me the first time I heard it and several times after.  I guess I had always thought that, as far as Jesus' mission was concerned, Joseph was just along for the ride.  Mary needed protection, they were already betrothed, problem solved.  Joseph had to have been an amazing man though.  We know that he had enough faith to act on messages from angels twice.  We also know that he was the perfect, chaste husband to Mary.  And what I finally understood after listening to his lullaby is that, as Jesus' daddy, he wanted to protect him and shoulder his sufferings in the same way any father would.  Was it perhaps God's mercy that Joseph died peacefully before Jesus began his public ministry?  Surely if he had been in the Garden of Gethsemane, he would have wanted to do more than cut off the ears of the men who were hurting his son.

So, St. Joseph is a wonderful saint for Frodo Seven.  He was "only" a foster parent--as we all are really--but loved Jesus with all his heart.  And when I talk about living with heart, that is what I mean---living with a heart full of the love of God.  

Tune in tomorrow for "Got Heart?"