Seven Quicktakes-Dec. 28

Merry Christmas!

Seven Takes On My Christmas This Year:

1. Apparently I contracted "walking pneumonia" during our family's bought with the stomach flu. After going to the doctor, I took a Z-pack of antibiotics which lasted through Christmas. I started feeling a lot better by the time we got to Christmas, but the cough is still lingering so much so that I have pulled some muscles in my core from all the coughing. This has been a lot of fun I tell you. At least I am hanging out in St. Louis with very few responsibilities and not managing the home and children while M works all day.

2. If you want to know how to extend a 8.5 hours drive to 11 hours, let me tell you. First, make sure you need air in your cars tires and fill them as you are leaving town. Stop a two gas stations with unavailable air pumps before finding one which will pump your tires. Second, bring a three year old who is still feeling off from the stomach flu along and make sure she vomits four times along the way. If you are lucky like us it will be in a disposable coffee cup (that you bought full of coffee at the second gas station you stopped at for air) instead of all over the back seat. Third, make sure you bring a newborn who likes to nurse on both sides at a leisurely pace, ensuring that all of your stops take at least 30 minutes. Fourth, have the same newborn have an explosive outfit-soiling back poop just as you are about to get back on the road. Fifth, stop for dinner.

3. My parents bought a two bedroom ranch when I was one year old. My two older sisters and I shared the second bedroom until my brother was three (he shared with my parents) when we moved to a basement bedroom that my dad made wonderfully nice for us girls. We always talked about adding on to the house to make more space, and I believe my parents once had an intention of moving to a larger house. They never did. So this Christmas, we decided it would be fun to have 8 adults and 6 little girls share three bedrooms (plus a semi-finished second basement room) and one bathroom for three days and two nights. It was fun. We all made it to 9 am Christmas Mass EARLY, had a delicious brunch, and managed to open all our presents by 2pm so that the kids could get a little bit of napping.

4. I think we must be a strange family that does not open presents until late in the morning. My dad has always played music for Mass on Christmas morning, so we always had to wait for him to finish clean-up and come home before we opened our presents. As a kid it made Christmas morning take forever as we watched and waited for him to come back home. I am glad we always waited until we had time, because the time we had for presents ended up being nice and leisurely. This was again the case this Christmas.

5. Christmas this year really felt like Christmas to me. Maybe it was because we were in my childhood home with all the siblings together, plus our children and spouses. Another thing that made it nice was that I had seen everyone but my sister and her family just a few weeks earlier because of F's birth and baptism. It is nice how seeing people more often makes you feel more in touch and closer to them even if you don't live in the same town as them.

6. While we have been here we have had the traditional: Amighetti's special sandwiches, Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, Cecil Whittaker's Pizza, and toasted ravioli. Yum!

7. We still get to have Christmas in Michigan with the in-laws. Hopefully by next week I will be healthy and without any pulled muscles. I am supposed to do Jillian Michael's 30-Day Shred during M's J-term break to encourage my extra baby weight to go away...

The Call to be Outcasts: A Reflection on Les Misérables

**SPOILER ALERT**
I have not seen the new movie that came out on Christmas, and will probably not get a chance until it is on video or at the $2 theater in Minneapolis (when maybe I will be willing to leave the baby with a sitter). I have seen the musical performed live and have read the unabridged novel; this reflection is based more on the novel but does not depart from the plot of the musical.

While I can't boast of fluency in French, I have read that "les misérables" translates into something like "the outcasts” or “the wretched ones” or “the miserables.” I want to focus on the “outcast” translation. If you look at each of the main characters, they are all outside of society: Jean Valjean the exconvict, Fantine the former mistress of a wealthy student who was left with an illicit child, Cosette the orphan child being raised by the exconvict, the Thenardier family who spend their whole lives stealing from people, Javert who is a police officer standing outside society to keep order, and Marius the orphan and republican student.

The character I am going to examine is Jean Valjean. He spent 19 years in jail regretting his small crime, and is filled with rage and hate. He encounters society's terror of exconvicts when he is on parole when he is unable to find food or shelter; however, even after his conversion caused by the bishop’s kindness, he lives in fear of his former self. No matter how many good deeds he does and how virtuous he becomes, he is always aware of who he is, Jean Valjean the exconvict. It doesn't matter that all he did was break a window and steal a loaf of bread when he was starving: he is an exconvict. As soon as people learn of his past, they fear him and think that there is no possible way that he can be good. Yet, when they do not know his identity as the exconvict, they recognize his saintly deeds and virtuous character.

There are several turning points in the story where Valjean struggles with choosing the morally right thing. If he follows his conscience, he will have to expose his past (and what he believes to be his true self) and be condemned by those who respect him; however, because of the influence of the bishop, he has been transformed and cannot disregard his conscience. It is not until the end of Valjean’s life that there is a person who is aware of both his criminal history and all the good he has done. This person recognizes that he is a saint.

Jean Valjean represents the life of a saint. He has a conversion, turns from his old life, never does a wrong thing again and is constantly running from his former sins. He seeks the life of virtue and union with God, but is always aware of his sinful nature. He constantly condemns himself when he is already good. He continues to find his weaknesses and overcome them until he has completely abandoned himself to the point of physical death. I think this is how we are called to overcome our sins, to become more and more selfless so that we completely lose ourselves in God. We need to be horrified at our ability to sin and our past sins. Fortunately, God is much more forgiving than society, and we must run to him. Valjean’s one flaw is his inability to accept forgiveness from God for his past sins, but in this he displays what it is to live a penitential life.

If we truly live the call to sainthood, we will be cast out of society like Jean Valjean. To seek be holy in a modern society is to be set apart a life of virtue and penance does not make sense without God. If we are truly seeking to be holy, we will be outcasts. This experience of being cast out of society is becoming more and more real for Catholic Christians in modern America. Being “set apart” is never easy, but with the grace of God it can and will be done. God will provide what we need to be sustained through the community of believers. Valjean says that love is what leads to human flourishing; without love the human soul dies, the human dies. So we must live the lives of saints with those whom we love and not fear the call to be outcasts.

Originally posted on Truth and Charity.

Still Sick

The stomach bug the girls had last Thursday night hit me on Sunday night, and I am still nauseated from time to time. The last time I got sick was Monday night. I have been easing back into foods still, and I really wish I had a scale to measure how much baby weight I am losing because of this (the one upside of this illness).

G randomly threw up again this morning just as I was about to take the older girls to the store since they have been cooped up since Sunday Mass in the house with a sick mom and a wonderful dad taking care of us all. I am waiting from a call from the doctor to see if what is going on with us is at all normal. Also, I have a really annoying phlegmy cough that only my albuterol inhaler seems to help. Anyway, not trying to complain, just explaining why I have not been blogging at all.

Prayers for health would be much appreciated especially since we are supposed to spend the next two weeks seeing relatives...