Prayer Buddy Revealed

So I waited until today to reveal my prayer buddy. I have a package to send out and I wanted to send it last week but wanted to get to a special shop in town before sending. So I have collected my items, prayed like the dickens and hope I can continue for God to bless her.
My prayer buddy is the misfit. I wanted to keep her real name private, like me, she may have reason. I offered many sufferings and prayers and rosaries and hope that God answers her prayers. I will be sending her package out and while it was hard not to take away pain, I prayed more and cried more in hopes that her burden would be lifted.
I was happy to see her love of vintage decor, etc. as this is my background in my "earlier career" which led me to the designer I am now. I love toile, chenille, shabby decor and anything eclectic and different.
Easter was nice. We went to the traditional Mass yesterday, the reading of the passion on Friday and Holy Thursday Mass at our parish. We were not able to get to stations on Friday night because it took so long to get into Cincinnati with all the holiday traffic. We spent a bit of time with friends and family yesterday and all was good. This Lent was tumultuous but if that is what God needs from me, to get me to His Kingdom, then I will go and follow. Losing an inheritance is a game changer. It will change the way we live, it may keep me from homeschooling, I may have to go back to my college days and wait tables, I don't know yet. I want to fight for what is ours but the other siblings of my husband's are doing nothing and he was not my grandfather. I don't want to live with the regret we did nothing.
I am trying to find positives and be happy for all the baby announcements and births around me. Don't fault me or think I am being a whiner, I am being honest. I know my situation is different. I have three live children, I lost 4 to miscarriage and at my age, don't know if I will ever conceive or carry a child to term again. I now pray for God's will and hope that I can provide a sibling for my "typical" daughter who is the only one without autism. I see her pain and loneliness everyday and I offer it up to God for all the intentions I can. So, I will stay on my unique path. I will continue to pray for my IF catholic blogger friends, like I do everyday and hope in the end we all find God's will in our tears.
On a happy note, feel free to run around and hit the men in your life with a pussy willow branch today. When we lived in Buffalo, we learned of this wierd custom on Easter Monday. Yes, it's Śmigus-Dyngus Day! Everybody party!

Happy Dyngus Day!

If you are Polish, live in Buffalo or both, here you go!
Follow the link for this tradition...
Dyngus Day Buffalo
I can tell you from living there, people played hookie from work and school to get in on the festivities.

This is a yearly debate among Dyngus Day revelers. The tradition holds true that on Easter Monday boys would sprinkle the girls with water and tap them with pussywillows. On Easter Tuesday, the women would return the favorite. At modern Dyngus Day parties it is common practice that both men and women trade water and pussywillow equally.

Blessed Easter!

Spring cleaning and the Triduum

The Sacred Triduum of Holy Week (Thursday, Friday, Saturday) was a time of holyday obligation all through the Middle Ages. The Christian people, freed from servile work, were all present at the impressive ceremonies of these days. Due to the changed conditions of social life, however, Pope Urban VIII, in 1642, rescinded this obligation. Since then the last three days of Holy Week have been classified as working days, despite the sacred and important character they bear, which was powerfully stressed by the renewal of the liturgical order of Holy Week in 1955.

EASTER CLEANING — According to an ancient tradition, the three days after Palm Sunday are devoted in many countries to a thorough cleaning of the house, the most vigorous of the whole year. Carpets, couches, armchairs, and mattresses are carried into the open and every speck of dust beaten out of them. Women scrub and wax floors and furniture, change curtains, wash windows; the home is buzzing with activity. No time is wasted on the usual kitchen work; the meals are very casual and light. On Wednesday night everything has to be back in place, glossy and shining, ready for the great feast. In Poland and other Slavic countries people also decorate their homes with green plants and artificial flowers made of colored paper carrying out ancient designs.

This traditional spring cleaning is, of course, to make the home as neat as possible for the greatest holidays of the year, a custom taken over from the ancient Jewish practice of a ritual cleansing and sweeping of the whole house as prescribed in preparation for the Feast of Passover.



(Source: Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs by Francis X. Weiser, S.J., Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1958)

It's a liturgical hoe-down!

I can't embed this so you will have to visit this lovely video here:

Franciscan University of Steubenville Holy Week Liturgies

H/T to Simon Peter.

I love the drama and the "rock concert" effect. Rock on!