Another flash back with my family around me... including my new son-in-law, Paul Lanoue. Ruth and Paul had just been married about a month before on Nov 22, and then he found himself in a van full of Verlys driving Maria to the Poor Clare Monastery in Sauk Rapids on New Years Day 2005! There were tears as John laid his head in her lap and told her that she wasn't going to go through with this. Ruth had had less than 6 months to plan her wedding so that Maria would be a part of it... knowing that she planned to go behind the enclosure and we might never get a hug again, and she would never leave from behind the wall and come home again! You can see the tears that have been shed and the shock of having her pass through the door into the other side and then enter the room we were directed to with the "enclosure" between us! So real and solid and hard and different for us to realize that this could be where she would live and where we would have to come to see her occassionally.
There can be a closeness even with the enclosure... we needed to know that we could still have that feeling of a kiss....Yes! This is a cherished and very personal picture of two sisters, who are testing the ways of comfort and love to be shared to give each other the strength they need to each leave the other. One to an unknown world of being a Poor Clare nun, and the other going back home with the feeling of losing her sister, who had always been there through the thick and thin of family life. Many emotions were so much a part of this day 7 years ago! Nancy and Maria were very close in age - being just 16 months apart and one year apart in school... they did compete some, but neither wished to have the other one so much out of their lives as to go behind an enclosure from which they would never leave! This was radical and scary in many ways. We left there shaking and deeply moved by the whole thing. Many thoughts and prayers would fly in her direction with each new day.
It wasn't for her, but we are forever changed by our experience, and if there is a big prayer need we are on the phone to these prayer warriors, who are behind the enclosure to protect themselves from the distractions of the world, and give their live's work to prayer for the needs of us all! I cannot imagine what the world would be like without the prayers of all the cloistered religious men and women called to pray for the world's needs! Jesus, we trust in you! Bless-bless
Thinking of my Maria tonight - now in Texas with her Leutenant Husband, Joseph and her two children - I just came across this fun oldie and had to put it here! I love you Maria, and thank God every day for your spiritual journey that you have shared with all of your family, and many others! What an out of this world ride!
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