Author: Carrie Sue Barnes

Carrie Sue Barnes is a fiction author and blogger who fell in love with creative writing as a grade schooler in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She resides now in Wisconsin with her family, often pulling her love for the Midwest into her writing. Carrie Sue's debut novel, The Hidden Legacy, was released in 2018 by Bold Vision Books to strong reviews. Since then, she has published several short stories and continues to write short fiction and faith-inspired reflections on this site. Carrie Sue loves reading, kayaking, hugging her children and friends, rewatching The Office, and connecting with readers in person and on social media.
Intentionality, Worthy

One Word for the New Year

Carrie Sue Barnes

Earlier this week, I chose my “one word” for 2017. You may have seen this suggestion making its rounds on social media. Choose one word that becomes your guiding theme in the twelve months ahead. People’s answers have a beautiful variety: thankful, peace, trust, action, hope, brave. I have seen many as the clock keeps ticking its way closer to the new year, and I have chosen mine:

WORTHY

I rolled it around in my brain for a day, considering others but returning to this one. I mulled over why it was the strongest contender. What did it mean for me? How might it affect my year? It nestled into my consciousness and I decided to let it stay. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to share it with you on this blog. As I sorted out my musings into readable paragraphs, I also tried to find a good quotation to use to introduce the idea. It was a rare occasion of Google failing me.

What I found was quote after quote affirming a person’s self-worth. I am worthy. You are worthy. On and on and on. We have a crisis of self-worth. This isn’t news. It’s been going on for decades and only getting worse. The misguided responses of rooting out all humility and lasting, God-given identity haven’t exactly helped.

All these people attempting to answer this crisis. At first it seemed like there was nothing applicable to my theme for the new year. I wasn’t looking for an affirmation of self-worth. It is exactly because of my belief in my own worth that I chose this word. Then I realized that maybe, just maybe, this new year’s theme is a piece of the puzzle of living in a manner that says you know your worth.

I chose WORTHY because I am tired of giving of myself to things that are not worthy of me. I’m tired of being tired – physically and mentally. I, like many people, have trouble saying no to or stepping away from that which isn’t worthy of a portion of my reserves of time, energy, attention, and care. In the coming year, I hope to retrain myself to an extent. Give myself only to what is worthy – be it activities, hobbies, relationships, responsibilities, worries, thoughts – and within the collection of what is worthy, spend myself to an extent that is proportionate to each one’s importance. Not everything and everyone is worthy of what I have to give, and not everything and everyone that is worthy is equally worthy.

At the close of 2017, I aim to have this a bit more sorted out than I do now. The end result, I hope, will be less of that tiredness I mentioned, yes, but also a better ability to pour myself out for what is WORTHY because I am not wasting myself on what isn’t.

Christmas, Family, Intentionality

Listen to Your (Inner) Three Year Old

Carrie Sue Barnes

My three year old gets it. All that is necessary to fill him with excited anticipation is to tell him we are going to do something together. The activity matters little. Togetherness is the key.

During the brief forty-five minutes we had this morning between him waking up and me departing for work, he must have asked ten times for me to spend time with him. The asking comes in a variety of forms – will you sit with me; can we watch a movie together; are you going to eat with me – but the heart of the question is constant: Can we be together?

Connection; companionship; unity; family. It is my belief that we do not lose our early years’ desire for togetherness. We grow adept at minimizing its significance, quieting its voice. We learn to ignore it. We all have our own reasons for doing so.

With each instance in which I must reject my son’s request for time with me because I am required to be elsewhere, my heart hurts. Yet there are plenty of times where I also turn him down carelessly, preferring that he leave me alone to do the things I’m more interested in that day or the things I think have to get done. I am imperfect in it, without a doubt, but having children has reawakened my own desire for and value of togetherness.

This isn’t written with undue guilt. We cannot be there with them non-stop. Jobs, obligations, responsibilities, and even solitary endeavors are both necessary and valuable. Yes, my children have to learn the hard lesson that they are not at the center of the world they occupy nor can they count on always receiving what they want from others. My thoughts run less along the line of eliminating those lessons and more along the line of wondering what society, and specifically my own family, could look like if alongside those harder lessons everyone also learned that we do not need to guard our hearts against the natural desire for togetherness.

Final request of the day: “Will you rest with me?”

What if I said yes more often, both to my son and to my own timid longing for greater togetherness? What if I factored it more strongly into our Christmas season plans and my New Year’s resolutions? What if I replaced “not right now” with “yes, we can be together” as much as possible? It would be a difference maker for the good, I am sure of it.

Advent, Christmas, Faith, Family, Hope, Jesus, Scripture

The Paradox of Suffering and Hope at Christmas

Carrie Sue Barnes
Photo provided by Trisha Hummel

Today is my cousin Trudi’s 44th birthday. It is her 23rd birthday in eternal life. I was still stumbling my way toward my teen years when Trudi was murdered. Trudi and her older sisters were thick as thieves with my older sisters while I was just one of the little cousins in our extensive family circle. I remember her as cool; fun and beautiful; bold and humorous.

This weekend I spent hours addressing Christmas cards. As I scribbled the names, streets, and cities of my cousins, I couldn’t help wondering about Trudi. Would she live in the same area, like her sisters, or would she have established her life elsewhere? Would we have attended a wedding? Would our children have played together by now? Would we have that comfortable, enjoyable dynamic that develops between family members after the years have placed us on level ground?

Hypotheticals. They do an excellent job of muddling the mind and stinging the heart. There’s nothing like loss to leave you wading through a pool of hypotheticals. And there’s nothing like Christmas time to amplify the wound of loss.

This isn’t a direct quote, as I can’t remember where I heard it, but I once read that St. John Paul II said suffering is created by feeling cut off from good. We live and love and link ourselves to sources of good. When one of those links is severed, we are left trying to patch the tear.

What has severed a link to good in your life?
Death
Divorce
Job loss
Infertility
Disease
Rejection
Betrayal

Every cut in our connections to what is good is felt keenly in this season of celebration. For some, the suffering renders Christmas undesirable. Potential joy is swallowed up in misery. Sounds of peace are drowned out by the roar of hypotheticals that can never be.

Oh, the paradox of Christmas. For Christmas, my friends, is the arrival of the Divine Response to every wound and cut and tear you carry with you. It is Almighty God dwelling amongst us. He made Himself vulnerable to encounter our vulnerability. God entrusted Himself to the arms of a mother, to the home of an earthly father, and to a community of imperfect, suffering individuals.

Adoration of the Shepherds by Gerard van Honthorst

Christmas is the issuance of God’s answer to our suffering, to our feeling of being cut off from good. It is a resounding song of hope: “You are not cut off. You are not abandoned. You are not lost. For I am with you. Here in the deepest cuts, I abide with you. I may have allowed pain and loss, but I fill the voids. I AM the source of all good and I AM here.”

Christmas, when “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) is the root of our conviction “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Advent, Christmas, Family, Love

She Would Have Loved That

Carrie Sue Barnes

Two years ago my last grandparent, my maternal grandmother, passed away. Her death came in the week before Thanksgiving and so inevitably she enters my thoughts a lot in this holiday season. Similarly, it is summertime when my paternal grandmother comes to mind most often as my final memory of her was a family picnic at my parents’ house on a warm summer day. Sunshine warmed grass between my toes, family sitting in chairs in the yard, Grandma Theresa makes herself present with us. Now, in the bustle of family focused holidays and age old traditions, Grandma Evelyn is here with me.

Grandma Evelyn with my firstborn, a few months before she passed.

During Sunday Mass last weekend, I leaned over to my husband and whispered, “Grandma would have loved this men’s choir.” The rich, reverent harmonies could have been from any number of old albums of hymns she used to play on her cassette deck next to her favorite chair. I savored every song during that Mass, enjoying it on her behalf.

Then at the end of Mass, I approached the giving tree set up near the sanctuary. Typically I choose a request for a child’s gift from these trees. It gives me a special kind of joy to know a young child will be happier on Christmas day thanks to a small sacrifice on my family’s part. It was with this same intention that I went to find this year’s star on the giving tree. But what did I find on the first star I read? A little Christmas wish list for an elderly woman that could have been my grandmother’s list pretty much every single year. My eyes filled with tears and I swallowed a lump of emotion in my throat as I plucked the star from the tree. I get to shop for my Grandma.

When I read that Christmas list and kept thinking, “she would have loved that,” with each item, I realized something I hope I won’t forget. Remembering our loved ones gone from this world is a special thing but loving on others with the very love your heart has marked for the ones you lost is immeasurably greater.

Because the Saints Said So, Gratitude, Intentionality, Saints, Writing

Because the Saints Said So: These Days (St. Gianna)

Carrie Sue Barnes
This is me pretending to be ok with the fact that I need a winter coat and hat again. And I need to leave the house even earlier to defrost my car. And my hands and feet will essentially be cold for the next four months (just ask my husband).
These days are hard for me in the motivation department. The uncomfortable temperatures, icy winds, and especially the sparse daylight hours take their toll and I tend toward hibernation instead of productivity. I’d wager I’m not the only one dealing with this seasonal slump. So what to do, what to do?

I used to think the trick was to focus on the future. Wishing my way through winter, counting on spring to come with all its fresh renewal of spirits and inner drive. What did that leave me with, really? A few months of dissatisfaction. There has to be a better way.

St. Gianna Molla said:

“The secret of happiness is to live moment by moment and to thank God for all that He, in His goodness, sends to us day after day.”

Moment by moment with thanksgiving. If I aspire to happiness in every season (winter, yes, but also any difficult or trying “season” you may experience), I must give thanks not merely for what is promised to come but what is here now. Am I thankful for the whipping cold wind? No. But I’m thankful for the sunshine on my skin. Am I thankful for having to wear layers and layers to be tolerably warm? No. But I’m thankful I have those layers to do so. Am I thankful for the darkness descending by the time I leave my office each day to drive home? No. But I am thankful for the brightness of the hugs I receive from my little ones when I walk in the door. Plus I guarantee those evenings make me more thankful for the light of dawn each morning.

What about this moment right now? Right now. Stop and be thankful. Pause to choose something worthy of your gratitude in this exact moment and consciously offer thanks to God. I’ll do it with you.

…

And now I’m a little bit happier with my day than before.

The side effect of all this gratitude isn’t only happiness. It’s that internal motivation to persevere in whatever tasks, projects, or endeavors you are tempted to neglect in this season. For me it is writing projects and being diligent about cooking worthwhile meals for the family. When we see the good in each day, in each moment even, how much greater the impetus to treat the day as deserving of your best.

The lovely hope of spring is still a fine reality to contemplate, but if I count on it to make me my best self in this season of my life I am likely to be disappointed. The gifts of today are reason enough to invest myself in living.

Intentionality, Writing

Chasing It Down

Carrie Sue Barnes

This is the first bit of writing I’ve done in three days. By last night I began to feel the desperate, urgent need in my gut. I cannot go without it. It took 25 years to fully realize my passion. That’s when I began the first draft of my first novel. When other (beautiful) things interrupted the pursuit, it took a handful of years before I rediscovered that same passion and dove back in. Now here I am, 35 years old, a few steps away from publishing that debut novel, and craving a taste of my passion whenever I set it aside for more than a day.

If you understand what I mean, you know there are two choices available: label the required effort a burden and gradually let it slip from your grasp, or chase it down with the fervor of a lover desperate not to lose his beloved.

I came across this image from success.com. Oh, how I laughed at the memory into which it plunged my mind. How applicable that memory happened to be for this train of thought. (Train! You’ll see why that’s funny in a moment.)

Maybe ten years ago, I traveled to Philadelphia with my sister and a good friend. We took the train to New York City for a day of living it up, tourist style. Sights were seen, miles were walked, photos were taken. It was grand fun apart from mildly injuring my foot in the early afternoon and continuing to walk on it for hours afterward. At the end of the day, really it was well into the evening, we tried to squeeze in one more must-see spot before navigating our way back to the train. To summarize, we at some point realized we had misread the train schedule and needed to haul our tired asses dozens of blocks across the dark, noisy, unfamiliar city to catch our connecting train or we would miss the last possible train into Philadelphia. So, haul ass we did. None of us were in great shape. None of us were runners. All three of us were already exhausted, all of us were doubtful we knew the way to the correct train station, and one of us had a terribly sore foot. Still, we ran. We ran through busy intersections and crowded sidewalks. We ran around street corners, glancing backward and forward to see if we were still a trio. We ran through the train station, our unrelenting pace echoing off the walls. We chased down that train like our lives depended on it.

There was no question of giving up. No contemplation of whether or not we should bother. We knew what we had to do and we did it. When we reached the summit of the steps exiting the station in Philadelphia and pointed ourselves toward our hotel, we laughed again and again over the adventure of it all.

I hope I can legitimately compare my pursuit of my passion (writing) with our pursuit of that train. I hope I pursue it like a cash poor, Midwestern girl who really, really wants to sleep in her hotel bed rather than wandering the dark and scary streets of NYC until dawn. I hope I never let up, never decide it is too much. I hope I come out the other side and laugh over the incomparable adventure of it all.

Lastly, I hope you find your passion worth chasing down. If you already found it, run hard, my friend. Run hard.

Full of Days, The Hidden Legacy, Writing

Doing the Hard Things

Carrie Sue Barnes
Ever have those days when God drops His subtle tendencies and instead places what you need smack dab in front of your face so you won’t miss it? Today was one of those days. A Facebook friend shared this photo today and I broke down crying.
There’s progress being made toward publishing Full of Days, my debut novel. Steps on this mountain climb of a dream coming true. Writing the first draft nine years ago was hard. Revisions ever since have been hard. Setting it aside when it was not top priority for a few years was hard. Rededicating myself to it this year with a level of commitment I had not employed since writing the first draft has been hard.
It’s all been hard and I have done it all. I have done it and every single bit has been worth it. That’s what I keep reminding myself as I acknowledge the intimidation I feel right now. There’s something no one ever told me about drawing close to fulfilling the dearest dream of your heart: it can be scary. Not pursuing the dream or giving up on it when you hit the inevitable bumps, those things are scary in their own crushing way. This is a different sort of scary. It’s not crushing. It’s not terrifying. It is simply intimidating.
The repeated question running through my head is, “what will I do if this falls apart because I can’t do it?” Sometimes the gist of that question is self-doubt, wondering if I am capable. Other times it is a panicked query of myself, at a loss for how I would handle this dream coming to an end so I’d better do everything possible to not let that happen.
I can do the hard things. As I’ve been doing and will continue to do until this novel is in the hands of every possible person willing to read it, I will do the hard things.