Hard decision

Well, as you know, it's been kind of busy here and we are investing much time with the dog we were fostering/adopting. After much discernment and experiencing total burnout, we are no longer adopting Beckett.

We found out afterwards that he is a mix of a Bluetick Coonhound and Blue Heeler. One is a hunting dog, the other a herding dog. Both breeds are intensely high energy and would not thrive in the city. We have experienced that firsthand. Two walks a day with a weighted backpack, several walks on our treadmill, soccer matches in the yard, training with a trainer...all this and his needs are still not being met which ends in total frustration for both of us. He needs to be in the country...or at least somewhere with a large yard and he needs to be with someone active...a runner, biker, roller blader, farmer, or hunter. My husband and I are burned out and we have decided to seek a family for him that can better meet his needs and then look for a LOW ENERGY dog.

This is heartbreaking but I am at peace with the decision. My own anxiety has reached its point and is affecting my daily life. It is hard since we have sacrificed so much trying to make this work. I pray he finds his perfect family/owner and they will take good care of him.

I am sure I will keep you posted on the next chapter.

Racing thoughts

For those of you , like me, who may have a very active mind with obsessive thoughts, here is an excellent post from Catholic Spiritual Direction that really helped me.

Sayings of Light and Love

Saying #116. The entire world is not worthy of a human being's thought, for this belongs to God alone; any thought, therefore, not centered on God is stolen from him. ~ St. John of the Cross

Gratitude journal--November 7, 2009

Today I am grateful for...

...crisp Autumn mornings

...smell of a Pumpkin Crunch candle

...a warm, crackly fire and roasted marshmallows

...quick recovery of my father-in-law after surgery

...curling up with a good book

...food on our table

Sayings of Light and Love

Saying #109. Wisdom enters through love, silence, and mortification. It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others. ~ St. John of the Cross

Spiritual Maxims of Br. Lawrence of the Resurrection

11. We must carefully examine which virtues are the most essential, which are the most difficult to acquire, which sins we commit most often, and which are the most frequent and inevitable of our falls. We must have recourse to God with complete confidence at the moment of combat, remain firm in the presence of his divine majesty, adore him humbly, bring him our miseries and weaknesses, and lovingly ask him for the help of his grace. In this way we will find every virtue in him without our having any of our own.

~Br.Lawrence of the Resurrection
The Practice of the Presence of God

Sayings of Light and Love

Saying #105. Frequent combing gives the hair more luster and makes it easier to comb; a soul that frequently examines its thoughts, words, and deeds, which are its hair, doing all things for the love of God, will have lustrous hair. Then the Bridegroom will look on the neck of the bride and thereby be captivated; and will be wounded by one of her eyes, that is, by the purity of intention she has in all she does. If in combing hair one wants it to have luster, one begins from the crown. All our works must begin from the crown (the love of God) if we wish them to be pure and lustrous. ~ St. John of the Cross

Blog award--I don't deserve all these!

Thank you to Mary at The Beautiful Gate

Such a beautiful one to boot.

All the blogs I follow are by lovely ladies to say the least. Feel free to post this on your blog. (and you don't even have to do anything!)

Updates, updates...really just "stuff"

My visits to my blog are getting fewer and far between. I am doing my best to keep up with all of you that I enjoy so much.

Let's see...the dog has been a handful. We have a trainer working with him since he does this *screaming* and yelping thing when he spots another dog...downright uncontrollable on the leash. So as I was walking the other day, he spotted two dogs and went nuts and I was trying to restrain him as well as do a leash correction and my neighbor came out yelling at me that he was going to call the SPCA on me for mistreating my dog. Oh...yeah...that's what I am doing while the dog is pulling me in the street and knocking my 5 yr. old daughter down. Who is mistreating who?? Okay, no walks past his house for now. No wonder I am completely drained by 6 pm.

Say some prayers for my father-in-law. He is in the hospital needing quadruple bypass surgery on his heart. Unfortunately, my mother-in-law is currently in a home due to severe damage from a stroke so he is her main support and spends everyday with her and this will be such a trial for her.

On a better note, my son's friend Chris (who I posted previously on) is doing wonderful. After he came out of the coma, they transferred him to an excellent rehab hospital. As of this week, he is off his feeding tube and eating, taking some steps, texting and typing, starting to talk (he said mom and dad) and laughing with his friends and enjoying watching the Phillies. Nothing short of miraculous! I hope this brings his friends and family closer to God.

My second oldest son is adjusting to the news of his high school closing. We registered him at another Catholic high school and are awaiting news on what's going to happen to his scholarship.

Enjoy your weekend and Happy All Saint's Day! Angeline is not much into Halloween (as her mother) and we are just hanging in making caramel apples and s'mores and maybe getting in a game of Saints bingo.

Words of Wisdom--St. John of the Cross

People, then, should live with great patience and constancy in all the tribulations and trials God places on them, whether they be exterior or interior, spiritual or bodily, great or small, and they should accept them all as from God's hand as a good remedy and not flee from them, for they bring health...(they) will cut off the roots of your sins and imperfections--your evil habits. The combat of trials, distress, and temptations deadens the evil and imperfect habits of the soul and purifies and strengthens it. People should hold in esteem the interior and exterior trials God sends them, realizing that there are few who merit to be brought to perfection through suffering and to undergo trials for the sake of so high a state.

~St. John of the Cross
Living Flame of Love

Spiritual Maxims of Br. Lawrence of the Resurrection

10. All these adorations must be made by faith, believing that God is truly in our hearts, that we must adore, love, and serve him in spirit and in truth, that he sees everything that happens and will happen in us and in all creatures; that he is independent of everything and the one whom all creatures depend, infinite in every kind of perfection. He is the one who, by virtue of his infinite excellence and sovereign domain, deserves all that we are as well as everything in heaven and on earth, of which he can dispose as he wishes in time and in eternity. All our thoughts, words and actions belong by right to him. Let's put this into practice.
~ The Practice of the Presence of God by Br. Lawrence of the Resurrection