November 1: Le Roy

November 1 – A family member. (If you want, mail a letter to that person today, just for the fun of it. Even if you live in the same house!)



Today, I am thankful for my father. 

He is an infinite source of wisdom and prayer for me and so many other people. 
He keeps me in the loop, and tells me when I've stepped too far. 

He has given me and my family a sense of humor, taught us to laugh through turmoil and hard times, to bring darkness into the light, to find joy and fulfillment in simplicity. He formed us to be educated, to never accept being wrong, to learn and read and know all we can about everything. 

He taught me to take pictures. He taught me that, in order to create memories,
PEOPLE have to be in the pictures. Had he not put me in front of this monument,
it would have just been another Google image of the Statue of Liberty.
Putting me in front of it made it a MEMORY.

He is the wisest and most incredible, giving man I know.
And I love him.

Thank you, Dad, for being the best example of a father I've ever met. 

Thank you for making me a master shoulder-massager.

Thank you for supplying wisdom that I've been able to use, and pass on, hundreds of times. 

Thank you for teaching me to speak the truth, in love. Always. To be gentle when effective, and to bang it in when facing something stubborn.

Thank you for teaching us what agape love really means, and showing what it is to love someone with no strings attached, simply because we are called to love. 

Thank you for loving my husband, and for never giving up
praying for the love and life we share.

Thank you for choosing to live a life of gospel simplicity, so that none of us thrive on the material, but know that we could make it if all things in our lives were stripped from our hands. 

Thank you for teaching us the Gospel, and for pulling us out of bed for morning prayers every morning - even when we hated you for it. Thank you for letting us sleep in and skip morning prayer during summer, even though you and mom were faithful to keep it going.

Thank you for being playful.

Thank you for making us love each other, even when one of us screwed up.

Thank you for letting mom be the one to overrule you, so that we didn't lose respect for you, and so that we gained respect for her. 

Thank you for working with mom to show us the value of every human life. Thank you for teaching us what justice means. Thank you for planting a little seed in my heart that has grown into an incredible passion and drive to save the innocent unborn. 

Thank you for putting music in our bones! And for letting Adam put that bus in your back yard.
Though the bus thanks should probably go to Mom...

Thank you for not giving up on me when I made bad decision, after bad decision, after bad decision. 



Thank you for praying with me, and for me, when I needed it. I don't know how many dads, when facing a hurt child, would say "let's pray." And then actually pray.

Thank you for allowing me to make mistakes, and loving me when I faced negative consequences, even when those consequences were exactly what you knew were coming. 

Thank you for supporting me with unceasing prayer. 

Thank you for this dance.

Thank you for calling me at dawn when you've woken up with me on your mind, to tell me what prayers were answered in your sleep. You've never been wrong.

Thank you for Loyalty, Texas. I don't believe anyone who has ever stepped foot in Loyalty needs any explanation for that thanks.

Thank you for having an incredible taste in music, and for allowing our childhood home to be one of jive and beat.

Thank you for being there on our birthdays.

And for helping blow out candles.
And for teaching that sad birthday song that everyone loves and
thinks is hilarious, after they realize it's not REALLY meant to be depressing...

Thank you for never giving false compliments and for never encouraging us to do things in which you knew we honestly were never going to excel.

Thank you for telling us the truth. Always. 

Thank you for encouraging me to finish college.
And for posing for this picture so it looks like some
sort of important conversation is taking place.

Thank you for encouraging us when we were on the right track, but for never filling us with a sense of false pride. We all work harder, and do better, for it. 

Thank you for letting me wear that, even though it was tragic.
And thank you for telling me that men would not appreciate me
for my mind if I'm wearing slutty clothes. You're right.

Thank you for being the best preacher I know. You get through to those that no one else reaches. You beat them with words, and they never forget it. In a good way. Your sermons and acronyms have been some of the best prayer tools that many people will ever have. SEEDS. LUCKY CHARMS. PALE GAS. ACTS.

Thank you for memories like this.

Thank you for being a comic artist. And for having really cool writing. You made sister and I the best locker-tag makers SHS ever saw.
 

Thank you for being someone that someone would want to be for Halloween. Twice.
(Eric and Cory were both Leroy, two different years! This one is Cory as Leroy.
And Geoff as Cory...)

Thank you for never letting a misspelled word pass, even if it was a simple scrawl on a post-it or a greeting card. (Though I have to admit there were many times I didn't let you read a paper, because I didn't want to have to rewrite it five times. Though I kept some from you, the ones you edited made me the writer and editor and proofreader I am today.)

Thank you for loving your grandbabies, and for welcoming more and more and more.
Thank you for not being a pushover grandpa, and for giving your grandchildren
lessons they need. Thank you for being stern when they need it,
but for being playful and musical so they have those memories of you.

Thank you for giving away cars, and food, and money, when we all know we didn't have cars, or food, or money to spare. You gave them anyway, and we learned that, even if you don't have cars, or food, or money to spare, you give anyway, and God provides. 

Thank you for getting me a cheap guitar and teaching me G, C, and D.
Thank you for gifting me with a beautiful 12-string when you realized that I'd finally,
after many years, actually learned to play a little.
Thank you for encouraging me to play the djembe. I wouldn't be the same without that drum.

Thank you for teaching me that it is important to do everything I do RIGHT. The FIRST TIME. Thank you for making me realize that even something as simple as a flyer for a school function, or a poster board stating burrito prices, should be legible from feet away.

Thank you for being strong for mom when she fought the battle for and of her life.
Thank you for making her laugh, for keeping her singing,
for being her "Big Nurse"
and for seeing her beauty with or without her wigs.

Thank you for showing us what trust, true trust in God is. Thank you for putting a face on faith. God never failed you. If I could learn to trust Him even a portion of how you and mom trust Him...

Most importantly, thank you for loving my mother. 

You lucked out on that catch, Dad.

Thank you, God, for giving me and my siblings such a phenomenal dad, and for somehow leading my mother to fall for him. We're the most blessed group of kids in the universe. 

Thank you for being the head of all of this.
What a legacy you will leave. <3

Let's ruffle some feathers. Holy day, anyone?

I'm sick and tired of people stealing Christian holidays and morphing them into something they are not. If you want a holiday, make one up, and stop hijacking ours.

If you don't believe in Saints, you did not celebrate Halloween last night. You dressed up and went trick or treating for the fun of it, on the last night of October. Call it what you want, but it wasn't Halloween. Because "Halloween" means "Holy Evening." November 1 was instituted as a Holy Day in the Church, to honor all the holy men and women in Heaven, the saints. All Saints Day is November 1. HALLOWEEN is basically the Christmas Eve of that holiday. Word? Word. 

Saints. Word. 

 

Halloween and trick-or-treat are two completely separate things. One is a night of joy and preparation for the Holy Day that follows. The other is a mix of traditions from this time of year that has morphed into a night of fun for kids. I get it. I like it. My kids will dress up and trick or treat. Heck, I'll even let them choose to be whatever they want, and not make them dress up like saints (though I'd love it if they did, and I make certain to tell them what the night is really about... not candy, but the holy men and women in Heaven) - with stipulations, of course. We don't do anything creepy because I don't like it, and do not want to invite anything undead or evil into my home and life... they try to get in as it is, why open the door for them? (I don't see dead people, except for one time in Santa Rosa at a La Quinta, but that's a story for another time... just saying that I know that bad things are real, and witches exist, and evil is true... and I don't want to invite it in or mock it. I don't think it's funny to mess with that stuff...)



But the next time someone tells me that Halloween comes from legends of evil spirits or the dead roaming the earth, or tells me that Halloween is a celebration of Shamain, I'm going to puke. Halloween, the evening itself, is not anything other than the eve of a holy day. All those other traditions just make it fun. THEY add to IT... not the other way around.

Happy Halloween!

 You know in Belgium kids get an entire week off school and all business close down on All Saints Day? Doesn't that rock!

Ok, moving on.

Next, Christmas. If you do not believe in Christ, you do not celebrate Christmas. You and your family think it's fun to get a tree and give presents. So don't call it anything other than what it is. A made up day to have fun, eat, get together, and give presents. Call it something. But don't call it Christmas. Because Christmas means "Christ's Mass." It is the day that Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Again, all the other stuff just adds to the fun and whimsy and magic (Santa - who is a spin-off of Saint Nicholas, reindeer, presents, music, you name it. Fun? Yes! Necessary? No!)

Jolly Ol St Nick

If all the trick-or-treating and costumes, presents and Santa photo ops end, these Catholic Christian traditions carry on. We will forever celebrate All Saint's Day, and the evening before. We will forever celebrate Christmas, and the evening before (Catholics have midnight Mass the night before Christmas. We bring in Christmas with, none other than, Christ's Mass. Hardcore, right?).

Quit boring me by acting like you know when you don't know. Quit trying to make my kids think that these holidays are secular and all about having a good time. Because they're not!

If you invent a holiday that is all about having a good time, we'll take part, for sure. We'd be crazy not to. But I will NOT tell your kids that "Fun Day" is actually a Catholic tradition. I'm so sure. I don't celebrate Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, and if I took them and made them mine, a couple groups, who really like and enjoy and understand those days, might be miffed, too. 

You know, while I'm at it, quit calling everything a "holiday." Holiday MEANS "HOLY DAY."

This country is becoming so anti-Christian it's ridiculous, yet it holds on to the fun things... the things that give you a day or two off and an excuse to get together.  "Give us your great holidays, but don't you DARE say Christ's name at the State Capitol, you LOONY!"

Take Grandparents' Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Administrative Assistant Day... have fun with all of those! They're awesome and fun. But Halloween, Easter, Christmas, and even Mardi Gras are ours. They've just been twiiiiiisted into something so far from what they are!

Okay, rant is done. I'm just really, really mad that my daughter was introduced to the legend of Bloody Mary yesterday, but heard nothing, I mean, not one single thing, about Saints, except from me. I'm ready to lock up the house and bar the windows and protect her little soul with all my might.

The end.