Finding Your Fiat: a conference recap

One hundred and forty women came from Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia, Colorado, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Illinois for a simple women's conference in central Illinois. The game plan was simple: bring in some dynamic speakers, add some fresh flowers and home baked cookies, and put them all in a church hall. Don't charge too much and invite women who love God and want to have a good time. It worked. 

Maybe you followed along on social media. Instagram has a good collection of pictures and I shared a couple good videos on my Facebook page but here's a few more glimpses of the weekend. 

Friday night was a Girls' Night Out. It was a blast. The location was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the wine was fantastic. Local friends loaned me their Marian statues so each table had a different image of our Lady - the woman whose Fiat has echoed down through the centuries. Jenna Guizar spoke about Blessed Is She - the official co-host and sponsor of the event - and Marie Miller gave a concert. Marie kicked off the second half of the night with karaoke and dancing. It was a blast. 

Saturday we started a bit later so women could get in an extra hour of sleep. We had fresh fruit, coffee and creamer, coloring pages, hand-stamped "fiat" necklaces, and more fresh flowers. It was a beautiful, sunny morning and we were so excited to start the day. 

Meg started our morning off with a wonderful talk on the difference between seeking God and seeking God's will. Jenna ended our day by challenging us to say "no" so we could say "yes." Her line "if the devil can't make us evil he'll make us busy" cut right to the quick.

Shanon at Organic Mama's Shop donated the pens. My friend Katie hand stamped each "fiat" and made the necklaces along with making the coloring sheets for us.

Our breakout speakers were Colleen, Annie, Sr. Clara, Laura, Nancy, and Marie. They spoke about missionary work, infertility, finding your "yes," suffering, hobbies, and state of life. They were all fabulous - at least that's what I heard. I was so busy working behind the scenes I only caught glimpses of the various talks. I wish I could tell you that the talks are all available but in keeping with the laid back and simplicity we did not have any equipment to do that. You and I can suffer that together.

At one point in the day Nell - our truly fabulous emcee - grabbed my phone so she could get a picture of me and the conference I helped create. I love looking at this picture of me, wearing baby Tee. I think I have a charism for founding conferences. ;)

To the women who believed in our vision and spent the weekend with us: Thank you. 

To Molly and Abbey who helped me establish this conference: Thank you. 

To the women who helped make this conference a reality: Thank you. 

to the women (and men) who prayed for me and for the weekend and for all the women who attended as speakers or guests: Thank you. 

Our God is good. 

"Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum."

"Let it be done unto me according to thy word."

Luke 1:38

Find Me Here:

I am super busy in the details of this weekend's conference but I did want to pop in and let you all know that yesterday I was at Blessed Is She with the devotional. Here's a glimpse at it:

Today’s Gospel shares a good litmus test for prophets and, I think, friends.

What does a friendship bearing good fruit look like? Well, it should be rich with the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. (Gal 5:22)

Love: Are our friends willing and able to hope all things and endure all things for our sake, and are we willing and able to do the same? (1 Cor 13:7) Do we want the best for each other, and help one another find God’s will in our lives?

You can read the rest here.


Then today I am guest posting at my dear friend Katie's blog, Look to Him and Be Radiant. She is running a week-long series on why it's important to make things beautiful and she asked me to write about why I decorate my home for holidays and holy days. Here's a snippet:

Why do I do it? For three reasons. First, because decorations are a simple way that I can bring the rhythm of the Church's liturgical year into our home. This is helpful for me as a mom - the decorations add an extra emphasis on what we are celebrating or why we are fasting. They are a sort of visual aid for my children as I teach them about saints, Jesus' love for us, doctrines of our faith, and the culture of our catholic Catholic church. But really it's not just for the kids - even as a 34 year old woman I find it much easier to enter into the liturgical seasons, the feasting and the fasting, if I am reminded of them by my surroundings.

You can read the rest here.


This weekend I'll be on Instagram taking pictures of the conference - which you can follow with the hashtag #findingyourfiatconference. I may even pop in on Facebook and share some live videos.

Two of My Favorite Ways to Pray

If you read the daily devotions from Blessed Is She than you might have already seen me over there today. In reading today's Gospel I was reminded of one of my favorite ways to pray - simple but powerful - and since it was a tip I didn't receive until later in life I wanted to be sure to pass it on. 

Catholic vocab lesson: an “aspiration” is a short prayer, a one liner that says it all without many words.

“I do believe, help my unbelief,” is one such aspiration. The father in today’s Gospel called it out to Jesus in desperation and, truthfully, it is one of my favorite lines of Scripture. I can relate to the sentiment strongly—a prayer asking God to fill in the gaps—and I pray it often, especially when I am struggling with Church teaching. “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.”

You can read the rest here. If you've never used aspirations before I really encourage you to give them a try. I find that having the words written in my heart helps me to pray when I don't know how to pray.


And then there is something else I love: praying with other women of faith. I don't mean praying with holy rollers, or spotless and perfect women, or other youngish moms who meet a certain standard of being good enough. I mean that I love praying with a group of women who are real. Women who believe and who love God and sometimes are really struggling. Cross-carrying, doing-their-best, open-hearted women - that's what I mean.

If that's you then I hope you will be able to join a group of us this June at the Finding Your Fiat Conference. The conference is not a way for any of us to get rich - it really is just an opportunity to for women to get together so we can be encouraged and inspired, so we can love and worship God together, and so we can enjoy each other's companionship.

We are nearing capacity but there are still tickets available. (You can buy yours here.) AND there is still the opportunity for you to win one of TWO FREE tickets to the Finding Your Fiat Conference! The giveaway ends tomorrow night at midnight! Hustle over and enter! 

Two Free Tickets to the Finding Your Fiat Conference

Hey ladies! Great news!

We have an exciting giveaway for TWO tickets to the Finding Your Fiat Conference!

The conference is going to be absolutely wonderful - just a laid back, encouraging, fun, weekend with Christ as the foundation. The more I work on the details with Abbey, Nell, Jenna, Molly, Annie, Meg, Colleen, Sister Clara, Nancy, Laura, and Marie the more excited I am for YOU to be with us.

And so, if you've been putting off buying a ticket, now is your chance to win one!

There are tons of ways to get entries, so have some fun, and share away so more sisters can know about Finding Your Fiat and we can all be together.

We are holding the giveaway over at Blessed Is She so head on over!

The giveaway ends Tuesday, May 17th at 11:59pm EST.

PS - A special Thank you! to the two anonymous donors who made this giveaway possible!

Recipes, IEP Prep, Mercy, Scripture, and Fiats - 7QT

1 - Let's start off with a song, shall we?



or maybe you'd prefer this one



L prefers this one. She loves the little dance he does (and so do I, really.)


2 - We have a lot of food allergies in our home and I have tried out a lot of recipes over the years. Just to review, JF and JP do not eat dairy, eggs, nuts, wheat, or tomatoes; Ben cannot have nuts; and I am currently dairy-free for Tee's sake. In case you're in a similar boat here's some recipes that some or all of us have enjoyed recently:

Easy Dairy Free Scones
I made these with blueberries and a clementine glaze the other day - delicious!

Easy Biscuits
Use water instead of milk for dairy free. I even substituted GF flour and added some herbs and they were still really good.

The Healthy Gluten-Free Life Cookbook (affiliate link)
This cookbook has been wonderful! I have tried so many online recipes which have been failures and so often allergy cookbooks don't cover all our bases. But this one has 200 recipes that are dairy, egg, soy, and gluten free. I can easily not use nuts for some but even with the ones that are based on nuts this book has been just awesome and I just had to share.


3 - Speaking of special needs (because I definitely think of the boys food allergies - especially JF's deadly allergy to dairy - as special needs), we are getting ready for JF going to Kindergarten next year and addressing his special needs. Our older kids are at our parish school but because of JF's apraxia he will need services that he can only get at our excellent public school. We're working with both principals to hopefully do a dual enrollment so he can have the best of both schools. At the encouragement of a friend of mine, who has spent many years advocating for her son, I made up an info sheet to pass out at JF's upcoming IEP meeting. I think it's such a good idea that I wanted to share an example in case it might be of help to anyone else. I used PicMonkey to make the section titles and then used Microsoft Publisher for the rest, but Word would work just as well I think.

4 - Earlier in the week I spoke live on Facebook, talking about a really wonderful video called Mercy is Greater, the book Beautiful Mercy, my fears, God's mercy and how I am supposed to live that out, and why I decided to start memorizing Scripture. Knowing that I was going to be sharing some personal stuff I was pretty nervous, which shows a bit in some slight rambling.

You can watch the Mercy is Greater video here, and you can go to my blog's Facebook page to watch the 12 minute video of me. And if you want to follow along and join me in memorizing Scripture please do. I will mostly be posting on Instagram, and mostly as a way to keep myself accountable to my goal of daily reading a chapter of the Bible, doing spiritual reading, and working on my memory verse.


5 - My nerves (and the tears) in the video meant that I forgot to mention something.

I wanted to say that my friend, Heather Renshaw, has been a major influence in my understanding the importance of Scripture memorization. Heather frequently peppers her conversations with Scripture. It's something I noticed while recording The Visitation Project with her (and maybe you've noticed to when you listen) and I've seen that same act in Facebook conversations and in offline conversations, too. She has used Scripture to bring hope, comfort, and praise into so many situations and often in situations where I didn't know what to say but Heather did because she has so much Scripture tucked in her heart. I see that as mercy in action.

The two verses I have memorized so are: Galations 5:22 and Philipeans 1:6. Look them up - they're good.


6 - Maybe you saw already, by the last Breakout Speaker for the Finding Your Fiat Conference was announced - Sr. Clara from the Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

We have so many great speakers coming - it's an incredible line-up. I hope you can join us and be there, too. To learn more and buy your ticket visit our website.

7 - I don't really think these were so quick so I'll just end here with a big THANK YOU to Kelly at This Ain't the Lyceum for being hilarious and for hosting the link-up each week.

Tickets are now on sale for the Finding Your Fiat Conference!

Along with already announced speakers and guests Jenna Guizar, Meg Hunter-Kilmer, Marie Miller, and Annie Tillberg we are really excited to say that journalist, blogger, and book lover Nancy Piccione will also be joining us and offering a Break Out. (Learn about all our speakers here.)

If your husband hasn't purchased your Christmas gift yet, maybe send him the link for the ticket info.

We hope you can join us June 24-25 in East Peoria, Illinois. It's going to be so much fun!

Purchase your tickets here or check out our website for more information.

Announcing the Finding Your Fiat Catholic Women's Conference

Some friends and I have been working on something behind the scenes for a couple of months now and today is the day I finally get to tell everyone. 

This summer, June 24-25, Molly Walter, Abbey Davis Dupuy, and I will be offering a Catholic women's conference called Finding Your Fiat.

We really believe it will be great. We talked about what we wanted in a conference (a fun, come as you are night out + talks given by women we know and admire who can speak to our hearts about our lives + affordable!) and then we set out to make it happen. 

We kept things simple (no vendors, no swag bags, nothing too fancy) which kept ticket prices and our stress levels low. We focused on bringing in great speakers and a yummy lunch and booked a parish hall so we could have access to Reconciliation, Mass, and a quiet chapel to pray. 

Our speakers will be amazing! Jenna Guizar and Meg Hunter-Kilmer will be keynoting and our growing list of breakout speakers already includes Annie Tillberg and Marie Miller.

Friday night we're co-hosting a Girls' Night Out with Blessed Is She and it will be wonderful. So. Much. Fun.

Tickets will go on sale soon but we wanted to share the date and info with you now so you can make plans and possibly add it to your Christmas wishlist. 

You can learn more about the Finding Your Fiat conference at our website. And I hope I can see you this summer!