About Me
My Journey towards Faith
As a child and teenager, I had been very religious and close to God, sure that God had a purpose for my life. I had even thought about becoming a nun, once in middle school and again in high school but had felt that it was definitely not what I was supposed to do. I don’t think I would have made a particularly good nun as I had become very independent and somewhat outspoken, not good qualities for a nun. As I went on to college, got married, and moved across the country for grad school, I had pushed God away. I went to church for Christmas and Easter and once in a rare while made a Sunday mass.
The Bargain
God got me back to church when I began having medical problems after finishing my masters and was told that I had either lymph cancer, or something called Sarcoidosis, which weakens the immune system. The doctors were running test after test but everything was inconclusive. I was to have surgery on February 14th, Valentine’s Day, to remove a lymph gland for a biopsy. The day before the surgery was a Sunday and I went to mass with my husband and told God I would make a bargain with him. If it turned out not to be cancer, I would return to mass every Sunday and even on holy days of obligation. I’m sure God smiled at that one. Well, it turned out not to be cancer and I kept my promise and began going to church faithfully.
Give me a sign!
I then began trying to find a job in my field and nothing was working out. I didn’t know if I should go on for my Ph.D. or keep looking for a job and I was getting frustrated. My husband and I were at mass one Sunday and I started complaining to God. What was the purpose I was supposed to accomplish? I told him that if he didn’t give me a sign that he did indeed have a purpose for my life, I would take control of my life and do what I wanted to do instead of sitting on the sidelines trying to guess what he wanted me to do. We were at the homily or sermon portion of the mass and the church was semi-circular with narrow horizontal stained-glass windows on the back wall almost to the start of the ceiling. As I sat there complaining to God a pigeon flew onto the exterior ledge of one of the windows. It was not uncommon for this to occur, but the ledge was very narrow and the pigeons would land for a moment and then fly off. This morning the pigeon faced into the church, and slowly flapping its wings, just stayed there. After a few moments of watching the bird, I thought to myself that the bird was crazy and was going to kill itself. Then I became aware of more people noticing the strange behavior of the bird. People all around me were whispering about what the bird was doing. At that point, it occurred to me that the Holy Spirit is often depicted as a dove, which is a type of pigeon, and it was like a jolt of electricity went through me and I knew it was a sign from God. I told him, “ok, you have a plan for my life, you keep control.” As soon as I thought that the pigeon flew away.
Moving Forward...
I went back to grad school and began working on my Ph.D. Then five months later I got pregnant with our son and six months after he was born I got pregnant with our daughter. Was this God’s plan for me? Really? But something good had come out of it. After the birth of my daughter, there was no longer a trace of the Sarcoidosis and the doctors felt that the two pregnancies on top of each other had cured me. Little did I know that six years later he would step dramatically into my life.i