Merry Christmas!

Merry CHRISTMAS!!!!

This is just my own little rant here, but while I'm all for keeping Christ in Christmas, how about keeping MASS in Christmas, too? Call 1-800-MASS-TIMES for a listing of Mass times anywhere in the United States. Say "thank You" to God for His wondrous gift.

The whole thought of God becoming man is more than I can hold in my brain, really. There's a song that says, "Whom all the world cannot contain comes in our hearts to dwell." My mind just can't really absorb that on an intellectual level (thank You, God, for the insight of faith!). I wonder if that's why sometimes our imaginations come up with places that look bigger on the inside than they are on the outside.... because we sense that if God is within us, we must be "bigger on the inside." Well, I don't have the brain power to delve too deeply into that tonight. So, until I write again, open yourself to all the graces in store for you through the sacraments. Renew the connection of human and divine in this sacred season.

Merry Christmas!!!!

Another Joanna-ism

There are some phrases that I never expected to hear a sober person say, even if the person in question is only three. Last Wednesday, we were driving back to our house. In a voice filled with astonishment, Joanna proclaimed, "Oh - I *do* have pants on!"

I tell ya, it really takes a LOT of control not to howl with laughter over some of the things that she says. Who needs Comedy Central, anyway?

Low blood pressure info

Wow; I am so relieved! I recently read an e-mail that really helped me, and I wanted to share it, just in case anyone else has this problem.

I have had low blood pressure for most of my life (usually in the 90/60 range). I never really thought about how that affected me, physically; I figured that it didn't, to be honest. But I receive a daily e-mail called "Daily Health News," which is a free e-mail service from Bottom Line: Health, and the e-mail that I received on Monday, December 12, was on the symptoms associated with low blood pressure.

While it cautions that a sudden drop in blood pressure is a medical condition to be treated, and chronic low blood pressure (CLBP) is just something to learn to live with, it does say that there are several things that people who have CLBP live with almost all the time. I know that I have had these symptoms, but I had never known that it was because of CLBP.

Some of the symptoms listed were:

"No doubt you have experienced times when you've gotten up quickly from a prone position and become instantly light-headed, perhaps so much so that you had to sit down. Imagine having that happen to you all the time -- that is what life can be like for many of those who have symptomatic low blood pressure."

Constant fatigue is another symptom, and the one that blew me away: salt cravings! Many people that I am around during mealtimes tease me about my salt intake (I have even been compared to the "salt-eating monster" from the original Star Trek series, or asked if I wanted a salt lick like those put out for deer). Apparently, salt cravings are my body's attempts to increase fluid retention to increase blood volume and hence blood pressure, according to this article.

Another thing that the article mentioned was this:

"Another... problem is that when patients are lying down, their pressure goes very high. Medication taken at night will lower the pressure, but then, when patients get up during the night to urinate (common among these patients), they tend to fall down. [Mark Pecker, MD, a specialist in low blood pressure at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical School in New York City] says that this night pattern is the major problem associated with low blood pressure. Patients are advised to sleep with their heads raised."

This is indeed a problem that I have experienced, although I didn't realize that it was simply a manifestation of CLBP. It would be terrifying to be lying down, trying to relax, and have your heart start racing like crazy. At least now I know what's happening, and that helps a lot.

Anyway, this article just cleared up so many nagging concerns for me; after all, I have had every single one of the symptoms described in the article. I thought I was becoming a closet hypochondriac, but it's really just the effects of low blood pressure. What a relief!

OK, enough of that

My apologies; I did not mean to leave that dream as the "first post you see" for so long. As I said, I do have good dreams, too, and - to balance that other one - I will share one that I had while I was pregnant with my daughter, Joanna. The following dream was actually part of a larger experience, which I will also relate. I call dreams like this one a "Joseph dream;" not that it is prophetic or anything, but I know God is definitely speaking to me through them.

Pre-dream info:

I was 37 weeks pregnant with baby Joanna. I had been having lots of “practice contractions” and they were at their worst at night when I was trying to sleep (go figure). This particular night they were quite frequent and pretty strong, and I had said a quick little prayer, asking the Lord to help me get through them. And this is the dream He sent me:

Dream:

I was in a church with several other people, and we were having Eucharistic adoration. I think the church may have been St. Williams, although (in the manner of dreams) it didn’t “look” like St. Williams. A very strange twist to the adoration was that there was a cup of the Precious Blood there, as well. I realize that is impossible (since the Precious Blood must be totally consumed during a Liturgy), but there it was in my dream.

At one point in the adoration, the cup was to be moved to the back of the church for some reason, to a special pedestal erected there for that purpose. And for some other strange reason, I got to move it rather than the priest (you can really see the dream part entering in here). After I had moved it, I lingered for a moment still holding the chalice in my hands: looking into it at the Precious Blood there in the cup. I was kneeling, which I am not sure how *that* was happening since the pedestal was high enough to be seen over the pews, but there I was.

We were singing “Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled,” one of my favorite songs. I found myself looking at this chalice and thinking to myself, “You are holding the blood of your GOD. How *incredible* is that? That GOD is right here, as real as He is in Heaven, and you get to touch Him, even in your complete unworthiness, because of His amazing LOVE for you.”

At this point, everything went into a kind of “negative” perspective (like a film negative), and the chalice in my hands began to grow, and I was groveling in front of the Precious Blood – while still holding on to it somehow – saying over and over again “Lord, Lord, Lord!”

The feeling of the REALITY of God’s presence there was so overwhelming that it seemed to fill my entire being until I thought I was going to burst into a million pieces. I was at once terrified, and full of wonder, and peaceful, and so many other things. I can’t describe it all. It was more than I could ever hold, because it was God’s presence itself. The sweetness of it was an agony; I prayed for Jesus to let me go because I am still so sinful, I just couldn’t bear it. I could even see the reflection of Jesus within the Precious Blood, holding His arms out to me.

I knew that He would never hurt me (except in the manner of the Divine Physician), but I did feel pain at seeing Him: in the knowledge of His great love and my knowledge of pains that I have caused Him by my sin, even (and maybe especially) in the knowledge of His great love DESPITE my sins. Fr. John Corapi said that he once had a dream in which he learned that God’s name is MERCY; I think I just had one of those dreams. Anyway, being God, loving me beyond my wildest expectations and allowing for my free will, he did release me, and I woke up.

Post-dream:

I was still having the contraction, or maybe it was another one, but my body felt so light and almost insubstantial that I hardly felt the contraction at all, even though I knew I was having one. I hardly felt the covers or the bed, I was still so enveloped by this sense of peacefulness and relief. I woke Mark and asked if he would scoot over, just to reconnect me to reality, and he did.

He sensed that I had had a dream, and asked if I wanted to talk about it (although he was concerned that it might have been one of my nightmares). I told him about it, and in the course of describing the dream, I inadvertently said, “When I got back” instead of “When I woke up.” I guess this dream had just been so real for me, even with all the impossibilities. But the feeling of peace is still with me, and I have a new appreciation of God’s love for us, especially in that He instituted the Eucharist for us.

Addendum: I wrote the above portion at about two in the morning, right after the dream happened. Then I went back to bed and had just regular dreams, woke up at the regular time, and got Paul off to school. I had not been to daily Mass in some time and thought it would be appropriate to go today, even though I would also be attending a Funeral Mass later that morning. God was apparently not satisfied with me simply *dreaming* of His love for us in the Precious Blood: today Fr. Ernie said a special Votive Mass for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, from which that Precious Blood flows!! I still don’t know why Father used that Mass setting, but it was very special for me. What a wonderful God we have!

Crack Is No Ordinary Killer

Well. For those of you who thought I was sane, I am about to disabuse you of that notion.

Ever since I can remember, I have had extremely vivid dreams, and fairly good recall of most dreams. When they are good dreams, this is a really cool thing. But when they are bad dreams, or disturbing dreams, they can REALLY get to me. Last night, I had a particularly disturbing dream.

I dreamt that my son Paul and I were at our family computer, searching for something, and this music video came on called "Crack Is No Ordinary Killer." It had been designed to show, in a metaphorical way, what happens to people when they get hooked on drugs. It was a rap song, but in the way of dreams you could actually hear the words clearly.

The video begins with someone at a party taking crack for the first time (not really knowing anything about crack myself, my dream showed the person injecting the crack. I don't know if that would be appropriate, but from a visual perspective you will see why it was done that way). As the person went to shoot the crack into their arm, instead of a liquid coming out of the needle, this huge spider-like creature emerged from the needle - impossibly large for the space involved, it's body was about the size of a human skull. It skittered up the person's arm and over their head, and bit into the back of their neck, while coiling its legs around the person's neck.

Then, the person's hands started turning into huge cockroahes that are attached to his wrists, to simulate the way that people have to scurry around and steal to get money to buy more drugs. Eventually, the person just turns into one big bug, crawling around; mindlessly looking for what he can't even remember, just a huge empty need driving him on.

Now, if you recall, I had said that both I AND my ten-year-old son were watching this video. Paul and I were not complacently "ho-hum" watching this. Ass soon as the spider thing crawled up the person's arm, Paul said, "Mommy, I don't like this song, Please turn it off." And I had to agree: in normal life, I would NOT watch such a video. I tried going to another website; the computer wouldn't let me. I tried shutting it down; it wouldn't let me. Nothing I tried worked (short of unplugging the darned thing, which I couldn't do because the plug was stuck back behind the deck where i couldn't get to it), so we ended up watching the whole thing whether or not we wanted to.

From a purely subjective, "art for art's sake" viewpoint, it was very well done. The bugs looked VERY real (WETA Digital probably had a hand in it, I'm sure). I have to say that I stopped following the words because my mind was overcome by the sheer visual impact; I could just tell that the music was still going on in the background. One interesting point about the music that did intrude itself into my consciousness was that, when the song started, it was just doing the fairly simplistic "heartbeat" type of rhythm. But as the song progressed, the rhythm got more and more complex and disjointed, until at the end there was no discernable pattern.

It did an extrememly good job, in my opinion, of showing the plight of poor people who get hooked on drugs. This is not say that they cannot be held responsible for their actions; the first "hit" is almost always a free choice. But the insidious and escalating nature of addiction is very real, just the same. Whether it is a decision or a disease, it is still a tragedy. Please say a prayer for those addicted to drugs - or any other thing that controls someone's life - for freedom from that tyranny.

One more Grand Ultreya shot

Some people had already gotten their food, but others - lots of others - were still waiting in line. Good food, good fellowship!

More Grand Ultreya

More Grand Ultreya

Grand Ultreya

Well, I guess I will be doing this in installments, since I can't get all of the pictures to download on to this posting. These are pictures from the Grand Ultreya this evening. As you can see, there was a nice crowd there, with nice people, too!

My "fruit-full" daughter

For Thanksgiving, each of my siblings is charged with bringing a certain part of the meal so that one person is not stuck with all the cooking. This year, my charge was to bring fruit as snacks for before and after dinner. I wanted to wait until the last moment to get nice, fresh fruit, and happened to be at my parent's house on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. Since that was their usual day for getting groceries anyway, Dad suggested that he look for fruit at the store while he was out while the kids and I stayed and visited with Mom.

He came back with a lovely variety - all well received - but none compared to the grapes that he found. They were huge, juicy, sweet red grapes, and Joanna absolutely loved them (all the little ones ate them with great enthusiasm). They were gone before dinner even began, whereas the rest of the fruit, though good, lingered and we even got to take some home with us. But no grapes.

Every day since Thanksgiving, Joanna has asked for more grapes, and I have had to tell her that, sadly, we had no grapes. I finally called Mom and asked that the next time Dad got to the store, would he please see if there were any more grapes to be had for his suffering granddaughter....

Mom called yesterday to tell me that Dad had finally found some more grapes, and we drove out to pick them up. The drive to Mom and Dad's is about 13 miles from my house, and Joanna fell asleep on the way over. So she did not see the bag of food that Mom put into the car when we arrived (put in first so that we would not forget it later - aren't Moms smart?). Joanna just thought that we had gone to visit Grandma and Grandpa (although she did ask where everyone was - kind of cute, since we *are* usually there when at least one other sibling and cousins are there as well).

Joanna was so excited when we unpacked the bag after we got home. I pulled out some cake mix and she said, "Caaaaaake." I pulled out pineapple and cherries, and she said, "Piiiiiineapple, cheeeeerrrrrrrries." I pulled out the bananas, and she said, "Banaaaaaaaanas."

But when I pulled out the grapes, she said, "Grapes! Oh, grapes!! I *love* grapes!! Mommy, Mommy, it's grapes!" So, I think that was a "winner" purchase. Naturally, we had to have some grapes right then, and they were every bit as juicy and sweet as their appearance promised. So we give Grandpa a big "thumbs up" for the grapes!