I am thinking way too much about it, but I am struggling with this whole “having a dog” aspect of my life. It’s one of those things, a detail you hear about someone else and you don’t give it much thought. “They have a dog,” you might think, “how nice.” And that’s the extent of it.

And then you get a dog. Maybe because you see all the other people who have dogs. Maybe because (in theory) it seems like something good. Maybe you want to teach your children responsibility (the WORST possible reason to get a dog) maybe because you want companionship (which is generally true of some folks but not of someone with six children, I am not really looking for more entities upon which to spread and share my love).

So that is the first question in your guilt-ridden mind: why did we get a dog? What was I thinking?

Here is the truth: I’m not really sure.

Last December, I was in the midst of Christmas and life and travel, a big trip to Boston to film The Gist. And this magazine comes in the mail, Garden and Gun (my favorite!). And somewhere in the magazine is a picture of past covers and it has this puppy on one cover and this puppy is just gorgeous.

“STOP. IT.” I can hear you saying this. “You did not seriously get a dog because you saw a cute dog on the cover of a magazine? Are you KIDDING ME?” Wow, you sound a lot like ME when you talk to me that way. Or maybe that’s me? Taking me to task?

So yes, I got it in my mind that this dog, this puppy, was just so cute and we needed this puppy in our life. Mind you, no other person in our household had any interest in a dog. Not at this point. Not before I introduced the whole idea to everyone. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I would say, “if we got a DOG?!” Um, sure, they would reply, before heading back out (again) to the basketball court. Or the backyard soccer field. Or out on their bikes to roam the neighborhood.

And then I’d go back to this vision of my sons with their dog, them sitting around in the backyard singing Kumbaya with Ethan on lead guitar, one of the boys petting the dog, everyone else seated around the dog just waiting their turn to pet the dog and love up on the dog and wait until the dog’s next feeding to be the person to measure out the kibble and feed the dog.

Wow! What a vision it was. I had an agenda — we NEED A DOG — and basically there was no convincing me otherwise.

Deep down I must have known how crazy I was. I hid my dog-searching ways from close friends, people who I knew would talk me out of it (or try to. HA HA! There would be none of that!). Because they knew my history and my clean-freak ways and also my inability to cope with chaos. That last one I don’t think is true and I don’t think they think that, but I do think for someone with five boys I have an amazingly limited ability to handle madness. I can handle five boys and a toddler girl. A dog? Not so much.

My history with dogs in our family is long and complicated and I thought “this time” would be different. I was going about this from a different angle, you see. That would be all the difference.

A brief recap: our first puppy ended very traumatically. I didn’t want to end on that note so I found another dog to take the first dog’s place. That ended badly because we basically got a feral dog. Then we got another dog (a few years later) that was not a good fit. Ironically I kept that third dog after it was the cause of Henry’s broken femur and seven weeks in a Spica cast — mostly because I was the root cause of that because I was the one who threw the ball that launched the dog that yanked the tether that broke Henry’s leg.

So all of that behind us, and this, THIS would be the time it all worked out. Right?

Except, here we are, six months in and I feel like I’m pulling my hair out.

And the worst part is: this dog? He is perfect. Like, if ever a family was going to have a dog, this would be the dog.

He is sweet and kind, he just wants to be with us. He thinks he IS us. In his mind he’s one of the children, just wanting to eat his food off a plate like everyone else. He wants to sit on the couch and watch How It’s Made like everyone else. He wants to get in the bathtub at bath time like everyone else.

And it’s driving me nuts.

Because here’s the truth, the deep dark secret dog lovers know but don’t tell you because honestly it just doesn’t bother them: a dog is like a child who will never grow up.

Today when Paul and I were hashing all this out on the phone, I told him, “Honey, it’s just that I am realizing this dog will  never learn to scoop out his own food or open his own kennel or open the door to go outside when he has to pee.”

Why do people get dogs? Because they love them. And I’m ashamed to admit that while I love dogs in theory, the practical side of owning a dog just doesn’t agree with me. It just doesn’t. You should see the look on my face as I type that. I am squishing up my mouth because the guilt and shame? It’s overwhelming.

What kind of a person doesn’t like having a dog? A selfish perfectionist, right? A non-fun-loving Mommy Dearest right? A tired-out overwhelmed woman with a bunch of kids?

I don’t know. The point of all this is not necessarily that we’re not keeping the dog. It’s that I have to make peace with my list of Pro’s and Con’s of Having a Dog. The one that looks like this

Con’s

• hair in house
• mud on outdoor cushions
• barking
• whimpering
• wants to get out of kennel the minute he hears me up in the morning
• follows me around everywhere
• we can’t eat dinner because he’s trying to jump on table
• yes, we can train him but that takes work
• I’d rather spend that time reading a book or painting my back door
• the back door he shredded because he is always trying to come inside
• and the list goes on

Pro’s

• Two of the boys really like having a dog
• Isabel tolerates the dog
• I can save face by not getting rid of the dog

We had a feast at my house the other night. It felt like a billion of my closest friends dropped by for dinner, but when I sit and actually count heads I realize there were only about twenty-five of us.

But still, twenty-five. Twenty-five is a big number when you consider all those people are your immediate family — your parents and their children and their children’s children. And that was with a few people missing.

When my family gets together it is animated and loud and exhausting. It’s also some of the most fun I ever have. We sit and laugh and talk and talk louder.

The occasion for this recent gathering was my brother’s surprise visit. He and his wife and their baby came in to see us all and they decided to surprise my parents. It was hard keeping that secret for so many weeks, tricky to be on the road to pick them up from the airport and not let on where I was headed when I pulled out of the driveway.

We surprised my dad at work and then drove the half-mile home to surprise my mom. I was in the car behind my dad and brother and by the time I rounded the corner towards the driveway my mom had already spotted my brother and was flying across the porch towards the car, her bright orange headscarf bobbing above the hedge.

I pulled in the driveway to see their tight embrace, my mom and brother hugging each other at last. This was his first time seeing her since she started her chemo and it was emotional and good.

That night we had the dinner at my house, those of us who were able to gather coming together. I sat there and looked at the faces of those around my table and realized this is what heaven feels like — being surrounded by the people you love so much, being filled with gratitude for the gift of these people in your life.

When I was younger, I had no idea I would grow up and consider my brothers and sisters as my friends. They drove me nuts, my younger siblings. I loved them, of course, but friends and siblings were two separate groups entirely.

And now, I count each and every one of these people among my favorites. I’m lucky because the people they’ve married are among my favorites too. Getting together with my family is some of the most fun I have.

But this doesn’t come naturally, and it isn’t always easy. When we were growing up, my parents worked hard to help us work on these relationships, to help sibling relating have the hope of friendship. It takes work and it takes training; a child must be taught communication tools and patience — but mostly love. It takes learning to have a heart of love for those in this great big world, but also right here in your own little home.

When I look at my brothers and sisters, when I think about the love I have for them and the love they have for me, I am excited and encouraged for my own children. I’m also committed to continuing the challenging task of training them to love each other, to be inspired by the way my parents taught us. My children — these boys, this girl — they have the opportunity to be among each others greatest allies.

Their best hope of that is to learn now to relate the way they should, to recognize the gift of family and the gift of siblings.

It isn’t always easy, it doesn’t happen overnight. But I look at the efforts of my mom and dad, how hard they worked to teach us to love and respect each other, and I know it’s possible. And I know it’s worth the effort.

This originally appeared in The Southern Cross.

I just looked out my study window to see Paul drive by in his truck. The back of his truck was filled with boys, about eight or nine of them, strategically wedged around a small dining room table. There was another boy on a bike bringing up the rear.

About thirty seconds later, another truck, another load of boys. This time, the freight was a small stacked washer/dryer with boys surrounding it.

I caught a glimpse of the faces, these young boys and pre-teens and teenagers. And they were smiling, all of them. They were spending their morning helping move a newlywed couple into their newly renovated home and these boys were learning that service can be fun. Helping others is part of living communal life.

Community draws us out of ourselves. We all go through seasons where we don’t necessarily need anything. It’s easy to feel like you are an island, that you can get done what you need to do. This is often the case, and it’s a very fine feeling. I personally love it when I’m able to do, on my own, all that I need to do.

But trust me when I say there have been many seasons when despite that desire, it just isn’t the case. We have new babies or we move or we support family members that need us. And we rely on those around us to help us get done the task before us.

It feels so good to be able to help others. I love training my boys — my children — that this is part of living the way God has called us to live. We are more than just us and our own needs. We are here for those around us, and those people are here for us.

Y’all. I’m either lazy or busy or setting the world on fire or watching it fly by. I can’t decide. I won’t bore you with a rundown of events of late, but I’d like to. But then I’d feel compelled to include pictures, the likes of which are still on my camera and that would require me a) standing up from the computer and b) tracking down the camera and c) putting the little card thingy into the computer which (backing up) would mean removing it from the camera itself. And never mind all the clicks and saves to actually pick and choose a photo.

Sigh. Like I said. Lazy or busy. You make the call.

I will get my act (which I just spelled “ack” if that explains anything) together and share some amazing pics from the big Social dance which I have always, every year, sort of hemmed and hawed about and then I show up to the dance and it’s amazing and I’m so glad we spend all the time and money doing it. Also, there are pics from my brother coming in to surprise my mom and dad! And all the revelry that these events involve (among the highlights? My new house summertime drink called The Balducci Summertime Drink, also known as a Moscow Mule in some circles).

In other news, I almost got killed yesterday.

Seriously, I’m not being melodramatic. I almost got totally taken out at a stoplight where I had the green light and another car flew through his red light, didn’t even slow down at all.

I was sitting at the light, waiting for it to change. I was multi-tasking, on the phone with my friend Mollie and also filling out a deposit slip for the bank. I was going to turn left at the light to go to the bank. So I was talking and writing and keeping an eye on the light.

The light turned green but no one was behind me so I sat for an extra three seconds to finish writing and when I looked up this SUV was right there in front of me, flying by full-speed-ahead.

“Oh my gosh,” I said to Mollie, “I almost just got taken out.”

She asked what happened and I told her and then I tried not to obsess. But it was hard. I mean, if I had even inched out to turn that guy would have crushed me. Like ME. Not my van, not some random portion. It would have been the part of my van where I was sitting.

“How creepy,” I said to Mollie, “if we had been on the phone and I had been hit?”

I actually started feeling worse for Mollie, the thought of how traumatic that would be.

“And I wouldn’t have even known where you were,” she said and the two of us were getting not too worked up but just enough that it was kind of making me rub my temples and squint my eyes. Must. Get. Image. Out. Of. Head.

After a minute or two we went back to our previous conversation, the one we were having before the light incident and there you go.

This morning I was telling Paul about all this, getting fixated (once again) on how terrible it would have been for Mollie to hear that crash, how scary and traumatic.

“Well that definitely sounds like something that could be on that Oxygen channel,” said Paul, “or maybe Lifetime.”

So there’s that.

Imagine my surprise and glee when I opened The Southern Cross this afternoon to see The Gist ladies smiling back at me! We got a shout-out from our diocesan newspaper! How nice!

And now we move from receiving a shout-out to sending one. Our good friend Chris — one of Paul’s very dearest friends — has been in town this week all the way from California. He tells me his daughter is a big fan of this blog, which honors me so. Thank you, Jess, for being a loyal and faithful Testosterhome fan and give your mama a big kiss for me!

I was feeling all sheepish about how much joy this crossed-off To Do list was bringing into my heart. And then Sarah at Clover Lane posted a pic of her To Do list and I felt such glee for her that I realized, it’s just how some of us roll. (also, I whole-heartedly agree with her sentiments on the family dog. I was up early this morning having those very thoughts.)

Oh what a feeling!

At a recent community retreat, Uncle Pat came up to me with a piece of paper covered with writing.

“Am I forgetting anybody,” he asked, putting the paper in front of me.

What he had written, what covered that piece of paper, were the names of all the religious vocations to come out of this community. And there were a lot.

That, to me, speaks to the fruit of living a communal lifestyle.

On the paper were Catholic priests and nuns, but also a wide-range of non-Catholics as well. And can I say here that sometimes I use the term ‘non-Catholic’ because I don’t want to mess up with the other denominations? Paul told me the other day, after I wrote that we had some Presbyterians, that we actually don’t have any Presbyterians here. But for your consideration, here is something I saw in the community office the other day, hanging in the main conference room. It’s a list of all the denominations of our members:

Very awesome.

So back to vocations. There are a good number of them to come out of our community. Not all of these men and women are still living here — in fact, many of them go on to spread the Gospel outside of our little neighborhood. We do have several priests who are “members” of our community, even though they are off being diocesan priests. But among those who have spent time here, who grew up here and have gone on to do other things, and those still belonging and living here, we have a Jesuit priest, two Carmelite nuns, at least six diocesan priests, a Lutheran pastor, FOCUS missionaries, deacons, an Episcopal bishop and the list goes on.

Here is an article written recently in the Serra Club newsletter for our diocese, covering a talk given by Sam Alzheimer. Sam runs Vianney Vocations, and he also grew up here in our community.

Our speaker at the November Serra Club meeting was Sam Alzheimer of Vianney Vocations. Sam was born in Warner Robins, but lived most of his life in Augusta. He attended Berry College in Rome and Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. A former seminarian for the Diocese of Savannah, he started Vianney Vocations in 2009. In his talk Sam discussed “Effective Strategies to Increase Priestly Vocations.

He began with the question, “Why did I start Vianney Vocations?”

“I used to work on the stewardship side of things when I noticed that some parishes spent more on educating their members about good stewardship than the entire diocese spent on promoting vocations. The priest abuse scandal is a public relations disaster, which makes it uncomfortable to talk about and promote vocations to the priesthood.  But as a result of the scandal men are less likely to consider a priestly vocation, because of the priest abuse issue.”

“Why do we need priests?” he continued.

“Without priesthood there is no Eucharist.

And without Eucharist there is no Church!”

Sam next reviewed the statistics which confirmed the urgency of priest shortage. In 1965, the Catholic population in the United States was 45 million and it now stands at about 70 million.   Over that same period, the number of priests has declined steeply from 59,000 to only 40,000 in 2010.  And the number of religious sisters has dropped precipitously from 180,000 to below 60,000. This is astounding! How often did some of those sisters influence a young man to consider becoming a priest? Although the number of men attending major seminaries has remained relatively flat this is by no means sufficient to serve the growing number of Catholics in the years ahead.

The priest abuse scandal made it more difficult to talk about the need for priest when some priests behaved so badly. In response to decline in the number of priests, many bishops stopped building parishes, closed churches and clustered parishes.  Sam stressed that we need to tell the bad news without focusing on doom and gloom but rather trusting in the Holy Spirit and doing our part to improve the situation.

“We are doing somewhat better in the Diocese of Savannah?” Sam continued.  “Our Catholic population has grown significantly since 1958 from only 25,000 to about 80,000 today and is projected to reach 100,000 by 2020. During the same period, the number of active priests has fluctuated between 80 to 100 and we stand at 100 today. Any attrition we experienced from retirements and deaths was been offset by external priests from Poland, Nigeria, Vietnam and Latin America to coming to serve in our diocese. Our current ratio of 1 priest to 1300 people. In order to sustain that ratio we need ordain three new priests per year which will require accepting 5 new seminarians per year, assuming the 60% attrition rate.”

“How can we do this and what can the Serra Club do to help?” Sam continued.

“Personal witness brings people into a closer personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The Alleluia Community in Augusta has produced 6 priests and 6 seminarians in the past 15 years. 

Pope Benedict has said that if a young people can be taught to pray, they can be trusted to know what to do with God’s plan. It takes a church to raise a priest.” Sam concluded.

The discussion ensued about how to engage the pastors to be more supportive of promoting vocations in their respective parishes.

In response, Sam offered us seven ideas to promote vocations:

1. Promote and support discernment retreats

2. Help reach high school men in the Savannah area i.e. Benedictine

3a. Hold a Vocations Convocation Workshop

3b. Sponsor a dinner with the Bishop and high school students.

4. Promote vocations among altar servers

5. Melchizedek Project – Discussion guide to help discern vocations.

6. Celebrate the Vocation Annual Liturgical events

7. Invitation – Ask young men to consider the priesthood.

Sam gave us a lot to consider.

I think Sam gets to the heart of community living — personal witness. It’s making Jesus come alive, in a very real way. Yes, knowing and understanding the faith is key but in order to be really moved by it, to make it something you’re willing to put your whole heart and soul into, it has to be a living, breathing thing.

Community proves that this is possible, that Jesus can really transform you in a way that touches every minute of every day.

I want to close with a beautiful quote from a friend I recently interviewed. I was doing an obit for the diocesan paper on Dennis and Dan Almeter, a leader in our community, mentioned something that speaks to the heart of WHY community is so important.

“Dennis liked to say ‘everybody needs to be in covenant community,’” said Dan, “and what he meant was in the last millennium almost all the saints came from religious communities. New covenant communities are a modern expression of these communities. If you want to become a saint, this was the best way to go about it.”

See if you can spot them all!

~An almost-summertime Watermelon girl
~seersucker outfits with a butterfly on the strap
~pigtails!
~large black trash bags, hauling out the junk
~the Magnificat
~lists
~my moleskin notebook
~books from the library, especially Newberry winners!

p.s. another of my favorites is my dad. It’s his birthday today and some of the family is about to come over for dinner. I love you dad. I could not have asked for a better daddy.

UPDATED TO ADD: When I spoke with Henry’s teacher Sarah today, she had just read my blog. She was excited because yesterday she told the kids that the wall is indeed their best friend, especially if they are feeling tired or nervous about the water. So Henry remembered! Thanks, Sarah, for being an inspiring water instructor!

Henry is taking swim lessons after school this week and next week. It’s very exciting because he gets to go home with his friend Gideon every day and play in his pool. Yippee!

I always enjoy having these kinds of activities on the horizon because my goodness the leverage you can get with some of this stuff. I won’t go into it because it might make me look bad, but how ’bout let me spin it all positive like and say we use the fun stuff to “encourage” good behavior. And it totally works.

But for as much as we had been counting down the days to swim lessons, it turns out that Henry was feeling a tad reluctant about the pool. Sarah, his instructor, told me he acted very sure of himself (as is his personality, oh my goodness is it ever) but when it was time to dive in so to speak, he wasn’t quite as amped.

“I blame the broken femur,” I explained to Sarah, adding that I blame the broken femur for a great many things. It makes me a little sad because honestly there are a few random fears that just totally do not jive with the rest of Henry’s ways. Fireworks and our pediatrician looking in his ears prime among them. Note to self: keep praying for Henry, for healing from fear.

On the way home from getting the big boys at school, I was telling them all about Henry’s swim practice and how AWESOME it is going to be, right guys, isn’t it awesome that Henry gets to do this?!

I subtly explained to the older brothers that Henry was not totally into it, that we really needed to encourage him in this endeavor so he could get to swimming and be ready for the summer.

“He’s going to do great,” I said within earshot of Henry, “we just need to keep telling him what a brave big boy he is!”

“Henry,” said Elliott with great love, “don’t forget that water is your best friend.”

“Actually,” Henry replied, “the wall is my best friend.”

I just found this picture of myself at Catholictv.com and it might be my favorite ever. If you know me IRL (in real life, for all you non-techies, ahem) you will likely agree this is pretty much me?

Here’s the more hard hitting, dignified version:

Speaking of which, I will be speaking in Statesboro, Georgia (or “the ‘Boro” as we call it down yonder) next Monday, May 7. If you’re interested in details please email me. I’m speaking at a dinner for Moms and Daughters, all are welcome, but the organizers need a headcount by tomorrow (April 30).