Share, Be Satisfied

     God provides all that we need and then some.  God provides us with an unquenchable hunger for Him that keeps us focused.  He gives us the gift of faith.  He showers love, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion upon us, so that we may go and share these gifts with others, thereby bringing us all closer to Him.  He provides for some of what we need for ourselves and gives us extra that’s meant to be shared. 

     Oftentimes, God works through other people to meet our most basic physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.  We each have different gifts, talents, and abilities, possess different types of wealth, but we’re each called to share all that we have been given. 

     Some of us may believe we haven’t got much that’s worth sharing.  We fear we can’t make a significant enough contribution to others.  We believe we don’t have enough money, resources, education, support, faith, and/or wisdom to share with others. 

     Sharing makes us vulnerable.  It means giving not only what we have, but also who we are, and that can be frightening at times.  Sharing our food and/or our money can be far easier than

7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 9)

-1-

You ain’t never had a friend like me! A number of years ago when we were still dating, Kevin mentioned something to me that sounded like “our genie.”  I thought he was being sarcastic about having his very own genie from a lamp, something along the lines of the masterful, musical genie from Disney’s Aladdin.  Turns out, Kevin was perfectly serious…about the name of the local power company: Rochester Gas & Electric (a.k.a. RG&E).  To this day I’m amused whenever people in the area talk about the power company, because they always say RG&E (often pronounced “our genie”) so quickly that it really sounds like they’re talking very seriously about their personal genie. 

-2-

Boys and their toys.  This past Tuesday our two youngest nephews from Kevin’s side of the family came to the cottage with their girlfriends and their jet skis.  They were out in the water when we got back home.  It hit Kevin that his influence of being a gearhead, who looks to speed for thrills, had greatly influenced the interests and spending habits of his nephews.  He apologized for this, only half-kidding, that he had some responsibility for their passion/obsession.  I informed the ladies that the penchant for motor vehicles and being a gearhead does not subside as the guys get older.  One of them said something to the effect of, so “we should get out while we still can?”  Kevin suggested starting a women’s support group instead, for those who love gearheads.      

-3-

How full is your water glass?  For my mom’s birthday last Sunday, she, her youngest brother, his wife, their two children, my husband Kevin, and I went to a delicious restaurant on the canal called Aladdin’s.  My mom had called ahead and made reservations, but when we arrived, we weren’t on their list.  They made room for our party of seven downstairs, but not outside, where my mom would have preferred to be.  The food was delectable and the desserts quite decadent which helped distract us a bit from the fact that the waitress helping our waiter was not all there, to put it nicely.  Refilling our water, bringing us napkins, and forks when it was time for dessert was apparently a greater challenge than one would think.  She provided the perfect foil for the waitress we had at lunchtime at The Cheesecake Factory the next day, who not only was on top of what we asked for, but who also had the foresight to anticipate what we’d like next and bring it before we even asked. 

-4-

I’m a little intimidated. After having such a good experience with the on-the-ball waitress at The Cheesecake Factory, the seven of us went up to the hostess station and requested to speak with the manager.  He came out in a minute or two, and upon seeing my uncle Rob, who has a solid build and claims he’s 6’9” (but whose head brushes against standard height doorframes), he admitted, “I’m a little intimidated.”  My uncle assured him there was no need to be, that we just wanted to let him know that our waitress had done a magnificent job and was to be commended.  My uncle’s also a laidback kind of guy, so he isn’t someone you’d need to fear anyway, even though he is super tall.  You could see the manager’s relief.   

-5-

No, I don’t.  Do you play miniature golf?  When we were growing up, people would always ask my uncle Rob if he played basketball because he’s so tall.  He’d shoot hoops from time to time, but that wasn’t his favorite sport to play, so really the answer was no.  I can’t remember if we saw his answer to this often-asked question on a T-shirt, but we thought it would be perfect to get him.  My sisters and I get our height from our mom’s side of the family.  My mom’s older brother is 6’5” and he prefers golf over basketball, too.   

-6-

Give us this day, our daily bread...  As a juvenile diabetic, my husband wouldn’t get too far without sustenance.  For many years, he’s been in the habit of carrying some type of food or candy with him in case his sugar gets low.  The first summer, I lived with my grandmother in Rochester, so I could be closer to Kevin, I often went to daily Mass during the week.  I went during the day while Kevin was at work, but even then I thought and prayed that God would change Kevin’s heart and mind about the Catholic Church.  I longed for him to return to the faith, take part in the Sacraments, and seek to center his life on the Lord.

I can’t help but marvel each day when Kevin and I are holding hands together at daily Mass, both wanting to be there, fully participating in the Mass, and aware of the Lord’s Presence in the Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharist.  I never dreamed that someday, even while we were on vacation, that my husband would join me for daily Mass, make it a priority, and look forward to it as much as I do.  God is truly amazing!!    

-7-

If you like piña coladas…then you’d be in vacation heaven with me this week.  My beverage of choice is a piña colada smoothie at Sips.  Earlier this week, I got to indulge in a most delicious slice of piña colada cake cheesecake from The Cheesecake Factory.  I spread the indulgence over a few days.  Kevin has had a penchant for mango, especially on vacation.  First, he was ordering a mango fruit freeze, now he’s moved on to a Mango Tango smoothie at Sips.       

.    

     Check out Jennifer Fulwiler’s 7 Quick Takes Friday series and her high-traffic for good reason blog Conversion Diary.

Dion The Wanderer Talks Truth

Dion -- The Wanderer Talks Truth is a great read I heard about through a God-incident.  When we took our best friend/brother John to the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart a couple weeks ago, he got some books at the gift shop.  He picked up a copy of this one for his sister, who is really into music and loves Dion.  None of us had realized Dion is Catholic. 

     
I selected Dion -- The Wanderer Talks Truth to review so I could talk about it with John’s sister, who also loves to read, and because it’s sort of off-the-beaten-path from what I usually select.    

     
Dion’s amazing journey to stardom includes the blues, those in his own life and those that inspired his music.  He got caught up for a number of years in the pop music artists’ traditional mélange of: alcohol, drugs, and Rock and Roll.  Throughout his life, Dion had some very strong influences on his music, many people who stood up and out with him from his Bronx neighborhood and the international music scene, and the support of someone I can only assume from his description of her is a remarkable woman, his teenage sweetheart/wife, Susan.  It’s always encouraging to hear of a couple who’s remained together through some tough times and come out stronger on the other side.  It’s nothing short of inspiring to learn of a Rock and Roll legend who’s realized God needs to be at the center of his life, someone who is still very much in love with his wife and proud of his three daughters.   

Two interesting facts I learned from the book that I bet many would get wrong if playing Rock and Roll trivia are: 1. “The Wanderer” is not a song written about Dion himself, and 2. “Runaround Sue” wasn’t written about his lovely wife.  The musicians did have a female from their town in mind when they wrote the song, but they changed the name of the girl to protect the guilty and provide them with a name which was easy to fit into many rhymes.      

    
In a thoroughly fascinating, often humorous way, Dion describes his roundabout adventure back to the Catholic Church.  From the priest in his neighborhood who would shout out questions to him about virtue and morality from across the street to his discovery of the Bible and subsequent interest in St. Augustine, the Holy Spirit kept bringing him closer to the heart and soul of all creation, the God who is Love and Truth.  

     
My husband’s more of the music historian of the two of us, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out what Kevin would probably have already known: a number of Dion’s songs have been extremely popular and are easily identifiable to people from many different generations, including mine. 

     
The only thing I could think of that would have made reading this book even more enjoyable would be if I’d had some of Dion’s greatest hits on-hand to play.  Of course, he mentions a number of his songs and even includes some of the lyrics in the book.  Okay, so maybe there’s one more thing that would enhance the experience: I’d love to meet his wife Susan.  She sounds like a very strong, faithful wife the caliber of which not many Rock and Roll stars have had by their side, ever and/or certainly not since their youth. 

     
I highly recommend this read for music buffs, those who have fallen away from the Church, and anyone who enjoys a good story told with humor and honesty.         

     
This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Dion -- The Wanderer Talks Truth. They are also a great source for a Catechism of the Catholic Church or a Catholic Bible.

Wegmans Concerts By the Shore

       For the past twenty-seven years, they’ve held Wednesday evening Wegmans Concerts By the Shore at Charlotte (pronounced without the “r” because they have some strange ways of saying things up here) Beach.  A while back when Kevin and I were dating, we rode bikes down there on a Wednesday night to hear the free concert.  I remember we slow-danced to “Unforgettable.”

Here’s Your Hint

     As my husband can attest, I’m not someone who goes gaga over cars, motorcycles, trains, planes, and other vehicles like he does.  My main interest is in that they work properly when I want to use them and are fixed properly when they don’t, preferably without completely draining our bank account.  My willingness to indulge in Kevin’s careful car maintenance rituals the second year we came up and stayed for two weeks at the cottage on Lake Ontario was another not-so-subtle hint I was already interested in Kevin thirteen some years go...      

     One afternoon Kevin said he needed to wash his car.  I wasn’t quite sure why, but I volunteered to help.  Mary and Theresa also pitched in.  First, we sat down in front of his ’95 black two door Monte Carlo and attempted to scrub the entire bug community of Lake Ontario off of the car.  Later, he and his friend figured the only way to get the embedded bugs off was to

A Bug’s Life

     It would be really funny to take a close-up picture or two of the front of my car, where there is now a large community of smashed bugs, and see how many insect splats the kids in my next Nature Camp are able to identify.  Don’t worry, I’m not actually going to have this be one of the works they do, but I do appreciate the irony of carrying out such an idea at a Montessori school where we catch insects we find inside to release them back outdoors.

     Not too long ago, I read about a company that’s doing studies on how the insect population is at risk due to the number of bugs killed by moving vehicles.  They’ve gone so far as to enlist people to count the number of insects squashed on their car after a drive and report it to them as part of their research.  I find this rather amusing in a what-the-heck-are-people-thinking sort of way. 

     A while ago I saw a poster and a T-shirt that had different bird poop splats on it and the feathered fowl responsible for each particular plop.  That matching activity would be another unusual exercise to try with the kids at school.  I suppose I could even use some of the same pictures of the front of my car, as the insects squashed and the bird poop are sometimes in quite close proximity. 

     Hmm, I wonder if there’s some environmental scientist, mathematics or physics professor interested in studying the wildlife that is sprawled out across the front of my car before I wash it.  Maybe there’s more to those carwash fundraisers than it would seem at first glance.  Perhaps they’re really being held as physics or biology experiments cleverly disguised as fundraisers for the band or athletic boosters.

     After all, life is like a windshield full of squished bugs, you never know what you’re gonna get.     

My Dad's Birthday and the Feast of St. James

Today is the feast day of St. James and my dad James Lester Niermeyer’s birthday.  He would have turned 56 in 2011.  Two years before that I got to spend an enjoyable day with him which I describe in My Dad’s Final Birthday post.        The rest of our immediate family was up in Rochester, NY, my parents’ hometown, on his birthday, so Kevin and I got to spend it with him.  It was a memorable day and became even more special to us when we looked back knowing it was his last birthday on earth.  For some time after that, I kept the message saved on our answering machine that he left that evening.  

While in the car, Kevin and I listened to the “Stroll Down Memory Lane” CD mix I put together for my family members a few years ago.  Each song on it I associate with a group of memories from when my sisters and I were growing up.  The first song on there, “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel always makes me think of this breakfast place we frequented in Dallas, Texas, called The Circle Grill.  

It was a kind of small place with good waffles where my sister Mary (who we called Katie back then) and I had fun taking turns picking out songs on the mini jukeboxes at each booth.  Even though my dad traveled a lot for business and ate at restaurants all the time, he still liked to take our family out to eat often.         

The ZZTop songs included I memorized early on because my dad used to work-out to their record.  I still have visions of dad doing crunches and reps to “Can’t Stop Rockin’” and “Velcro Fly.”

     
My dad tended to do things all-out.  He worked hard, exercised hard, played hard, prayed hard, and laughed hard.  He was super-organized, a very experienced troublemaker, an accomplished athlete, a successful businessman, had a great sense of humor, and quite the repertoire of stories from back in the day.  He could somehow manage to make us laugh in the midst of some really stressful times.  His hilarious antics are firmly planted in the minds of his brothers, my mom, sisters, and I, as well as his many nieces and nephews.
     
I’m sure Dad, Nana, Pa, Uncle Bob, Aunt Florence, and John are keeping the saints laughing.  We love you and miss you, Dad!        

7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 8)

-1-

It’s a jungle out there! This Monday a parent whose child was in my Nature Camp last week told me that her daughter’s friend, also in my camp, had informed his parents he’d gone on the school bus to a jungle with my class. Of course, the mother was a bit disconcerted to hear this, since nothing had ever been mentioned about an off-campus field trip anywhere, certainly not to a jungle.

     I laughed and said he had quite an imagination. I assured her we didn’t go on a spur-of-the-moment, no-permission-slips-needed trip to the jungle...

Disclaimer: Your child will, at no time while under our supervision, be leaving the school campus, the state of Virginia, or the United States of America without your expressed written permission, required stuffed animals, and a current passport.

     To read the full post, click here.

-2-

Catholic artists combine creativity and faith to glorify God.  These three Catholics have answered the pope’s call to continue the tradition of creating beautiful, sacred works of art that honor and promote the Faith...To read full article By Jim Graves – Our Sunday Visitor Newsweekly, 7/31/2011, click here. 

-3-

We didn’t have a lot of fun in the desert.  My husband and I have a confession to make: we’ve had some very catchy Veggie Tales songs running through our heads this week thanks to the readings from Exodus about Moses leading the Children of Israel out of Egypt.  If you have not yet had the pleasure and amusement of listening to this song, I highly recommend you click here then select “Going to the Promised Land” to see the video.  Listen and repeat.

-4-

Fully Relying on God (F.R.O.G.) is a phrase Kevin and I first heard of from a Cursillo friend of ours.  Last night we went to Sweet Frog for some frozen yogurt.  The shop in Carytown is brightly decorated, has air conditioning (which is mandatory for me in such oppressive heat), a cool self-serve set-up, and a moral message.  Their frog stands for the same thing we are each called to do.  These shops only play Christian music and they serve as a smooth reminder what this life is supposed to be all about.

-5-

Separation anxiety/sadness.  It breaks my heart how sad my grandmother becomes when she doesn’t get to see my mom every day.  If my mom has to go out of town or is sick and needs to stay in bed for a few days, my grandma has sometimes worried that she’ll never see my mom again.  It’s hard for her to remember most days what she’s been told, so she asks the same questions over and over, usually about how each person in the family is doing, how work is going, etc.  Any time my mom can’t come see her, she asks if I’ve heard from my mom and wants to know what she said, where she is, and when she’ll be back.  I always call my mom and, if I can get ahold of her, will let Grandma talk with her for a while. 

     A woman came in yesterday to ask my grandma eight questions about what activities and such are important to her.  I knew her answers before she said them: reading the newspaper, books, and magazines, listening to classical music, taking part in religious services, getting time out in the fresh air when the weather’s nice, and being up on the news are all things she said are very important to her. 

    Yesterday she thanked me a number of times for coming to see her.  I left feeling that it’s pitiful that I don’t visit her very often when she lives so close and it means so much to her.    

-6-

My Snap-Happy Hubby goes to Washington.  Last Saturday Kevin, our best friend/brother John, and I went up to the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C. for a day-trip pilgrimage.  It was the first time Kevin and I had ever been there.  We made it in time for the second half of the daily Mass in the Crypt Church, then we spent the rest of the praying there and looking around before going to 5:15pm Mass in the main sanctuary of the Basilica.   I had to laugh that Kevin was the one who had the camera out and was snapping pictures left and right.  I didn’t feel the need to take lots of photos that day.  After we’d toured the Crypt Church, Kevin asked what I wanted to do next; he didn’t realize that we still had the actual basilica itself, the main church, to go through.  He’s pretty cute.  I’m going to keep him ;) Kevin’s only been on one other “pilgrimage.”  We made an hour or two stop at the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, which is the oldest known replica of the famous French shrine, on our way home from my aunt Florence’s funeral last fall.  We knew about the place because John had gone there and brought us back some Holy Water a while ago in a most unusual-for-that-purpose container. 

-7-

Are You Willing to Ask the Lord for His Truth about That? Since this past January, I have been learning about an amazing ministry that has helped people all over the world find tremendous healing and release.  Theophostic Prayer Ministry, developed by Christian preacher, counselor, husband, father, author, and speaker Ed Smith, deals with identifying the lie-based beliefs we have and being open to the Holy Spirit replacing those lies with Truth. 

I’ve learned quite a bit about the ministry over the past seven months.  Of course, I still have a good bit to go over and practice.  Some of the most exciting benefits of this ministry for me so far is that it’s something that Kevin has become increasingly interested in.  He’s been reading the introductory book Healing Life’s Hurts, watching the training DVDs with me, and coming up with some really funny examples of how not to do the ministry.  I’m not sure where all of this will lead us, but it’s brought us closer to learn about this ministry and the basic principles of lie-based beliefs being the driving factors behind our negative emotions and pain.  To read about this ministry, see a demonstration of it, etc., check out www.theophostic.com.     

     Check out Jennifer Fulwiler’s 7 Quick Takes Friday series and her high-traffic for good reason blog Conversion Diary.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

     Today’s reading from Exodus 16: 1-5, 9-15 about the Lord providing manna from heaven for the Israelites to eat in the desert when they were fleeing the Egyptians got me thinking about a great children’s book, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett.       

     When Fr. Kauffman was giving his homily at Mass this evening, he mentioned that when he was around five or six years old and heard this story from the Old Testament he pictured huge chunks of bread falling out of the sky.

     I wonder if the Bible story was part of the inspiration for the classic children’s book in which the people get all of their food and drink from the sky.  It is a very interesting concept to think that the Lord would shower down food.

     Actually, Fr. Kauffman shared with us this evening that there is a natural explanation for the flakes covering the ground each morning.  The secretions of certain insects covered the ground in a sweet, sticky paste that you could eat if you got to it early in the morning before the ants carried it away.  Fr. Kauffman witnessed this phenomenon when he spent a week living in the Sinai Desert. 

     This I found interesting, along with the fact that the freed slaves complained about having nothing but this to eat, so the Lord sent quail down each evening so they could have their fill of meat at well.  To be honest, I guess it sort of surprises me that the Lord not only gives them what they need to live, but that He also provides them with something they want, but don’t really need as one of the ways He shows He is Lord.  Or maybe it’s that I’m wondering why God gives into their whining (or ours for that matter).    

     Part of God being a tender, loving, compassionate Father is that He not only provides for our most basic needs, but He often gives us over and above what is essential to get by so that we may share it with others.

     I can almost hear the Israelites complaining about being led out of one really bad situation where at least they had decent food into a not-so-comfortable-but-certainly-way-way-better situation in which the selection of entrees wasn’t quite as varied.  I am certainly guilty of being grateful that the Lord has brought me through some tough time, only to return to grumbling the next minute about the latest hardship I’m faced with.

     In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the citizens are forced to abandon their town of Chew-and-Swallow when the food starts falling from the sky in gigantic portions that flatten buildings and create a disaster area.  They sail away on stale bread to another place where it just rains rain and snows snow, and they have to get their food and drinks from grocery stores.  It takes some getting used to, just like it did for the Israelites, just like it does for us when we’re nudged or downright pushed into changing, but it’s still true that “all things work for good for those who love God.” Romans 8 :28

     Lord, please help us to be grateful for the blessings You shower upon us each day.  Teach us to praise You in every circumstance and through all kinds of weather.  Amen.

Who Laces Up Whose New Shoes Now?

     After waiting much longer than someone who is so extremely hard on shoes should, I finally went and got a new pair of walking/stair climbing/chasing kids outside sneaker-type shoes today.  Apparently, I was more tired than I thought, because after giving the salesman the shoe I wanted to try on and watching him go in back and return with the size I needed, I proceeded to put one of my insoles into the shoe next to me, finish lacing it up, and attempt to try it on.       

     The salesman asked me about whether or not the shoe was the right size.  I said I wouldn’t know until I got the insole in it and then tried it on. 

     At that point I looked up and saw that he was lacing up a shoe for my right foot.  The one I’d just put one of my insoles into was the right foot of the display pair.  Duh!  No wonder he was confused and asking me before I even got the shoe on if it was the right size.

     Of course, it wasn’t the right size!  They practically never put anything on the cute little wall displays that’s going to fit someone my height.  I apologized to the salesman, explaining it had been a long day.  He said the same was true for him, which a moment later he proved.  Once I had the correct right shoe on with my insole in it, he had another woman come in the store who was looking for a salesperson not onsite today, and then was approached by someone else he’d been helping before me.  Rather than handing me the shoe so I could finish lacing it up (perhaps he was concerned about my abilities with footwear at that point), he ended up carrying it all over the store with him, lacing it up himself, while helping the two other women at the cash register and other parts of the store. 

     I almost went up to him and asked for the shoe, but I figured I’d just look around a bit and wait for him to come back.  I wasn’t thrilled with the way the first pair fit and had some concerns about how well they would hold up in the rain, since carpool and an outdoor campus require running through the rain at times.  I found another brand, got my size, laced them up, and suddenly experienced that wonderful feeling of having some bounce in my step even after work on a hot, humid day.  I’d found my pair. 

    I put my insoles into my old, worn-out shoes, tied and double-knotted them all by myself and paid for my new pair.  On the way out, I thought about this morning when one of the kids got out at carpool with his shoes on the wrong feet and only one of the Velcro straps done.  Lord, thank You for loving us even when we are looking “toe-up challenging” inside and out.  Amen.

It’s a Jungle Out There!

Today a parent whose child was in my Nature Camp last week told me this morning that her daughter’s friend, also in my camp, had informed his parents he’d gone on the school bus to a jungle with my class.  Of course, the mother was a bit disconcerted to hear this, since nothing had ever been mentioned about an off-campus field trip anywhere, certainly not to a jungle. 

     
I laughed and said he had quite an imagination.  I assured her we didn’t go on a spur-of-the-moment, no-permission-slips-needed trip to the jungle.  We did, however, talk about different animals who live in the jungle, because some of the children’s foam visors to color with markers had a jungle theme. 

     
We explored nature around campus and in the classroom, but we didn’t exactly go on safari.  What’s even funnier is that, though I checked out a number of books from our school library, I didn’t end up reading a single one of Scholastic’s The Magic School Bus books I got during last week’s camp. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I love Scholastic’s The Magic School Bus series, where the class always goes on exotic field trips, and they get there by their transformer-like school bus which can morph into all sorts of cool things.  Ms. Frizzle, the teacher in the book, always has really strange outfits and seems oblivious to the fact that the excursions she takes her students on are a bit out of the ordinary. 

     
The series of books is great as a fun educational tool.  I could understand a child perhaps getting a bit confused if we read one of The Magic School Bus books and pretended to go to the jungle, but that’s quite a jump from a foam visor with a monkey, an elephant, a snake and some plants on it.  (Maybe he’ll join me for creative writing club in a few years.) 

     
Perhaps I should send home a disclaimer on the letters to parents about what we did at camp during the week.  Maybe I need to emphasize that we didn’t go on any exotic, unannounced field trips: not to visit the jungle, nor the Eiffel Tour, nor the zoo. 

     
My camp this week is called Trip to France, though no parents have brought in their child’s passport and suitcase, so I think we’re good.    

Disclaimer: Your child will, at no time while under our supervision, be leaving the school campus, the state of Virginia, or the United States of America without your expressed written permission, required stuffed animals, and a current passport.     

Kevin’s Birthday Flashbacks: 1997 & 1998

Surprise!!

My mom, Mary, Theresa, and I first rented the other side of the cottage on Lake Ontario for one week beginning July 12, 1997.  That’s where Kevin and I first met.  That week, we found out that Kevin’s birthday is July 17, so we went out and bought provisions to decorate his door.  My mom is famous for her fondness of decorating for special occasions with colorful streamers, signs, and balloons.  We had fun putting everything up while he was at work. 

     
He was shocked when he came home and knew immediately that we were the ones behind it.  We gave him a card.  On it is a black and white picture of a little boy with slicked down blond hair who’s wearing dark overalls without a shirt.  He’s eating a banana with a thoughtful expression on his face.  The quote underneath says, “He had only one idea, and that was wrong.”  We gave Kevin a clear bar of soap with a tugboat inside it and continued to hassle him about the sunken vessel none of us ever spotted. 

Mixed Messages, Unfettered Laughter

   
The next summer we expressed our birthday wishes for Kevin with a few gifts.  We gave him a notepad that said, “Experience enables us to recognize a mistake when we make it again.”  I gave him a little wooden box with a star cut out of the lid.  I colored it with markers, put three shiny tugboat stickers below the star, and filled the box with little papers.  That summer my sisters and I would tell someone to be quiet by saying, “I’ve got a whole box of Shh! with your name on it!”  Kevin had heard us use this many times, so I wrote Shh! on several pieces of notebook paper, cut them up, wrote his name on the decorated wooden box, and gave it to him.  He was very amused. 

   
Our useful gift, or one that at least appeared to have practical value, was a magnet with the phone numbers of the Coast Guard.  We told him we’d included it so he could call and get the coordinates of the sunken tugboat he still claimed existed.  He’d been disappointed by the Coast Guard in the past, and we’d joked about how much time they spend at local donut shops.  Later we confessed that the phone number on the magnet was actually for Dunkin Donuts, not the Coast Guard.  He thought that was even funnier.

   
We also gave him a set of ballpoint pens with his name on them.  He took this as an indication that he should be writing me.  This was a message I wanted to convey, but I’m sure wasn’t what my mom was thinking when she bought them.  He apologized numerous times for not writing me back.  He explained he didn’t know what to say.  I forgave Kevin and told him his father had written me one of the nicest letters I’d ever received in response to the one I’d sent him.  Of course, this didn’t make Kevin think he was off the hook.

Fantastically romantic fact: Kevin kept everything.  He still has the card, the tugboat soap, a whole box of Shh! with his name on it…

Happy Birthday, Babe!  I’m so grateful that we’ve been able to celebrate your last fourteen birthdays together.  I’m amazed at the countless ways God has worked in and through us to help each other grow closer to Him and one another.  It gives me hope that He’ll keep working such miracles in the years to come, and, thereby, exceed our current aspirations by 500 miles.  Love you muchly, me

Rediscover Catholicism by Matthew Kelly

I must say that I’m impressed with Rediscover Catholicism by Matthew Kelly. There are some books about Catholics coming back to the faith that give just a taste of the richness within the Church. Others tend to focus on a few aspects of the Catholic faith or treat one particular subject in depth. This book is a great one to give to those who are wondering about Catholicism, those who have fallen away from the Church of their youth, those who would like to learn the Truth about the pillars of the faith, as well as devout Catholics interested in growing closer to the Lord.

     
I’ve read and reviewed a number of Matthew Kelly’s books, CDs, and DVDs. As with his other works, his strong, straightforward messages are ones basically every person on the planet could benefit from hearing. He provides practical suggestions for how people can become the best-version-of-themselves, which he explains means living out God’s will and becoming all He has created you to be.

     
Rediscover Catholicism is a wonderful tool to help people of all ages and degrees of education (in terms of the faith and otherwise) to be inspired to live out the call to holiness which God extends to each of us.

     
The repetition and re-emphasis of important points help drive home the bold, yet basic messages Kelly has about why, how, where, and when each of us can become the best version of ourselves.

     
As I’ve previously mentioned, the one and only qualm I have about the book is that there are some grammatical errors and typos that are distracting for an English major like me. I’d certainly be more than happy to read and be one of the copy editors for Matthew Kelly’s next manuscript. I enjoy reading his work quite a bit and would indeed be interested in helping his next book become the best-version-of-itself before it goes on the bookstore shelf.

     
You can purchase the Rediscovering Catholicism here.
      
I wrote this review of Rediscover Catholicism for the Tiber River Blogger Review program.   Tiber River is the first Catholic book review site, started in 2000 to help you make informed decisions about Catholic book purchases. I receive free product samples as compensation for writing reviews for Tiber River.