#2 God the Father Day - Women who provided for Jesus out of their resources - moms, Little Sister Marie, Mary/Teach the TRUTH - +JMJ+

Mom Verly with her 5 beautiful daughters some years back.  Add to that 5 sons as she is the mother of 10 children that she raised on the farm.  

I should begin to realize that my God the Father Day is  becoming God the Father week!  There is so much for which I am eternally grateful to my God the Father!  Pat's mother, Anna Verly, took this city girl under her wing and sweetly taught me all that I know about being a farmwife to a big successful farmer!  

One of my favorite stories was a few months after we were married - she was helping me harvest a small garden the former renters had left behind.  She asked me if I had a potato fork.  "Sure!"  I went in the house and got a fork out of the silverware drawer.  She took it and dug in the dirt a bit until she told me that it was actually a large tool.  She didn't laugh in my face, but I think she than realized how much I had to learn.  She was the best and most kind teacher - sharing her love for the farm and the life it provided for our family.

When we had big family work days in the kitchen she would come - not to sit and watch but to work!  I am not nearly the willing worker she was.  

Father God, thank you for this beautiful woman, who showed me that Faith/Family/Farm is a wonderful journey we are called to share with our Lord and Lady in the True Church.

My mother, Nancy Cross, was so beloved to me!  I cannot remember ever disagreeing with her, and am eternally grateful for her deep faith and listening to the Holy Spirit to guide her- a Protestant Minister's wife, who found a devotion to Mary, the Mother of Jesus along the way.  

My mother broke the mold of when it came to having children.  She had 8 and ladies of the Protestant church would ask her if she didn't know how to keep that from happening over and over.  Rude!  On top of that she took in 4 others, whose parents were killed in a car accident.  We went from 7 - one died at 2 days old, to 11!  My mother had her hands full!  She had a clean and organized and faith filled home.

The Gospel today of the women that made the ministry of Jesus possible by providing for his needs and those of the 12.  These two mothers of mine were women of Faith and shared that with the 21 children that between them they raised in The Church!  For the 11 my parents raised that involved our conversion 52 years ago!  

Family Soul Story - Choose Life!: The amazing story of the 13 becoming Catholic!  

Nancy Cross taken 2 weeks before she passed in a day.  She fell in the morning before breakfast and died at 5p just as covid was shutting everything down.  

My mother was an amazing woman- she had a message to married women to be submissive to their husbands.  She wrote many articles and books.  She did a Bible study of the entire Bible!  She had a passion for Edith Stein - St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and even wrote a children's book having to do with her.  She wrote about our beloved Lake Michigan... All of her writing is found on a webpage that dad and mom did a few years back - dad's Alcoholic Chalk Talks and mom's studies, books and articles!  

Sadly I just discovered that their webpage is gone.  I am trying to resurrect it, though.  Such an amazing family heirloom that has been lost.  Dear God, my mother is on her journey to you.  She died the day before my sister, Mary's birthday on March 16th.  Mary had died when she was 28 from cancer, so it was so comforting to envision mom and Mary with their big wonderful dogs leaping around them in heaven together!  Both loved their big dogs!  

My beautiful sister, Mary.  She was always super close to me although we were 7 years apart.  We would go for long walks on the beach together looking of fossils when we spent most of the summer at our grandparents cabin on Grand Traverse Bay - Lake Michigan.  

She came to live with Pat and I when I was pregnant with my 2nd daughter and on bed rest.  Another city girl -she fell in love with the farm as she helped with chores morning and night.  Sadly she knew it was time to leave and find her own path - she found her farmer, Gerry!  They married and welcomed daughter, Audrey, but discovered that pain she was suffering from was 4th stage Lymphoma cancer.  

My dad Deacon Robert Cross baptizing Audrey with Godparents, our sister, Paula and husband, Bill.  

The questions were swirling in our hearts, minds and souls - why when Mary finally found her happiness in life was she being called to leave it all behind?  She passed away on July3, 1986 at age 28 and Audrey was 20 months old.  Now all these years since - we see a wonderful plan for Gerry and Audrey in a large wonderful family that they have joined - Cathy and her 5 children.  She had lost her husband in a drowning accident, and they now have many grandkids adding to their love!  

Thank you, Father God, for the gift of this most precious sister, who shared in loving the farm and giving life to sweet Audrey.  Being reunited with her in heaven keeps our eyes on heaven where we will share your LIGHT and JOY!  Mary is Godmother to 2 of my girls and they have asked why their Godmother is not here, but in heaven.  "You are called to pray for her, and I am sure she is praying for you now from a better place."

Family Soul Story - Choose Life!: Our marriage stories - "The world needs LIGHTS!"  

I have to mention how this was the Pope of our Marriage!  St John Paul II became Pope just a month after we were married and was Pope for the first 28 years of our so far 45 years of marriage.  How we loved him and he was our hero for LIFE and for family!  

We continue to pray to him and I am totally aware that he is battling from heaven for LIFE with all that he has along with St Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  He was very much involved in John's healing from brain cancer.  He was part of the team of Saints we had fighting for John - including a relic of Blessed Solanus Casey!  Thank you, Father God, for St JPII and the difference he made in the world, the Church and in our marriage.  May he bring abortion to an end!

Tom and Joy - prolife kids - Choose LIFE!  They are walking examples of being open to LIFE and raising them as LIGHTS for the world!  It begins in the home!  

A year and a half ago this was you, Tom!  

John's miracle family - 3 healthy happy kids and a wife, who knew years before that she would marry John Verly.  Bobbi is such a beautiful example of trusting, having faith and praying for your future spouse through seminary, cancer, and this and that...  Here is the story!

After being classmates for all 13 years for them to come together 10 years after graduating is kind of special.  She shared to the 300 family and friends gathered at the reception in her sweet humble way about how John Verly popped into her head and heart when they were seniors in HS as her future husband.  Time and time again the same answer came to her through prayer and roses from St Therese and opening her eyes to see him right in front of her at WYD in Australia... When we consider what John experienced over those 10 years... brain cancer, seminary, girl friends, ups and downs and how disheartening it probably was and how powerful her prayers were for him!!!!  Amazing!!!   And how patient and trusting and prayerful and waiting and praying for John, this sweet girl was!

Sweet Bobbi after waiting and praying since they were seniors in high school!  Patiently she trusted in His plan and now a sweet family of 5!  Another woman that provided for Jesus to work in John's life and answer prayers.  Thank you, dear God, for such a powerful lesson of TRUST!  

I will always remember when John's cancer grew back through his chemo - Bishop LeVoir wrote on our Caringbridge site - "When in times of fear and distress repeat these words; "Jesus, I trust in you."  

Their oldest, Jude age 4 is now in preschool at the Catholic School just a block away - LOVE this on the wall yesterday!  The same school where his dad and mom attended all 13 years together in the same grade!  John's siblings, his dad and his 9 siblings, and Ruth and Paul's kids too!  We love our Catholic School - thank you, dear God, for such good teachers helping us to raise our LIGHTS for the world!  

Our youngest grandchild, Lucy Marie, yesterday.  She was just 8 months and is such a happy sweet girl!  

The sunflower was laying on the driveway when I got out, and I couldn't resist in front of their wonderful picture window!  

Maria's 2 youngest girls - 2 year old Magdalene, and soon to be 7 year old Evangeline.  Appropriate as Magdalene was in the Gospel today as one of those women that helped our Lord in his ministry!  He also appeared to her first of all at the Resurrection.

Accompanying him were the Twelve
and some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities,
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out,
Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza,
Susanna, and many others
who provided for them out of their resources.  Luke 8

I found this most special today by Maria VonTrapp -Speaking about those women!  So good!  

The rest of it.  Mary Magdalene - "I have seen the Lord."  Yes!!  

Praying the rosary for Fr Denny with 7 Sisters today - for the 4th Station of the Sorrowful - Carrying the Cross - I do as I did with my dad as we prayed the Rosary for the 6 months he lived here - for the 10 beads there is a station to go with it.  Looking up I saw St Luke and his symbol the ox or bull.  

It strikes me a bit of the Lord having fun with me as long before I met Pat and had any notion of being a farmwife - I came into The Church and chose St Luke for my patron Saint when I was confirmed.  I was in nursing, and he was a physician, and he wrote all that we have about The Mother of God, Mary Most Holy and other wonderful women that followed Jesus.  Now to see this every week brings a smile to my face and joy to my heart!  The jokes on me!  I see your loving care for me my Father!  

John was in seminary 11 years ago and came home to help dig after the crop had been harvested.  He loved the prayer life, but the studies were hard.  He discerned out, and John and I would share the Office and Morning prayer with chanting whenever it would work out for us.  Definitely taken deeper into his Faith through that year!  

First day of fall on Lake Michigan...

Tom a year ago - he is here now taking his nap.  We have become very close!  I need to end this for today.  There are still so many things that I yearn to share and give thanks to my Heavenly Father for them - Community of the Lamb and grandson's Patrick, bringing back to life and healing... I guess there will have to be day #3!  Jesus, we trust in you.  Bless-bless, Barbara and the 33 plus many Little Sisters and Little Brothers

 

  "The greatest tragedy would be

to come to the end of our lives and realize

that the Lord was so near,

and yet we were so far away."

 - Fulton Sheen, The Eucharist God Among Us

Retreat on the Priesthood

 

"It is most important that the holy Eucharist

becomes life's focal point: that the

Eucharistic Savior is the center of existence;

that every day is received from His hand

and laid back therein; that the

day's happenings are deliberated with Him.

 

In this way, God is given the best opportunity

to be heard in the heart,

to form the soul,

and to make its faculties clear-sighted

and alert for the supernatural."

 

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

in Essays on Woman

My mom would love these without a doubt!