I will be the first to admit that growing up with a public school education served me well. I was not Catholic as a child, and my parents did a great job teaching me about Jesus and taking me to Methodist Sunday School on their own time. I was fortunate …

Have you ever felt “spiritually dry”—that sense of struggling to pray, not feeling connected to the Creator, or even doubting? Maybe you’re not praying as much or wondering what you did to deserve something bad happening in your life. I certainly have, and I know I’m not the only one. …

Over the past year, my husband, Mark, and I saved and planned a big vacation for our 15th wedding anniversary. It involved a lot of work, including driving 14 hours one- way to drop our children off in Louisiana with family, taking multiple flights to various connecting airports, securing our …

I sat in a hospital room with my seven-year-old son, the blood pressure cuff inflating and counting down, his heart rate registering on a monitor. After months of being in and out of Children’s Hospital with a mysterious illness, he was about to go under anesthesia for a biopsy and …

As a tall third grader, I was immediately tapped to play our basketball team’s center position (as the team’s tallest person often is). This meant that I had to make the opening jump ball, which placed me in the very center of the action, and I had to fight other …

When I look at photos of my children at summer’s beginning and then turn to the quickly-growing people standing before me at the school year’s start, I’m always taken aback. I shouldn’t be—after all, over summer everyone goes up a shoe size or two. It’s bittersweet to watch our children …

I’ve been a bit emotional while working on this particular issue of the magazine. You see, when it comes to mothers and kids—in utero to toddlers, tweens, teens and everything in between—my mama heart often empathizes to the point of pain. This is your first child and he has a …

After working for dioceses for more than 14 years, I’ve seen my fair share of bishops come and go. Twice, I’ve been on the receiving end, part of the flurry of communications, joy and anticipation that comes with a new bishop for my diocese. I’ve gotten caught up in the …

I’ve been meditating for weeks on this May issue’s theme of devotion, rolling it over in my head. While growing up, the word “devotion,” in relation to faith, only extended to flowery “devotional books.” I wasn’t even aware of devotions to particular saints then, because I had no real understanding …

There have been a few times in my life where God’s presence, abundance and majesty left me thunderstruck. As a child of 10 or so, when my family went to the Gulf Coast, I would drag a chair out to the beach at night and sit under the stars. Even …