Author Archives: gallandria

One thing, as a lifelong Protestant, that I’ve struggled with is “praying to the Saints”. But as I’ve been learning, is that Protestants and Catholics use the word “pray” somewhat differently.

For a Protestant, “prayer” is pretty synonymous with “worship”; for a Catholic, it’s more along the lines of “ask”. A better way, I think, for Catholics to phrase it, so as to avoid the lectures and cries of idolatry from Protestants, would be “invoking the intercession of the Saints.” (Trent Horn has a helpful video on this on his YouTube channel, The Counsel of Trent, which I highly recommend subscribing to.)

My own personal experience has been all over the place. As a child, I prayed all the time and styled myself a prayer warrior. Now, I still want to be that, and have more or less taken for myself St. Monica as patron saint. If you don’t know her story, please read it. A super short version is, she was the mother of St. Augustine, who lived an incredibly wild, unChristian life. St. Monica prayed for his conversion for 18 years before he converted. She died shortly after.

I’ve struggled a lot with prayer over the past couple years. At the end of last year, I was cleaning and came across my grandma’s Rosary. (She wasn’t Catholic, just had a Rosary). I decided to start using it to guide my prayers, but without the Hail, Mary’s. I used a guide to understand the Mysteries, what the beads were for, etc, and for each Mystery, I’d pray specific things regarding it. And it truly revitalized my prayer life. I started seeing prayers answered, and felt more desire to pray than I had in a long time.

Sometime after the New Year, I discovered the app Hallow (again, highly recommend) and one day, when one of my sons had made off with my Rosary, decided to use the app. Including the Hail Mary’s. I did that for a while, but since I wasn’t fully convinced it was “right” decided to stop for a while. And I noticed something interesting.

I went from loving to pray (not just the Rosary, but prayers written by saints of king ago, my own continual prayers, and with my kids), to having less desire to pray. So, I studied. And studied some more. I became convinced of the fact that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, as we’re told in the bible. Those witnesses are the Church Victorious, worshiping and lifting us in heaven. I still wasn’t convinced of the ability to ask their prayers, but I now knew they were watching and praying. I read several books about Mary (Catholic and Protestant) and started researching the history of invoking the Saints. I also realized I believed the Churches Dogmatic teaching about the Blessed Virgin Mary, and thought, if they’re right about so many things (Baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Marian Dogmas), why shouldn’t I trust them regarding “prayers” to the saints?

I decided to start praying the Rosary properly again, begging God to give me confirmation that this was good and proper. And I found that my heart softened so much toward my kids and husband. That I was, again, zealous for God’s glory. That I wanted to pray, read the bible, read the Fathers, learn the teachings of the Magisterium, even, to learn more about the Faith.

And now, as the capstone, I started praying a Novena a few days ago (I signed up praymorenovenas.com), a Novena to Mary the Undoer of Knots. Praying specifically for my heart to be more maternal and my kids relationships to be more peaceful and loving. And three days ago, my girls started getting along better. So much better they’ve been commenting on it.

Why Sidetracked Mama?

Well, because I get sidetracked. Easily. All the time.

I got the idea from my favorite homemaking book, called Sidetracked Home Executives. I suffer from homemaking ADD. I’ll start off doing the dishes and suddenly realize I’m organizing books. Or start grading homeschool assignments and, through a serious of mostly unrelated events, wind up going through the boys socks and underwear.

Conversations with the kids usually go the same way. We’ll start off talking about a book one of them was reading, morph into current events and (more likely than not) wind up discussing theology.

Posts here will probably follow that same format. Maybe a recipe my family loved (and since we just discovered the boys have to be gluten free, that’s huge!). Or a book we read aloud and enjoyed. Homeschool curriculum. Theology. Things that help me with homemaking. Favorite YouTubers.

Eclectic. And probably sidetracked.

Why yet another blog? There are so many out there, after all. Well, to be honest, this is mostly for me. To organize my thoughts and ramblings, and remember what my kids have been up to, what we’re learning and doing, that sort of thing.

So, who am I? I’m Elizabeth, wife, mom of 5, theology nerd. And that’s mostly what I’ll be writing about. Theology. I grew up Protestant, walked away for a time, went through an atheist/anti-theist phase, then a Wiccan/Druid phase, then came back (praise God!) to Christianity.

But, evangelicalism isn’t very robust, or satisfying, or rooted in Church history. In my desire to find all that, I discovered Reformed Theology. Internally consistent, intelligent, robust. And, I thought, rooted in history. Spoiler alert, it is none of those things. In a nutshell, Reformed theology, when followed consistently, is rather fatalistic. The view of God’s sovereignty is that everything is ordained by God. Me writing this blog? Ordained. You reading it? Decreed by God. That thought you just had about that? Also decreed. Everything, from the tiniest thought to Stalin’s genocides, were decreed and ordained by God. And despite the vociferous disagreement with what I’m about to say, that does, indeed, make God the author of evil. And that goes against everything we learn about God in Sacred Scripture.

I couldn’t sustain a love for and zeal for God, when I saw Him that way. So I started drifting, I continued reading my Bible every day, but it was rote. Went to church. Taught my kids. But I didn’t really want to.

Then, a few things pushed me into a Mere Christianity position. I watch a lot of political commentary, and enjoy Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, both of whom are Catholic. Matt Walsh talks openly about his faith, and was challenging all his listeners to memorize the Beatitudes. My former piano teacher, whose kids at least are Catholic, and who definitely isn’t Reformed, is one of the most godly examples I’ve ever had. All her suffering (she has several incurable diseases), has been used to glorify God. Every time she had to go into the hospital for a procedure, she asked for prayer requests and bragged on God and how He sustains her. That all challenged my preconceived notions toward non-Reformed folk.

We also went to visit my in-laws in Spain, and went to a Cathedral in Sevilla. Keep in mind, as a Reformed Christian, I was vehemently anti-Catholic. When we walked into the Cathedral, I had an overwhelming urge to genuflect and worship. There was such a sacredness there, and I felt so much awe.

(Btw, none of the previous paragraphs are in chronological order)

So, fast forward to the present. I’m in the hallway Lewis talks about in his book Mere Christianity (highly recommend, btw, if you’ve never read it). I’ve been studying the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Luther’s Large Catechism, Catholic, Lutheran, and Orthodox theology, Church history, the Church Fathers, watching lots of dialogues on YouTube, and praying.

So back to the reason for this blog, I’m going to attempt to organize my thoughts and see where I end up with all this studying. There have been days when I’ve been convinced I’ll be Catholic, then Orthodox, then Lutheran, then maybe Anglican, then back to Catholic, and round and round I go. You’re more than welcome to come along for the journey. And please, chime in! The more information I have, the better decision I can eventually make.

And, of course, the whole “iron sharpening iron” thing!