Author: simchajfisher

“What went ye out to see?” asks Jesus of the crowds who came to see John the Baptist. Here’s a painting of John by Matt Clark, one of my favorite living Christian artists. (You can find my short interview with Clark here, and here is his blog, his Instagram page, his Pinterest page)

I hadn’t been planning to start running Christmas art until Thursday, but I got this one this morning, and I had to show you. It’s so simple, so lucid, so urgent and direct. (And I have never seen a scroll wrapped around a prophet’s beard before, but now that I’ve seen it, I don’t know why I haven’t seen it before.)

Jesus asks a good question — really the only good question — as we hurry through the final days before Christmas. Why are we doing this? What are we hoping for? And what have we done to prepare?

What did you hope to find on Christmas morning? A God who is impressed by cinnamon buns and glazed ham? A Savior who is satisfied with something you found on Pinterest? Friends, the one thing and only thing that the Christ Child wants for His birthday is the gift of your heart, which you turn over to Him in that dark little box of the confessional.

Figure it out. Find a place. Make a phone call. Get to confession!

 

Here’s a fascinating story from the NYT: Norway offers migrants a lesson in how to treat women. It’s not about filtering out terrorists or screening for infiltrators; this is an article about modifying the behavior of people who are who they say they are, and who, because of the accident of birth, behave like aliens because they are aliens. These men have to be taught, very explicitly, that they’re expected to treat women well, and not like objects.

The article says,

Fearful of stigmatizing migrants as potential rapists and playing into the hands of anti-immigrant politicians, most European countries have avoided addressing the question of whether men arriving from more conservative societies might get the wrong idea once they move to places where it can seem as if anything goes.

Uncomfortable implications be damned: you can’t just plunk a bunch of strict Muslim men into a western European city and expect them to be chill about all those women walking around wearing tank tops and drinking beer.  “Back home,” says one immigrant, “only prostitutes do that, and in locally made movies couples ‘only hug but never kiss.’” Where they come from, married women can’t say no to sex, and the rape of a stranger may very well go unpunished. This is just a fact. It doesn’t mean that Muslim men are animals. It means they’ve been raised in a certain way, and have to be reeducated.

So they’re trying to figure out how to let these guys in, but get them to change their behavior:

[W]ith more than a million asylum seekers arriving in Europe this year, an increasing number of politicians and also some migrant activists now favor offering coaching in European sexual norms and social codes

[…]

In Denmark, lawmakers are pushing to have such sex education included in mandatory language classes for refugees. The German region of Bavaria, the main entry point to Germany for asylum seekers, is already experimenting with such classes at a shelter for teenage migrants in the town of Passau.

Norway, however, has been leading the way. Its immigration department mandated that such programs be offered nationwide in 2013, and hired a nonprofit foundation, Alternative to Violence, to train refugee center workers in how to organize and conduct classes on sexual and other forms of violence.

What I like about this approach is that it manages to be compassionate and practical at the same time. It doesn’t scream, “Muslim men are all violent animals, so let’s seal them out of our borders”; but it also doesn’t purr, “Muslims are our brothers, and it’s racist and intolerant to imply that there’s a problem.”

It says, “There is a problem here. Let’s figure out how to work with our Muslim brothers so they figure out what’s expected of them.” They’re being gentle as doves, recognizing that migrants and refugees are fleeing horror and tragedy back home, and are entitled to asylum as human beings — but they’re also being wise as serpents, recognizing that there the huge and disastrous culture shock isn’t going to resolve itself, and someone needs to make it very clear to these guys that Denmark isn’t Eritrea.

I bring this up because it’s a balance we could use in the American Church, as we Catholic “natives” deal with an influx of uncatechised “refugees” from the secular world. Pope Francis really is throwing the doors open, loosening up the borders and reminding us all that the Church is intended to be a place, the place, that welcomes spiritual refugees.

But then what happens? A culture clash. Catholics who were born wearing a scapular and a chapel veil are suddenly rubbing shoulders with folks who wouldn’t recognize an encyclical if it hit them over the head with a crozier.

It’s all too easy to fall back on extremes. Those of us who were lucky enough to be raised Catholic may be tempted to say, “These people are animals! Look at them — they’re irreverent, they don’t know how to dress at Mass, they have all kinds of repulsive heterodox ideas  . . . and we’re just going to let them into our Church? Hell, no.” In these quarters, the word “mercy” is a punchline.

The other extreme, which is just as foolish, is to bleat, “God is love, and love means never having to say you’re sorry.”  In these quarters, beating one’s breast during the Confiteor is considered offensive (or even, for reasons I can’t quite grasp, sexist). We already know how well that approach works out.

So? Cue the serpent doves. Catholicism is all about two things: mercy and repentance. Invitation and response. It has always been about these two things. You have to have both. Catholicism must be inviting; and once we’re in, we have to learn how to behave. We have to have both. Like it or not, believe it or not, we’re getting both.

By all accounts, the final report from the Synod on the Family is a “dove and serpent” statement, reiterating God’s boundless, inconceivably generous welcome, and then following up that welcome with a mandatory instruction on how to become acculturated. I’ve written about this before. The Church invites us to a feast, and then instructs us on how to “dress” as honored guests, so that we will not be cast out into the darkness.

I’m tired, so I’m just going to quote myself now, because when I wrote it, I was quoting Holy Scripture: the part where the King invites his friends, and they don’t turn up — so he throws the doors open and invites everybody, and helps them figure out how to dress for the party.

This is what the Church is doing: it is inviting people to the feast, and it is instructing them in how to “dress” the soul, how to behave as an honored guest so they can participate in the feast — so they can follow up on the invitation. In short, it is teaching us how to be a Catholic.

…

If a cohabitating couple shows up for a baptism, what do we do? Or if a couple with an un-annulled second marriage, or if a gay couple turns up wanting to lead some ministry, what do we do? Do you slam the door? No, we say, “Come in, and let’s talk about what you have right so far. Then we can figure out what’s  next.”

…

[A]ll the Synod is saying is what the Church has always said: invite whomever you find, so you can teach them how to be good guests, so we can all enjoy the feast together.

This dove-and-serpent stuff isn’t new. In fact, it couldn’t be older. The question is, will be we be wise enough and innocent enough to understand what the Church is doing? Like it or not, the doors are open.

In which I attempt very little, and more or less succeed. When I sat down to make the weekly menu, I saw that the schedule was wall-to-wall “have some kind of unpleasant appointment in the morning, rush home to get work done while the baby tries to bite my face off, pick up the kids, and go out again right around dinner, then rush home and stay up late to do that unpleasant thing I signed up for,” and thought, “no-brainer food all week it is.” So that is what we did.

SATURDAY
HAMBURGERS; RAW VEGGIES AND HUMMUS

Nothing to report.

 

SUNDAY
BEEF STEW and CINNAMON BUNS

Sunday was my only chance to do some actual cooking, and this stew was delicious. Steak was cheaper than stew meat, so I used that, plus carrots, onions, mushrooms, potatoes, string beans, and tomatoes, and I even had bay leaves for once.

[img attachment=”84307″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog beef stew” /]

As I used to spoon to bump up the meat and potatoes to the surface for the camera, I was uneasily reminded of certain . . . adjustments  . . . I make before someone takes a picture of me. Remember, woman, that thou art stew, and to stew thou shalt return.

Oh, I do have something that I suppose qualifies as a cooking tip. As I’ve mentioned, I have an unreasonable hatred of unwrapping a bunch of bouillon cubes, but I am too cheap to buy bouillon powder. I also experience irrational resentment while waiting for eight or ten cups of water to boil for broth. I just don’t like it, okay? Grr, water! So instead, I boil one cup of water in a tiny pot and add all the bouillon cubes to that, and add this concentrated broth to the soup pot, and then add the rest of the water. It just feels easier.

The cinnamon buns were okay. I made the dough the night before and let it rise once, then formed the buns and put them in the fridge. My plan was to let them rise again in the morning, then pop them in the oven for St. Lucy’s Day breakfast; but a kid threw up, so cinnamon bun popping didn’t seem like a prudent way to start the day. So I didn’t bake them until they middle of the day, and they had risen too much by that time, so they were kind of dry and bready.

[img attachment=”84308″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog cinnamon buns” /]

But still, homemade cinnamon buns! I used this recipe, skipping the nuts and some ooey gooey elements. The dough came together pretty easily. I hear Pioneer Woman’s recipe is pretty good, so I may try that for Christmas breakfast.

 

MONDAY
FISH TACOS; CORN CHIPS

Fish tacos are fairly new to me, and I was skeptical at first (tacos without cheese? Is outrage), but now I love this dinner, which is very flavorful but much lighter than beef tacos. I used frozen breaded fish fillets, and set out shredded cabbage, wedges of lime, slices of avocado, chopped cilantro, salsa, and sour cream.

[img attachment=”84309″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog fish taco” /]

Annnd WordPress seems to have cropped out everything but the jarred salsa. Behold, my handful of jarred salsa! Look upon me, ye foodies, and despair.

I also got four very seductive-looking mangoes, but they weren’t ripe yet.

A good make-ahead meal. The kids cooked the fish while I was on the radio.

 

TUESDAY
ENGLISH MUFFIN SANDWICHES with ham, egg, and pepper jack cheese

The kids made this while I did something, I don’t even remember.

Tuesday was also my birthday! When we got home from the school concert, my husband had a gorgeous cheesecake sampler waiting, plus my daughter had made cupcakes from scratch. A happy day in the midst of craziness.

 

WEDNESDAY
CHICKEN DRUMSTICKS; SALAD

Chicken roasted ahead of time, served cold. Another make-ahead meal that people could grab and eat at various times while accommodating our ridiculous schedule. Wednesday I was on the radio again, with Jennifer Fulwiler, when I unwittingly helped her create a new promo for the show, saying, “I’m sorry, I have to go. My baby just fell off the bed.”

[img attachment=”84315″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”worlds greatest mom” /]

THURSDAY
SPAGHETTI with MEAT SAUCE; SALAD

I made the sauce in the morning, and the kids cooked the pasta while I fell asleep on the couch.

 

FRIDAY 
TUNA NOODLE CASSEROLE

Gonna make this in a minute, so we can shovel it down before yet another evening concert.

Oh, and I did make six dozen cookies last night. I used this foolproof cut-out cookie recipe, tripled. It tastes like mildly sweetened paper stock, but you can make it all in one bowl (I also have an irrational resentment of mixing dry ingredients in one bowl and adding them to wet ingredients. Maybe I should just have a weekly feature called “What’s My Irrational Resentment?”)(Nah.), and you don’t have to chill it. This makes it a great recipe for making cookies with kids, who mainly like the fun of using cookie cutters and decorating, or for when you are feeling mentally fragile can’t take any chances using a recipe that may or may not comply.

Last time I made royal icing, it turned out more like — what’s the opposite of royal? It was ignoble icing. So I got the store-bought pouches of cookie icing with the built-in tip. Some of them turned out cute enough to impress kids:

[img attachment=”84336″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”cookies 1″ /]

Some, well . . .

[img attachment=”84337″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”cookies 2″ /]

Let’s just call it “A Tribute to Voyage Dans la Lun” and let this week pass away.

 

It’s December, the month when bakers lose their minds. Here’s what’s popular this year:

 

 

The Miracle Two-Ingredient Internet Fraud

There are more of these recipes each year, preying on the busy, the gullible, and the lazy. “Get the taste of mom’s real apple pie in these dreamy bars you can whip up in twelve seconds!” Being a trusting soul, you think to yourself, “I would love a taste of mom’s real apple pie, but I simply don’t have the time! Count me in, internet.”

So then it turns out you’re supposed to whirl a graham cracker and a cup of drained lentils in your Vitamix, add a dash of cinnamon, then set them out in the driveway for eight hours in full sun. Break into sharp fragments and call it apple pie, what do I care? Look at me, I’m Sandra Day O’Connor, and here is my husband, David Bowie. As long as we’re calling things whatever we want.

 

The Thumbprint-If-You’re-Lucky Cookie

One of the dirty little secrets of fine restaurateurs is that the fancier a dish is, the more incidental human DNA it contains. Ever been in a five star hotel kitchen? It is, let us say, not the part they usually feature in the brochures. Leaning over sauté pans is a hot and frazzled business, and the waitress may or may not have added her own garnish to your plate, depending on how you responded when she told you that the special was cockaleekie soup. Now double the biologically suspect content of this kitchen, and you have the typical home kitchen.

Care to triple it? Choose one of those novelty treats that requires you to stick a bunch of separate elements together. This one, for instance:  Snow Globe Cupcakes with Gelatin Bubbles. Fabulous, right?  Well, I don’t care if it was baked by the Supreme Hygiene Minister of Switzerland; those suckers are gonna include more fingerprints than a forensics lab, and you could not pay me to put one of them anywhere near my mouth. On the other hand, I do know that I enjoy eating unflavored gelatin that has been handled a lot and then stuck to a balloon, so I can see why it would be worth the trouble.

 

The How-Can-You-Bring-Yourself-to-Call-This-Homemade Recipe

“Cake mix” is cake mix. It is for making a mix cake. It is not an ingredient. The end.

 

The Why-Rome-Fell Monstrosity

This is probably an American thing, but we seem to believe that we really can’t celebrate the birth of our savior without putting together a dessert that is the culinary equivalent of a grand mal seizure. We can’t just have cupcakes. We can’t just have frosted cupcakes. We can’t even just have frosted cupcakes studded with bits of candy. It has to be a cupcake that is frosted with cookie-dough-and-Heath-bar-chunk icing, drizzled with white chocolate and topped with miniature jelly donuts, and then you deep fry the entire thing, roll it in peanut butter, dust with powdered sugar, and cram it inside a double-sized eclair. On a stick.

 

Still feel like baking?

Perhaps you even signed up to make five dozen for the school concert, and you’re stalling because you know your cookies always turn out terrible? Here is a foolproof recipe, with no wacky ingredients and no wild promises, just plain old, regular old cookies that look, taste, and smell like cookies because they are just cookies, and you do not have to chill the dough, for real. Swallow your pride a buy a couple of pouches of that ready-made cookie icing, squirt it on, and call it Christmas.

 

Makes about 24

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

There is no joke at the end of this post. Just cookies.

Last year, I posted a gallery of original Christmas-themed art, and I’d love to do the same on Aleteia this year. If you’d like to share your work, please send a high-resolution file to simchafisher[at]gmail[dot]com with “Christmas art” in the subject heading. Feel free to include a line or two about yourself and your work, and a link to your website, if you have one. By sending a file, you are giving me permission to publish your work online.

I can’t promise that I’ll include all submissions, of course, but I’d love to feature a wide variety of styles. The image above, from last year’s gallery, is “Revelation” by Matt Clark, whom I interviewed last year as part of my occasional “Artist of the Month” series. 

Please submit your artwork by Saturday, Dec. 19! Thanks.

 

 

This morning, my husband gave me a lovely present, a bottle of Calvin Klein Euphoria. He said that they also had Endless Euphoria for sale, but that seemed like . . . a bit much. Sort of like in The Loved One, where the funeral home offers two kinds of commemorative flames: Perpetual Eternal, or just Standard Eternal.

I’m forty-one today, and just to drive the point home, I woke up to a phone call from the radiologist, who never calls just to chat. Quick version:  they found three nodules on what’s left of my thyroid. Thirteen years ago, I had a nodule on the other side, which they removed, and which turned out to be benign (and now I have an awesome scar). Even if these nodules are cancer, thyroid cancer is pretty easy to beat, and we have great insurance. And who couldn’t use another awesome scar? Also, I dreamt the ceiling was leaking, but it turns out it was just a dream. Again, I say herpy berfday to me.

Today, I’ll be on Jen Fulwiler’s radio show, then dash over to one school for one kid, then to the other school for the others, drop off one at drama, drive to the church and drop off four for catechism, bring the others home, pick up the drama kid and the catechism kids, pick up the one kid from work, and bring everyone home, and then we will have twenty minutes to eat dinner and get dressed to go to the high school Christmas concert, where we will meet my husband.

Isn’t it obnoxious when people say they’re going to give a present to themselves? Too bad! I’m giving myself the present of letting this sorry excuse for a post be my post for today. I have a handsome and loving husband, ten ridiculously great kids, a smelly, rotten van that starts up every morning, a sunny little home, a smelly, rotten, insanely loyal dog, a fulfilling job and really okay haircut. I’ve traveled forty-one times around a glorious blazing sun created by God most high, who also made me, for no good reason except out of sheer love. Happy birthday to me!

We may skip catechism, though.

 

We have this one priest who is reverent and hard working and gives good sermons and all, but he just can’t resist doing a little ad libbing at one point. Instead of just saying, “Behold the Lamb of God” — which, for goodness’ sake, is already enough for anyone to say and listen to and think about for the rest of the life of the world, isn’t it? — he says, “Behold, God’s holy gifts to us, God’s holy people. Behold, the Lamb of God . . . ” Why? I have no idea. Obviously it means something to him, and he is reverent and hard working and gives good sermons, so that’s all I’m going to say about that, besides maybe one final “harumph.”

Anyway, nothing does a more efficient job of cranking my attitude 180 degrees away from holiness than being called “God’s holy people.” So now you know whose fault the following is.

Yesterday, I played what I suddenly realized was the first Christmas music of the season in our household:

This does  not, to my  mind, rise to the level of irreverence, even though it is goats singing “Silent Night.” I do not detect any malicious intent to demean or deride sacred things. It’s just goats, okay? You got a problem with how goats worship? What are you, some kind of fanatic? Just pretend it’s about Laudato Si’ and you’re covered, apparently.

Next up: a song that I find spiritually rich and intensely moving:

Noooooo!

And finally, a fellow who needs to introduction, other than HRRRRNNNNMNMMMMM!!!

I can thank the illustrious John Herreid for bringing Joseph Spence into my world. “He has been called the folk guitarist’s Thelonious Monk.” Heyy, I know that trick. You say something, and then you can honestly say “It has been said . . . ” Well, it has been said that this is the second time in two days that I’ve wanted to quote a British commenter saying something that seemed charming and amusing, but then I looked it up just in case, and it turned out to be shockingly obscene. I mean shockingly. What is with you guys? Can’t you even enjoy a little Christmas music without bringing up . . . that? All I can say is, you better jdd jnnnn, you better yib jrrp, because Sanny Clorr is gammin . . . to us, God’s holy people.

This week I unveil my terrible new logo, which features a barely legible “Aleteia” rather than a barely legible “Patheos.” Ta da! I did the exact same boneheaded thing as last time: Got all the elements in place except for the question mark, and then I was searching for a whimsical font and then accidentally dropped the mouse, and basically dropped the question mark, and I couldn’t undo it. Oh well.

My goal for cooking lately has just been to try one new recipe every week. I accomplished that goal, and we all ate like — I don’t know, what’s the opposite of kings? We all ate like ugly Americans anyway. Here’s how our week in food went:

 

SATURDAY
Reg-lee-ar hot dogs wiv no buns and no kettsup, lemonade chips, spider eggs, Spiderhead strarbrerries, tate, tuptates, tandy, and strarbrerry ice tream

Saturday was Benny’s 4th birthday party, so she chose the menu. I got Aldi’s “chili limon” chips, but I’m still not sure if that’s what she meant by “lemonade chips.” The spider eggs were made thusly:

Hard boil a bunch of eggs, roll them around on the table but keep the shell on, and then let them sit overnight covered in water with a bit of vinegar and tons of red food coloring. Peel them carefully, and the egg underneath should have red “web” designs on them.

[img attachment=”82853″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog spider eggs” /]

They turned out as I hoped, and I was left to wonder if that was a good thing or not.

The Spiderman strawberry heads were supposed to be made with candy melts and black icing, like this. I bought candy melts and black icing, I know I did, but I have no idea where they went. Benny was perfectly content to use leftover white icing to make faces on strawberries and then eat them.

[img attachment=”82863″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog strawberry faces” /]

So that worked out. She liked her tate, and had leftover tuptates for breakfast.

SUNDAY
Ham and cheese omelettes, roasted mushrooms, frozen hash browns

Do you ever have one of those times when you’re driving and suddenly you think, “OH CRAP, I FORGET HOW TO DRIVE!” It just lasts a second, and your body memory covers you until you regain your confidence, and then you’re fine again, and no one’s the wiser? This is what happened while I was making omelettes, except that my body memory also forgot how to make omelettes, so nobody took over and they turned out terrible.

I did, however, take a picture of eggshells, and here it is:

[img attachment=”82848″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog eggshells” /]

I also attempted roasted mushrooms, which is a completely fabulous recipe from Deadspin. They turned out pretty good, but I forgot to buy a couple of the ingredients, so they weren’t as savory as they might have been. Still, a wonderful, versatile side dish that goes with any number of foods. Even just mushrooms and a loaf of crusty bread to sop up the juices would make a lovely little lunch. Here’s a picture that hints at the yumminess:

[img attachment=”82858″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog roast mushrooms” /]

MONDAY
Chicken nuggets; chips

Monday was the day of ten thousand appointments, so aiming low was the right thing to do.

TUESDAY
Chicken tacos, tortilla chips

More appointments. Cursing myself for making all these appointments back in the summer, when there was sunshine and light and hope in the world. I also knew I was going to have to take all ten kids to the evening Mass by myself, so a layer of preemptive panic lay like a sulphurous fog over the whole day. We got home after 5, and I threw the food on the table while shrieking, “MAKE YOUR LUNCHES, DO YOUR HOMEWORK, WHY IS SHE CRYING, PUT YOUR JACKETS AWAY, OH LORD, WHY DO WE EVEN HAVE A DOG??”  You know, in honor of Our Lady. Then I signed onto the church website to double check which church the 7:00 Mass was at, because last year we went to the wrong one and missed the whole thing.

And . . . it was yesterday.

So we sat down and ate our tacos in peace. Te salut, o Maria.

Oh, so I had been planning regular ground beef tacos, but beef suddenly got really expensive, and chicken was suddenly cheap. I took the two envelopes of taco seasoning, mixed it with oil, and slathered it on the raw chicken, and roasted it, then shredded it. It looked amazing

[img attachment=”82849″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog chicken for tacos” /]

but tasted kind of bland. I guess chicken just needs more help.

WEDNESDAY
Spaghetti with hidden prize; one-piece salad; non-garlic bread

 

On Wednesday, I was feeling like I could really use some help, so I had one kid make the spaghetti, and another make the garlic bread, and another make the salad.

What this got me was spaghetti that came out of the pot with a knife in it.

[img attachment=”82850″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog spaghetti knife” /]

The salad was made out of lettuce, which is fine. The child had managed to cut it up . . . but not all the way. It was like a salad kit with perforation lines to show you where to separate the vegetables when you were ready, which apparently we were not.

And the garlic bread, well, I bought three loaves of french bread and told the kid to cut it up “like a big, long sandwich, so one piece is all top and one piece is all bottom, know what I mean?” I thought that was pretty clear, and he did it perfectly. But he didn’t realize I meant he should cut all three loaves that way. He did one and then disappeared.

So I finished it up and discovered we were out of garlic anyway. So we had big hunks of buttered toast. Which is fine.

At our house, I buy three loaves of bread and cut each one into four pieces, and each person gets a quarter loaf of garlic bread

[img attachment=”82852″ align=”alignnone” size=”medium” alt=”food blog garlic bread” /]

Or, in our case, a quarter loaf cruton. For some reason, this is much more fun than getting pieces of garlic bread like people do.

THURSDAY
Pork and Green Chile stew; cornbread; rice; hypothetical salad

 

Super disappointed in this recipe from the New York Times, and never mind all the ways I screwed it up. It blame the New York Times! The broth never cooked down like it was supposed to, so it was just a kind of greasy soup that managed to be spicy and boring-tasting at the same time. I did, however, manage to buy chile peppers that didn’t melt our faces off (unlike a few weeks ago).

The cornbread turned out fine. I burned the rice. The salad was in the fridge, left over from yesterday, but after I made the cornbread, I was too tired to open the fridge and take the salad out. When my husband got home at 7, I went to bed, where I dreamed that I was falling slowly into a deep, deep, deep hole, and enjoying it.

FRIDAY
Pizza; raw veggies and hummus

And here we are at the end of the week. Phew.

As I try to mention every so often, I’ve been seeing a therapist for a few months now. I make a point of mentioning it because a lot of Catholics are resistant to the idea of therapy. I understand much of that resistance, so I thought I’d share my experience so far. Here are some basic observations:

1. Therapy is not a replacement for confession or spiritual direction. You may end up addressing the same behaviors in both therapy and confession or spiritual direction, but you’ll learn different things about where they come from and how to deal with them. If you go to therapy, it doesn’t mean you think you’re not responsible for your actions. It means you’re serious about trying to change them.

2. At the same time, therapy is not incompatible with Catholicism – or it shouldn’t be. Ideally, they should dovetail. In my case, I’d made no progress trying to conquer certain behaviors through prayer and confession, so I turned to therapy to help me learn practical ways to do it.

3. It’s far better to see a good therapist who doesn’t know much about your Faith than it is to see a faithful Catholic who’s a second-rate therapist. I went in with the idea that I’d listen with an open mind to whatever my therapist could offer, and I’d do the job of filtering out whatever was incompatible with my faith, and I’d integrate whatever was compatible. Once I got to know and trust the fellow, I let him know that I felt defensive about my Faith, and that I was afraid that he’d see my religion as something to be cured – that he’d see my big family and my spiritual obligations as the things that were dragging me down.

He said that it’s true that some therapists see religion as an unhealthy thing, and they may or may not be aware that they have this prejudice; but he said that most of the good therapists he knows will want to treat the whole person, and that includes their spiritual life; so he encouraged me to be more open about matters touching on religion. I have done this, and it’s worked out well.

This makes sense, because I have made a deliberate effort to integrate my faith into every aspect of my life, so it’s not as if I can compartmentalize it anyway.

4. Therapy is not for losers. Knowing there’s a problem and not going for help is stupid. Knowing there’s a problem and going for help is what adults do.

5. Of course it’s hard to get started. Important things usually are. It is hard to make the first phone call, especially if you have to make lots and lots of phone calls, and explain over and over again that you need help, until you find someone who is taking new patients and accepts your insurance. Just keep calling. Set a goal per day – say, six phone calls – and just keep plowing through. If possible, if you need it, ask someone to make the phone calls for you. Just get the ball rolling.

6. Don’t assume you can’t possibly afford it. Therapy might be covered by your insurance, or they might offer a sliding scale fee structure, so at least make some calls and find out. If you call an office that does not take your insurance, ask them if they can recommend someone who does.

7. You might not find the right therapist at first. Give it several sessions, and if things seem really off, it’s completely normal and useful to say so and try someone else. The whole point of this is to help you, and if it’s not helping, then what are you doing?

I was set to see a therapist for an introductory visit, and she didn’t return my phone calls, and then left a message saying she would call back, and then didn’t. So I fired her before I even met with her. If I want to get treated like crap, I can just hang out with my teething baby at home for free.

8. Therapy isn’t magic. You have to actually do the things throughout the rest of the week. Just showing up for your appointments isn’t going to help anything.

9. Even when it’s working, it takes a while. And it’s normal to have ups and downs. You should be seeing some progress at some point, but don’t expect to be on a dazzling upward trajectory from day one.

10. Therapy is smarter than you think, smarty.  So give it a chance, even if your therapist uses words or ideas that sound goofy at first. If you have a decent therapist who seems intelligent, responsive, and respectful, then keep an open mind.

I had a hard time, for instance, getting over the word “mindfulness.” I was like, “But I am not a bleached blonde yummy mummy, and I do not balance crystals on my forehead when I get overwhelmed by yoga pants shopping, so get away from me with your mindfulness nonsense!” Well, it happens that I went in for help changing some behavior that I do out of habit, that I do without thinking, and that I do when I feel like I’m not in control of my responses. So guess what I’m working on? Mindfulness. La di dah.

***

If you’ve had a good (or a bad) experience with therapy, what would you add? What would you like your fellow Catholics to know?

 

 

… is The Little Dress Up Shop. This is not a paid promotion; I’m just a very happy customer who knows a lot about all the ways costumes can go wrong. Here’s why we love The Little Dress-Up Shop:

So far, we’ve bought one Anna and one Elsa dress from them, and both are lovely and machine washable, not itchy, machine washable, not flimsy, machine washable, not skimpy or skanky, and you can put them in the washing machine, because they are machine washable (see Gardening Anna, above). The prices are reasonable, too, and shipping is free in the U.S. They have other costumes besides dresses.

What about customer service? This is actually what prompted me to write this post.

We ordered an Elsa dress for another of my girls for her birthday. The package came a few days later, but it turned out to be another Anna dress! I was so bummed, because they promise an easy exchange, but it would not get there in time for the birthday. Plus, it’s not exactly free shipping if I have to ship it back. So I made an inquiry that night around midnight, and the next morning, I got this email:

Sorry to hear we sent you the wrong dress. We are sending out the Large Elsa out today, Priority mail so you can receive by Sunday.

With the dress will be a white, postage-paid envelope to return the Anna dress back to us.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

They didn’t ask to see a photo of the dress or the packing slip or anything; they just believed me and fixed the problem. Customer. For. Life. The new dress came right away, and the kid loves it.

[img attachment=”82554″ size=”medium” alt=”benny elsa” align=”alignnone”]

We’ve already run it through the wash once, and it came out great: velour still plushy, gemstone and rick rack still attached, shiny parts still shiny, sparkles still sparkly, tulle still tooling along, not all scrumbled up. Little Dress Up Shop, moms. The deadline to order for Christmas is tomorrow, Friday the 11th, so check it out!