Elena 
In the busyness of living life, I completely missed my Blogiversary again!
My Domestic Church is now 7 years old and it’s a little hard for me to remember the time before I had the blog.
My first post explaining the blog went like this:
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
There are lots of reasons for starting to blog, I guess. Frankly, it’s a new part of the web that I only recently became aware of and once I got started reading a few favorites (Like Amy Welborn) I thought I’d like to try my own.One of the new bloggers in St. Blog’s parish said “everyone needs their own soapbox” and I that struck a cord with me. Yea, I think he’s right. And at least on a blog where you are you’re own editor and not a guest you can get a lot of this out of your system, as Father J says, “so I don’t exlode!”
So why the Domestic Church? Because I like the sound of it. I like Pope John Paul’s encouragement that our holiness doesn’t just happen in our parish church on Sunday but in our own homes as we try to get ourselves and our families through this “vale of tears” and into our eternal homes in heaven.
So I’ll probably focus on how my own family is doing on that. How our path to holiness faces it’s ups and downs. A real challenge on that journey was the stillbirth of our 6th child, Raphael, last year. It’s something I’m still working through myself and with my children as we try to move through the grief and yet remember and honor this little soul that we had in our lives so briefly.
We also face the special challenges of a homeschool family and all that that entails.
A special interest of mine has been the Pope’s Theology of the Body and the beautiful teaching of Humanae Vitae and how that definitely impacts the Domestic Church particularly the couple in the sacrament of marriage. It was on a quest do learn more and defend this teaching that I stumbled across this board
Birth Control Catholic Church
and it has been a real challenge. Having been banned there several times for speaking the truth about this teachings, I’ve decided just to take my frustrations, and feelings about the discussions over there, here. That should make everyone happier.
That all said, here I go…
There have been a lot of changes over the years. The Birth Control and Catholic Church forum doesn’t even exist anymore. I have learned a little bit out about digital photography and html coding. I’ve made friends and a few enemies along the way and even had a few folks move from one category to the other. I had a baby, buried my mother, and had my oldest leave the home. I’ve gone from worrying about high school to almost having my second son in his senior year of high school. And almost all of it has been documented here.
I’ve seen blogging go from something that was very personal, almost like a series of online diaries, to slick, magazine styled “focused” blogs. I try to focus. I really do. It’s just that my focus keeps shifting with my family, interests and events!
I still haven’t met many bloggers in real life. I keep trying to meet TSO but I think he likes to keep the mystery alive. We are facebook friends though. Turns out that the only blogger I have met in real life is my pastor. I knew him as a blogger first though. In the first weeks after he came to our parish and I introduced myself and had Mr. Pete out me as a blogger. That was also the time period where I ended up having a lot of heated discussions with another homeschooler in my com boxes. Talk about bad timing!
Earlier this year I ran some letters from my grandmother and other relatives that I found in my mother’s things. It was such a joy to read this voice from the past. Hopefully this blog will be that for my family – my voice and my thoughts about things that happened to us as a Catholic family living in the real world. But it’s also been a place for me to learn more about myself and try to become a better person. A holy person. Obviously I’m not a perfect person but analyzing and writing has certainly helped me process things and analyze myself to help me become whatever it is God has called me to be.
So now it’s on to year 8. That all said, here I go…
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