When Justina Hausmann Kopp found out she was pregnant with quadruplets, the joy of conceiving a child now carried with it a daunting new dimension.

“I had to break my body wide open for these guys,” she recalls of her pregnancy. “It was very challenging, definitely one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.” The quadruplets are now 5 years old, and Kopp is studying to become a marriage and family therapist.

“It’s been a ride. We’ve learned a lot about ourselves, and we’ve learned a little bit about God,” Kopp says. In all of it, she’s become aware of her reaction when people, viewing her family life in the Twin Cities from the outside, say, “Oh, you’re so blessed!”

“I get a little uncomfortable,” says Kopp, noting the struggles of friends who’ve experienced infertility and the losses of multiple pregnancies. Why should she be blessed and not them? “It puts God in too small of a box when we put it that way, and we hurt people unintentionally when we talk about it that way,” she says.

Despite the ubiquitous role of blessings in Catholic faith practice—blessing mothers, couples, fields, throats, cars—Kopp’s encounters are not unique. Catholics and other Christians struggle to grasp what it means to be blessed, using the term loosely and as a hashtag, often veering into territory that has more to do with the prosperity gospel than actual Catholic theology. And while she rejects these frames, Kopp’s faith does lead her to recognize blessings in her life, but it’s not a shallow understanding of grace.