Pick up most any faithful Catholic publication and chances are that you’ll read something by Kristen McGuire. This prolific writer’s work graces the pages of Canticle, Faith and Family, New Oxford Review, Our Sunday Visitor, Envoy and other well known periodicals. She’s also been doing a little editing for Canticle, and would like to do more, but she cannot. Her first duty, she says, is in the home with her children. “If I wait, the other opportunities will still be there when my children are grown.” “This doesn’t mean that it’s easy,” she admits, “it’s an oblation.” A homeschooling mother of six children, with a husband in the Marines, Kristen says that it’s the hardest work she has ever done. Her writing, however, provides an excellent change of pace from the routines and challenges of each day. “Writing is something I’ve always been good at doing. As a sophomore in high school I was able to test out of English. So, while everyone else was taking Advanced Placement English, I was cheerleading,” she recalls. “I have a literary sense, but my writing and all that I am is God’s good gift.” After graduating from Georgetown University with a major in psychology, McGuire worked as an administrative assistant. “I had a fabulous boss who formerly worked for the Washington Post. He was a terrific writer and occasionally I would ghost write for him. His red pen molded me into someone who could make good use of the talents I had been given,” she explains. “I am a terribly opinionated person,” she admits. “Initially, my writing expressed those opinions, but it has changed a lot over the last ten years. The projects that challenge and provoke me today are those about my faith. I have a convert’s zeal for souls, and I think that is why Jesus gave me a gift for writing. “My senior year at Georgetown I experienced what I considered to be a call from God. I was amazed that Jesus was bothering with the likes of me. After graduation, I had a good job and was active in social justice work. When a scholarship for urban ministry became available at a local seminary, I took advantage of it.” In the midst of her preparations for ministry within the Methodist denomination she first felt called towards the Catholic Church. “During one summer I served as chaplain intern at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. I was pregnant with my first child and felt completely overwhelmed. I had been reading a lot of Mother Teresa, marveling at the unity of her faith and her apostolic works. By the end of that summer I knew that I would probably never be a minister in the Methodist church,” says McGuire. After the birth of her first child, Margaret, McGuire finished her degree in 1991. “Shortly thereafter I approached my mentor, Dr. Robin Maas, who had converted in 1987, and asked for help and advice as I explored the Catholic faith. I was received into the Catholic Church in 1992.” Dr. Maas is also the director of the lay apostolate that Kristen joined in 1998. The Women’s Apostolate to Youth (WAY) is a provisionally approved apostolate within the Diocese of Arlington. “It’s a community of formation for women who work with youth and children,” explains McGuire. “It is a unique group composed of women of all ages and stages of life, centered on spiritual maternity.” Members choose one of four female patron saints to study. They attend regular meetings and read and discuss female Catholic authors such as St. Edith Stein and Adrienne Von Speyr. McGuire says she has found the apostolate very helpful in her work as a wife and mother. “We live a rule of life, and rather than piling more stuff on top of what I’m already doing, being a part of WAY has focused my energies so that there is a method to the madness. It helps me prioritize. “After my conversion, I faced the question of what I was supposed to do with all of that knowledge gained in seminary. When I first started writing I was looking for an outlet for the preaching that I had hoped to do.” As the mother of two girls and four boys — Margaret (10), Sean (8), Patrick (6), Peter (5), Joseph (3), and Maryellen (7 months) — McGuire struggles to find time to write. “I’ve learned that I can’t expect to sit down to write for one hour straight. It’s not going to happen. So, I’ll be thinking about my writing while I’m doing things around the house, such as cleaning the bathroom. Reading and writing help me to make sense of what I’m doing as a mother. It’s been cathartic.” Although McGuire’s husband, Dan, can be called away on duty, he takes an active role both in the family and in Kristen’s work. “My husband is incredibly supportive. He will give me an entire morning or day to work on things. He has a Master’s in theology and has read more of the great Catholic thinkers such as Aquinas than I have, so I call him my “Catholic Answer” man. Often, he and I will work on something together.” McGuire is also the author of a book, The Glory to Be Revealed in You: A Spiritual Companion to Pregnancy (Alba House, 1995). McGuire wrote the book while her husband was on a six-month deployment and she was a mother of two. “I had just converted and was reading Caryll Houselander’s Reed of God about receptivity to faith. Pregnancy is a wonderful time for women to receive the gift of faith. It all just came together,” says McGuire. “It is my considered opinion that writing the book was not God’s will,” says McGuire with a laugh. “It was an outgrowth of my ego. I wanted to be told that I was doing something worthwhile in addition to mothering. Part of God’s will for the book was that I realized I needed to be with my children. “The problem for many mothers,” she says, “is that we live in a disjointed society. One hundred years ago, when our economy was primarily agricultural, you had everyone living and working together in the same location. It was ma and pa and the kids working together. Today, you have this isolation where the father is away all day and the mother is home by herself with the children. “When you are in the thick of parenting it can be very difficult to see the progress you are making with your children. For that reason you want to be told that you are worthwhile at something aside from mothering. When your children reach about four or five years old, you realize that your child has learned your own worst habits. You are confronted with your own sins. How you deal with the pain of that realization is the stuff of which saints are made.” McGuire finds that homeschooling is a wonderful outlet for her love of reading and her need to connect with other mothers. “Those who read a lot will be more easily able to write,” she says, “because you will have something to say. It’s a way to form your voice. With homeschooling, I have the opportunity to read more in-depth about something that the children might be learning.” In addition, she points to homeschooling as a way to replace the community that mothers so desperately need in a “disjointed society which has broken the family into various pieces going various directions. The other mothers in our homeschooling community are frequently bringing over meals or asking if they can watch our children for us. They are the most generous, salt-of-the-earth people I have ever met.”