Hi! I’m Meredith, and this is a repost, because I have a 40-ish day-old baby and I have not finished Christmas shopping for anyone else. Here’s a repost. At the bottom, there’s a book recommendation and a reminder about the AMA Giveaway - one more day to get questions in!
Tik Tok Thérèse
(a repost from Christmas 2021)
A few weeks ago, I got sucked into a YouTube blackhole. I started with the trailer for the movie Dune, and I wound up in the curious world of deep cleaning videos. I clicked on a video called Cleaning DEPRESSION HOME for free! 🥺❤️ - YouTube. This was my introduction to Aurikatariina.
Aurikatariina is from Finland. She deep cleans houses – scary filthy houses – for free.
The people who ask for Aurikatariina’s help are depressed and severely isolated. Their internal distress manifests in their physical environment. We’re talking dirty dishes stuffed into the cabinets, food caked onto the sinks and counters, and floors totally concealed by trash. Her videos have millions of views on YouTube and TikTok.
I kept clicking on these videos, fascinated by the houses themselves (the owners are never shown on camera) and by Aurikatariina’s approach to the messes. One video I watched shows her kneeling down in the middle of a living room that is covered stem to stern in old trash. She says to the camera, “This is the dirtiest house I have ever seen. And I am in heaven!!”
Aurikatariina smiles while she says this. And she’s not judging the resident for anything she finds – like clothes matted to the floor and banana peels that are months old. If anything, she’ll comment, “Oh, look at this moldy sock! This is funny!”
This whole thing got me thinking about the intercession of the Saints.
My soul has been even filthier than those houses. Sometimes the condition of my soul is so bad, and so dark, and so full of messy, nasty, years-old junk that I feel powerless to do anything about it.
I know that something needs to change, but I don’t even know where to start.
I need a professional.
I need an Aurikatariina.
So why would I ask a Saint to pray for me? Why not just ask Jesus?
Because this is not an either/or situation. I also ask Him to pray, and I ask my family to pray, and I ask my friends, too. Because we are all members of the Body, of which there is one Head. The Saints are doing the work of Christ. Not because He can’t do it, but because He invites us to help him with His work.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux started praying for the conversion of remorseless criminals when she was a child. I refuse to believe that something as ordinary as death stopped her from doing this. In her autobiography, Story of a Soul, she wrote, “I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth.” She wanted to intercede on your behalf.
There is nothing the Saints have not seen before.
There is nothing they won’t take on gladly.
There are no sins and no circumstances that could make them cower in fear.
Like Aurikatariina says, “I’m not afraid of dirt. Dirt is afraid of ME.”
Asking Saint Thérèse to pray for me is like inviting her into my soul – complete with stacks of ancient pizza boxes and a shower I can’t even use anymore. And when she walks in, she just says, “Look at this mess! It’s a disaster in here. And I… am in heaven.”
Book Recommendation
The book you really need to read this season is The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, by Barbara Robinson. Family of troublemakers takes small-town Christmas play by storm. The kids, who are exactly the right ages and genders for the roles of Mary, Joseph, the Three Wise Men, and the Angel of the Lord, truly are the worst kids ever. There’s underage smoking, which, nowadays, probably makes the story TV-14. I understand if there are tomes with more spiritual heft that have your attention, that’s probably a good thing. But this slim, seventies-era treasure is worth picking up for reasons I’d ruin if I wrote a whole post about it. Just finished reading it with the kids. Only had to explain a few things. 10/10 will do it again next year.
“Ask Me Anything” Giveaway
(this is all the same from last time, so if you’ve already read it, don’t bother… but I do have the gifts in hand and they are spectacular! Consider asking a question!)
You enter the giveaway by… asking me a question.
Any question?
Yes, any question. Topics I know about: writing devotional content for children, having a lot of babies in a short amount of time, converting to Catholicism, skipping steps in recipes, getting a crash course in the Saints by writing about them. Topics I don’t know about: nuclear fission, household organizational systems that stick, flora and fauna of southeast Colorado (but I want to know more!), metalworking, writing fiction. But everything is on the table. Ask away!
I will compile your questions (I’m thinking I’ll choose five to seven of them) and my responses into the 100th Still Today post, which will be posted in January. I’ll take questions via comment or direct email (or by text or in person, Mom).
As a “thank you” for submitting a question, you’ll be entered into the giveaway. I ordered a set of Saint Polaroid Minis and some Christmas gift tags from January Jane Shop, a family run small business that creates beautiful Catholic gifts and art. You’d have to follow the links to see the quality and craftsmanship for yourself. (This is not affiliated in anyway. I just like the shop. Sometimes Substack links don’t work — so, the url is https://www.januaryjaneshop.com/)
I love the Saint polaroid project — the modern Saints lived during a time when they could be photographed. So Jana Pingel (the owner of January Jane) has taken these photographs and added calligraphy, using the Saints’ first names. The result is a good reminder of how human these heroes are. I chose a set of mini polaroids (Edition 3) that includes St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, Venerable Augustine Tolton, and Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, among others. Jana also created a book of these photographs called Humans of Heaven, but it’s on back-order until February. The gift tags have lovely little watercolor images of the gifts from the Twelve Days of Christmas.
I’ll take questions until December 17. On December 18, I’ll choose a question asker at random, track you down, and ask for a good address via email. Then I’ll priority mail you the gift tags or Saint polaroids, or both. You will get to choose! Hopefully these gifts will help round out your Christmas giving. I’d love to hear from you!
I reread the Best Christmas Pageant Ever last year and cried, cried, cried it was so good!! I’ll have to reread it again this year! A question I am asking a lot of women in my life recently is what did it look like( what did you do, however you want to phrase that haha) for you to live an ‘abundant life’ when you felt like you were in seasons of waiting (whether it’s waiting for vocation, work, babies to be born, literally anything). I love reading your thoughts Meredith!!
You are completely allowed to not post or repost ANYTHING with a 40 day old baby. ;) But this was a good (re)post. My daughter just got done reading the Best Christmas Pageant Ever for a book club she's in. I was surprised it was still making the rounds. But it was a fun revisit. :)