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Daily Lenten Meditations

«  March 2010  »

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
  • Pray Light a candle. Every time you pass that candle today, offer a prayer of thanks. Don’t ask for anything. Just thank him.
  • Fast Don’t cut corners. Even if no one will know, complete today’s work thoroughly.
  • Give Touch is a powerful thing. Make an effort today to touch your children: a hug, a shoulder rub, a tousled head -- especially the bigger ones
1
  • Pray Make five minutes in the morning, at midday and in the evening to be still, silent, and alone, only asking God to infuse your soul with his will.
  • Fast No noise today. Turn off the TV, the radio, the iPod. Find God in the silence.
  • Give Pay particular unsolicited attention to your least demanding child today.
2
  • Pray Begin a gratitude journal. At the end of the day, jot down five things for which you are grateful. Think upon these things.
  • Fast Remember the first time you had a moment alone with your first child. What did you promise him? Do that. Be that.
  • Give We can only expect what we inspect. For every task you assign today, follow through and before it’s truly finished ensure that there is praise from you.
3
  • Pray “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me." -- John 10:27
  • Fast Every time a child interrupts you today, stop what you are doing and look into his eyes as he talks.
  • Give “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” -- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Speak kindly all day long.
4
  • Pray Ask God to show you how weak and small you are. Open your heart to see it.
  • Fast Don’t argue today. As much as possible give up, give in, give way.
  • Give When you are tempted to put on the TV for kids today, pull out a stack of favorite picture books instead. Invite the kids to join you on the couch.
5
  • Pray Take a walk, even if it’s cold or raining. Leave your iPod at home.
  • Fast Think of someone whose life you are tempted to envy and then choke out these words: Thank you, God, for the blessings you have given to X. Help me to see my own.
  • Give Think about the kind of person your husband married. Be that person for him today.
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  • Pray "Love consumes us only in the measure of our self-surrender." -- St. Therese of Lisieux
  • Fast As you go about your daily routine today, remember that you are expecting someone very important for dinner tonight. Together with your children, work towards your husband’s homecoming as if you were expecting to welcome a king back to his castle.
  • Give “You can do nothing with children unless you win their confidence and love by bringing them into touch with oneself, by breaking through all the hindrances that keep them at a distance. We must accommodate ourselves to their tastes, we must make ourselves like them.” -- St. John Bosco
8
  • Pray Take this quote to prayer today and listen to God’s answer: “Real love is demanding. I would fail in my mission if I did not tell you so. Love demands a personal commitment to the will of God.” -- John Paul II
  • Fast Stop looking for encouragement and approval. Genuinely encourage and affirm someone else instead.
  • Give Let your child choose a huge stack of picture books (use that word “huge” when you ask her to gather them). Read them all to her today.
9
  • Pray Persevere. “He who does not give up prayer cannot possibly continue to offend God habitually. Either he will give up prayer, or he will give up sinning.” -- St. Alphonsus Liguori
  • Fast Don’t forget that the only pedestal you need ever stand on, is the one your husband and children build for you.
  • Give Focus on your home today. The world can find another volunteer, but your husband and children have only you.
10
  • Pray Insist on quiet from all your children during naptime today. Pray the Divine Mercy chaplet.
  • Fast We’re half way through. Compare yourself now only to yourself when Lent began. Tweak the plan.
  • Give Reach out to a local friend today. Reconnect.
11
  • Pray Ask God to make you humble and lowly.
  • Fast Don’t compare or complain. Do compliment.
  • Give Pack a picnic and go somewhere to eat it with your children. If the weather is prohibitive, build a tent in the living room and it eat there. Sit on the ground with them. Be fully present.
12
  • Pray Sometime before bedtime tonight, make time to pray with and for each of your children.
  • Fast Rise a little earlier and bring your husband breakfast in bed. (If it’s too late today, plan for tomorrow).
  • Give Plan a date night.
13
14
  • Pray Give thanks for food, clothes, and shelter. Listen to His plan for stewardship.
  • Fast Clean out the refrigerator today instead of eating lunch. Pull everything out and wipe it all down. As you do it, thank God for the food he provides for your family.
  • Give “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.” -- Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
15
  • Pray Before you read or do anything else today, pray this prayer, taken from the writings of St. Louis de Montfort: Lord, help me to imitate Mary's deep humility, lively faith, blind obedience, unceasing prayer, constant self-denial, surpassing purity, ardent love, heroic patience, angelic kindness, and heavenly wisdom. Amen.
  • Fast Give up thinking things have to be perfect.
  • Give As you do laundry today, bless the person for whom you are folding. With every crease, offer a prayer.
16
  • Pray For a few minutes tonight, after your children are sleeping, kneel beside their beds. Let your breath rise and fall with theirs. Entrust them to the Father and thank him for lending them to you.
  • Fast Let go of self-recrimination. “There is still time for endurance, time for patience, time for healing, time for change. Have you slipped? Rise up. Have you sinned? Cease. Do not stand among sinners, but leap aside.” -- St. Basil the Great
  • Give Do not say “In a minute” or “When I finish this” at all today. Instead, put aside your agenda and meet their needs (and even some wants) immediately and cheerfully.
17
  • Pray Pray to know how God wants you to spend your time today.
  • Fast Let go of despair and know that God gives you sufficient grace. "Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." -- St. Francis of Assisi
  • Give Make sure that every one in your family gets at least one of your hugs today.
18
  • Pray Is there someone who inspires feelings of inferiority in you? Offer a Memorare for her intentions.
  • Fast Refrain from self promotion. “The only way to make rapid progress along the path of divine love is to remain very little and to put all our trust in Almighty God. That is what I have done.” -- St. Therese of Lisieux
  • Give Page through your wedding album with your children today. Remember how loved you felt that day. Love your family well.
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Bloggers

Meet the Faith & Family bloggers. We invite you to join us in encouraging and helping the Faith & Family community grow in faith!

Danielle Bean

Danielle Bean
Danielle Bean, a mother of eight, is Editorial Director of Faith & Family. She is author of My Cup of Tea: Musings of a Catholic Mom (Pauline 2005) and Mom to Mom, Day to Day: Advice and Support for Catholic Living (Pauline 2007). Though she once struggled to separate her life …
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Rachel Balducci

Rachel Balducci
Rachel Balducci is married to Paul and together they are the parents of five lively boys. Besides being a mom, she is also a writer and a newspaper columnist for the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia. For the past four years, she has maintained her personal blog at Testosterhome.net where she …
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Lisa Hendey

Lisa Hendey
Lisa Hendey is the founder and editor of CatholicMom.com, a Catholic web site focusing on the Catholic faith, Catholic parenting and family life, and Catholic cultural topics. Most recently she has authored The Handbook for Catholic Moms. Lisa is also employed as webmaster for her parish web sites. …
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Arwen Mosher

Arwen Mosher
Arwen Mosher lives in southeastern Michigan with her husband Bryan and their young children Camilla and Blaise. She has a bachelor's degree in theology. She dreads laundry, craves sleep, loves to read novels and do logic puzzles, and can't live without tea. Her personal blog site is ABC Family. …
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Rebecca Teti

Rebecca Teti
Rebecca Teti is married to Dennis and has four children (3 boys, 1 girl) who -- like yours no doubt -- are pious and kind, gorgeous, and can spin flax into gold. A Washington, DC, native, she converted to Catholicism while an undergrad at the U. Dallas, where she double-majored in …
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Robyn Lee

Robyn Lee
Robyn Lee is the managing editor of Faith & Family magazine. She is (yikes!) an almost 30 year-old, single lady, living in Connecticut with her two cousins in a small bungalow-style kit house built by her great uncle in the 1950s. She also conveniently lives next door to her sister, brother-in-law …
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Hallie Lord

Hallie Lord
Hallie Lord married her dashing husband, Dan, in the fall of 2001 (the same year, coincidentally, that she joyfully converted to the Catholic faith). They now happily reside in the deep South with their two energetic boys and two very sassy girls. In her *ample* spare time, Hallie enjoys cheap wine, …
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Fr. John Bartunek, LC

Fr. John Bartunek, LC

Fr John Bartunek, LC, STL, received his BA in History from Stanford University in 1990, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He comes from an evangelical Christian background and became a member of the Catholic Church in 1991. After college he worked as a high school history teacher, drama director, and …
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Guest Bloggers

Melissa Wiley

Melissa Wiley
Melissa Wiley is a homeschooling mother of six and the author of The Martha Years and The Charlotte Years, two series of books about the ancestors of Laura Ingalls Wilder. She blogs about children’s books, family, and home education at Here in the Bonny Glen.
Read My Posts

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Buckle Up!

Tips to Keep Kids Safe on the Road

Car seats can be a real blessing and a real burden for today’s moms.  The politics of car seat regulations aside, we can all acknowledge that car safety seats for children have saved many lives. Car accidents are the #1 cause of death in children ages 1-14, so car seats truly are a necessary “burden” in today’s society.

I say burden for all those moms with a screaming infant buckled in a car seat who wants only mother’s milk, for those who’ve lugged heavy car seats through a crowded airport with several kids in-tow, and for all those mothers and fathers who have braved the experience of taking apart and scrubbing a car seat.  I think we should all receive an honorary engineering degree for figuring how to get those covers on and off!

Over the past few years, I’ve tried to educate myself a little more on car seat safety in hopes that I can be positive about the use of car seats and keep my children a little bit safer every time we get in the car.  Here are some main points I’ve gained from my research:

Buy the best seat in your budget. I’ve been tempted to skimp and purchase a low-cost model but have never regretted investing in a quality car seat.  I’ve found that the pricier seats tend to last longer, are easier to install, easier to buckle, more comfortable for the kids, and in my case have procured some very good car-sleepers!

Install the seat correctly. After speaking to several car seat technicians and reading about their work, it’s apparent that many of us do not install our car seats properly. Maybe we’re too lazy to read the manual, or maybe our car makes it difficult to fit the seats in. There are some great online resources and local inspections offered in most cities. Make it a point to find out if all your car seats and boosters are installed appropriately.

Buckle it right! We should be sure the chest clips are at the correct spots, buckles are tight, and that they are configured at the right locations for the height of our child. A loose buckle could mean a flying child in the case of an accident. We’ve also had the experience where an older child in a booster seat accidentally unbuckled a sibling’s seat instead of her own seatbelt. Check and double-check them often!

Follow the guidelines. Look into the laws in your state to be sure you have the correct type of seat faced in the correct way for your child. These guidelines may seem burdensome, but again, these burdens can save our little blessings in the case of an accident. Car seats are an important part of our every day lives as moms, so let’s be sure we’re doing all we can to keep our children safe on the roads this year.

—Blair Bailey is a Catholic wife and homeschooling mother of three who writes from Texas. She chronicles her family life at Blair’s Blessings.

Resources:


Comments

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I once completed a 5 hour road trip (with the kids) and discovered a day *after* our arrival at Grandma & Grandpa’s that my 4 year old had unbuckled the 2 year old’s car seat (at the adult belt connection.)  I am just grateful that it was discovered at all…in all of our hurried comings and goings, we could *still* be driving around unbuckled & not know it!

 

You can get a cover for the latch of the seatbelt that you don’t want to be inadvertently unbuckled by your bigger ones…pretty sure Babies R Us sells them.

 

When I was 38 weeks pregnant with our 3rd child, I took apart and washed the car seat.  My husband went out of town.  I went into labor and left all the pieces of the carseat everywhere.  When it was time for us to leave the hospital, we got to the car and the carseat was all put back together, but forward facing.  It was hysterical that we had to wait while my husband tried to figure out how to fix the carseat.  It was a convertible instead of an infant carrier.  I quickly went out and purchased a new carrier.

 

I really like this website: http://www.thecarseatlady.com/ for all questions regarding car seats.  Before my daughter was born, I got hooked on extended rear facing, and plan to leave her that way until she reaches the weight limit of the seat for rear facing.  This (only 9 seconds!) video really reinforced it to me.

I was able to pick up a Britax Marathon on sale, though it was a big bite, I’ve not regretted buying it.  It’s easy to install, and I feared that my daughter would hit the height limits of a smaller seat before reaching the minimum weight of a booster seat.

I had to laugh when I read the part about reading the manual - I did just that!  And that’s how I discovered that you can buckle in an infant seat without the base, something that my sister-in-law whose baby is 10 months old didn’t know!  It pays to be a nerd sometimes.  :>)

 

I’m amazed how much carseats have changed since my older ones were little. The big things that I learned were 1. Car seats expire. 2. Rear face as long as possible. 3. Then keep harnessed forward facing longer too. We just bought a carseat/booster seat for our 3 yr old that harnesses to 65lbs before converting to a booster seat.

 

I can’t tell you how much I miss those old T-shield carseats.  I know the 5-point harnesses have been proven to be safer, but the t-shields were so much easier to buckle, especially when dealing with winter coats.

 

Great article, Blair!

 

Claire, please be careful when using thick winter coats with car seats.  From my understanding, it’s not recommended you buckle up your kids with their winter coats on.  Instead, tuck a cozy blanket on top of them, after they’re already buckled in!

 

I hear what you’re saying, but it just isn’t practical.  When he was an infant I used one of those Bundle Me things that went around the infant carseat carrier so a coat wasn’t necessary.  But at his age now, he has to wear a coat to get from the house to the car, and if I were to take the coat off and tuck a blanket around him his arms would still be uncovered, and then when I arrived at my destination I would have to put his coat back on and then carry him (in his coat), his diaper bag and the blanket with me (so the blanket wouldn’t get cold in the car).  I want to keep my son safe, but if I had to go through all that every day for the 5-month winters we have here, I would never leave the house.

 

Though I am glad they keep our children safe, especially with the rise in speeds, I wonder what the rates of death were without them?  We are in need of car seat #6 already.  And, in order to lawfully put all the kids in the car, we need an adult sized seat space for each one!  Again, I appreciate the job the care seats do, but I cannot wait until they don’t need them anymore!

 

Blair tipped us off that we should have a car seat for one of our children. To fit everyone in (4 car seats total), we use two Combi Cocorros, which were the narrowest car seat I found. They go up to 35 lbs in weight I think.  Supposedly you can fit three of them across in even a Civic or Corolla, though we haven’t tried that.

 

Lenetta, thanks for the website!  That looks like a great one!  I’m also a big fan of Britax seats.  Like Becky mentioned, car seats (like the one in the picture!) do expire, and they’re always coming up with new versions that are easier and last longer.  Glad we have car seats for safety reasons, but I agree with all of you that they can be burdensome and can make for quite a production when you need to take it apart to clean it, or install it in another car.  Glad most of us are trying our hardest to keep our kids safe!  (and glad you found some good seats for your car, Devin!)

 

Great article! (and comments). I am a big fan of a product called the Mighty Tite. If I was paid for everyone I told about it—I would be in a higher income bracket!! LOL
If you drive an older car that does not tighten enough to secure the car seat then you will probably love it, too.
Car Seat safety—- appropriate tightness and position were the ONLY things my husband and I argued about! Pretty good, in retrospect!

 

how timely, just this week my friend sent me the link for the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety. it lists which carseats are rated as best bets/not recommended for fitting when a child outgrows the harness and moves to using the cars’ belt. it also points out how the seat belt should fit to properly secure your child. here it is if anyone is interested in checking their seats’ rating: {http://www.iihs.org/research/topics/boosters/default.html}

 

I don’t work for the company or anything like that, just sharing a GREAT carseat find…

Sunshine Kids makes SUPER SLIM (14.5 inches wide at the base) carseats called the Radian 65, Radian 80, and Radian XT.  They are made of steel, so they are pretty heavy, but they go from birth to 65 or 80 lbs in a 5-point harness.  They are on the expensive side, but it sure beats buying a new car to be able to put 3 across one row, and they are made of higher quality materials, so they don’t “expire” halfway through one kid’s use.  They also make a SUPER SLIM booster seat.

I just cannot say enough about how much I love, love, love this seat!

 

Car seats and kids is one thing my husband and I debate.  He hates the hassle and I’d rather the safety factor be an issue.  But when we had to buy a bigger vehicle for #6 we were both pretty upset.  I sure wish the state of TX had taken a childs size and not their age into consideration when requiring booster seats.  Makes no sense to have a seat be “age restricted”.  Age doesn’t make you safer in a car seat.  At the time we had an 8 seater Sienna but it didn’t allow for any combination of car seats to fit 3 in the back row (I contacted Toyota about it).  Wish I’d known about the Sunshine Kid’s one and given them a shot.  Now we’re in a 15 passenger, but happier with the room anyway.

 

I’m all for safety, but it has to be within reason.  For example, my son is a tiny little peanut.  My guess is that he won’t weigh 80 pounds till he’s at least 12 years old.  There’s no way that I’m going to make a 12-year old ride in a booster seat.

 

I’m completely with you, Claire!  My gang will be a short bunch and if we went by the height restrictions… well lets just say my mother-in-law would still need to be in a booster seat.


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