My faith had been tested beyond measure
"It’s believing none of it’s wasted"
This week on Mothering Spirit
Alessandra Harris shares a story of learning the hard way what prayer does—and does not—bring to our deepest longings:
“My daughter’s hopes and dreams since middle school vanished before her eyes. The disappointments of her high school seasons meant she’d have a very slim chance of playing in college. It broke my heart, and I suffered with her through her bitter disappointment.
In March, I tweeted: ‘Prayers go unanswered. Miracles don’t always happen. God can be silent. Lent is a season when we acknowledge all of those truths but also remember that in spite of the desert times, Easter still comes.’ My faith had been tested beyond measure. To pray so hard for something that didn’t come to pass—my daughter to stay well and be able to play—felt insurmountable. Faith is believing that God can answer prayers and work miracles, while also understanding God doesn’t always choose to do either.”
Read the rest: When Prayers Go Unanswered.
Ashley Holston gives us a prayer for the paradoxes of motherhood, particularly poignant this time of year:
Motherhood is
Weighty and wonderful,
Sometimes monotonous and boring,
But also exciting and spontaneous,
While being grievous and frustrating.
It’s both stretching and structured,
Straightforward and confusing,
Tiresome and energizing,
Painful and healing,
Draining and lifegiving,
Hopeful and despairing...
Pray with the rest here: Motherhood Is A Prayer Breathed Out.
From our sponsors
This week’s sponsor of Mothering Spirit is Ellie Roscher, author of Remarkable Rose and The Embodied Path. Remarkable Rose is a picture book that tells the true and inspiring story of a girl who was determined to play soccer in Kibera when girls weren’t yet allowed to play. The Embodied Path explores how claiming and sharing our body stories can lead to deeper embodiment, healing, and wholeness.
Ellie is a former athlete and coach, a mother of young athletes, and a woman who believes our bodies are a gift from God who writes stories about the wisdom and power of our bodies. Visit ellieroscher.com for more on Ellie’s work!
This Week’s Recommendation
Each Friday we feature more work from our writers. This week we shared an excerpt from Every Season Sacred: Reflections, Prayers, and Invitations to Nourish Your Soul and Nurture Your Family throughout the Year from Kayla Craig.
“Jesus paid attention to people, often those who were unseen. When a woman in the crush of a large crowd touched the hem of His clothes, Jesus knew. He was awake to the place He was in and to the people around Him, along with their needs. He was paying attention.
Much ink has been spilled over our children’s generation and the implications of so much technology at their fingertips. Navigating online spaces is complicated and overwhelming, to be sure. But I wonder how much starts with us as parents. We have to contend with our own habits and how our unhealthy patterns with technology form us—and our souls.
How can we hope to form the souls of our families when we’re drinking from a firehose of information, entertainment, and connectivity twenty-four hours a day?
The youngest among us have much to teach us about paying attention…”
Read the whole excerpt here: The Gift of Noticing.
Substack Spotlight
At
Gina writes honestly about aspects of Catholic motherhood that often go undiscussed, covering topics such as mental health, marital challenges, and the difficulties of raising kids in the faith as a convert.Her fortnightly newsletter Cake for Breakfast is chatty and fun, including tidbits about her life in France, where she's finding moments of pleasure in the midst of mothering young children, and some recommendations.
Check out popular posts here: The graceless gods of good intentions, Shiny Happy Catholics, and Baby or no baby?
Subscribe to Gina’s Substack here—and don’t miss her latest post, on the lives we might have lived: The ghost ships that surround us.
Want to feature your Substack newsletter here to have it reach more readers? Contact laura@motheringspirit.com for more information.
In Your Words
Starting this fall we’re featuring more of your words here. We know social media is a place where mothers of all ages and stages share from the heart about their joys and challenges. Each week we hope to bring you a glimpse into one mother’s life—in the hopes that her words might resonate with your own story.
This week’s post comes from Jess Rozga-DeBoni (@jess.k.rozga.deboni on Instagram):
“My kids start public school for the first time next week. Man, are we a basket case of bittersweet feelings. As we transition in roles and rhythms, I do have one hope and request from our friends and family—
Can we please stop assuming the worst in one another?
Home educators, can we please stop assuming the worst in public education? Can we please stop pointing negatively to all the things that do not specifically align with your educational perspective? Where is the hope & help in this?
And public school families, can we please stop assuming all home educating families are unsocialized, not receiving a holistic and rigorous education? Can we please stop pointing to all the negative beliefs we have about home educating families and begin asking more questions, wondering more possibilities, taking a moment to look at education outside of our personal experiences?
Some of the most thoughtful, engaging, kind and intelligent families we know are home educated. And some of the most thoughtful, engaging, kind and intelligent families we know attend public schools.
This is not to say that we should not look critically or without hope within each of these institutions. As most of us are aware, neither avenue of education is without flaws. But may we then work together to assume the best in one another?
Not one child or family's educational story is like another, and it would strengthen all of our communities and personal relationships to assume the best in one another's homes and educational experiences.
Let us not assume every home educating family is unsocialized without learning about their everyday rhythms. And let us not assume that public education is full of demons and instruction without care until we have asked specific questions from our local educators.
I believe it would benefit us all to pay close attention to the many assumptions and beliefs we have regarding each educational practice. And Dear Lord, may we all have the personal restraint to check ourselves & our motivations before we comment on home or public education without knowing our audience or asking thoughtful questions before speaking audacious assumptions.”
Want to share your words here? Tag @mothering.spirit in your post on social media & we’ll let you know if we’d like to feature it in a future Substack.
If you like what you read at Mothering Spirit, we’d love if you’d share this with a friend! Maybe someone who needs encouragement in her mothering journey—or a place to pray in the midst of her busy days. Thanks for supporting our writers by sharing their work, following us on Instagram or Facebook, or supporting us on Patreon.
This post contains affiliate links.