Seeking Jesus in the Chaos of Family Life

Busy mom of many Betty Vertin's quest for quiet in prayer and Adoration ended in a reminder that God can be found in noise and chaos too.

Sometimes, I need to calm my heart and surroundings to hear Jesus’ voice. My parish has a Chapel of Perpetual Adoration. I have an hour every Monday and share two more hours with other parishioners, where we take turns going every other week.

As a convert to the Catholic faith, I was not familiar with Adoration. And honestly, I didn't love it at first. I had no idea how to sit with Jesus. The quiet made me quite uncomfortable. Fortunately, I have grown to love and depend on time in Adoration. The Adoration Chapel has been a place of peace and calm for me.

I love my Monday hour best, which allows me to start the school and work week with intention. In Adoration, I always pray a Rosary and on Mondays, I pray the Joyful Mysteries. In the Adoration Chapel is a stained-glass window that depicts Mary and Joseph finding Jesus in the Temple. And every Monday, when I pray a Rosary in that chapel, I feel reminded to seek Jesus.

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Admittedly, my house is not quiet. I have seven children ages 12 months to 21 years, and although one lives away from home for college, we have somewhat organized chaos most of the time. Kids are coming and going; appointments, games, theater productions, and lessons continue. Our youngest turned one year old yesterday, and I feel like she's never had a schedule. She eats and sleeps when the big kids' schedule allows for it.

As the year 2022 ended, I kept reflecting. It was amazing, complex, and exhausting. Disease progression for my three children with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy has been devastating, and I’ve seen it change our plans for the future.

And having a baby last year when I was a couple of weeks shy of 42 was beautiful but also tiring. The demands of a baby feel more challenging now that it was in my 20s and 30s.

I am craving rest, peace of mind, ease of decision-making, and a feeling of belonging.

2023 promises to be anything but that. January alone is full of four birthdays, a baseball tournament that requires my husband to be away from home for five days with our son, two baseball camps, and the start of show choir season. The spring will bring back-to-back baseball seasons, spring musicals, college graduation, the start of 8U softball, and undoubtedly more disease progression.

It will be a blur, and I was craving a quiet, peaceful hour of Adoration last week.

That holy hour of Adoration, I sat down and took in a deep breath, ready to exhale all of that into the hands of my Maker and Savior.

Then the vacuum started. This beautiful, devoted couple in the parish cleans our church daily, and they do a fabulous job. I could not be mad that they were cleaning because it is so generous, and I honestly wouldn’t want to do it, so praise God for them. But it was outside of the Adoration Chapel. And my quiet vanished.

I had to chuckle. Of course, of all the times for vacuuming, it would be my hour. The chapel sounded like home. And in the noise, I heard God's answer. Now is not the time for your rest or your quiet. Be patient. And I was reminded that He is always there, even in the noisy messes of raising a big, busy family.

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In the noise, I heard God's answer. #catholicmom

A couple of weeks ago, at a different hour, I was looking for a prayer that I thought was in the back of my Bible. Instead, there were pages stuck together. I gently tugged the pages apart to find a sticky Skittle was the problem. Again, I had to chuckle, and I scribbled this in my journal, “a mom of faith might mean finding the last pages of your Bible stuck together with a Skittle.”

The Skittle doesn’t make the word of God any less meaningful, just as the noise doesn’t make Jesus any less there for me. On the contrary, it makes life colorful, and like every Monday when I pray the Joyful Mysteries, I remember to continue to seek Jesus, in the quiet, in the noise, in a mess, everywhere because he meets me where I am!

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