Letter to Editor of NC Catholics
January 21, 2015
January 21, 2015
Dear Rich,
You came to mind to me suddenly as I was making my weekly Eucharistic visit to a “down and out” assisted living facility here in Apex. The halls are filled with the most marginalized of our citizens who are poor or black or mentally ill or forgotten … and often all of those factors combined. My parish priest asked me to see a woman in her 70’s with Bipolar Disorder whom he has known through the years, and through my ministry to her I have met other residents and people in the home and heard bits and pieces of their stories.
In December we went with our senior citizen group to bring a little Christmas cheer. When I saw one of our men sitting in his car outside the facility as I left, I asked him about it the next day. He is an MIT graduate (perhaps a Rocket Scientist!) and said he couldn’t hear well nor understand what the people were trying to say, so he felt uncomfortable and decided to wait outside in his car for his wife to get through with the party. But something funny happened while he was inside, he said, because he suddenly saw his neighbor come in and go to visit someone down the hall. His neighbor came back out to him and said, “I am visiting one of the new residents here….he was the former commander of a nuclear submarine and I served on one myself. Would you like to join us?” And sure enough, this man from my church had served on a submarine too…and the three men reminisced and formed community in this little forgotten place … and God was so clearly the orchestrator of it all…
Over the course of the months and I don’t know, perhaps two years, that I have been going there, my ministry has expanded to include a few other Catholic residents whom I was introduced to as I made my rounds. Then one day I felt compelled to ask one of the nursing aids if she was a Catholic and whether she would like to receive the Eucharist too. She hesitated at first, but then said “yes”, and when I suggested we recited the “Our Father” together, she remained silent while I said the prayer. She received and then I left. The next week when I came, I offered again, and asked her if she would like to say the prayer. She responded that she had only learned the prayer in Spanish and this time I kept my mouth shut as she recited the prayer from her heart while chills ran up and down my spine.
Each time I come, she looks eagerly for me and receives. Today I stayed with her a while and asked her about her life. And this is why you came to mind and why I am contacting you. She told me her story: as a young girl growing up in Guatemala she was about 6 years old when her mother abandoned the family and left her to raise her younger siblings. After seven years she was ordered to join her mother in the US or be cut off from her family for life. She came and married and had a son. She is 30 years old today and her son is 11…she is working as a nurse’s aid at this assisted living facility, has a second job at Target in Holly Springs, is pursuing her nurses license at Wake Tech and raising her son. And through all of this she feels nothing but blessed.
She said that her husband was abusive and after several violent attacks she finally had the courage to trust God and leave him with her son in tow. She prayed that her son would have the strength to leave him too, and then called the police to report the rape that sent her out of the situation and sent her husband to jail and then through deportation back to Guatemala.
And through it all, she had experienced the deep presence of God. He encouraged her to wake up to her situation and then provided the resting places to help her build her new life on her own with her son. She said that she has the goal of becoming a Nurse Practitioner one day and is working toward it each day. And she welcomes the chance to tell her story to others so that they may be encouraged in their own situations to walk forward and trust God.
Rich, I am a privileged woman in my early 50’s with a college education and a newly empty nest. I have my own challenges that are very different from hers and yet this woman’s courage and strength and raw faith in God help me with my own walk in faith as I try to trust God in helping me decide what to do with the “second half” of my life.
As I talked with her this morning, I thought how publishing her story in the NC Catholics could be such a light of faith for others and it could possibly bring opportunities to her life as well. And so I asked her if she might be willing to have her story published and she said yes as she gave me her number.
Rich, our diocese is full of the goodness and presence of God working in our daily lives and helping to build us up in faith. Thank you for spreading the Gospel through your wonderful ministry at NC Catholics.
Sincerely,
Ronda Watts
St. Mary Magdalene Church
You came to mind to me suddenly as I was making my weekly Eucharistic visit to a “down and out” assisted living facility here in Apex. The halls are filled with the most marginalized of our citizens who are poor or black or mentally ill or forgotten … and often all of those factors combined. My parish priest asked me to see a woman in her 70’s with Bipolar Disorder whom he has known through the years, and through my ministry to her I have met other residents and people in the home and heard bits and pieces of their stories.
In December we went with our senior citizen group to bring a little Christmas cheer. When I saw one of our men sitting in his car outside the facility as I left, I asked him about it the next day. He is an MIT graduate (perhaps a Rocket Scientist!) and said he couldn’t hear well nor understand what the people were trying to say, so he felt uncomfortable and decided to wait outside in his car for his wife to get through with the party. But something funny happened while he was inside, he said, because he suddenly saw his neighbor come in and go to visit someone down the hall. His neighbor came back out to him and said, “I am visiting one of the new residents here….he was the former commander of a nuclear submarine and I served on one myself. Would you like to join us?” And sure enough, this man from my church had served on a submarine too…and the three men reminisced and formed community in this little forgotten place … and God was so clearly the orchestrator of it all…
Over the course of the months and I don’t know, perhaps two years, that I have been going there, my ministry has expanded to include a few other Catholic residents whom I was introduced to as I made my rounds. Then one day I felt compelled to ask one of the nursing aids if she was a Catholic and whether she would like to receive the Eucharist too. She hesitated at first, but then said “yes”, and when I suggested we recited the “Our Father” together, she remained silent while I said the prayer. She received and then I left. The next week when I came, I offered again, and asked her if she would like to say the prayer. She responded that she had only learned the prayer in Spanish and this time I kept my mouth shut as she recited the prayer from her heart while chills ran up and down my spine.
Each time I come, she looks eagerly for me and receives. Today I stayed with her a while and asked her about her life. And this is why you came to mind and why I am contacting you. She told me her story: as a young girl growing up in Guatemala she was about 6 years old when her mother abandoned the family and left her to raise her younger siblings. After seven years she was ordered to join her mother in the US or be cut off from her family for life. She came and married and had a son. She is 30 years old today and her son is 11…she is working as a nurse’s aid at this assisted living facility, has a second job at Target in Holly Springs, is pursuing her nurses license at Wake Tech and raising her son. And through all of this she feels nothing but blessed.
She said that her husband was abusive and after several violent attacks she finally had the courage to trust God and leave him with her son in tow. She prayed that her son would have the strength to leave him too, and then called the police to report the rape that sent her out of the situation and sent her husband to jail and then through deportation back to Guatemala.
And through it all, she had experienced the deep presence of God. He encouraged her to wake up to her situation and then provided the resting places to help her build her new life on her own with her son. She said that she has the goal of becoming a Nurse Practitioner one day and is working toward it each day. And she welcomes the chance to tell her story to others so that they may be encouraged in their own situations to walk forward and trust God.
Rich, I am a privileged woman in my early 50’s with a college education and a newly empty nest. I have my own challenges that are very different from hers and yet this woman’s courage and strength and raw faith in God help me with my own walk in faith as I try to trust God in helping me decide what to do with the “second half” of my life.
As I talked with her this morning, I thought how publishing her story in the NC Catholics could be such a light of faith for others and it could possibly bring opportunities to her life as well. And so I asked her if she might be willing to have her story published and she said yes as she gave me her number.
Rich, our diocese is full of the goodness and presence of God working in our daily lives and helping to build us up in faith. Thank you for spreading the Gospel through your wonderful ministry at NC Catholics.
Sincerely,
Ronda Watts
St. Mary Magdalene Church
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