I Have A Say Thanks to My Mom and Dad!!!

Being the oldest of 11, I am so thankful, especially now, for my Mom and Dad saying "yes" to life! Growing up, we never had a ton of money. My Dad was a high school chemistry teacher and my parents decided from the beginning that they wanted to have one of them home with us. My mom gave up her teaching career, and raised me, followed by 10 others! My Mom also taught all 11 of us at home for part of our childhood before we would head off to Nativity Catholic Grade School. My Dad worked long hours, eventually earning other degrees so that he could first become dean, then principal, and finally, when I was a sophomore, he was named Roncalli High School's first president. My Dad and Mom both sacrificed SO MUCH for us.

I remember, even as a young person, getting stared at by people, and I remember the comments they would make. I can still hear a dental receptionist asking my Mom "Are these all yours? You know how children are made right?" followed by a real insidious but ditzy chuckle, followed by a secretarial gum crackle. My Mom and Dad were always tight budget wise, and I'm sure at times ached with a desire to not have to take bags of clothes from other families so that we could have clothes. I'm sure my Mom and Dad had desires to simply go to Nordstrom and buy us and give us all our own new clothes and Gameboys and Reebok Pumps etc. I'm sure they at times really wished they could just get a new car and not have to drive a fifteen passenger van around. I'm sure at times they wanted really badly to just go to a restaurant and sit back and enjoy a big expensive meal instead of having to cut coupons and craft together economic meals on the stove.

But they chose life for us, and they chose sacrifice for themselves.

I often think about that ditzy secretary now when our family gets together almost every weekend for dinner to laugh and hang out. Some of the siblings might be out of town or busy with other obligations, but inevitably, all weekend long, every weekend, our family gets together. Sometimes, when we're out at a restaraunt, I see the couples who are alone with each other. They hardly talk to each other and the loneliness is palpable. A part of me feels bad that we're having so much fun with our 8 tables shoved together, telling stories, laughing good hearty and healthy laughs. Sometimes I wonder if one of the couples sitting in the restaurant quietly and solemnly is that dental secretary - who now has piles of money and can eat wherever she wants, but doesn't have hardly anyone to share it with. My heart breaks for the people who are alone, especially the ones who are alone because, when they could have been having children, they instead bought into the contraception lie and lived for themselves only.

I have a say today, and so do my ten younger brothers and sisters, because my parents chose life. Mom and Dad - thanks a million!!!

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Michelle Lynch - Mother of 16

    I have a say, and I say I am proud to be a Catholic woman, a member of the Church which speaks up for those who are denied a voice.  As the 3rd in a family of  7 children, one of whom died shortly after birth, I have a say because my parents were open to life.  My younger brother and sister are alive because my parents remained open to life despite the difficulties presented by Rh incompatibility before the finding and implementation of Rhogam therapy.  As the mother of 16, five of whom have died before birth, I have a say, and I say that each and every one of my children has been a precious gift from a loving God, despite the sorrow we have endured at each loss.  I have a say and I say that the daughter who was stillborn at 20 weeks was not a parasite, nor a blob of tissue, but a beautiful baby, and no one will ever convince my older children who held the body of their tiny sister to say hello and goodbye that an unborn child is not a person.  I have a say and I say that I grieved for each of the 4 children I miscarried.  Their lives were not of no consequence .  Their lives, no matter how short had significance.
    I have a say, and I say that there is no love without sacrifice and service.  I say we are aborting the very lives that have the most important lessons to teach us, the lessons of compassion and love with no strings attached.  I say we are becoming a society that has lost the use of reason all the more as we have become less and less compassionate.   I say it is time to stop this insanity of  calling enslavement to uncontrolled sexual desires "freedom".  True freedom is being able to choose that which we ought to do. 
   I have a say, and I say that I love all of my children, despite their flaws and sins, as I must...as my Father God has loved me despite my flaws and sins.  I say that being loved despite my sin does not mean that my sin is not sin from which I must repent.  I say it is not hatred or "phobia" to call a sin a sin, but rather an act of charity, for if we do not recognize our sin we will not repent from it.
   I have a say and I say that yes, many Catholic women have used contraception, many due to the well meant but wrong advice of their confessors, but that does not change the constant teaching of our Church that the use of contraception is intrinsically evil.  I also say that the 98%  dissenting of all Catholic women touted in the MSM is a very skewed and manipulated number.  Only 30% of the women in the survey who self identified as Catholic attended Mass weekly.  Any woman who was not sexually active was not included, thus leaving out all of the single women living a chaste life.  Any woman who was pregnant or trying to achieve a pregnancy or  who was postpartum was left out, thus leaving quite a number of the faithful young married Catholic women living chastity in their marriages.  Also left out were any women over 44 years old.  And thus it is reported that 98% of ALL Catholic women have used contraception...yet my math adds things up to say that percentage should be less than 89% of  the women included in the survey which used contraception, as it showed 11% used no birth control method. And the survey ignored the existence of faithful Catholic women!  I say it is time for the truth to be told! I further say that it does not matter in the least, as far as the rightness of the HHS contraception mandate goes and the matter of freedom of religion and conscience how many women fail to live up to the Church's teaching, it is still the teaching and it is still the truth and we cannot to provide contraceptives, sterilizations and abortifacient drugs to others.  I say it is time to stand up for the truth and expose the lies that are being perpetrated before it is too late for our country to survive.  I say it is time for our priests and bishops to proclaim the truth from the pulpits loudly and clearly and without fear.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you all for your wonderful words! Thank you Fr, John, for your blog. Thank you for "taking off the gloves" in this fight. May our Lord and His Loving Mother sustain all of you in this fight! My prayers are with you.
    A mom of 9 in So Cal

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