Meditation: Jesus enters the world as a helpless infant in Bethlehem. Lizzy was born on March 20, 2017, and Cecilia was born on May 5, 2019, so there is only a 1.5 month lapse between them. This means that I was significantly pregnant with both of them throughout two winters, two Advents, and two Christmases….
In the early months after Lizzy’s death, people would ask if I prayed or talked to Lizzy as a spirit, soul, angel, or saint. I always said “No” in response to this because Lizzy was still too human, too real, too much a toddler to be a spirit. Every second was rampant with memory of…
Elizabeth Aviva Fiada was born into this life on the first day of spring, 2017. She was beautifully and fittingly given the middle name Aviva, or springtime, in Hebrew. Later on that spring, on the 22nd of April, she was born into the divine life of grace at her baptism. In the springtime of 2019…
I watched Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ last night. I know some people may think this was a very unwise decision, while some people may get it. For me, it was a way of entering into my faith, especially Our Lady’s experience of suffering through every single step of her Son’s Passion. It…
“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when, in your heart, you begin to understand… there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep… that have taken hold.” – Frodo in The Return of the King…
I identify myself as Roman Catholic, and I take my faith very seriously. But the truth is that I am a person of weak faith who has always struggled with believing. In late high school and early college, I fell away from the Church and identified myself as agnostic bordering on atheistic (I think I…
The final struggle that I discussed that day with Father Wyble was an issue that has consumed much of my thoughts and time since I lost Lizzy. It is the question of my vocation. For nearly 15 years, I have believed that being a wife and a mother was my vocation. With the birth of…
The day before Cecilia was born, tears streaming down my face, I remember repeating to Father Wyble, “I just need her to come home to me.” After a pause, he responded quietly, “We have to remember that this is not home.” What do you do with that? What do you do with the idea that…
There were four major takeaways from my conversation/confession with Father Wyble the day before I went into labor with Cecilia. And I return to these four concepts again and again, as I try to process my grief. The first concept is that the death of Lizzy is my cross, which I will carry for the…
Many times, I have mentioned the priest who has been with me through the death of Lizzy and the birth of Cecilia. He is the priest who came to the hospital to administer Anointing of the Sick to Lizzy and who came to the house five hours after Cecilia was born to baptize her, both…