Showing Up to the Encounter
Fear, triumph, trust, compassion, victory, failure, births, sobriety. Maggie’s Place is full of lots of hard, lots of messy things. Amidst it all, one thing is overwhelmingly true for life at Maggie’s Place: the call to encounter each other in every circumstance. I...
Divine Providence Will Provide
The MissionCorps of Maggie’s Place begin and end the day with the mantra “Divine Providence can provide. Divine Providence did provide. Divine Providence will provide.” We say this as a reminder of the radical trust in God that is required to do our job. We can say...
A Mother’s Love
Life in community with mothers, though not a physical mother myself, has opened my eyes to the beauty, pain, joy, and deep love manifest in motherhood. God entrusts to each mother something so precious, so weak, so perfect: a baby. This child longs for communion with...
Saying Yes
Maggie’s Place operates on a set of core values: love, hospitality, community, and excellence. These values aren’t easy. In fact, they’re radical. But radicality doesn’t entail impossibility. It just means we need grace. As we inch closer to our 17 year anniversary on...
Why Do A Year Of Service?
I graduated from Gonzaga University in 2013. As a Jesuit institution, service is something that Gonzaga talks about a LOT. Zags are incredibly service-oriented. It’s instilled in us through service-learning classes and mission trip opportunities and our clubs. Still,...
New Life
Love rocks at Maggie’s Place in a special way. As a new MissionCorps at Maggie’s Place, I was surprised to learn that, no matter how much love I give, even more is returned. Love is the fuel and driving force behind every new day. This Easter season, I have been...
Pro-Life Beyond Birth
“I don’t know if I’m good enough to be her mother,” she sobbed as I held her newborn daughter in my arms. Not much had gone right in Rose’s life. Her first memory of violence occurred at a mere three years old. Adopted into one abusive family from another, she...
The Gift of Tears
In my time at Maggie’s Place, I have cried. I have cried tears of exhaustion after a long day of work, tears of sadness when someone I love is in pain, and tears of frustration when I feel inadequate. Living in a house full of women, it can be extremely challenging to...
Courage, Dear Heart
At Maggie’s Place we have a saying that the only thing that is constant is change. There is always a new mom moving in after another mom is finishing the program, a new baby being born, or a new MissionCorps transitioning into her role. We learn to love in the...
Into the Desert
Brown and Spiky. This is how I described Arizona upon my arrival at Maggie’s Place. I grew up surrounded by the lush, green fields of Pennsylvania and taking day trips to the Atlantic Ocean. The brown landscape, pointy plants, dry heat, stinging arachnids, and...
Christ’s Hands and Feet
In early September of last year, I accepted the offer to be a MissionCorps at Maggie’s Place. Shortly after, a friend asked me what I was most excited about doing at Maggie’s Place. I exploded all over her, describing every little detail of how great it was all going...
What Makes Maggie’s Place Different?
I am a new MissionCorps. And I am not your average MissionCorps. I’m a mom to four adult children and grandma to two with one more on the way. When people learn that I sold my home and my car, and gave away most of my earthly possessions to do a year of service as a...
Masculine Genius
The first time I walked into Maggie’s Place, five boys were staring at me. Three of them were infants, and the other two were bearded, very inquisitive seminarians. Geoffrey and Colm were always around: ministering to moms, listening to corps, painting and fixing the...
Messiness
I decided I wanted to write about messiness this week, without knowing what that really meant. The idea struck me last week while doing Monday night room checks. I was in the room of one of our moms who seemed to have magical powers: every week her room would go from...
Pierced by Love
Those hot, salty tears came streaming down my cheeks and I knew my heart was being torn open in a way I had never experienced before. I was saying goodbye to someone I had only known for 3 months, and yet I was crying more over her leaving than almost anyone else I...
The Dawn of New Life
I knelt to the ground, my empty hands open heavenward. I didn’t have any words to form into prayers. My heart completely turned to God, which was more genuine, more sincere than any words could possibly be. It was natural to rely on God, but this moment was entirely...
Extraordinary Generosity in Ordinary Places
Never in my life have I been so surrounded by witnesses to true charity: in our volunteers, our donors, the staff who give of their time to make the organization what it is, and in the daily sacrifices our moms make for their babies. In little ways, God shows us his...
Quotes and Mantras That Kept Me Going
This January I transitioned out of serving as a MissionCorps in the homes and now serve as a regular staff member, which means it’s a good time to think of what words of wisdom I have gained over my two years as a MissionCorps. What came to mind were the quotes and...
The Fight That Counts
My story began four years ago. Our bus departed into the dark January night, seats full of shower deprived college students beginning the dreaded overnight journey back from the annual March for Life in Washington D.C. It was my third time making the trip, but this...
Sisterhood
sis•ter•hood ˈsistərˌho͝od/ noun 1. the relationship between sisters. 2. an association, society, or community of women linked by a common interest, religion, or trade. I don’t know what I’d do without my sister. We are separated by six years in age but our...