CONGRATS!!! A line is a line in my book!! I’ve always taken the tests so early that I’ve seen super duper faint lines too - but they were there and that = a baby!!! Prayers for you and your hubs today:)

false positives are pretty much impossible (some crazy less than 0.01% meaning you have this freakish weird cancer - ie. not the case here) - so CONGRATS ON YOUR NEW BABY!!!

that being said, we buy ours at the dollar store so we can take 2 or 3 b/c we’re OCD like that :-p

Congrats!  Take another one tomorrow morning & then tell him & the two of you can celebrate properly on a Friday night!

(Lina, I’m right there with you on the multiple tests!)

Congratulations on your anniversary! 

We don’t do a yearly checkup, but we do a weekly one - every Sunday evening, after the kids are in bed, we go over the finances for the week, the to-do list for the week (we divvy up chores, make lists of who is doing what this week, etc), and the schedule for the week (meetings, kids’ practices, dr appts, etc).  We also discuss our NFP chart and any problems or issues that we’ve had during the week (disagreements, challenges, whatever).  I usually make us a snack or dessert to have while we talk, and even though we are talking about things couples usually fight about (money, children, chores, etc) it seems like we both look forward to our Sunday meeting!  It seems like this weekly meeting keeps minor issues from becoming major ones, and it also gives us a scheduled block of time to discuss the major issues  

Certainly a yearly assessment sounds like a good idea too!  I’ll be curious to see what others post.

Mama A, I am inspired by your example! We talk about all of those things - to-do lists, schedules, finances, charting - in passing, over email, or over the yells of two little boys at dinner. Surprisingly, this does not work well! I figured we were just stuck here at this stage in life, but you’ve inspired me - and I think making a special dessert to share on Sunday evening is just the ticket (bribe?!) I need to get us both to the table. What a lovely Sabbath practice! Thanks.

Congrats on your Anniversary.  I recommend http://www.exceptionalmarriages.com/
It is Catholic, there are quizzes and podcasts, etc. 
Marriage Encounter might also have some good resources too- like dialogue questions.

Blessings to you and your husband!

Mama A, you’ve inspired me, too! Love that idea! Love the idea by Kathleen of an annual check-up. Maybe a time to just remember why the two of you got married in the first place. Gee, 20 years of marriage and I never thought of doing anything like this. No, suggestions, Kathleen, sorry, but thank you for the inspiration!

My husband and I do something somewhat similar.  Every Sunday we do the Mass reflections found on Catholiclane.com.  Then we talk about how we’re doing spiritually individually, as a couple, and as parents.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I attended a Strong Bonds retreat which is a marriage retreat run through the military’s chaplains (so, faith-based, but not overly religious, not Catholic).  Still, a good program.  There are some videos online for viewing at this site: http://www.lovethinks.com/MarriageLinks/  (look at the bottom where it has another link to videos).  I didn’t watch the videos, but at a quick glance they seem to be similar to what we participated in.  Another suggestion, if your hubby is up for it, is just reading a book together, such as The Five Love Languages or some of the other relationship books mentioned frequently on this site, and discussing it.  You could read the book chapter by chapter out loud or separately and discuss it chapter by chapter over the course of a month - date night.

Happy Anniversary!

happy Anniversary!  I just wanted to say (as a HUGELY experienced wife of 3 years ) that it’s awesome you realize the need to keep working on your relationship even when things are going well.  It took me a while to realize that you don’t wait until you’re having a mid-life crisis or something, you do kind of “preventative maintenance” from the very beginning—things like regular date nights, or making a commitment to pray together daily.  The Love Languages book is really good and an easy read, and he talks about doing a “love tank” check-up every night, so maybe something like that would be helpful.  Corny terminology, but the idea is that you each have a specific way you need to be shown love to fill up your “love tank,” so at the end of the night you ask your spouse “is your love tank full?” and if not, what you could specifically do to help them feel more loved.  Also, Gregory Popcak’s book _Holy Sex__, which I also highly recommend, has a similar “daily marriage check-up” which basically consists of asking eachother how well you communicated love to eachother that day, and what you could do better; and you supply your spouse with a list of things he could do that make you feel loved.  I guess either of those ideas would be good for a daily or weekly check-up—not sure about a yearly check-up.  What a great idea, though!

We do a State of the Union every year.  And we think we’re really clever.  ; )  We have a notebook where we record tons of stuff - major changes, how our finances are (fun to compare years), books we’ve read, etc.  It can kind of be a pain because it can take so long (we keep adding categories), but it’s worth it to be able to see on paper how our union is progressing.  Our life is like a story, so we’re making ours a book.  : )  Good luck with yours!

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions! Tiffany, I like the way you describe your annual check-in. My husband’s already on board with the idea, but he’s a political buff, so I might have to borrow your terminology - I think that calling it a State of the Union would really tickle his fancy!

I think Popcak’s “For Better Forever” has some resources for this at the end, maybe even an appendix/ chapter for annual discussion…  Great book!

Not sure about your DH, but I know mine always feels more confident in new clothes, but he hates to shop. Will this new job mean he should dress a little differently? Maybe you could buy him a few pair of pants/new shirts or ties and wrap it like a present, and give it to him, telling him how proud you are of him, and how lucky you are to have such a great provider for your family. Beyond that, I would let him vent about he new challenges, but stay positive, and keep reminding him that he earned this promotion and he is setting such a great example for your children (if you have any, sorry I am assuming here), by tackling new frontiers. If you have kids old enough, you could also have them make him a card, congratulating him and building him up. In the office, I find there is not a lot of building up, just a lot of stress over performance, so be his cheerleader if you can.

Keep the home ship running on an even keel; give him extra time to either be alone or to vent.  (Guys usually need the former)  Congratulations!

I think the practical tips here are awesome, but I just want to mention something else. I’ve been thinking over how I can best help my husband during a stressful month at work, and it just occurred to me that recently I haven’t been praying for him nearly as much as I have in the past. Guess he was doing great there for a while, and I slid off the rails… anyway, I have noticed huge differences when I’ve remembered to pray and mortify myself for him. Nothing major, just offering up a quick prayer when I think of him (for example “Jesus, please give my husband whatever he most needs to do your will today” or something along those lines.), or giving up cream in my coffee, etc. If you ask your guardian angel for reminders, you’ll get a ton. As a side note, I’ve also found that doing these things really increases my own lovin’ feelings towards my husband. Which is always nice.

Your post made me really think, so thank you, and God bless!

Great tips from everyone.  I agree that praying hard for him helps, as does making home life as stress-free as possible until he adjusts.

Jeanne,
I hope you realize that you really are not funny here. We have all been very suuportive of you as you go through your adoption process, and you have done nothing but ridicule and belittle the problems of those of us who have concerns about our marriages or child rearing. Yes, we all know that you have not been able to have children. We all know you have no problems keeping up with your housework, and that you and your husband go out to eat several times a week, etc. But you have never had to take care of a bunch of small children while keeping the house clean. You must realize, as an intelligent woman with several degrees (that you have told us all about over and over again), that this lifestyle is very diffeent from yours. It presents different challenges as well as different blessings. If you can’t understand how taking responsibility for one or more children changes your life, your challenges and your ability to get things done, I question if you are prepared to accept a child into your home. This is not the first time I have seriously considred wether it was my responsibiity to alert the authorities in Tampa involved with your adoption process, as to whether they should be paying attention to your blatent hostility toward parents on this blog. You clearly have no idea what it means to accept a child into your life. I hope you have counselers to help you along in this process, and if not, please seek some out. Don’t bring a child into your home if you are not ready to make ALL of the changes necessary to do right by him/her. God Bless, and I hope you take this under prayerful consideration.

I think it’s possibly in some ways ‘easier’ to be holy if you don’t have a husband and family - Paul basically said so.  You can focus on that with fewer distractions.  I am not in any way saying it’s easy to be single or less in any way, btw.  Sex, in the context of marriage, is from God, and is therefore good and not ‘earthy’ in any way, as in, not of the world, in my opinion. I may be misreading what you meant, and I’m very sorry if I did.  I think it’s very normal at points during our lives to question a lot of things.  I certainly do so myself.  But what I need to do when I do this, and want to gently suggest that you do also, is to focus on how I can be more holy and do God’s will in my current situation instead of thinking about/wishing I were in a different one.  Please know that I say this from a perspective of a person who has been deeply struggling with unhappiness in my own life and knowing that I need to do what I recommended to you, so I’m just sharing with you something I am working on in myself.  I know that my ‘take’ on what you said is going to be colored by my own situation so I hope I don’t offend.

I have struggled with this before and mentioned it in confession and a priest said that those feelings are not limited to the vocation of marriage. Those in religious life still struggle (or have the possibility of struggling) with feelings of doubt and anxiety. For some reason this helped me.

I have doubts sometimes not so much that I chose the wrong vocation (marriage was definitely the one for me) but whether I married the right person.  I try to focus on the fact that it really doesn’t matter.  We have a sacramental marriage and we ARE married, can’t go back and change that so I need to focus on the future not what ifs. . .So maybe that would help you too since at this point it doesn’t matter if you were called to religious life because you are married and what you need to be concerned with is fulfilling that vocation to the best of your ability.

I use the Baltimore Catechism in my home-school.  Lesson 15 (this is Book #2 for those of you who wish to look it up) talks about religious vocations.  It clearly says that religious vocations are better than secular vocations - not that marriage is bad, but that religious vocations are better: “The comparison between religious life and secular life is not a comparison between good and evil, but between good and better.”  However, if you are married, you are clearly, at this point, called to a vocation of marriage.  You need to be as committed to that vocation as possible, and strive to be the best wife you can be.  It is possible that you may one day be a religious, and it is possible that one cross you must bear is not doing what you think you want to be doing.  St Therese, the Little Flower, wanted to be a missionary…she really really wanted that.  But she had TB and other issues, and so was “stuck” in her cloistered convent.  Instead of being a missionary, she prayed hard for those religious who could be missionaries.  Celibacy may seem like the holier choice - and for an unmarried person, it is - BUT, for a married person, it might be a very selfish choice, because you also demand celibacy of your husband, who didn’t sign up for a religious vocation.

I researched the religious life but then eventually married.
I can’t imagine life without my husband.
My husband has made me a better person.
He has filed off my rough edges you could say by his influence.
Maybe your spouse is also doing this for you and it is God’s plan for you.
After all these years I have an empty nest .
I am able to go to mass each day and spend a lot of time in prayer.
So I think I got my first wish and then some.
So be patient and see what God has in store for you.
It is better than what you could ever imagine or want.

Wait, Michelle - in the sentence you shared from the catechism——-“The comparison between religious life and secular life is not a comparison between good and evil, but between good and better”——wouldn’t the sentence structure meant that religious life=good; secular life=better? 
I’ll take your word for the BC’s overall interpretation/explanation; I was just puzzled by your use of that sentence to explain your post, though.

StephC, I totally agree with you, but I didn’t write the Catechism!  There are two full pages of examples: this is good, this is better…each one depicting religious life as better, but that sentence does make it seem confusing.  Here’s a clearer quote: “The doctrine of the excellence of virginity and of celibacy, and of their superiority over the married state, was…revealed by our Divine Redeemer…; so too, it was solemnly defined as a dogma of divine faith by the holy Council of Trent” quoting Pope Pius XII, Encyclical on Sacred Virginity.  Pretty strong words!

It’s true that the Church teaches that consecrated life is better (in a certain sense - someone mentioned St. Paul earlier and his explanation is a good one) than secular/married life.  But a couple of things to keep in mind about that if you’re feeling down about your vocation:
One is that the renouncing of marriage in favor of celibacy wouldn’t mean much if marriage wasn’t all that great to begin with.  The reason that vow matters so much is that the person is giving up a great good for a better one.  So no Willy Wonka meme from the Church about “Oh, you’re giving up marriage to be consecrated?  Tell me more about that so-called holiness in married life.”  Read Song of Songs if you want the Biblical view of the goodness of marriage…
Two, yes, *objectively* celibacy for the Kingdom is a higher vocation than marriage.  But no vocation takes place in a vacuum - there’s always a subject, the person being called.  And *for that person* called to marriage, marriage *is* the highest vocation.  That’s what God wants and that’s what will best bring about His kingdom.  I think that’s often what was behind some of the awful stories of mean nuns and priests from older generations: there was a false idea of marriage not being good enough, so people without a true calling pursued religious life anyway and were miserable - and made everyone else miserable too.
Three, sarah has an excellent point: where you are now is your vocation.  Even if you have legitimate worries that you didn’t give consecrated life enough consideration before you married, God works with our choices; He didn’t throw the towel in on your holiness when you married.  Where you are is where He wants you and your marriage is still a legitimate sign-post toward heaven. 
@Michelle, I used to use the BC when I was teaching and I loathed those vocation comparison pages and always pointed out to my students the problems there: the BC makes it look like married people buy whatever they want and “I will do as I wish with my own time” (isn’t that how they phrase it?)  But really, rather a lot of people here can speak to the poverty that is often a very real and scary part of raising a family - and as for “doing as I please”, you know as well as I do how that works out for parents of little kids!   The basic explanation of celibacy-for-the-kingdom vs. marriage is fine, but the illustrated examples were over the top for me.

I think we all may have thought “what if” at one time or another. I recently enjoyed this post, and thought you might like it as well as it seems to apply to the discussion:
http://www.wordonfire.org/WoF-Blog/WoF-Blog/April-2012/Spirituality-The-Grass-Is-Brown-On-Both-Sides.aspx

Anna, I agree that the pictures are over the top.  Yes, it does make it seem like being married is so easy, and so full of selfishness: “I get to spend the day the way I want.”  Because I WANT to change stinky diapers, mop spilled juice and listen to whiny children, right?  I attribute it to a different day and age and don’t get too worked up about it.  We use selections of the BC to reinforce the topics discussed in the Faith and Life Series for religious education and don’t really go over a lot of the verbiage in the BC lessons.  I’ve had my kids memorize certain Q&A and I’ve found their distilled answers perfect for a quick response to frequent questions/situations (for example, during Lent we often quoted the one about who was obliged to abstain from meat - “All Catholics who have passed their fourteenth birthday…”), but I prefer the Faith and Life series for a more contemporary presentation of issues and discussions.

Am I the only one who was completely unaware that this is what the church taught? I have skimmed the catechism before, and all my schooling was through Catholic schools. I was always taught that they were equally important. For the first time ever I am truly cheated by the church, and like its possibly something I don’t want to be apart of.

Hang on there, anon!  I’m with you in that this one caught me off guard, but let’s just take it slow and reflect a bit.  There are a heck of a lot of teachings that I’ve never heard of nor studied, but that doesn’t mean it’s being hidden from me.  Perhaps doing a careful and thorough study, over time, with prayer & the Holy Spirit, will reveal more to you?

anon, do you mean to say that you think the Church is saying that marriage is not a worthy vocation and that if you aren’t a priest or nun that you are no good?  Please don’t listen to a few select quotations, take them out of context, and leave the Church based on that.  Martyrdom may be a fine and noble thing, but the Church does not demand that of everybody - or even anybody.  The catechism is over-simplifying an extremely complex discussion - keep in mind this is for school children.  The Church has a vast depository of information that can not be boiled down to 250 pages!!  Marriage is a holy and glorious thing.  Marriage can lead us closer to God and can be the means to our sanctification.  Marriage is demanding and sacrificial…however, the religious life is (arguably, I suppose) MORE demanding and MORE sacrificial.  If a religious vocation is “harder”, the presumption is that it is “holier.”  Think about Martha and Mary and how Christ told Martha that Mary had chosen the “better part.”  He wasn’t saying that preparing and serving food to guests wasn’t important - only that listening to Him was MORE important.  Of course, Martha also listened to Christ, but she was also practical and concerned about “this” world.  Mary was able to ignore the needs of this world to focus solely on Christ.  But they still would have been hungry and in need of supper!

Anon, i’m so sorry you feel like this :(  Please don’t blame the Church tho, for bad catechesis - you deserved (and still do!) to know the fullness of Her teaching.  I’m sorry you were cheated out of it! :(

Have you ever listened to Danielle Rose’s song The Saint that Is Just Me?  If not, look it up on Youtube.  It is beautiful and I think it may offer you some consolation.  I agree with all the other posters - you are living YOUR vocation and everyday Jesus is providing you with opportunities to grow into a saint.  I’m reminded how St. Therese’s parents prayed and prayed for a son who would be a priest.  They did not get a son, but they got a daughter who would influence far more people than a simple parish priest would have.  God works in mysterious ways, but His ways are always the best. 

Michelle, of course I think Priests and Nuns are a great thing. But better or holier are not words I would necessarily choose. I would think they are both essential and incomparable. I would not say that being ordained is more difficult. They both have their challenges but should not be compared. Ugh I am so frustrated and feel like I have been completely ignorant.

Anon, the “better” and “holier” don’t refer to the individuals in any vocation; it’s just that marriage is the sign-post (which in heaven will not exist as we know it, i.e.: the Gospel passage about how those in heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage) and the wedding feast of the Lamb is the reality that the sign points to.  So the consecrated life is the objectively higher vocation since it’s the participation in that marriage between us and God (though that will only be consummated and perfected in heaven).

But both vocations lean on each other: we need the consecrated people to keep us oriented to our goal - our spouse is not the end goal, the relationship with God is.  They continually point us to that “better part.”  But we have a task too: to show the consecrated people what marriage really is.  If they are wedded to Christ/the Church (depending on whether we’re talking consecrated people or priests), then they need that relationship to be like a real marriage, sharing not just the honeymoon moments, but the “everyone has a stomach virus” moments and the “well, nothing really happened today, here we are just plugging along” moments, and the funny moments, and everything.  It’s easy to make a relationship with God be all theoretical and only-the-good-parts and all either Good Friday or Easter (and not all that time in the other 3 years of his ministry) and forget that it really has to be as total and “mundane” as marriage is.  Both vocations are essential to the life of the Church and the world - so God calls some people to one and some to the other.
And, Michelle, sorry, I didn’t mean to knock your BC reference (it is a handy distillation); it was just that their proposed dichotomy always made me laugh, given those diapers and spills and all you mentioned.  Most of my students, given that I was teaching at a residential treatment center, weren’t headed for consecrated life, so I spent our time with those pages trying to point out that marriage wasn’t the easy way out, or the path to take if you didn’t pray much or something, but that they would need the same virtues to get married and have kids as they would need to be consecrated.  If they saw marriage (or even single life or single parenthood) in the selfish view presented by those illustrations (though not by the Q&A text), they’d just end up perpetuating the cycle which got them to my classroom.  That always threw my boys for a loop when I pointed out that their reasons for themselves not making good priests would make them not good *men* - they’d need virtue for any vocation or job.  Anyway, for anyone else reading this part, the BC text is a fine brief explanation of the hierarchy of vocations, but the illustrations might be less than helpful if you’re feeling like your vocation of marriage and motherhood is inferior. 

Thanks, Anna.  I would also like to point out that all my quoting was directed at the anon wife who was feeling that the religious life/celibacy was holier, because I think she had discerned something which many of us were unaware of, and wanted to let her know that her feelings were correct (but that she needed to focus on her vocation as a wife).  To anon and anyone else feeling like they are ignorant, please remember that God is INFINITE.  I believe that St Thomas Aquinas, who wrote volumes and volumes of theological works and is named a Doctor of the Church for his writings, was also frustrated and overwhelmed by how very little he truly knew about God.  We CAN’T know everything.  Yes, I do think that religious formation of the 70’s and 80’s was particularly lacking - I remember learning about how the rosary was supposed to be meditation on “mysteries” - events in the life of Christ, when I was nearly 30!  This is why I feel that parents - no matter where their children attend school - need to be deeply involved in the religious formation of their children: not only will the children received individual attention and specific instruction, but the parents will learn the faith as well.  I learn new stuff every school year, even when I go over things with my younger kids, I still pick up new insights.  We have all of eternity to learn everything there is to know about God, which is to say that it will never be done!

I second everyone who has said that the best vocation for any person is the one God has called that person to do. It’s far more about fulfilling God’s will than whether we’re choosing the “good” or “better” vocation - how are we being “holier” if what we’re doing is not what God wants us to do?

I recommend reading “Holiness for Housewives” and “The Apostolate of Holy Motherhood”.

Yes, thanks for asking. She had the surgery to remove her tumor on Tuesday morning. The surgery went well, and she is recovering. Her surgeon assures her that she is recovering as expected, but she has a long road ahead of her. Her mobility on her left side is limited, and she is experiencing some memory issues, although her doctors think these problems will be resolved with time and therapy. She also has some swelling right now, which is a normal side effect from the surgery and should subside over time. In general, her husband is optimistic, but these have been difficult days for them, and I think there are more difficult days to come. As her friend, I thank you for your prayers and concern and ask that you keep praying. I hope to be able to visit her at the hospital next week (or as soon as she is up to it), and I will pass along the prayers and good wishes of this community.

I will pray for you!  Before such talks, I pray a lot and I rehearse exactly what I want to say, try to anticipate how my husband will react, and adjust accordingly.  So, if I think he will get defensive, then I try to rephrase it so it doesn’t seem accusing.  If it is something that will hurt his feelings, I really work hard to make my tone helpful, not nasty.  If I expect him to react poorly no matter how I phrase it, then I practice MY reactions to his reactions and how I can continue to be calm or suggest he take some time to think about the news/situation and not get drawn into an ugly scene.

Monica, I will pray for you.
I’ve both heard & read about, as well as experienced in my own marriage, the benefit of not having difficult discussions face-to-face.  Sitting next to each other, holding hands on the couch, sitting outside next to each other in the back yard, talking a walk, even just positioning chairs so that you can see his face, but he can feel free to look elsewhere may help you both.  It has something to do with men’s experience of challenge/confrontation & defensiveness/fight instinct?  Not sure I can express it too well.  Sometimes we even start out on either end of the couch, giving simultaneous footrubs!  Something about having a pleasant activity to perform with our hands & receive at the same time can keep a conversation moving along.
I know that if there’s a chance I’ll be getting teary-eyed, it helps b/c then it completely eliminates everything that triggers for both of us.
Good luck, Monica.

Praying!