Our daughter, Emily – now Sr. Agnes Therese – was always a child in tune with the Lord and the spiritual life. From an early age she seemed more interested in God and building a relationship with Him than the average child. We baptized Emily and her sister on February 11, 1990 after converting to the Lutheran faith, and made an active practice of our faith an important part of family life.
Following my wife Joy’s conversion to Catholicism, Emily seemed happy to attend both the Lutheran services and Catholic Mass, but soon entered into full communion in the Catholic Church herself in the summer of 2002. She chose Sr. Stella Marie, p.m., an older, lovely Philippine sister who was residing in the convent at our parish to be her sponsor. Perhaps we should have seen the beginnings of a vocation to religious life there! But it was not until some time during her years at Franciscan University that we began to suspect that she might be considering this vocation. At first, to be honest, it was a difficult pill to swallow – for us and for her older sister and younger brother. While we certainly loved the Lord and had great respect for religious sisters, this was never part of the “plan” for our second daughter. We already saw her, in our minds, married to a nice Catholic man and giving us lots of beautiful grandbabies. But that was our plan, not God’s, for Emily’s life. Learning to not only accept, but eventually to embrace God’s will for our daughter was not easy, and came as a fruit of much prayer and grace.
God is not outdone in generosity. There have been many days that were very hard – but many more that were full of joy beyond our wildest imaginings. Canonical Novitiate, a time of decreased communication and contact with family as the new sister becomes more a part of the community and more fully embraces the way of life as a sister was a time that we dreaded. How would we live without the more frequent phone calls and letters? Would we lose our daughter completely? But God’s grace was there for us – and her – and that year passed quickly and relatively painlessly. It was a time of growth for all of us.
When Emily – Sr. Agnes Therese – professed her first vows, we expected to feel a flood of emotion. And we did – but honestly, it was all joy! When you see your child following the Lord’s call for her life – even if it is not the path that you would have originally chosen for her – any sadness at the loss of what “could have been” is driven away.
Religious life, like any vocation, is not all “butterflies and rainbows”. We know that Sr. Agnes Therese has had many challenging days and will have many more – just as we have had in 37 years of marriage. But God’s grace is more than sufficient as each of us cling to Him in our respective vocations. It is in the challenges and the joys of following the Lord as He calls us each day that we come to know more of God’s steadfast love for each one of us, and grow more perfectly into the person He created us to be.
