Fanucci - Everyday sacrament: the messy grace of parenting

With heart, honesty and humor, Laura Kelly Fanuccis offering of a peek into her quest for God in the midst of the craziness of parenting will help inspire you along your own path to God. Full of tender moments and truth, this is a book that every Catholic who ever lived in a family will appreciate.

Lisa M. Hendey, Founder of CatholicMom.com and author of The Grace of Yes

Everyday Sacrament is a gift to every parent everywhere. Whether shes writing about giving a newborn a bath or flying with a cranky toddler, Fanucci reveals the holiness that lives right in the mess of parenting. Her writing is graceful, sensitive, and honest in its portrayal of the highs and lows of motherhood. This beautiful book is a feast for the mind, the heart, and the soul.

Ginny Kubitz Moyer, author of Random MOMents of Grace: Experiencing God in the Adventures of Motherhood

Everyday Sacrament is a gift to any of us seeking God in the messiness of life and raising kids. With refreshing honesty, Laura Kelly Fanucci shares her home and heart to reveal the sacred in everything from changing diapers to rocking a child to sleep. Along the way, she develops a real-world theology that brings the sacraments to life and honors parenting for the holy vocation that it is. As with any encounter of grace, gratitude is in order for this powerful testimony to the messy grace of parenting.

Jeremy Langford, author of Seeds of Faith: Practices to Grow a Healthy Spiritual Life and father of three

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from the English translation of Rite of Baptism for Children 1969, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation (ICEL); excerpt from the English translation of Rite of Confirmation 1975, ICEL; excerpt from the English translation of Rite of Penance 1974, ICEL; excerpt from the English translation of Pastoral Care of the Sick: Rites of Anointing and Viaticum 1982, ICEL; excerpt from the English translation of Rite of Marriage 1969, ICEL; excerpt from the English translation of Rites of Ordination of a Bishop, of Priests, and of Deacons 2000, 2003, ICEL. All rights reserved.

Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.

Translation of In All Things by St. Francis of Assisi from the Penguin publication Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky. Copyright 2002 Daniel Ladinsky and used with his permission.

2014 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint Johns Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fanucci, Laura Kelly.

Everyday sacrament : the messy grace of parenting / Laura Kelly Fanucci.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-8146-3768-5 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-8146-3793-7 (ebook)

1. ParentingReligious aspectsCatholic Church. 2. Sacraments
Catholic Church. I. Title.

BX2352.F36 2014

234'.16dc23

2014011976

For our children

It was easy to love God in all that was beautiful.
The lessons of deeper knowledge, though,
instructed me to embrace God in all things.

St. Francis of Assisi, translated by Daniel Ladinsky, Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West

Contents

Introduction: Before Beginning
An Unexpected Story

Introduction

Before BeginningAn Unexpected Story

The seven sacraments touch all the stages and all the important moments of Christian life:

they give birth and increase, healing and mission to the Christians life of faith.

Catechism of the Catholic Church 1210

I never expected to be here.

I never expected to have children at all during our years of infertility, as I plunked box after box of pregnancy tests into my shopping cart, only to have them turn up negative again and again, month after month.

And even when a baby miraculously arrived and it seemed our prayers had been answered, I still never expected that parenting could change everything I knew about seeking God. Especially when I was so overwhelmed by new motherhoods demands that I could barely string two coherent thoughts together.

When my first son was three months old, I read a magazine article by a mother who sang praises of the beauty of babyhood and practically squealed about how close to God she felt when she gazed into her newborns eyes. I glanced up from the magazines glossy pages to the foggy mirror of the bathroom where I had locked myself to treat my raw, bleeding breasts with the slather of ointments my doctor promised would clear up the latest round of an agonizing thrush infection passed to me by my nursing babe.

I hadnt slept more than two hours in a row for twelve weeks, a stupefying stretch of sleep deprivation that threatened to violate the Geneva Convention. And the shrieking screams from the next room reminded me that it was time once again to grit my teeth and curl my toes as I tried to nurse the hungry baby through shooting pain.

I tossed the magazine in the wastebasket as I left the bathroom. I had zero interest in finding transcendence through motherhood.

But months slipped by, as months do even in that early stretch of dragging days. Gradually I started to sleep a little more. The evil thrush finally healed. The world shifted back into focus like the slow turn of a telescope. Parenthood wasnt pretty pastels and it wasnt an easy elegy, but eventually I found myself settling into mothering.

Then I began to wonder where God might be.

For a lifelong Catholic with a freshly minted degree in theology, trying to find God in the midst of my new life as a parent should have been easy. It was decidedly not.

Although I had spent three years in graduate school studying how to understand God, I suddenly felt clueless about how to seek the presence of God that I needed to survive this overwhelming transition to parenthood. I knew plenty of ways to define God intellectually, but I was scrambling to feel Gods strength surrounding me when I craved it most. I had thought motherhood was my callinga way God was inviting me to give my life in service out of lovebut now it seemed the rocky path Id chosen was far from a smooth road to spiritual enlightenment.

For starters, motherhood magnified my flaws to the nth degree: impatience, irritability, an Irish temper that stomped its feet whenever I didnt get my way. Furthermore, every spiritual practice Id been taught required peace, quiet, and time apart from the rush of daily life. Finding even one of these conditionslet alone all three at onceseemed impossible with a new baby at the center of my life. Most days I barely muddled through, but whenever I found a rare moment to reflect on how unbalanced my life had become, I knew I had to find another way.