From the time I was a little girl playing with dolls, the dream for my life was to be the mother of a large family. As I got married, my husband shared that dream. When he had completed his military service we returned to my family’s farm and built a house big enough to hold at least six children.
1977 was a very hard year for us. Among other problems we discovered I could not have children. We were devastated.
By July of that year we had also discovered that we could not even get on an adoption list for at least another two years. It was a time when our faith in God was tested. It had never entered our minds that our plans were not God’s plans.
Just then we had visitors from Pennsylvania, four of my husband’s aunts. They had never been to Kentucky, so they came to see our lovely state and spend time with us. One, Sr. Margaret Mary, was a Franciscan nun of the order that St. John Neumann had founded. That was the year he was canonized. As we poured out the story of our distress at dinner that first night, Sister went back to the guest room to her suitcase and pulled out a First Class relic of St. John Neumann. “Here,” she said. “Trust God and pray to St. John. God will hear you.”
The last day of the aunts’ visit we planned to go to a nearby state park to see the outdoor play, “The Stephen Foster Story.” Alan had honestly had enough of ladies’ conversation, so he decided to stay home and rake hay. He came in from the hayfield just as we were about to leave that afternoon. I have a picture of him all sweaty hanging on the wall in my bedroom to this day. It was such a turning point moment.
This was 1977, long before cell phones or even answering machines. In spite of the news we could not even get on an adoption list, we had submitted our application to Catholic Social Service in Covington. While Alan cooled off in the house for a few minutes after the rest of us left, a sister from Catholic Social Service called with some questions about our application. Alan didn’t know the answers, so he wrote down both this sister’s name and another nun’s name and their phone numbers for me to return the call the next day.
Now Alan could be a little dyslexic. He was at this moment. He mixed the numbers up.
When I called the next day, I got the wrong nun. However, we began a conversation that led to the information that we would be in Covington (Covington is about 90 miles away from where we live) the next week. “You know, I’m a believer in Divine Providence,” Sister said. “You have called. You are going to be up here. While you are in town, come to the office. I will do the interview which will get you officially on the potential adoptive parents list. We actually have a 10 month old child with us right now. His mother has changed her mind about keeping her child. Perhaps God means for you to be his parents.”
Excited and hopeful, we went to the interview.
We never knew what happened to that child. He was not to be ours.
But one day the next May, we got the call that informed us we could pick up the child that was to be ours that afternoon . (That was the way it was done in the 1970s!)
He was a wonderful gift from God, our son Andrew. Some time soon after that I realized that actually, following normal gestation, Andrew would have been conceived the same week Alan’s aunts came to visit, for he had been born in late April.
Now I would never imply that God sent the distress of unplanned pregnancy and the pain of adoption to Andrew’s birth parents to give him to us. God is good, all the time. He would not cause pain in others to give joy to us. But I do believe God used the situation and the courageous choice to give birth which Andrew’s birth parents made, to bring goodness to him, to us, and hopefully to those who made that sacrifice.
That was the first time I noticed that God miraculously intervened in my life. It was not the last. Since then the eyes of my faith have grown to see many times fervent prayer has been heard and answered in my life in ways I would not expect, ways that are the signature of God.
This past Sunday, Pentecost, we had a visiting priest in our parish, Fr. Jim Sichko, who serves as a Papal Missionary. He told us one story after another of God’s intervention in ordinary lives at times when it was most needed. His point was: God is good. God hears prayer and responds, often in miraculous ways. We have to TRUST and RISK to enter into the loving care God wants to provide to us.
Father’s comments caused me to think about when and how God has answered prayer in my life. This story of our son Andrew’s beginnings was one that came to mind.
It popped back up as I read today’s first reading from Tobit. Tobit is such a wonderful story to read. It tells of a generally good man, Tobit, and his family, as they struggled with difficulties life sent them. Tobit had become blind. He was so discouraged he cried out to God to let him die. Then he remembered that someone in Media, some distance away, owed him money. He sent his son Tobias to Media to get the money to provide for his family after he died. Tobias was accompanied on his journey by the angel Raphael, though the family did not know Raphael was an angel until the end of the story. In today’s segment Tobias encounters his bride to be, Sarah.
There is a difficulty, though. When Tobias asks Raguel, Sarah’s father, for her as his bride, Raguel tells him that SEVEN husbands-to-be have died as they “approached her.” They had been killed by the evil spirit, Asmodeus.
In the Daily Readings sequence from Tobit, we do not read Sarah’s prayer. She, too, was praying to die. She chose to ask God for that, rather than take her own life. She cries out, “And now I lift up my face and to you I turn my eyes. Let your word deliver me from earth; I can bear myself traduced no longer….Already I have lost seven husbands; why should I live any longer? If it does not please you to take my life, then look on me with pity; I can bear myself traduced no longer.” ( from Tobit 3)
Two people, Tobit and Sarah, risk their lives as they pray, trusting God will hear them.
He does.
Then Tobias, trusting God like his father, and Sarah pray together before they consummate their marriage.
God hears their prayer, too. Tobias lives. We will see tomorrow they happily return to Tobit.
In today’s Gospel Jesus is asked what is the first of the commandments. Jesus answers, “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord our God with all you heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandments greater than these.”
I have found this scripture is a powerful weapon against temptation if I just quote it.
It is what Tobit, Sarah, and Tobias did. They loved God with all their hearts. They did their best to love others as themselves. Then they trusted their lives to God.
Without quite realizing it, it is what Alan and I did in 1977–with the help of Sr. Margaret Mary.
It is what Father talked about on Sunday. It is what living Pentecost is all about.
We are adopted children of God. God loves us. God seeks our good. I have learned much more to trust God and depend on him since 1977, but still too often I don’t trust enough to fully RISK.
A local church has a slogan on its marquee this week that just fits: YOU MAKE THE CHOICE. GOD MAKES THE CHANGE.
What choice to TRUST God might you make today? What change might God then make in your life?
Prayer:
Lord, how great You are! How many times you have worked out impossible situations in my life when I trusted You, when I let go and let God. Have Thine Own Way in my life today, Lord. It is not likely to be a day of great problems. But take over anyway. Help me not wait until I am in trouble to hand myself over to You with TRUST, willing to RISK. I give you this day with whatever it brings. I risk giving up my plans, if You have other plans. Lead me, guide me. Amen.
Many thanks to Robert Burford who wrote the Thursday meditations these past two weeks while I officially retired.
