“Excellent student; talks too much.” That was pretty much my report card throughout elementary school. I had the beautiful gift of a sunny personality and was somewhat precocious. Around the age of 12, I remember riding home on the bus after a church camp and having an inner dialog with myself, debating the question: “Should I believe in God or not?” I changed my mind many times on that 20-minute trip. The memory of that inner debate remains distinct in my mind. I remember vividly how happy I felt when I answered yes, but on the other hand, how immediately saddened I became when I answered no. That was my first spiritual experience. This is my memory of my true self, pure and turned toward God.
My second significant spiritual experience came in college, when I was awakened at 4:00 AM by a voice: “Yaz, I have something for you…” That was all I heard. The loving voice trailed off after that, probably because I was not ready to hear more. After all, I could barely handle the greeting; I knew the voice was from God. What could He possibly want with me? And why was He calling me by my nickname? Surely God would call me Miss R. I thought about this incident, and it felt way out of my control. This was not what I had said yes to. I was happy to be a Christian, but I was not going to do anything outlandish that defied rational thought.
I had come to America to go to a Christian college. Though it was a wonderful place and time of life, I had a lot of difficulty distinguishing true Christianity from American culture. The loud music, the laying on of hands, seed faith, being slain in the spirit, the sinner’s prayer — some of these things were uncomfortable to me, and I did not know what to do with them. Yet it seemed that these were part of the standard faith experience. When I heard the voice that morning, I was a little horrified that I might become “one of them” — what I considered a “mindless Christian.” This experience shifted the “yes” in me, and I ran from a true walk of conviction, and sadly, from my true self.
The Glittering Image
The next three decades of my life brought many good things: marriage, children, career, travel. I was a worldly success. I was a committed Methodist; after all, I was married to the pastor. I engaged in a mediocre, comfortable Christianity, never facing the difficult things of life in myself or others. I paid little attention to those childhood experiences, and a false self evolved — a glittering facade of my true, sunny personality. I was proud of the shiny persona I had developed. As the years ticked by, though, the separation between that glittering image and the true self became greater. Life was busy, and I never stopped to recognize how lost I had become.
Then, in February of 2017, true trauma hit, and in an instant, the image was shattered, and what was left was my lost soul. It was not that I did not trust in God; it was more of a slow distancing from surrender in my life. Teresa of Avila’s imagery of the soul being a garden where God wants to dwell illustrates my experience. Within my soul there was a beautiful garden, but it was contained in a glass gazebo, allowing me to control how much I would allow God to work. There were places in my garden that I did not want God to go. This imaginary gazebo was beautiful, with large French windows that overlooked scenic rolling hills. The garden bloomed year-round and no matter the issues of the outside world, I could find a beautiful place to dwell and hide from the cruel realities of the world. This is how I coped, stayed “sunny” and kept my glittering image shiny. As the years went by and troubles came, the gazebo had to be fortified — more denial of reality, more refusal to look at others’ pain. These were moments of opportunity for humility, but instead, I pridefully closed the door and patched the walls. Preservation of the image that “all is well” was always key.
Then, in 2017, a bomb went off, and the fortified walls with patched-up cracks could no longer stand. The destruction was instant, without warning. There was no time to board up the windows, they were shattered. The glittering image was gone, and my naked soul was exposed.
There was no denial this time: the magnitude of the destruction was immense. I had to face reality, the horror. I found amid the great horror was God himself, God omnipresent within the situation. My broken soul was gently scooped up and allowed to hide under His protective wings for close to two years. I mourned continually, the gazebo walls were fallen, and God in His great mercy came in and comforted me. Thus began my journey home to the Catholic Church down the Via Dolorosa.
The Power of the Rosary
February 2nd, 2017: My bright and talented 14-year-old son lay in the ICU. He had just come out of the operating room, having had two brain surgeries in hopes of containing the damage of a self-inflicted gunshot wound suffered a few hours earlier. His cranium was split down the middle, and the left parietal bone removed to allow for swelling. Two drains were inserted into his brain, draining blood. A third tube was inserted to measure pressure and drain cerebrospinal fluid. He was on a ventilator and in a medically induced coma. He had left home in the morning happy and excited about his basketball game, and then, twelve hours later, our world had come to a crashing stop.
Midnight, day 2: I knew I had to pray, but I could not. Beyond exhausted and running on pure adrenaline, I was unable to think, I could not fit the words together to make a sentence to pray. In the hospital lobby, at midnight and alone (my very dear friends had left for a little break), I found myself googling the words ‘healing prayer.’ The first hit I found — I believe by divine providence — was Kathleen Beckman’s prayer for healing and deliverance from 2010.
This prayer was a lifeline, a cry of protection from a mother’s heart to look after her son. The prayer called forth the power of the Spirit, protection from evil, and the surrender of her boy to Jesus with the help of His mother Mary. All these were the very cry of my own soul. Here was this prayer that had all the words and themes that I desperately wanted to articulate, but it was embedded in the Hail Marys of the Catholic Rosary. I knew very little about the Rosary, except that it was used by Catholics to help them pray. I had never said a Hail Mary, but it was right there for me. All I had to do was read the prayer; I did not have to think. The words were there for me, and all I had to do was repeat them over and over. As I repeated the Hail Marys, I experienced an unimaginable peace.
The next day, I shared my experience with friends, and within 24 hours I was the owner of a beautiful Rosary, gifted to me by the monks of St. Gregory’s in Oklahoma. I was told that the Rosary had been blessed by the pope. I was so grateful to know that — I am not sure why, since I was not Catholic — but I knew the pope was a very holy man. I physically clung to that Rosary; it somehow connected me to Jesus. Amidst the terrible prognoses and the limits of medicine, I had tangible hope in my hands.
Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus
Against all odds, Ian survived. The unknowns were huge, but he had come off the ventilator and within two weeks was discharged to a rehabilitation center. The ride to the rehabilitation facility was one of the worst days of my life. I prayed and prayed the Rosary but was overcome by the tragedy. Ian was far from being okay. I found myself in a van with my beautiful boy strapped to a gurney in the back. His big developing muscles were tight and clenched, he had almost no movement. He was speechless. I sat in the front seat with the driver, a routine day for him but the hugest of horrors for me.
I was greeted at the door by the rehabilitation chaplain, Dorothy. In hindsight, I can see that God was at the center, even before I arrived. I had known Dorothy for over 20 years. However, I did not know she loved the Blessed Virgin Mary and, at one point, had contemplated becoming a nun. I have no doubt she was placed there to help me. She talked to my Protestant brain about Mary and encouraged my devotion to her. I spent the next month in the rehab facility, with Ian being cared for by Dorothy and her friend, Wendy. They carried my burden and lightened my load in a very practical way. They laid hands on me, anointed me with oil, and prayed. The physical touch was meaningful. It united me to the heavenly realms of saints and miracles who have preceded us.
Within three weeks, Ian had progressed so significantly that we were ready for discharge. He was walking, talking and making jokes again. He still had a lot of recovery ahead of him, but it was so much better than the day we arrived. I was most fearful of leaving because, along with the Rosary, Wendy and Dorothy were my lifeline. I am not sure that I could have mentally survived rehab or the next year without these prayer warriors. I knew they would continue to pray for me, and indeed, over the next year, I sought them out on a couple of occasions because I needed to be anointed and prayed over again to survive this journey. I am reminded of the Stations of the Cross and Christ’s journey to Golgotha, where Jesus falls twice. First, Simon of Cyrene is there to help carry the cross, then Veronica wipes His face. Real, tangible presence, ready to help carry the burden — that is how I think of Dorothy and Wendy. I am forever indebted to these women. They carried my burden and encouraged me to keep my eyes on Jesus.
The Long Journey to the Cross
As I stepped back into my life at home, the magnitude of the disaster became real. When one person in a family unit suffers, they all suffer. Though Ian was getting better the ripple effects of this terrible event became evident. The toll this had taken on his sister was tremendous. She was 10 years old and had to endure her brother almost dying, the horrors of violence and suicide, and her family split apart for months. The toll on my husband was immense as he tried to work through the trauma and keep what was left of normalcy together for all of us. My family was badly hurt, and I found myself prostrate every morning, begging for God’s grace to make it through the day — grace for healing, grace for restoration, grace for protection, grace for hope and joy to come back to all of us.
I continued repeating the Rosary and pleasantly discovered that there was more than one set of mysteries. In the Luminous mysteries, I found myself asking Mary to petition her Son for more wine, since we had none left. The wineskins were empty; we were spent. My daily Bible readings were all in the Psalms. My once sharp mind could not reason or think, but my soul connected to the Psalms. I read the Psalms every day, several times through. For the first time, I understood the extremes of emotion that would cause someone to ask God to smite an enemy’s children dead. Mary was with me every day; I felt her presence.
Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty (1 Timothy 2:15)
The journey at home became one of perseverance, and I understood what Timothy meant: motherhood brings us to God. Daily, it became clearer that this would be a long, uphill climb rather than a 400 meter sprint. The left side of Ian’s body was frozen, and he needed speech, occupational, and physical therapy. We did not want to be there, but we were. I was fully aware that how we chose to walk this journey would not only be a testament of our faith, but an example to both our children of how to handle adversity. My prayer became: “Lord give me the grace to parent in this impossible situation.”
There were extremes of emotion in this journey, hence the connection to the Psalms. It was a mental roller coaster full of paradoxes. One moment there was screaming pain at the loss; the next moment there was anger and outrage at the injustice of the situation; then after these emotions were spent, there was full surrender and gratitude for survival. This cycle repeated itself, sometimes multiple times a day. Permeating these emotional highs and lows was the unanswered question of, “Why, God?”
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:21).
EWTN and a Growing Faith
In the middle of all of this, I started watching EWTN every night. I had never heard of the channel prior to this journey. For me, the mornings were awful. The thought of facing another day in this paradigm was overwhelming, but at the end of the day, we had survived, and I was able to settle down. I had no desire to watch my former favorite shows; I needed to connect with people of faith. I was looking for a miracle and stories of miracles, and EWTN had them. For the first time in 30 adult years of being a Christian, I heard of saints, Eucharistic miracles, appearances of Mary, and Jesus alive in the Eucharist. It was mind blowing, and I soaked it up like a parched sponge.
One night, about two years after the injury, I was watching a rerun of Mother Angelica’s show, and a woman had called in explaining that she could no longer attend Mass; she was too grieved over the loss of her husband. Through further conversation, Mother Angelica found out this woman had lost her husband over seven years ago. Kindly, Mother Angelica said to the woman, “You have been reliving the worst moments of your life over and over again for the last seven years.” Mother explained that this is exactly where the devil wants us — replaying our sorrows and losses continually and losing our life amid the replays. I recognized immediately that the grief I clung to was now standing in the way of God’s grace. Two years out, I had a choice to stay stagnant and broken, or to try to move on.
Being a pragmatist, I had tried to let go of this grief many times, but was unsuccessful. The grief had become precious, an intimate part of me. It made me softer and kinder, and I did not want to go back to the old, pretentious, glittering image. I also did not want to accept that the healing was over; Ian “needed more recovery.” Giving up on the grief felt like accepting the status quo. I turned to St. John of the Cross’s poem, The Dark Night of the Soul, for help because I thought the dark night was about the journey of grief. I had tried to understand this poem for over a decade; however, it was always out of my grasp. I simply did not get what he was trying to say. My heart was hardened when reading the poem previously, but now, I was reading it with a heart turned to God. This time I understood the poem clearly and found that faith had already lit the way through the dark night for me to walk to Jesus.
I echoed St. John’s thoughts of the paradox: “amid the struggle, the soul is free.” All desires had been stripped, and my soul was ready to leave the house. I wanted God, and I wanted Ian to be fully healed. Faith led my journey and shielded me. The enemy did not recognize me, because I had no earthly desires. I felt my soul arrive at the allegorical ladder and then stop. I could not ascend because I had two competing desires — that of union with God and that of full healing for Ian. Union with God cannot coexist with any other desire, no matter how noble. At the bottom of the ladder, I realized that my desire for union with God was self-serving; it was still in hope of finding full healing for Ian. Before I could ascend the ladder, I knew all desire must be surrendered. The only thing that must be sought was God, sought only for the love of God. I had to let go of the search for healing.
I was stalled in the dark and had to take time to surrender. The letting go of this intense desire was done daily, some days better surrendered than others. I begged Mary to pray for me, to help me leave Ian at the feet of her Son. Only by the grace of God, for just a moment initially, I was able let go. My soul then moved on quickly, guided by faith through the rest of the dark night.
The ladder was climbed, and the morning dawn brought transformation. I found myself held in the sanctuary of the Beloved’s breast. There was no fear, no pain; my soul was at rest. Two and a half years into this journey, for the first time that morning, I woke up forgetting my care among the lilies. I had traveled the dark night and was now forever changed.
EWTN: Women of Grace
I continued to be pulled toward the Catholic Church because these were the only people in my life who understood my experiences with Mary and the Rosary. The Catholic Faith appeared so beautiful to me — the icons, the art, the liturgy all so carefully constructed and preserved. I recognized in the Catholic Church the suffering Christ, full seasons dedicated to His passion, crosses with His holy body displayed, the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary repeated twice a week. The Catholic Church helped me align my sufferings to Christ. It was like I was looking at my familiar faith with a new set of lenses. There was so much to explore.
EWTN schooled me in the faith in many ways. I watched shows on the Marian apparitions; I attended Masses from all around the world; I learned about religious orders and their lives of prayer. My favorite show was Women of Grace; there were many episodes where the messages were key for me. I had experienced the power of prayer in the Rosary, and now I learned of its history. I bought many books based on the show’s recommendations. I read Fulton Sheen, Mother Angelica, and Pope John Paul II, to name a few. I could not get enough! Even as a committed Christian, I had never heard of the many incredible people who had lived in my time.
Two episodes of Women of Grace in particular stood out. The first was about a book called Mary’s Way: The Power of Entrusting Your Child to God. In ways, the book paralleled the story of my son, the suffering of our family, and the coming to know the most blessed of all mothers. This prompted me to write my story, telling others that Mary is there, standing at the foot of the Cross during her Son’s suffering. However, I did not know how to write the story in my Protestant world. I knew I could never leave Mary out of the story; I would rather not write it.
The show then introduced me to Sister Breige McKenna, a wonderful Irish nun. On the show, Sister Breige drew me in as she recounted miracle after miracle. Of course, I bought her books, including Miracles Do Happen: God Can Do the Impossible.” Even four years after Ian’s brain injury, I was still looking for full healing — looking for the impossible. I went to Sister Briege’s website and saw people could call her on Facetime, so I did. She was delightful and a kindred spirit. I explained to her I was a Methodist who loved the Catholic Church. Without hesitation she said, “You are on the wrong ship.” Instantly, I knew exactly what she meant. It was time for me to enter the Catholic Church. This was no surprise to me. I knew I should do this, but I had needed someone to confirm it. Sister Briege did that for me. The next day, I contacted the local Catholic parish in my town to sign up for RCIA classes.
The Beautiful Catholic Church
I entered the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 2023. My parish asked that we choose a saint to commemorate our day of joining the Church; I chose St. Veronica. Dorothy and Wendy were there for me. Easter Vigil was a beautiful liturgy, and I am so very happy to be Catholic. My heart is full, and I love my Church.
Life is a little complicated still. My 16-year-old daughter is active in the Methodist youth group she grew up in, and I continue to go there to support her and my husband, who teaches classes there. I still have many friends at the Methodist church, and they are beginning to come to me, asking why I joined the Catholic Church. My answer is simple: I cannot deny Mary any more. I want to shout from the rooftops what Mary has done for me. Mary held me and turned my head toward Jesus at my weakest moment. She was there for me every step of this journey. In Michelangelo’s Pieta, Mary holds Jesus as He is taken down from the cross, her heart clearly pierced. In prayer for many months, I had the image of the Pieta in my head but in my version, Mary held Ian for me and brought him to Jesus.
I have often wondered about the appropriate response to a journey that has been filled with unending mercy and grace. What is left when the soul has travelled through the dark night, when everything has been surrendered? The answer to all these questions is love. Love is the only reasonable response, love is all that is left. I have been given so much and now it is my turn to give back, to join in communion with the saints and walk the way of the cross, pointing others to Christ.
I will close with a thought from Henri Nouwen, who so eloquently wrote in A Cry for Mercy:
Most of all, O Lord, I pray that you help all who suffer to look to you, who have carried all the sufferings of the world and have died to bring new life. May those who are in agony and pain see in your cross a sign of hope, and may they catch a glimpse of the mystery that they can make up all that has still to be undergone by you for the sake of your body, the Church. Help us see that in our suffering we can indeed become intimately connected to your ongoing work of salvation. O Lord show all who are in pain your boundless love and mercy. Amen.
