I was shopping one day at the thrift store to de-stress. I wanted to scout for books that I can use for homeschooling. However, at that time, I was also deeply troubled by my 16 year old. His name is Jayjay. He is my biological son. He went to California last year to be with his biological father, my Ex. Our Catholic marriage was annulled a few years ago. However, I have remained in talking terms with him.
Jayjay is filled with resentment towards me. I can see it in his eyes. It is filled with anger. I was just a bit confused on what could have triggered it.
You see, Jayjay fell in love with his stepsister Fay. Thus, my husband and I need to separate them. I gave Jayjay the option to stay with his grandparents. He chose his father.
We brought him back home after his Confirmation. We caught him looking at internet porn in his laptop and IPHONE. We grounded him from computer. He disobeyed us. We felt we had a bigger problem.
At the same time, this year,we have decided to homeschool everyone across the board. Jayjay did not like that and so with my other RADish kids. Thank God that they are the kids and we are the parents.
We made a decision to homeschool after a year of discernment. We took the plunge and we are very happy about it.
During the shaky times (around the end of summer), I picked up this book “Consecrating Families to Jesus through Mary in Union with St. Joseph” published by www.familyland.org. I read the first part. It contains some meditations of Pope John Paul II and based on the devotion to St. Louise Marie de Monfort.
Click the video here.
What 40 days of prayer? We did not think we would want to do that. Yet, my husband decided that we must put our faith to this especially in the way I came across this book.
Let me digress and tell you how I found the book.
After sifting through 4 huge shelves of books at Goodwill Outlet, I was drawn to look back again. I followed the prompting of my angel. I found a book on “strong-will children”. I browse through some parts and it seemed like a pretty neat book for my present problem with Jayjay.
If I missed out on that book on my first pass, then probably I did miss out another book. True enough, I found a tiny, thick book in plastic cover. It was turned upside down. I fixed it and put it back in order. I decided to pull it out. Guess what? It was this Consecration book. Being a Catholic book, I bought it.
Going back to my story, we started this Consecration novena for 40 days. I have to share my experience with you in detail in my future posts. I will tell you how God made it known that He wanted our family to do the Consecration. I will tell you how the book helped us to understand the role of Mary in our family situation. Lastly, I will share iwth you our “miracles”.
