I remember when I first entered the monastery how worried my dad was. Not about me, he was worried how the other sisters were going to put up with me! And for how long? I’m not sure but I think it may have had something to do with my easy going nature that could at times explode into angry, thunderous, disruptive behavior.

One time in particular rather implanted itself on my poor family. First I must give you a brief bit of background. I had been in the Navy for four years and sad to say, I had picked up a few less than noble words during my stay. Words that I hardly even noticed how “unladylike” they were. So anyway, one day, everything was going along peachy wonderful. I must have had my head in the clouds and my mind on the moon or something because I went blithely out the door and walked smack into a tree. REALLY HARD! The kind of smack where you see stars and planets and spinning galaxies.

Well, unfortunately, every single word I had ever even remotely heard in the Navy and other unholy places came forth from my lips in a voluminous stream of outrage and anger. How dare that stupid tree get in my way like that? I certainly let it know and every other breathing, hearing being within range that this was not going to be taken by me lying down.

This was not needless to say a real witness of Christian holiness at its best. Granted I was in my “atheistic” period at the time, having left God behind in the Navy as well, but it was memorable enough to implant solidly into the heart of my parents and siblings at home that I was no longer the sweet and meek little girl that had left home four years earlier. Some things had definitely changed!

I do remember that even I was shocked by all the things I said. It was like, “Oh my, where did all that come from?”

Sigh. Well, thankfully, God does not give up on people when they get off the beaten path. Even if they get “way” off the beaten path. During the next year or so, God found some more “trees” to step in front of me and reveal the inner workings of my soul to myself in such a way that I could again be shocked and dismayed by who I was, what I was capable of in a very negative way and what changes definitely needed to be made.

The biggest tree was the death of my brother Mike at 28 years old. Mike had developed a seizure disorder and one night he came home after a particularly hard day at school and work. He had been in the process of making a life change in his life by going back to school to get a college degree in Forestry. He had very little money so every chance he had to earn some he would take. That day, after a full day of school, he had gone to work in the woods to cut some timber from his acreage to sell. He had had little to eat most of the day and after several hours of hard work when it got to dark to see anymore, he walked back to his truck only to find that he had three flat tires. I’m not sure how he got home, maybe he walked, I don’t remember that part I only remember that he was very tired and upset. After eating dinner he went upstairs to bed. He had a seizure. Face down in his pillow, unconscious, unable to move, he suffocated.

In a family of eleven kids this was the first death I had personally experienced. The one thing I had always dreaded happening had happened. One of us was gone! How could the world go on? This time, I did not swear or blacken the air with my voice at all. I simply died within. I went into shock. Mike was gone.

After the funeral I remember running after the priest to thank him for the service he had offered. He looked at me and with a careful measured voice, said, “Well we know where he is. He is alright.” I don’t know what I said to him or how I looked but I was full of disbelief. I certainly did not know where my brother was and I certainly did not know he was “alright!” I walked away, numb. Where was Mike? Was he alright?

At that time as hard and as difficult as things were for my brother he had kept his faith. He was the only one still going to Church, the lone, practicing catholic in a family of thirteen. One day, several weeks after his funeral I was going for a walk and all of a sudden a burst of understanding illuminated my consciousness like the sun breaking through the clouds after a heavy downpour.

The thought was this. My brother had died. He was no longer on the earth. There was no proof to anyone to explain he was “still” with us. A hundred years from now who would know that my brother Mike had ever lived on this earth? What had he done to immortalize himself? Nothing. The little he had was gone. He hadn’t married. He hadn’t finished school or left anything behind but a few clothes and some bills. Who could prove to anyone that he ever was? A gravestone? Could that tell who my brother Mike was? A few pieces of legal papers, here and there, could that paint the picture of “who” my brother was? The only real proof my brother existed were the memories implanted in the hearts of my parents and myself and my other brothers and sisters. We knew he had lived. We knew he had loved and laughed and shared and given of himself. We had a few letters, a few pages from a homework journal he had kept. So very little and yet the thought began to grow in my heart, Mike was indeed immortalized. I would never, ever forget him.

So…. Could it be….. that Jesus had actually lived as well? Could it be that the life of Jesus had implanted itself in the lives of men and women 2000 years ago so powerfully, that they were “his” living “testament of life?”

If I knew Mike had really existed, was it possible that Jesus also had existed? And if Jesus had really existed (I had been in doubt of this at the time) than perhaps also everything Jesus had said and did was also true? For me, it was a short step from actually believing in Jesus existence to going one hundred percent into also believing his message, his life, his Godhead.

I found under the bed where Mike had died, a simple black bible someone had given him. I took that bible and it became the door that opened to a new springtime for me. I marked up the pages with yellow, pink and green crayon markings. Every time a passage spoke to me, I highlighted it. Soon it looked like a splash of color with almost every page having something on it marked for me to remember. I started to go to Sunday Mass. Than daily Mass. I started to read anything and everything that was of God.

Bit by bit I was discovering this glorious thought. I knew where Mike was. I knew Mike was alright and not only that but I was going to do everything I could to be with him again someday!