HISTORY & MISSION: A Miracle of Faith, Twenty Years in the Making
by: Theresa Martin, Executive Director
I’ll warn you up front that this is a bit longer of a read (and you may need a tissue), but I believe you need to hear it. (Or at the very least, I need to share it.)
It was Christmas of 2004, and I was 5 months pregnant with our oldest and far from home. This was the fourth year of our journey to study theology in Rome, and being pregnant, we thought it might be our last. We had come over to Rome following a call – something deep within our hearts that had burst forth during one of our weekly adoration hours when we were engaged: Go back to Rome to study marriage. It was a message so clear in my heart and my mind that I began weeping right there. (My then-fiancé, being a good Midwesterner, was a bit discombobulated by loud tears in public and quietly reminded me there were other people in the chapel. I couldn’t help it. God had touched my heart and when he does that—I leak tears.) We got into Peter’s rusty, old pickup after our hour was complete and I began to tell him what had happened and how we had to go to Rome and study marriage and God is asking this of us. My dear man listened quietly and said the most wonderful thing, “well, let’s take the next step and as God opens the doors, we will walk through them.”
And then there we were, in our fourth year studying in Italy. We had come over with enough money to last one semester, and had kind of made a bargain with God, you need to show us the way or we won’t be able to return for the next semester. Two weeks before the end of the first semester, we got a message that there was someone who wished to support us. Step by step is how He led us in our journey in Rome, our journey in faith.
We grew so much during that time. We were such a mess when we first arrived. Two young lovebirds, romanticizing returning to Rome and studying marriage together … and then we found out we wouldn’t be studying together, and not even at the same time of day. Not having extra money for much, we were not eating very well, and the stress intensified. We also had no idea how to be married. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? We had followed a call to fly halfway across the world to study marriage and family, and here we were: arguing and stressed. There were a hundred little things that we didn’t realize we expected—that were missed and a hundred little things we never expected that annoyed us. We were both to blame, and yet, it was through the struggle, that God taught us to love. He taught us how to be married, how not to expect our spouse to fill our emotional needs, but to find our source of strength and faith in Him, and then be a conduit of gift to our spouse and not a demand of it.
St. Thérèse came into our life at that time. Do you know, I had never read Story of a Soul before that year, but I had been given it by my parents many years before? And I had brought it with us to Rome! Even though I had never read it. And when Peter and I were feeling the tension, his spiritual director suggested we read the life of a Saint, and I thought, “wait! I think I have a book on a Saint!” I read her story and absorbed her into my soul. Then, I read absolutely everything else she wrote, except the things only in French. And you know what she did? She sent us to Our Mother Mary. Peter and I made our True Devotion Consecration the spring of that first year in Rome.
I suffered a miscarriage the third year we were there. My very first time being pregnant and our baby slipped away from me. We went to see a doctor in Rome and she told us that I would never be able to have children. She said not to worry about it though, because this is a horrible world and who wants to have kids anyway. That was horribly insensitive and devastating to hear. Yet, a year later, we did conceive again and we decided to make a journey to France over the Christmas holidays, and Lourdes would be included in that trip.
After having been told we would never have children, this little one growing inside me was the most precious gift and I knew we needed God’s protection over him. Little did I know how rocky his journey and the rest of his siblings' journeys would continue to be. But I am jumping too far ahead…
This was the beginning of our deep love of Our Mother and we came to her in Lourdes. It was off-season and there were no processions nor big events, but we went to the baths…and I was immersed in the waters. When I told the sweet ladies I was pregnant, they prayed extra over me. I believe that Mary has been protecting me my entire journey of motherhood. My motherhood has carried within it two intersecting crosses: the anxiety of caring for children with an extremely rare, chronic disease, and the grief of miscarriage.
We will have to fast-forward a bit of the story (although I’d love to share it with you some day), and just say we have 15 children. 7 of those children went to heaven before us. And I understand with my mind, that our job and responsibility as parents is to raise our children so that they do get to heaven. And children with no faults, surely are there ahead of us—but oh, how my heart was broken. So, so very broken.
7 boys and 1 wonderful daughter we have the great honor and blessing to raise, love, and care for. Three of the boys have an extremely rare disease that requires twice daily injections and specialty care check-ups every 3 months. It also requires constant monitoring from their mother. Their medication is an immune-suppressant and too low a dose and their body is debilitated from the disease and they are in excruciating pain, too high and if they caught an illness it could put their life in danger. I feel as if I have been constantly ‘on alert’ for 18 years, but I am guessing every mother feels that way in one capacity or another.
While all of our babies’ deaths were heartbreaking, two of them were traumatically so. In 2016, we lost PierGiorgio Matteo at 18 weeks. We went in for the big ultrasound, to find out the gender and instead we found out there was no heartbeat. It was the first time I had to go through labor and not bring home a live baby, and it really broke me. Instead of a gender reveal party, we would have an entombment…at Our Lady’s shrine (the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, WI). I surely thought I would drown in grief. For months, my prayers were simply tears. Slowly, through the help of God’s grace and others’ prayers, I felt like I was pulled out of the darkness.
We had two more children, but then the last three pregnancies of my motherhood would end in miscarriage. And the very last one, was the hardest. Yet, even while I was pregnant with our Angelo Joseph, God continued to tell me to rejoice. I thought that meant we’d get to keep him; I thought everything would be okay…and it was, but not the way I expected it to be. Angelo’s death sliced my soul open wide, and I felt like I surely had died with him. God used this wound to enter into my heart in profound ways. I have never experienced such closeness with God as I did after Angelo died.
God has done such healing in my heart and Mary, my sweet Mama, has comforted me in a way I never expected her to. I have always seen Mary as this radiant queen, loving, benevolent, kind, but regal and removed. In my sorrow of my own seven swords, she became my comforting Mother, not blessing me from afar, but pulling me to her and wrapping her arms and mantle around me.
Last Spring, God blessed us with the prospect of taking a pilgrimage to Lourdes. (Now, my children each have their own stories of wonder and blessing from our pilgrimage, but I will share it solely from my perspective.) If there is one thing I see more than anything else in life, it is the truth that the more you give yourself away in love, the more God lavishes love upon you!
Even after all the blessings through the years and the feelings of moments of closeness with God, I still carried what a doctor described as “child loss anxiety,” which she explained it as similar to PTSD. When one of my children were removed from me, even for normal reasons, panic rises that I cannot control. There are ways I can manage it, and I have learned to live with it. It is not rational, and I cannot reason myself out of the anxiety. But it is always on me like a backpack full of solid rock. So, even the very thought of travelling across the ocean with all of our children brought waves of anxiety. I almost canceled several times, and my irrational side just thought everyone would be safer locked in the house forever. I knew this wasn’t true, so we proceeded with the plan.
During every moment of packing for the trip, I was on the brink of tears. I knew this was such a blessing and such a gift for all of us, but the anxiety gripped tighter and all I could do was keep breathing and try to operate above it.
The volunteers with Our Lady of Lourdes North American Volunteers were the first touchpoint of grace for me. The doctor who would be helping us during the trip, figuring out how to travel overseas with syringes and needles and medication that needed refrigeration, told me, he would take care of it. And for a moment, it was like he had lifted the weight of that backpack and the relief I felt made me realize how truly heavy it has been, and I cried…again. But this time, at least, it was in joyful thanksgiving.
During our pilgrimage I was constantly counting “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8” to make sure no one was lost. It took everything within me not to burst into tears at every leg of the travel. And we arrived. Tired, exhausted, but we were there. And despite dealing with children’s moods, and still having to pack and dress a surgical wound on one of the boys and manage their meds, I felt more peace being there, and it was like God was saying, I have something for you here.
It was the next day, we were waiting to enter the baths and I remembered 20 years ago, Peter and I were here—sitting right in these same spots! Just beginning our journey! What a full circle our marriage has come and all under Our Lady’s protection! I watched as a woman from our group was wheeled out of the baths. She was motioning to her helper about her legs and then—she stood! This woman who had been in that wheelchair for over 20 years stood, and walked, and danced! Everyone (from so many different countries) applauded and cheered and sang out praises to God.
Then it was our turn. They helped me prepare to enter the water and as I descended the stairs into the icy water, my body began to tremble. They said, ask Our Lady your intentions and I raised my heart to her silently and I began to weep and shake. I had not asked for any specific thing but just offered my broken body and broken heart to her. And something began to well up within me, a lightness and a joy, and a lifting of all heaviness…as I got out of the water, I assisted my daughter, and then we left. And my mind was suspended in a sort of other-worldliness. And I couldn’t even say “I was healed” because it felt like whatever God was doing was not done yet.
A few days later, we attended an anointing Mass where they offered the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick to whomever wished to receive it. I went up to receive along with almost all of our family. And after Communion, I was praying and I saw in my mind my broken heart burning fire from those seven wounds, and Our Lady’s hands reached down and took my heart bound it to her own and then gave it back to me. The wounds’ fire turned into bright light and green vines grew out of the wounds and flowers grew upon them and from every flower bursting white light. And in that moment, I understood—not in words but all at once—I would carry these wounds forever, but they have been transformed from death to life. And from that life, God will bring forth more life in so many ways—far beyond my understanding. And I must let go of the old, limited ways of thinking and trust Him: HE IS ABUNDANCE AND MERCY.
It was as if I was carrying this great heavy burden of brokenness, pain, and child loss anxiety, and He lifted it. He lifted it from around my neck and shoulders, and it took all week of the pilgrimage to untangle it and finally be able to remove it completely from me and replaced it with the fire of the Holy Spirit, and the light of Life, the light of God. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”
Since returning from Lourdes, I have not experienced any anxiety or panic attacks. I have all my same responsibilities, but I am able to do them with even more joy! It is true that Peter & I keep saying, following the Rule will give you a unity and a joy that you never realized was even possible. And we keep saying “I wonder what God will do with us next! We already feel we are in a place we didn’t think possible…” and then God does that next amazing thing and brings you even deeper into His life of love and joy!
Give God your everything! Follow JPII’s Rule, love your spouse and hold nothing back! The blessings that God wishes to send you cannot be understated—trust Him and give yourself away in love and just wait to see what God will do…I can’t wait to hear your story!
Blessed be God! Blessed be His holy name!
Our Lady of Lourdes North American Volunteers
