For the Love of a Family

I have always been surrounded by family, especially my parents and four siblings. I would have never imagined that I could learn so much about family while being 28 hours away from them during my service at Maggie’s Place.   My Own Family- Selfless First, I found out how supportive my family was when my…

Help from the Holy Spirit

When asked how I first heard about Maggie’s Place and how I ended up here, I usually respond casually with “It took a lot of help from the Holy Spirit.” I explain how I read about it in the Catholic Volunteer Network magazine and my professors in college really encouraged me to look into it.…

Lessons Learning

My laptop is in the process of dying. Every time I turn it on, it makes a weird scraping, crackling, nails-on-chalkboard noise and every time I think it is actually going to explode right in that moment. But it doesn’t. So it’s thankfully given me some time to go through old documents and pictures to…

Gratitude

gratitude [grat-i-tood, -tyood] noun 1. the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful: She expressed her gratitude to all of the donors and volunteers of Maggie’s Place. When I first interviewed at Maggie’s Place last November, I remember being overwhelmed by the generosity of the donors and volunteers. I knew that God had called…

Worth the Wait

“Are there any babies yet?” This has been an everyday question at our home for the past five months! Since October, we have not had a single baby at our house because four of our moms are due in April and the rest are due even later. We have been playing the waiting game for…

Into the Breach at MP

During a contact meeting with a mom, we had the convo card* that expressed the meaning of a REAL MAN. The fact that the mom had picked this particular card was ironic because she had just finished telling me why she wanted nothing to do with men. She giggled. I laughed. And we both became…

From Heroism to Dailiness

“A community which is just an explosion of heroism is not a true community. True community implies a way of life, a way of living and seeing reality; it implies above all fidelity of the daily round. And this is made of simple things—getting meals, using and washing dishes and using them again, going to…

The On Duty Apron

I want to show you a little bit of what life is like as a MissionCorps member at Maggie’s Place. Enter the On Duty Apron. Actually, let me back up. Maggie’s Place is a community of many homes of hospitality for homeless pregnant women, each staffed by full-time, live-in volunteers called MissionCorps, who volunteer a…

The Soul Workout

I recently began training for an Ironman triathlon. I know, I am crazy. Now that we have established that; Throughout training, there have been moments of weakness. “Stop now,” my body says, “This is not good for you. You need to stop, you can’t handle this.” “What the heck are you doing? This is too…

Taking Root

Go across the country to a place caught in a strange undertow of time, a swift current, strangely paused in July. Never to doubt your mission and Live a life willing to challenge the currents of culture, to be misunderstood by society governed by wealth and success, confident that eternity is more valuable than rewards…