Weekly Links: September, Stumbling, and more

My weekly round-up of good reading for (what's left of) your weekend.


"September Seasonal Plans": I myself have been falling down in my duty to write about the change from summer to fall (probably because it's still ridiculously hot here and the trees don't look like they're even thinking about dropping their leaves), but you should go over to Shirley's place and read about all the wonderful autumnal things you can now reasonably enjoy.

"When You Stumble and Fall":

On some level, I carry on all week sinning and being awful and hauling the burden of those sins around with me without too much trouble or discomfort. It’s not like I’m always sitting at my kitchen table, stricken and afflicted, because of my selfish unkindness, my bitter unforgiveness of others. But that I carry them around myself presently, doesn’t mean that it will always be so. Jesus is the judge. He is the king. If I don’t give them to him to carry now, I will have to go on carrying them forever, and then the burden will be intolerable, and I will have to tolerate it. 

"Why the Key Character in 'Inside Out' Is the One that Isn't There":

Admittedly, there's something very lonely about Inside Out if you compare its external structure and Riley's journey through her physical world to traditional kids' movies. There's no Donkey from Shrek or Abu from Aladdin or Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King cheering her up with "Hakuna Matata." This respect for the role of melancholy in the lives of kids is very Pixar, but it's particularly acute here: There are no other Incredibles, there is no EVE, there is no Dug the dog. Riley's allies and boosters in this adventure are not made or met along the way; they are summoned. They are hers — in fact, they are her. 

"I, Tertius":

For my money, the Epistle to the church in Rome–the book of Romans more commonly–is the finest, most important letter in church history. Certainly in the canon. So who wrote this tremendous piece of work? The apostle Paul, right? Actually, no. That’s a bit of a trick question. Paul is the author–it is full of his words and thoughts–but the writer is another chap we only find out about towards the end of the letter ...

"Our Reading Life":

So our reading life is reading for life; reading as the experience of the literary art which focuses and localizes a reality that is apparently too grand and overwhelming for us to give our full attention to with such immediacy. Reading great books is a chance to face reality through the prism of carefully crafted objects of art tested by time and worthy of our attention. We don’t bring fully formed faculties to the task; we open our still-forming eyes and ears to things we hadn’t previously known in their wild form. We learn reality by joining the human community that is already talking about it.

"Kim Davis: the Guts of a Convert":

We are Christians first, before we are Americans. So before we start talking about whether this is a good religious liberty case, or not, before we start distancing our educated selves from her simple faith, and before we take to the internet to show the liberal gestapo that we really are for the “rule of law” and that Kim Davis is a simpleton of a Christian who should have resigned before embarrassing us Christians—let's just step back from this fog and think with a faithful mind.

Weekend Links: Drawing, the BCP, the feast of the Ascension, and more!

Some interesting reading for your weekend, from around the Web:

"Why you should stop taking pictures on your phone – and learn to draw":

So if drawing had value even when it was practised by people with no talent, it was for Ruskin because drawing can teach us to see: to notice properly rather than gaze absentmindedly. In the process of recreating with our own hand what lies before our eyes, we naturally move from a position of observing beauty in a loose way to one where we acquire a deep understanding of its parts.

"The Book of Common Prayer Remains a Force: An Interview with Alan Jacobs":

. . . you really can’t have a higher view of the authority and sufficiency of Scripture than Cranmer did. The Book of Common Prayer adds nothing to Scripture and is not the means of salvation. It was meant just to provide a form of words and actions to guide and direct public worship. It should be remembered that very few Christians, at that point in the mid-sixteenth century, practiced extemporaneous worship. Almost everyone used set forms. Cranmer just wanted the Church of England’s to be in understandable English and to be derived as closely as possible from the Bible.

"A Bachelorette Composer Reveals How He Drums Up Drama and Romance on Reality TV": Yes, it's about The Bachelorette, but I found it interesting to read how the composer for the show purposefully manipulates the viewers' emotions through music. It's one of those things you already know goes on, but it's still fun to peek behind the curtain.

"Ascension Gifts" - I just loved this sermon/essay on Christ's Ascension. Perfect for this week's major feast day!

"The Publishing Timeline": How long it actually takes to get a book from written to published and why.


Have a great weekend!
Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

The Three Big December Feasts (that aren't Christmas!)

All of Advent is focused on preparing for the Christmas feast, and now we’re here! On the second of twelve days of celebration.

But the first three of these days following the Christ Mass are actually pretty special in their own rights: today is St. Stephen’s Day, the 27^th is St. John’s Day, and the 28^th is Holy Innocents.

St. Stephen was the first martyr of the church, and his death (and marvelous testimony just before his death) is recorded in the book of Acts. He was one of the first deacons, and as he died, he saw the Lord Jesus standing and awaiting him.

St. Stephen’s Day is also known as “Boxing Day” in the English world, after the tradition of packing up the remnants of the Christmas feast and delivering it to the poor. Variations of this tradition had servants bringing boxes to their employers’ homes and the employers filling them with good things. These days, many people take Boxing Day as an opportunity to go through their home and donate what they can to charity.

St. John was, of course, the beloved disciple of Jesus, writer of the fourth gospel, three epistles, and the book of Revelations, and was known as St. John the Divine (i.e., St. John the Theologian).

You can read here about one tradition for celebrating his day, by drinking a mulled wine known as “St. John’s Love” (scroll down for the recipe; it's near the end of the post). I’m looking forward to trying that this year!

The last of these three feasts, Holy Innocents, is, perhaps, the saddest. In it, we remember the young children slaughtered by a jealous King Herod, as he sought to destroy the infant Messiah he feared would supplant him. Though we ought always to be praying for those in danger and trouble throughout the world, this is a particularly good day to spend time in prayer for the persecuted. Perhaps this year, you can remember those in Syria, or in South Sudan.

Finally, here are prayers for each day:

A Collect for St. Stephen’s Day:

We give thee thanks, O Lord of glory, for the example of the first martyr Stephen, who looked up to heaven and prayed for his persecutors to thy Son Jesus Christ, who standeth at thy right hand; where he liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

A Collect for St. John’s Day:

Shed upon thy Church, we beseech thee, O Lord, the brightness of thy light; that we, being illumed by the teaching of thine apostle and evangelist John, may so walk in the light of thy truth, that we may at length attain to the fullness of life everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Collect for the Holy Innocents’ Day:

We remember this day, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by the order of King Herod. Receive, we beseech thee, into the arms of thy mercy all innocent victims; and by thy great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish thy rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

(All collects from the Book of Common Prayer.)

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

what does the catechism say?

Writing  my review of "Rooted" last week piqued my curiosity; my main disagreements with the authors (who I mostly agreed with whole-heartedly and enthusiastically) were about the phrases of the Apostles' Creed "he descended to the dead" and "the communion of the saints". I was curious to know if my objections were actually rooted in my own church's theology, or if I was actually holding some vague, partly-remembered-partly-made-up beliefs that I really needed to revamp.

So I did what any good Anglican would do: I cracked open my BCP. :D

I was happy to find that I wasn't far off. Here's what the Book of Common Prayer (in the Catechism) has to say:

"What do we mean when we say that he descended to the dead?"

"We mean that he went to the departed and offered them also the benefits of redemption."

and

"What is the communion of the saints?"

"The communion of the saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise."

(Of course - and this is for you, Grandma - when it comes to "Invocation of the Saints", the 39 Articles says it is

". . . a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrenty of Scripture".  :D )

All this, of course, is not to dump on anyone else's tradition. I just want to make sure that I know my own really well. Because if I say I believe it, I ought to really believe it, and I can't do that unless I know it!

I'm curious: if you're Anglican, do you find yourself going to the BCP when you're pondering over theological puzzles? And if you're not Anglican, where do you turn to see what your church believes? (other than the Bible, of course! That first, I imagine, for all of us.)

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Using the Prayers of the People for intercessory prayer

My two oldest kids go to school every weekday now and recently I've been feeling more called to intercessory prayer.

Could there be a connection there? ;)

All kidding aside, I really have been feeling called to intercede more than I have in the past - or perhaps, a better way to put that would be that the Lord has been reminding me that this is something He has asked me to do and He still wants me to be doing it. (I first got the impression that I was really supposed to be doing this on my honeymoon, actually. I remember journaling then that I thought a big part of my job as a wife and a mother was going to be praying for my family.)

One of the things I did in response to this most recent reminder was to email my grandma and ask her about her prayer life. It only made sense, because she's one of the people I always ask to pray for me when I'm in need of prayer.

Her response was both generous and helpful. And as I read her list of the different people and groups of people that she prays for, I thought, Huh, that sounds a lot like the Prayers of the People.

So I've started using the Prayers of the People in my own prayer life. I'm using the version that's in the back of my St. James devotional, as I already have that with me during my Bible-reading time.

And that's it. That's all I've got for this blog. No great spiritual insight, just a passing-on of something I've found useful. If you're having trouble structuring your intercessory prayer life, try the Prayers of the People. Pray them and let them remind you of all the people you were planning to pray for anyway. I'm finding them immensely helpful, both in reminding me of people I meant to pray for and of reminding me of how I ought to be praying for them.

Praise God for his servant Thomas Cramner.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Why we must learn to say, "God's will be done."

I read a story recently where one of the characters pointed out that we always do what we want to do - that sometimes we call what we want to do "right" to make ourselves feel better, but, basically, we do what we want.

I think the character's implication was that nothing actually is "right" or wrong, and I disagree with that conclusion, but the observation that the only thing we can possibly act on is our own desires is correct: we always do what we really want to do - you can tell what we want by what we do. Or at least, you can if you have all the information (which you don't). Anyway.

But here's the cool realization I had when I read that: this is why we must learn to say (and mean) "God's will be done." Or, in other words, why we must make God's desires our desires. Our real desires. The reason we must learn to desire what God desires is that only God desires correctly.

Our desires are corrupted by sin and selfishness and - I don't think we think about this enough - a really pathetic lack of sufficient information. We can't see into the next minute, let alone back to creation and forward to the End, taking into account the good of all creatures and the honor of their Creator. But God knows all and loves fully. So may His will be done.

Almighty God, to whom our needs are known before we ask, help us ask only what accords with your will; and those good things which we dare not, or in our blindness cannot ask, grant us for the sake of your son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

writing and the morning.

The day stretches before me, and I'm curious about what it holds. It's my first breathing space of the day; after the rush of breakfast and diapers and nursing, and cleaning up from breakfast and reading some books and nursing again, the babies are down for their naps and the kids are down for their quiet times. Or, rather, up, since I'm the one sitting in the living room at the bottom of the stairs.

I'm always puzzled at what to do with this short half hour or forty-five minutes of peace. Do I pray? do I relax? do I try to get some chores done? do I write?

Often I do some combination of the four. I'll start by puttering around a bit with the house stuff: move this over there, put that away, start this part of dinner so the end of the day is less harried. Today it was getting all the dirty clothes into the laundry bags and fishing out a recipe for herbed bread that I want to make to go with tonight's creamy veggie soup. Then a bit of relaxation: reading a snatch of TWOP's recap of Survivor (the one TV show we actually watch on the TV - over at my mother-in-law's; what can I say? it's become a Grandma-time tradition: dinner and Survivor). And now the tea is on, and I might read through the morning daily devotion in the BCP and then try to get a bit more of my novel rewritten.

The novel now, that's a thing. I wrote it in the small space between when my son started sleeping through the night and when I got pregnant with Lucy and Anna. Now that Lucy and Anna are - not sleeping through the night - but only waking up once to nurse - I'm starting to rewrite it. I didn't expect to be doing it so soon, but my husband, who hadn't read it yet, started reading it aloud to me during our dishes-and-clean-up time that we have every night after the squirts are a in bed, and hearing the words rather than seeing them has given me a gift I never expected to have: the gift of being able to experience my own words as a reader, and not a writer. I'm terribly afraid Adam has just let himself in for an entire lifetime of reading my work back to me. Brave man.

So I am working on the little, obvious fixes that I've noted. Add dialogue here. Make that character more consistant throughout. Show, don't tell, that they had a lot of fun at the dinner party. And in the midst of these little changes, I'm hoping that the bigger one makes itself clear. The story starts with a flourish, and ends with a delightful build-up of tension and an even more delightful release, but there is something missing from the beginning-middle of the book, and though I can feel the shape of what ought to be there, I don't know the specifics yet.

The shape of the change is so clear in my mind; when I talk about it, I always make the same low, round motion with my hands. But I don't know exactly how it is to be done yet. So I'm hoping that by fixing the easy things - this paragraph, that scene - I'll be able to lure the big change out of hiding. It's there, I know it, I can feel it, and I hope that by innocently working in its vicinity, while paying it no direct mind, it will come out of hiding, and show me its face.

But for now? Tea and Psalms. I've read all the way through them again, my one consistant piece of Scripture reading this year, and I'm back at the beginning: "Blessed is the man . . ."

That, and perhaps the biography of St. Elizabeth of Hungary that I got out of the library. Today is her saint day, and I know nothing about her except that one of the other liturgical blogging moms around her had her daughter dress up as St. E of H for Halloween. It made me curious, and so now I have an old, yellow hardback from the library that's going to assuage my curiosity. I should have read it last week, but I was deep in the middle of Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. That's done as of this morning though, and so to St. E of H I go!

I hope your morning goes well, and that the best possibiities of the day become reality.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

still Easter

And that means I'm still reading things like this everyday in Morning Prayer:

"Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more. Death hath no more dominion over him."

Today I had to go in for a scary doctor's appointment, that ended up being not-so-scary, and actually rather good (i.e., neutral, which is pretty much always good in the medical world) news. Reading the verse above made me tear up.

Whatever happens, in these bodies of death, Christ has been raised from the dead, and dies no more. And he will show us the way through death, to himself.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Morning Prayer in the BCP

As I was reading the service yesterday morning, it struck me that Morning Prayer is a good balance to the spontaneous prayers I pray the rest of the day. Many of my prayers during the day are petitions. After all, it's the difficulties of daily life that remind you to look to the Lord, by and large.


But Morning Prayer is different. There are plenty of petitions in it, to be sure ("but thou, oh Lord, have mercy upon us; spare thou those who confess their faults"), and even a place where "Authorized intercessions and thanksgivings may follow," but there is much more praise. There are the canticles, which glorify the Lord. There are many repetitions of the Gloria Patri ("Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.") And there is great care throughout the whole service to address God as his greatness deserves: "Almighty God our heavenly Father", "Almighty and most merciful Father", "Christ the Lord", "God my Savior", "the Lord God of Israel", "Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father", "Lord God of Sabaoth", "the King of glory", "God, the King eternal", "almighty and everlasting God" and "Father of all mercies". These are all the titles which deserve to be constantly used, but that, in my hurry and distraction through the rest of the day, I forget and omit.

It's good to take time every day to use them. To pray to the Lord with the care and attention He merits. It's true that He hears my prayers that are uttered quickly and distractedly as I go about my day. But my prayer life would, I think, be unbalanced without this reverent, set-aside time in the morning. It gives Him His due, but it also has the salutary effect of reminding me who I address so easily during the rest of the hours I'm awake.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Morning Prayer Again

I've been reading the Morning Prayer service regularly now for several weeks. As I keep up this habit, I'm finding more and more things to like about it.

I like that it's made getting ready to take communion easier. Before mass, you're supposed to examine yourself, and confess any sins you've committed since the last time you went to mass. I don't know about you, but for me, this often consists of running through the past week quickly in my head, and then apologizing to my husband in the car on the way to church. Not exactly ideal.

But since I've been reading Morning Prayer every day, it's felt like I'm keeping shorter accounts. One of the first prayers in the service is the Confession, preceded by a moment of silence to think of what you're confessing. Doing this every day leaves me feeling much more prepared to take communion, because Sunday morning on the way to church is not the first time in the week I've consciously repented of my sins!

(I also have to note that confessing my sins every day prompts me to sin less, either because daily confession reminds me of what my perpetual temptations are, or because the thought of confessing later what I'm about to do now is so distasteful that I avoid the sin in order to avoid the confession. :D Either way, it's a good deterrant, and I'm grateful.)


I also like that morning prayer provides a set time and place to pray for my friends and family, especially the ones who are undergoing some particular trial or suffering some particular sorrow, or who are taking a stab at some particularly hard duty. You always say you'll pray for people, but it's easy to forget, and I find that Morning Prayer gives me one more place in my day to remember to make the petitions I promised to make. (The set place in MP to make those petitions, btw, is towards the end, just before the General Thanksgiving, where it says "Authorized intercessions and thanksgivings may follow.")


There's a lot more I like about Morning Prayer, but those three things alone: coming to communion more prepared, being prompted to sin less, and being prompted to pray for my loved ones, make saying Morning Prayer worthwhile for me.

And, maybe most importantly, I like starting my day by praising God. Saying, "Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever" feels like the right way for a Christian to begin her work each day. It's starting the day with worship, with giving God his due. It just feels right. I'm sorry I've come to this habit so late, but I'm very grateful to have it now. It feels like a present from God. A "here, do this; it will serve me and help you." A very fatherly sort of a gift.

Which is to say, all this good stuff is not any virtue of mine. I think things like Morning Prayer, and all good traditions and words handed down to us by Christians who've gone before, are just more evidence of God's grace and love to us. I'm just glad that these resources exist to help us as we follow the Lord. He knows we need habits and help in order to be virtuous. I'm terribly afraid this post will sound snobby ("ooo, I read Morning Prayer"), but it's not meant that way. I just want to share something cool I've found. Please forgive me if it doesn't come across well! This post is meant as a thanksgiving. So . . .

Thanks be to God!


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

p.s. the picture is of an olive tree in my front yard. In honor of all the tree references in the Psalms, the Psalms being an integral part of Morning Prayer.

p.p.s. For those of you fellow moms reading, who wonder where in my day I have time for Morning Prayer: I read it while my daughter is in her room having her quiet time, and my son is nursing down for his first nap. (Bess' quiet time comes whenever Gamgee is ready to sleep. It's a moveable feast.)

birthdays: a part of the church year?

A year ago today, I was very, very, very pregnant. In fact, a year ago tomorrow, I was to wake up at about 2 am, not to go to sleep again till just before midnight. The intervening time I spent giving birth to our son.


In the church, we tend to celebrate death days, not birth days (Christmas being the notable exception). Why? Well, partly because those days often mark martyrdoms and partly because no one knows on a saint's birthday that that date is going to be worth remembering 20, 30 or 80 years later. But mostly because the day of a saint's death is the day of the fulfilment of that saint's hope: he is finally to be found in the full presence of his Lord.

Still, it's customary in our culture to celebrate birthdays, and I think it's a fine tradition. (Ever since becoming a mother, though, I've felt a little self-conscious on my own birthday, realizing that I wasn't the one doing the real work so many years ago!) Birthdays are a chance to thank God for the gift of a loved one, to really pay attention to the people you live and work with, to really appreciate the people who make your ordinary life such a good ordinary life.

In my church, people with birthdays upcoming in the week get to take up the Eucharistic gifts during the offertory. The priest accepts the gifts from them, and then prays God's blessing on them for the following year. So, at least in my experience, birthdays are a part of the church year. There's also a whole church service, "A Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child," in the Book of Common prayer, to celebrate the adding of new members to a family.




I think viewing birthdays as part of the church year makes sense. We're supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves, and that tells you, among other things, that you have to love specific people. In fact, the people right in front of you. And family, especially children, are people we have specific duties toward, especially the duty of loving them. Birthdays are a chance to remember God's grace, to pray for his future blessing, and to enjoy his current gifts.


so, my son, my beautiful one-year-old-tomorrow child: I thank God for you. May he always be your God and father, may you grow to love and obey him, and may he grant us the privilege of raising you to a healthy, happy adulthood in his grace, by his mercy, for the sake of his love. Amen.



peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Evening Prayer

To make a bookend of my new habit of reading the morning prayer service, today I read evening prayer to close the day. I'd forgotten how much I loved the evening collects. I couldn't read just one, I read them all. (I suppose if I read the evening prayer service every day, I wouldn't feel the need to do that.)

What did seem odd though, was reading the same Confession, the same Creed, the same Lord's Prayer, that I'd read this morning. I found myself jerking away mentally from reading them twice in one day ("didn't I just read this?") in the same instinctive way I might press the button on a TV remote to switch away from the channel I've found playing repeats.

But then I stopped myself. Wait, why wouldn't it be a good thing to read the Creed twice in one day? Don't I still believe it in the evening like I did in the morning? And is it as if I don't have sin to confess now, it being about twelve hours since I did it last? Is it as if I was perfect those twelve hours? And don't I still want the Lord's will to be done here on Earth, as it is in Heaven?

Finding my questions pretty rhetorical, I read and prayed all of those parts of the service again. It was funny to find myself instinctively wanting to skip what I'd already done. But it was equally strange to find myself so willing to be argued into repetition.

I think this liturgy thing is growing on me.


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

A couple of experiments

One of the characteristics of a good homemaker, I think, is that she is an irrepressible experimenter. Always tweaking her household routine, always trying to make things a little better, make things run a little smoother. Though she sticks with what works, anything that doesn't is liable to be changed, to see if it can be made more efficient, more welcoming, more homey.

I've found myself in the middle of several experiments. I blame the new year.

One of them is this blog. I had so much fun during Advent, that I decided that trying to celebrate the whole church year was a good idea. And being a writer, I thought that writing about it every day would be the best way to spur myself towards learning how to celebrate it. So far, I'm happy with this experiment. At the end of the year (St. Andrew's Day! or thereabouts), I'm hoping that I'll have laid the groundwork for celebrating the church year every year for the rest of my life.

Another one I started last week, and it came about largely because of this blog. Doing research for this blog has had me digging into the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) more than I have since I first started attending the Episcopal Church and was trying desperately to learn the order of service! And in doing that, and in thinking about how to celebrate the church year every day, I've rediscovered morning prayer.

Since I have kids, the biggest part of my particular homemaking job is taking care of my children. And one of the most time-consuming aspects of that is nursing my son, who's only 10 1/2 months old. I usually use the time he's nursing to read, but I've decided that, at least some of the time, I ought to be reading more edifying stuff than movie reviews on the internet. So, for at least the next week, I'm going to try reading the morning prayer service out of the BCP while I'm nursing Gamgee down for his morning nap. I tried it a few days last week, and I did it this morning, and so far it seems to be doing exactly what I'd hoped: it's ordering my day. Starting the day praying along with the Psalms and hymns and prayers in the BCP is starting my day with the reminder that the earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, that I am the Lord's and all that is in me is his. It's very good.

And it seems like a good experiment to start during Ordinary Time. :)


The Morning Prayer service is almost like a mini-church year all on its own. It has the same structure every time you do it (like each day has morning, noon and night), but small pieces of it changes day to day based on the season, the day of the week, which Psalm you've read last and, also, just whatever things are on your heart to talk to the Lord about, during the "other intercessions" part. I like that pattern of sameness and change. We need both.



And that's sort of the way homemaking experiments work too. You might experiment with vegetarian meals, but you still feed your family something healthy every night. You might experiment with how and when you clean the bathroom, but you still make sure that your family has a decent place to wash up. You might tweak your laundry schedule, but you still want to make sure your family has clean sheets. Sometimes our techniques change, but our big, overarching goals don't. I might learn more about what it means to obey the Lord, but I expect that even when I'm eighty, obeying him is still going to be on the top of my list of what I want to accomplish.

Lord have mercy.


So what are you all trying at home that's new and different? How's it working out?


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica