I am penning this newsletter on the feast of St Elizabeth Ann Seton. Every month I look for an inspirational quote to inspire my content but this month I was coming up a bit dry. We have set some lofty goals for ourselves in women’s ministry but with the holidays, a computer that broke down and an inability to get on the website to edit, amongst other technological difficulties, things did not take off as planned. Not the way I wanted to start 2024. I like to have this newsletter out the first Monday Morning Memo of the month and I am pretty brutal with myself on keeping deadlines once I set them. Try as I might I just kept running into issues and would have missed the only night I had all 4 of my kids in town in order to get it finished. Even then it was a long shot. So I missed my self-imposed deadline! I am sure you were all just sitting at your emails and highly disappointed when you looked for it on January 1^st! (Ha-ha). I also have been struggling to get the spring event finalized and can’t get a phone meeting with the speaker until January 9^th so had to postpone announcing that. I was feeling pretty low. That is when I stumbled upon this quote. It really spoke to me! And it just so happened it was almost Elizabeth's  feast day!

By now I know, I will never not be the person trying to get it all done but this was a goof reminder to sit back and remember that in the big scheme of things sometimes we have to let things go. St Elizabeth Ann Seton is a great saint to meditate on when you are having these kinds of feelings. Life threw her many twists and turns and she was super productive! She started the first Catholic school in the Americas and the Sisters of Charity while a widow raising five children. I am sure she had some stressed out days! Maybe that is why she wrote this quote. The remedy of our troubles is to draw the comparison between time and eternity! While every moment in time has significance, that moment is so little when compared to eternity. Just think on that for a bit. How often do the troubles and burdens of the minute consume us in an unhealthy manner? We think we can do it all and control every outcome but we can’t.

So I am sharing this with you now because, first of all, I hope you will be patient with me as this comes out a little late and as I struggle to finish up our spring plans. But I also hope you will keep this in mind as you look through the opportunities we are offering to join together, serve together and grow in faith together. None of us can do it all. But like Elizabeth Ann Seton we can do a lot when we surrender our lives to the Lord. As we move into 2024 I challenge you, and myself, to be really intentional about where we choose to place our time. Here are a few guidelines I am going to try and stick too:

1. Really pray about how I should intentionally choose to use my time. Are there ways I waste it? Things I am doing I should nix? If so I am going to do my best to get those off my plate!
2. Leave time to answer the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He is calling each of us but we have to leave times of silence to hear and leave space in our lives to answer those promptings.
3. And finally recognize that when I do feel strongly about what I should be doing God will give me the strength and energy to do it even if it doesn’t look exactly the way I thought or happen in exactly the time and manner I wanted.

I am so excited to see what God has in store for us in 2024. One thing I am sure of after traveling around and meeting so many of you is that we are definitely better together! Having a network of women to walk this journey with is such a blessing. I hope you will take some time to look through some of the opportunities to join in with us and intentionally pick what is calling you!

To Blessings in 2024!!

Barb