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October 2005
Non-Fiction Book Club Selection
Author Interview with Laurie
Robbins and Mary Rogers,
Homework From Heaven
Mary: I moved to Washington when I was three and have been here ever since. I married Aaron right out of college and began teaching in the Catholic schools. I enjoyed my career for seven years before becoming pregnant and dedicating my life to the vocation of motherhood. Aaron and I have been happily married for coming up on nineteen years and have three children: Patrick who is eleven and in the sixth grade, Kathleen who is eight and in the second grade and Maggie who just turned five and has started pre-kindergarten. It is her first school experience. All our children attend St. Charles Borromeo Catholic School. Aaron and Patrick share the spirit of St. Francis, because we have pets galore! There’s Ollie, Rita and Rosie our 3 poodles, Strawberry, Ruby and Maxine our 3 bunnies, Shelby our turtle, 2 frogs, yet to be named, and finally Pookie the tarantula. This is quite a feat considering we live in the city. Laurie: My husband Steve and I have been married for 13 years and we have seven children, one boy and six girls. I'm a stay at home mom and my school-age children attend our local Catholic school. Prior to getting married and starting a family, I was a fourth grade teacher for the Archdiocese of Seattle for three years. I enjoy being a mom and I love the Catholic faith. I feel extremely blessed to have the children God has given us and to have such a loving and caring God to be with me each day. Q: For anyone who has not read Homework From Heaven, please describe the book. Mary: Homework From Heaven is a gift to moms. It is a book that supports a mother has she raises her children in the Catholic Tradition. It has stories that touch the heart and bring home Catholic teachings with humor, tenderness and at times sorrow. Homework From Heaven is meant to help a mom celebrate motherhood and the gift of her children. It encourages mothers to be actively involved in the lives of her children as she teaches the faith. It provides activities for moms to do for herself or with her children, but all with the intent of developing a friendship with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as well as Mary the Mother of God. Laurie: Homework From Heaven is a book that has personal stories, reflections, activities, scripture and prayer. The aim of all of these is to convey to mothers that they have been given a great gift in their children, and that motherhood is a holy vocation. It is a reminder to mothers to be a leader in the faith to their children and to prayerfully and confidently lead their children on the path to heaven. Homework from Heaven encourages mothers to have a loving friendship with God, and to imitate Mary, the Mother of God, as a beautiful example of what it means to live a life of virtue, and prayerful surrender to God's will. Q: How did the two of you come together to write this book? How did your partnership function in the writing process? Laurie: Mary and I met 14 years ago while teaching together at a Catholic elementary school. We hit it off and soon became prayer partners and close friends. We both had our first child three months apart from each other, and began raising our families. As we would get together with our kids, we would talk about the funny things that kids do, or talk about ideas we had for making the life of a mom a little easier or more efficient, etc. We thought it would be neat to write a book about the adventures of mother-hood. We began jotting some ideas down, but as we continued writing, it seemed that God began leading us in a different direction with the book. Mary and I continued writing and continually prayed for God's guidance. Mary has a wonderful gift of insight and she would usually be the one the get something down on paper first. Then it was a matter of both of us going over what was written and going back and forth between the two of us until we had something that we both really liked. We prayed a lot and waited on the Lord to guide us to just the right scripture or even just the right verb for a particular sentence. On a practical note, Mary and I would take turns taking care of the children as the other worked on the computer, and once the kids were in bed, we'd sit side by side at the computer, and usually would stop working when the birds began chirping outside! One time we only managed twenty hours of sleep in nine days. The grace the Lord gave us though, to take care of our kids during that time, was incredible. God always gave us to Grace to keep going. So much of what is written was truly inspired by God and over the course of eight years, the book became what it is today. Instead of us sharing our very limited “wisdom” with other mothers, God led us to share HIS wisdom with mothers, so that He could help a mother experience His love and the truths of the Holy Catholic Church and pass these on to her children. Mary: Well, Laurie and I met at St. Michael Catholic School where we enjoyed team teaching. It became a running joke between us that we should write a book about the situations we’d find ourselves in, because crazy things seemed to happen when we got together. For example, on one of our field trips the bus driver refused to let our two classes on his bus and return us to school despite that fact that we had tickets proving that we had paid the city in advance. Laurie and I call that story, “Laurel and Marty Go on a Field Trip” That’s what we call each other when the ridiculous strikes, which is more often then we’d like to admit. It only got worse when we became mothers. So we decided that maybe we really should write a book and let other mom’s know that they are not alone in the interesting situations they can find themselves in when raising children. So, Homework From Heaven actually began as a book meant to entertain mothers with witty stories. How did our partnership function while writing the book? It didn’t! I’m just kidding. We muddled along the best we could considering it took 8 years and between us we had 11 babies. Our husbands thought that we had gone off the deep end, because Laurie would travel to my house and we’d spend days together trying to write the book. You see Laurie and I live an hour apart and I was the one with a reliable computer. (My husband is the Technology Coordinator at the local Catholic high school.) We would be mothers by day and authors by night. One time Laurie spent nine days with me and in those nine days we only had twenty hours of sleep. I think that time we did go off the deep end! Through the years we have found that we work most effectively when I write down our initial thoughts. Then Laurie comes over and we fine tune the concept together. It’s funny though, because often what we ended up with did not resemble what I had written in the first place. I call that “Laurie Magic!” It is truly a time of grace when we write together. The Holy Spirit and Mother Mary are unmistakably with us. We have had some really good laughs, really good cries and really good prayers over the past 8 years. Q: What is the major message you hope to share with this book? Laurie: The major message I hope to share with this book is that God loves mothers and that He is with us, ready and able to help us to raise our children for His glory. I want to share with mothers that God has and will continue to equip each mother with everything she will need to raise the children she has been given, and that God is with her every step of the way. Also, we travel with Mary and Jesus as we reflect upon the Holy Rosary in the book, and we look at the virtues that the Mother of God put into action and invite mothers to do the same. I hope this book encourages mothers to eagerly lead their children to the sacraments and to teach their children the beauty and the power of living out their Catholic faith. Mary: The major message I hope to share is
that our children are both a gift and a responsibility given to us by the
Creator Himself. As mothers, we have cooperated with God in nothing less
than a miracle by helping to create a soul that will live for all eternity.
God trusts us to teach our children about both Him and the Church that He
established. God trusts us to do everything in our power to bring our
children home to heaven to spend all eternity with Him. That is “awe”-some
in every since of the word! Mary: Some of the activities came from our classroom lesson plans and fell right into place for the concept we were writing about. Some came from prayer, because we were truly stumped, and some were just gifts from a gracious God who knew He was working with couple of tired moms who needed His help! One of my personal favorites is the family journal, because my family uses it to write down prayers of petition and thanksgiving as we pray the rosary together. It is special to hear the concerns of my children’s hearts, and then to look back and see how God has answered our prayers. I also really enjoy doing the hands on arts and crafts kind of projects; the one that comes to mind is doing the “We’ve Been Framed” with Kathleen. I loved that she colored each family member’s piece of the puzzle in their favorite color. I never would have thought of that. Laurie: Some of the ideas for our activities came from projects we did with our classes as teachers. One classroom activity that I've now done with my family are the positive placemats. We did this activity on Thanksgiving one year, so that there were extended family members doing the activity as well. Aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins all went around the table and wrote an affirming message on each person's placemat. It was a lot of fun and many people still have their placemats. It's neat because you don't always get to tell an aunt or cousin something that you appreciate about them. This activity gives you that opportunity and it's a nice way to give “thanksgiving” for each family member. Another Homework from Heaven activity that I love doing with my family is to visit Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Each Thursday after school, I send in my older children one at a time to spend a minute or two with Jesus. I take turns taking the younger ones in and try to get in by myself as well, even if it's for half a minute. It's always my favorite part of the week. Another “Homework” activity that I love doing with my kids is to help them write “Thank You” cards. It's wonderful seeing the kids take time to color pictures and write special messages to friends and family and I like that the kids take pause to consciously recall the kindness and time it took for someone to give them something or to do something with them that brought them joy. Q: How can Catholic families more fully live and engage in the cycle of the Church calendar? Laurie: There are many ways to engage in the cycle of the Church calendar. To start, it's very helpful to use a catholic calendar as your main calendar so that the family is aware of the holy days of obligation, special saint days, the days of Advent, and Lent, etc. Be sure to pick up the Sunday bulletin each week and read what activities are going on in the Church community and choose an activity that your family would like to participate in. Mimic in your home as much as possible what the Church is doing. For example, during Advent and Lent you could decorate your home using the color purple, just as the Church does. Also, similar to the banners the Church hangs up, denoting what Church season we are in, hang a banner in your home as well. Have a holy water font in your home, just as the church building does. Light a blessed candle when the family prays together. Put up pictures along a hallway or similar space of the fourteen stations of the cross, especially during Lent. Celebrate your child's baptismal day as well as their special patron saint's day, and the list goes on. There are so many opportunities and information available to help our families engage in the cycle of the Church calendar and so many wonderful and meaningful ways to bring the Church home. We can enjoy each season in the life of the church and thus, in the life of Christ, year in and year out! Mary: To me, simply celebrating life around the Church calendar is imperative! For example, I have all my Christmas shopping, wrapping and cards complete before Advent begins so the family focus can be on Advent. We enjoy taking the time each night to open our advent calendar doors and praying around our advent wreath. We don’t set up our tree until the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday set aside to be joyful! Or, during Lent, we all write our Lenten projects in the family journal and as we pray the rosary we pray for the success of each other. And when it’s Easter we celebrate with each other, because we better understand what it took to succeed in our individual projects. My dad had a saying, “Life is too short not to celebrate.” I figure since life is worth celebrating, let’s center the celebration on God! Q: How can families, in a practical way, place greater emphasis on praying together? Mary: I find praying before each meal effective. It helps us to maintain grateful hearts. My kids and I pray together every morning on the way to school. We take turns saying, The Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Guardian Angel Prayer, and the Saint Michael Prayer. We then ask our patron saints, guardian angels and our family members living in heaven to pray for us to help us through the day. We pick something in particular that each of us needs to work on - all too often mine turns up practicing patience. It’s amazing how much smoother the days run when we begin with prayer. But, we are never closer as a family than when we pray the rosary together. I’m not gong to tell you that we are perfect at it. There are times when we slip, but when we come together and pray the Most Holy Rosary, there is harmony in our home. There is greater compassion in our home. There is less need for forgiveness in our home. Why we slip I will never understand! Laurie: Asking God for the grace to be able to pray together. Using a variety of ways to pray. For example, instead of praying the regular morning prayers, I'll say to the kids, “Who knows a praise song we can sing to God?” or, I'll ask each family member to say one thing they are thankful for from their day. Many times before bedtime, instead of telling the kids to pray their regular night prayers, I'll say, “Be sure to talk to God before you go to bed,” and I've taught them that God loves them and made them and loves when they talk with Him and tell Him things they are thankful for, or worried about, or excited about, or to ask God to help a person that they know is in need. I tell them to talk to God as you would talk to me and dad or a friend. Also, frequenting the sacraments will give families the grace that will help them to pray more. Q: Are there any closing thoughts or comments you'd like to share? Laurie: I would just like to say that God is incredible and He will always provide for all of our needs. Being a mom requires so much energy, patience, strength, stamina, and on and on. Only with God will we ever survive! One of the most important things I try to help myself remember to do is to ask God for whatever it is I need. Many times I'm having such a hard day with the kids and all the tasks of the day,and I may be thinking, “Why isn't God helping me?” These days seem to continue on long and difficult. But on hard days like these, if I remember to pray, “Please God, help me,” He always does and the day becomes blessed by God and I receive the help I need. I cannot say enough how powerful prayer can be. One of my favorite verses in the bible is, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” And another, “You have not because you ask not.” Through God's Grace, both mothers and their children will make it through all of the seasons of their lives together, and in the process, help each other to become great Saints! Mary: Only this, may Homework From Heaven be a catalyst that brings families closer to God, to the Holy Catholic Church and to one another. And, as we are all members of the Body of Christ, may we one day meet in heaven to glorify God together. God Bless you all!
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Homework From Heaven
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Please tell us a bit about yourself and your families.