Offering it Up

Today marks the five year anniversary of the indescribably glorious day one ordinary woman was changed by an encounter with our extraordinary God. I must be very hard hearted that our ever patient and merciful God uses such obvious and spectacular signs to get my attention. Last month I gave a talk about that day and the events leading up to it framed through the lens of redemptive suffering. Though this story has been told here before, I think the passage of time and my recent struggles with health have augmented my limited understanding of suffering, so I thought it worth a re-share. The reflection emboldens me to advise we not waste the precious holy fuel the difficulties this earthy life offers. 

 Veni Sancte Spiritus

When I was a child and I’d go to my mom hurt or sad she’d say, “Offer it up.” Which I took to mean, don’t complain, be a big girl.

As a young bride, pregnant with our first baby I suddenly experienced unexplained health issues such as an arrhythmic heart and severe muscle weakness which led to falls and preterm labor. All seemed well with the baby. Bedrest put my teaching job on hold. 

At 37 weeks I delivered our seemingly healthy son, Ben. Yet one day later, Ben inexplicably stopped breathing in my arms. We cried out for help and he was whisked down the hall, my husband racing after. I sat frozen in terror. Jason watched through glass while a team tried to save him. A nurse off to the side shook her head repeating, “He’s gone. He’s gone.” 

Someone noticed Jason and guided him back to my hospital room. We clung to each other pleading to God. I uncharacteristically demanded He send him back. My husband’s prayer was, “Thy will be done.” 

Time stopped, and I was alone with God for a moment. He seemed to be sitting with me asking, Are you sure? Will you be the mother he’ll need? And will you allow Me in? I knew our life together would be difficult if he lived. I said Yes. I will carry this cross. 

After 30 minutes with no heart beat, Ben came back. He was immediately baptized by a hospital chaplain. No candle, no Godparents, no holding him at the font. I couldn’t speak his name when asked. But one tiny seashell of holy water was enough to affirm Ben belonged to God, not me. 

Ben’s six week stay in the Mercy NICU was traumatic. The tests were fruitless, the prognosis grim. He continued to code, but he always came back. 

Jason and I sat at his bedside and pleaded for more miracles. We sang hymns. We prayed for the courage to accept God’s will. Ben couldn’t breathe on his own or swallow, so he had surgeries to place a hole in his neck for a trach and one in his stomach for a feeding tube. After converting our house into a mini clinic, a mere twelve days after his surgery, we were able to bring him home supported by a team of nurses. Ben wasn’t expected to survive infancy. 

Ben showed us right away that there was reason to hope. His eyes seemed to indicate that he desperately wanted to communicate, but the trach meant no air could pass his vocal cords, so he could make no sound. I found a baby signs book and by one year of age Ben knew over 100 signs and strung them together into sentences. We took Ben to visit the NICU around his first birthday. He signed to me, “Baby hurt. Mama help.” 

I had a miscarriage when Ben was two. We attended an Archdiocesan pregnancy loss memorial service and gave her the name, Theresa. A woman approached me, weeping, and handed me a blue rosary. “Please keep this safe as a gift from my little boy to yours,” she said. I hung it from our car mirror and used it to pray on road trips to honor Theresa. I also prayed for this unknown mother and son. 

A decade later, the rosary still hung from the mirror. After all those years of specialists, medical events, and tests, Ben and I were both diagnosed with a rare genetic neuromuscular disease likely in the realm of Congenital Myasthenic Syndrome, meaning disfunction of muscles and nerves. My weakness would fluctuate causing difficulty climbing stairs, lifting, swallowing, visual blurriness, and irregular and fast heart beat. Ben’s weakness was more severe and constant. There is no cure, but some medications and therapies can improve quality of life. For much of his life, Ben had stoically accepted all the surgeries, the procedures, the medications, the suffering with minimal complaint. He didn’t know any other way.

But by middle school something had shifted. One day, the school nurse called me to again pick him up and by the time we reached the parking lot, Ben was crying. He was fed up with feeling sick and tired all the time. He was done with “Offering it up.” He just wanted to go to school like everyone else. 

I didn’t know how to help, so I asked Mary to be a mother to us. I had the thought to go to the adoration chapel and said aloud, “Let’s ask God what to do. Will you pray with me?” I opened the car and retrieved the blue rosary. He took it and it broke in his hands, part of it hitting the pavement, causing him to sob harder. I reached down to pick up the loose end, and cupping his hands in mine over the broken rosary, I looked him in the eye and said, “It’s ok, we can fix this.” 

I had an strong sense of peace filled hope and confidence in that moment. I knew Mary was present. He agreed to go into the chapel with me and when our hands parted, the rosary was completely intact, it was fixed. 

This repaired rosary was a sign of grace received. Ben’s broken spirit was mended too. A repair that has endured. 

A few weeks later, I went on my first ACTS retreat. I brought along a new rosary my Godmother had made since she thought the blue one deserved retirement from the car. Each decade was made up of letter beads spelling out the names of my family members and the medal held a relic of St Thérèse, a serendipitous nod to our lost baby.  

I thought I was fine, just looking for an opportunity to build community and deepen faith. But I hadn’t dealt with the heaviness of the last 12 years or the responsibility I felt to be a perfect caregiver to keep my son alive. Jesus was waiting. 

On the retreat, I prayed the Divine Mercy Chaplet for the first time. When we reached the third decade, with the beads of Benjamin beneath my fingers, I looked up and realized the cross above the altar was a larger version of the Sisters of Mercy cross that hangs in every room of the hospital Ben frequents. I had been pleading for the life and strength of my son beneath that cross for 12 years. 

At the realization of this literal sign, I felt Jesus asking me to hand Ben over. Again. Then He gave me the grace to do it. All the suffering we’d endured was poured out at the foot of this cross. I offered up my firstborn son to His providential care. I offered up my need to fix it. I offered up control of the outcome. I offered up checking on his breathing every time I awoke in the night. Jesus took my little offering and multiplied it. He took my yes but also my anxieties, my pride, my fear, my doubt. He transformed them into a lasting peace. 

Soon after, Saint Padre Pio inserted himself into our lives. There’s no other way to explain that. I’d never heard of this contemporary stigmatist from the mountains of Italy. But he kept popping up. 

https://taylormarshall.com/2013/09/padre-pio-a-rare-video-plus-stigmata.html

Ben had a scheduled surgery to remove a reoccurring mass from his ear that this time threatened his brain. I had recently begun praying novenas prior to the feast days of my favorite Saints. I checked Ben’s surgery date and was bemused to learn it was Padre Pio’s, September 23rd, which coincidentally, 13 years prior was the date I first learned I was pregnant with him. 

So for nine nights before the surgery, my husband and I knelt beside our bed and prayed Padre Pio’s efficacious novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, asking specifically for protection for Ben’s brain. As Ben was moved to recovery, the bewildered surgeon told us he had repaired damage caused by the corrosive mass, shoring up the hole made in his skull that had luckily stopped just before hitting brain matter, but the mass, itself had disappeared! Ben chose Pio as his confirmation name out of gratitude. 

Days after Ben’s miraculous surgery, Jason too attended an ACTS retreat. He brought his gratitude and heaviness to adoration. Weighed down by the suffering of both Ben and I, he begged God to give him our illness instead. He surrendered himself, “Give their crosses to me.” He received an unmistakeable reply through Padre Pio. “Pellegrino!” He heard, which Jason later learned meant pilgrim in Italian, “Be my healer.” The message was accompanied by intense pressure in the center of his hands. Padre Pio was known to bear the wounds of Christ on his palms. 

This sign was not one easily forgotten, and we both felt compelled to respond. For two years we wondered how to be Padre Pio’s pilgrim healer until the day our pastor, Fr. Jack announced a parish pilgrimage to Europe in honor of the 100th anniversary of the apparitions by Our Lady of Fatima. Her feast day was our wedding anniversary too.

It was a transfiguring moment. I needed to make this trip happen and knew that somehow we would find a way to see Padre Pio there and thank him for his intercessions. Trusting in God’s providence for how we would afford the trip and obtain the time off, Ben and I signed up for the two week pilgrimage and began planning for my husband and other two children to join us for an additional week.

While Padre Pio was pressing Jason’s palms, our Blessed Mother had taken up residence in my heart. Always friends, I had begun speaking with her daily. One November day I visited the Shrine of the Miraculous Medal in Perryville. I was struck by the graces she has been entrusted to give that we fail to ask for. I added the medal to my necklace and resolved to ask Mary daily for grace. Soon after, I consecrated myself to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. 

http://famvin.org/en/2016/11/10/the-history-of-salvation-in-a-medal-•-tales-of-the-miraculous-virgin/

Before we left for Europe I shared with a prayer group that I was hoping for the courage to ask for Ben’s healing. Having witnessed my physical decline, my friends encouraged me to add myself to the petition.
 I recoiled. This wasn’t about me and I didn’t want to be greedy, after all, we’d already received so many answered prayers, even asking for Ben's healing felt like going too far. They wisely countered, that it would be a pretty small god that doled out “just enough,” blessings, not the God who Is.

On November 5, 2017 exactly one year to the day after I’d spontaneously put on that miraculous medal, and the day after completing the five month consecration to the Immaculate Heart, none of that planned, Ben and I boarded a plane for Fatima, Portugal.

It was a physically difficult trip, navigating several cobblestoned cities in three countries not bound by ADA compliance. I walked with a cane and Ben used a wheelchair and we had trouble transporting our gear and keeping up. All along the way, fellow pilgrims carried us along, anticipating our needs and never making us feel like burdens. 

I felt called to be enrolled in the brown scapular while in Fatima. As I stood in the historic square I prayed, “Mary, if I should be enrolled, show me your priest.” Soon after while in line for an exhibit. I was approached by a priest who asked me for information for tickets in English. As he turned to go where I had directed, I noticed his messenger bag imprinted with a scapular around the words, “Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.” I trusted in the sign. 

After my on the spot enrollment, Father gave me the assignment of continuing my dedication to the Immaculate Heart, but also adding a new devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. “Complete the set,” He’d said, “to Jesus through Mary.” 

Before the pilgrimage ended, Fr Jack had everyone gather around Ben and I and prayed a blessing over us, asking for our healing. 

When our friends had all gone home, my family joined us in Rome and we began our trek to the Gargano Mountains of Padre Pio. We spent two days immersed in his memory. We thanked him for his guardianship over Ben. Yet, we still had a sense we hadn’t fulfilled our mission of being pilgrim healers. 

In my research on Padre Pio before the trip, I read of a statue of Our Lady of Fatima arriving unexpectedly by helicopter to San Giovanni while Padre Pio was gravely ill. It was known as a pilgrim statue, traveling around the world to spread the message of Fatima. Pio requested to be taken to the statue and kissed her feet. He returned to his hospital room and watched as the statue of Our Lady ascended by helicopter to her next destination. He told Mary he was ready to go to heaven with her and said, “But Maria, I thought you would heal me.” In that moment, he was cured. A current newspaper article told me the same statue would be returning for one novena, 9 days, which coincided with our visit. 

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/331366485077080639/

The coincidence of this healing pilgrim statue of Fatima displayed before us when we had come to be pilgrim healers via Fatima, felt monumental. I longed to kiss her feet too, but there were gates and guards and security cameras. I did find the courage to boldly request of God through the intercession of Mary and Padre Pio to heal us both and I blew her a kiss. Nothing happened…But I did get a sign. 

My eye was drawn to the large mosaic of Our Lady of Graces behind the altar, the one where an infant Jesus is reaching for her breast and offering her maternal nourishment to all. The figure of Padre Pio below seemed animated, running toward them and spoke these words to my heart, “She has grace enough for all. Behold your mother! Behold your Savior!” 
“But I know them, already,” I answered. 
“No, Surrender. Surrender all to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. Go home. Your faith has healed you.”

After visiting Pio’s idyllic hometown, Pietrelcina, we drove back for one last day in Rome. In the car, we talked about the answers we’d been given. We were not healed physically, but we were leaving with so much peace and comfort and hope, and a resolution to surrender to God’s will in our lives. Whatever suffering lay ahead we’d accept, offering it all up for God’s glory. Though I did express my mild disappointment and said aloud, “But Padre Pio, we came all this way, I kind of thought we’d be healed.”

Contentedly, we continued along the highway. Suddenly, my younger son, Alex, exclaimed, “Look at the sun!” This phrase evoked my memory of Fatima’s miraculous sun dance. It was a clear day but dark clouds had descended upon the mountain range to our West. The sun had burrowed through the darkness and peeked though in an odd shape. Though, it looked nothing like the sun. It evolved into the form of a burning, flaming anatomical heart dancing in the sky.

Jason reached for my hand and we said together, “It’s the Sacred Heart of Jesus!” We felt intensely at peace and so very very loved. It was if we were momentarily taken up and suspended in Heaven, enveloped in His flaming heart, burning away anything that was not of Him. We both knew it was a sign for us, an affirmation. Once more, God accepted our little offering and multiplied it. There, in the mystical fire, I was freed of even my lingering desire to be healed.

http://corjesu-sacrocuoredigesu.blogspot.com/2011/12/san-giovanni-apostolo-e-il-sacro-cuore.html

We arrived in bustling Rome and jumped right back into sightseeing mode, Colosseum bound. A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum. As we walked I noticed the cane felt odd in my hand, so I switched to the other hand. It still felt wrong. Then I realized we had climbed a fairly steep incline in the road that I hadn’t felt in my legs. 

I lifted the cane off the ground and continued to climb the hill and felt-nothing, the simple, extraordinary lack of fatigue. I expressed this oddity aloud. There was a low wall to my left. I stooped to sit and then stood. I tried it again. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d been able to stand from sitting without great effort.

 We arrived at the Colosseum and I lost all sense of tourism, fully engulfed in the curiosity of my new found abilities. I did little tests like climbing up the curb, standing from sitting, jumping jacks, running in place. There’s video.

I even picked up my six year old daughter and carried her on my back. I hadn’t lifted her in at least 3 years. I was astounded and disbelieving, certain I was asleep. 

It occurred to me that perhaps I had been healed, so maybe Ben was too. Giddily, I asked him to get out of his wheelchair and try things out. He obeyed, but soon realized his strength was unchanged. I was crushed. My gratitude soured to guilt and grief. See? I was greedy! I did ask too much! This was all to be for him, not me!

I must have said some of this out loud for Ben turned to me and said steadily. “I didn’t pray to be healed. That’s not God’s will for me. I’m supposed to be this way and pray for the people who have no one to pray for them.” Without using the vocabulary, Ben expressed his acceptance of redemptive suffering. Where I had promised fifteen years before to bear this cross on his behalf, he now freely gave his own yes.

For three years I was physically strong, took no medications. My heart was steady. I was released from the care of all my astonished specialists. 

Yet, the story continues. Just as Ben turned 18, I clearly discerned that God was inviting me to, “suffer well,” to not only be a big girl, not complain, and again pick up my cross, but to truly turn it over to Him to be multiplied for a good beyond my understanding. Shortly after, my heart again began racing and skipping beats. Though my vision remains clear and my muscles, strong, I have found myself again under the care of specialists and need medications for my heart for an entirely different disease. I renew my surrender to God’s will for my life. I trust in His tender love and infinite mercy. And I’ve learned like forgiveness, surrender is a process. He craves our continued yeses. 

Ben was strengthened that November Sacred Heart day too, not in body, but in spirit. Today he’s a bright, witty, sarcastic, theology studying college kid. He wants to be a hospital chaplain. I would still trade my strength for his in a heartbeat, but I know in my soul he has chosen the better part.

I believe my faith did heal my body for a time, and it was fitting with God’s plan to allow me to be the mother I promised to be. I did not earn that honor. It was a gift freely given, a grace. It was a grace too, to be allowed to see the signs of God’s unwavering hand, stretched out, ever calling me to Himself. Just as He calls to each of you. I don’t know your signs, your moments of knowing the presence of God is very, very near. I don’t know what crosses He’s inviting you to carry. I hope to hear about them. I only know that it was when I surrendered and opened my ordinary eyes and heart wider to the awe of God’s grace and mercy that big wonderful changes happened inside. 

Padre Pio pointed me to Mary, and Mary led me to Jesus. Yes, I knew them already, but I learned to truly surrender myself and my son to God, to offer up MY will, asking Him to make it match His. Thy will be done. 

We listened to God’s call to be pilgrims and to be healers, but it isn’t finished. We are to be pilgrims every day, seeking God in all things. Learning from His words and those who know Him. Seeking, knocking, and having faith that we remain always in the palm of His loving, guiding hand. It is in our showing up, our surrender, our yes that we are truly healed. 

And when her babies hurt, Our Mama helps.