Fluffy Christianity gives me the creeps. I sometimes wonder how people can just pretend that everything is ok and not really stand in the reality of horror. Like when these kinds of Christians look at pictures of the Holocaust or the Rwanda genocide or some other tragedy do they say “well, God has a plan” and then go on with their lives? Part of the Christian faith is taking time to stand in the horror of sin. Advent is... Read more
The other day I received a rejection letter from a major book publisher for my memoir manuscript. The thing is that this person loves my writing and complimented it, which was a real confidence booster, but the issue is that I do not have a big enough platform to sell a memoir well. Here’s the honest truth. I worked for years building a platform. I had over two thousand followers on Twitter and over a thousand on Instagram and... Read more
It’s 2018 and all around us, we hear about how we are free to make our own choices. We are free to choose who we want to marry, if we want to allow the child in our wombs to live or if we want to abort them, we are free to choose if we want to end our own life and “die with dignity” and we are free to make all kinds of choices in between even choose what gender... Read more
Yesterday I wrote on my website about life eighteen months after losing my oldest son Anthony to suicide. It is Suicide Awareness Month and while I do not think I have much to offer in the prevention advice department, I do have a lot to say about what life is like after losing someone you love to suicide. Anthony was more than just someone to me. He was my best friend, my little brother since I had him so... Read more
I was taught that only God can bring good out of evil. Not that he creates evil, evil is the deterioration of the good, but God can bring good out of evil choices we each make. The biggest example of this is the Crucifixion. Jesus was beaten, battered, flogged, tortured and murdered for no good reason. He was executed in a brutal way as if He was the most dangerous of criminals even though He was sinless. Even if you... Read more
Maybe some of you know but maybe some of you don’t know that I had a slight mental meltdown a few months ago when I took down all my public social media and declared that I didn’t even know if I was going to stay Catholic. Welp, the update is that I am still, in fact, Catholic. That meltdown came before any of the current drama. Before the PA grand jury report, before the McCarrick story broke and before the... Read more
I have so many thoughts and replies and opinions swirling in my head about the latest round of news of priest sexually abusing children. I have thoughts and opinions about all of it, including the conversation that we, as an entire Church, need to have about homosexuality. But today I want to recognize the heroes I read about in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report: the victims who spoke up and the parents who fought for their children. To the victims of sexual... Read more
Along with most American Catholics, I am in shock, anger and pain over the things I read in last weeks Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report. I am heartbroken over the abuse of children by priests and even more disappointed in the way that Church officials handled, or mishandled, reports from parents and children about the abuse. The fact that Church officials, Bishops, and their staffs, saw the children as the problem that needed to be solved rather than the abusive priests... Read more
The day that my oldest son took his own life was the day that my life was set on fire. The moment that his body was lowered into the ground and I had to walk away, get in the car and drive away was the day that that fire burnt my entire life down to the ground. I was in such deep shock that I didn’t even realize that I was completely destroyed in that fire as well. It was not... Read more
Below is the homily from my son Anthony’s funeral Mass. In case you don’t know, my son Anthony died by suicide on March 8, 2017. Fr. Jonathan baptized Anthony and had a fairly close relationship with and is super close with me and my husband. Father also celebrated my wedding Mass. The story about the bat goes back to when Anthony was a year old and was bitten by a bat. Because of that, he was scared and also fascinated... Read more
Through Broken Roses
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