Back when I was blogging regularly, whenever my husband Dan found me working on a piece of writing, he used to tease, “Let me guess … something about laundry?”
So maybe I wrote about laundry a little bit.

I bet you’re not judging me. After all, the laundry we shall always have with us. Every woman knows this truth, though every one of us does her best to avoid it.

(This is baby Daniel! Daniel! Who is now 9 years old. I need a minute …)

For better or for worse, at least for me, the laundry is a pretty good barometer for how the rest of my life is going. If laundry is mostly caught up and clean clothes are where they should be, i.e., NOT in piles on chairs in my bedroom, then you can safely guess that I am feeling pretty good and top of things. If the laundry is all manner of “not caught up” and “not where it should be,” then you can safely offer to bring me a glass of wine, because the rest of my life is quite surely a stinky, smelly, wrinkly, neglected mess …

Read the rest of this week’s newsletter and subscribe, so you never miss an issue.

After receiving my first newsletter last week, a reader sent me the following:

Your message was spot on about Wonder Woman, but sometimes I forget to do some of these things and get frustrated. I had my 7th baby in January of this year and ever since, I feel more like Horriblewoman, forgetting things, feeling overwhelmed, wanting to sign up to help out at moms groups, but winding up not even going because the two I have at home with me (8 mos and 2 1/2 years) are just too much for me to now manage.

At one point in my younger journey as mom, I had 4 under the age of 5 and could get 10 things accomplished at once! My five school age children (15, 14, 12, 10, 7) are so busy at school and each have one activity they’re involved in (we really only can handle one activity per child and it seems they all are fall sports/activities this year), but I can’t shake this feeling of inadequacy. It’s really as though baby #7 sucked all the desire, ability, and action out of me.

I think every mom can relate to these sentiments. And truly, when I write about every mom being Wonder Woman, I do mean every mom — especially those who are struggling and feeling inadequate. That’s when we most need the reminder that we are everyday heroes in our homes and families.

Sometimes being that hero means nothing more than getting yourself out of bed in the morning and signing on for another go-around on the ride of life. Sometimes being a hero means “just” nursing that fussy baby or “just” folding one more basket of laundry or “just” managing to keep everyone fed and clothed in whatever way you can manage that day.

We all have times in our lives where we feel on top of things and in control. And we all have times in our lives when we feel inadequate, overwhelmed, and desperate for support. It’s during the more trying times that we must admit something that’s been true all along — that the feeling of control we sometimes enjoy is only a pleasant illusion. Every one of us is dependent upon the grace of God every minute of every day. We are nothing, we accomplish nothing, we are worth nothing without Him.

As for your personal situation, I would encourage you to accept the fact that there is not a lot of “extra” you can manage right now. Personally speaking, I find having older children at the same time as having younger children and juggling multiple outside activities to be absolutely depleting in a way that the “many babies” years were not. It’s okay to admit how hard it sometimes is.

Each stage of motherhood and family life comes with its own unique challenges and joys. What you describe your family as right now sounds like a very full and demanding life! Being Wonder Woman right now does not mean taking on more responsibilities or helping out anyone but your own family.

God has uniquely qualified YOU to be a perfect gift to your family. You are the wife and mother he means to be the heart of your home. He has given you unique gifts of strength, compassion, love, and sensitivity that you are meant to use in the service of your family right now.

The devil would love to use this opportunity to convince you that you are not a good mom and you are failing at the important stuff. He lies. You need to be too busy living out your vocation and loving your family to hear anything he has to say. Focusing on working for your family and offering it up for the greater glory of God makes you a super hero, my friend.

Wear the bracelet, Mama, and wear it proud.

Are you Wonder Woman? I am.

Okay, maybe not really. All I know is the other day on the highway, the kids and I were following a car with the license plate “WDRWMN” and I could not help but think:

“That should be my car!”

Whether or not we are willing to admit it, we all play Wonder Woman sometimes.

Maybe it was this morning when you resisted the urge to hit the snooze button, got your butt out of bed, packed lunches, made breakfasts, and kissed everyone goodbye as they headed out the door …

(Read more and subscribe to the Danielle Bean newsletter to receive a new message every week!)

I am so excited to share this video which gives you a sneak peak at some of the video elements of the Momnipotent Study — soon to be released!

My dad was visiting this past weekend and in the process of discussing book promotions, he asked me about blogging.

“You never do blog anymore do you?”

“No.”

“Because it’s a waste of time?”

Well now, there’s a question. Blogging may not be the hippest platform authors use to promote their books, but it surely is not a waste of time for anyone who enjoys blogging, or reading blogs, or commenting on blogs, or whatever else you kids are doing with blogs these days.

I have only not been writing here because at the end of every day, I am fresh out of time. And also, with the growing young people under my roof, fresh out of material that is fit for blogging. No toddler ever cried foul when his mom posted pictures of him in the tub (not that I did that!) but older kids have a real right to privacy (except on Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat where they post absolutely everything — but it’s what they’re CHOOSING to share — you see the difference, I am sure).

But anyway, I thought I should update this space with a bit about my latest project with Ascension Press: Momnipotent, the book and the study.

You are participating in the daily discussions at Momnipotent, aren’t you? You can also sign up to get the posts sent to your email inbox, if that works best for you.

The book (read an excerpt!) and parish study (order a risk-free preview for your parish!) will be released this spring and are now available for pre-order. I am so excited to share them with you! Here’s a little promo that tells you more about the project.

[I found an old photo of Kateri and her beloved pet Speckly on my computer recently and posted it on Facebook. Seeing it made a friend recall and request this old column of mine about the two of them. So here it is.]

It finally happened. I was dreading this day. Speckly is dead.

For those who didn’t have the pleasure of meeting her while she was alive, I should explain that Speckly was a Speckled Sussex hen. That’s right, a chicken. A charming, mottled brown and white feathered hen with an affinity for grasshoppers and Japanese beetles. And at 5 years old, she was a quintessential old biddy.

Years ago, when Dan and I decided to let the kids raise a flock of laying hens, we never could have anticipated the antics and attachments that would follow. We’ve combated carnivorous creatures from foxes to raccoons. We’ve encountered swooping owls and sharp-eyed hawks. We’ve had rowdy roosters that loved the children but would have gladly eaten me for lunch. We’ve had Houdini hens who kept us devising ever more elaborate systems of cooping and containment. We’ve had the high drama of nursing ailing chickens back to good health, one medicine dropper at a time.

And we’ve had fun. Lots of it. We’ve had the pleasure of pampering the “ladies” with cool bubble baths on hot summer days, the thrill of treating the flock to cake and ice cream on high feast days, the joy of giving hens rides in sleds, wagons, and bicycle baskets, and the excitement of hatching baby chicks from eggs and watching them grow … into a new generation of raucous roosters and happy hens.

The coop has seen many birds come and go through the years, but none were as important to my oldest daughter as her beloved pet Speckly. Speckly was Kateri’s very first pet. The first animal she called her own and named all by herself. The first animal she loved.

Of course we knew this day was coming. When the kids called to me this afternoon with shouts about the hen’s demise, I dreaded the task that lay ahead. I walked to the coop in sober silence, opened the door to a nest box, and found the old bird. Her feathers were ruffled and dirty. Her eyes were closed. When I lifted her into a bag, her body was stiff and heavy. As I carried the hen across our field, several children followed at my heels. We stopped at an appropriate gravesite and I cut into the soft earth with a shovel.

Dust to dust. This was just a chicken, I thought to myself as I dug. Just a chicken. But one look at my daughter’s swollen eyes told me there was more to it than that.

Worse than any pain we might experience ourselves are the sorrows we parents must watch our children suffer. We want to protect these small souls. And yet we want them to love — to embrace every good thing with all their tiny hearts — and to love means to risk the pain of loss.

All were quiet as I turned over the soil. I paused and let Eamon help with the digging while somber Stephen stood alongside, his eyes squinting in the late day sun.

When the burial was complete, I suggested a prayer.

“Thank you God,” I began.

And then what I wanted to say was: Thank you for the foretaste of heavenly joy you give us through even your smallest creatures. Thank you for helping us to understand that to love means to risk getting hurt, but that it’s worth loving anyway. Thank you for the gift of free will, so that we might choose to love you, a choice that will never cause us pain or sorrow. Thank you for the reminder that we all must die one day and that we should live this life with the next in mind. Thank you for the gift of eternal life, for loving us unworthy humans so perfectly that you were willing to die on a cross in order to win us victory over pain, death, and sin forever.

But I choked on those words. I couldn’t say them. And yet, somehow, as my children’s small hands pressed the soil down upon that grave, as they fixed a handmade cross of sticks and string upon that mound of fresh earth, I think they understood these words as clearly as if I had said them. Sometimes the most important lessons we learn are ones that go unspoken.

“Thank you, God,” was all I managed to say.

And my children, with unwavering voices, answered, “Amen.”

My high school physics class never made much sense to me. In fact, there is only one thing I learned in that class that still sticks with me after all these years–the idea of entropy or the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Systems tend to go from a state of order to a state of maximum disorder.

Finally. After endless pages of meaningless numbers and symbols and equations, here at last was something that actually made some sense. In fact, the truth of this law has only become more evident to me in the years since high school. A house containing small children is one of the clearest examples of entropy you could ever hope to find.

Toy boxes overflow. Kids’ closets don’t stay organized. The ability of my kitchen counters to collect and grow junk never ceases to amaze me, and once a week, when I give my bathroom a thorough cleaning, I am astounded by the fact that–once again–it really, really needs it. Left to their own devices, messes multiply: Toys scatter, juice spills, and dirt accumulates. If I don’t constantly work at returning things to a state of order, the house will always end in a state of maximum disorder.

It occurred to me recently that this same principle of entropy applies to our spiritual lives as well as the physical state of the universe. If we don’t work continually at improving ourselves and making advances in our prayer lives, we drift all too easily in the opposite direction, toward chaos. Small faults and neglects, if not attended to, eventually lead us into bigger sins, and then still larger ones follow from those. So, the tendency of our homes and our children toward disorder is a healthy reminder. Choose carefully: By work or by neglect, we are all moving in one direction or the other.

You can support our work at Catholic Digest and own a piece of Church history. Order your copy of the Catholic Digest special commemorative issue — Pope Francis: The People’s Pope. This stunning, full-size, 54-page, photo-filled issue is available for only $4.95, with bulk rates as low as $1.95 available for your parish or group.

There are a limited number of copies available of this special issue. Order your copy today.