Bringing Peace Home

There is a room in my house that brings me great peace. 

When I wake, I lumber straight for this room.  I make sure that I wake before anyone else.  This is key.

I enter this room; I open the blinds, and I sit down in a wooden chair.

For a few moments, I can hear myself breathe.

Then, I notice the sounds of the birds, and I am thankful for them.

I then see a statue of the Blessed Mother, which is a gift given to me by the little Pennsylvania church in which I was raised. 

I was raised Lutheran, attending a little church right down the sidewalk from our house.  I have beautiful memories of that place and its people.  I developed a love for religion there.  I found religion to be like a manual, helping me decide what to do. 

Kids secretly love a manual. 

In my family, though everyone was going to church, no one told me to follow a manual; I chose to follow,

and I am glad no one told me to follow because I am pretty sure – being the way that I was and still am – if someone had told me to follow, I would have stopped following.

I have always been the poster child for freewill.

I digress.

The Blessed Mother statue in my peaceful room stands over 2 feet tall; it was found in my Pennsylvania Lutheran Church about five years ago.  The church was moving to a new location, and they were going through about 100 years worth of “stuff,” getting ready for a big rummage sale. 

They came across this beautifully-painted, flawless statue of the Blessed Mother. 

No one knew how it got there or why it was there.   This was the kind of statue you would find in a Catholic Church.  They concluded that it had been there for a very long time, hidden.  They moved on to packing up the rest of the church.

I had converted to Catholicism when I was in my early twenties.  I began the process because my husband was Catholic, but I continued the process because I found such incredible Truth in my individual study of Catholicism.  

It was the manual of all manuals.

The priest, Father Check – Thank GOD for Father Check – who brought me through my study of Catholicism, was brilliant and perceptive, and he handed me the Catechism and said, 

“Read it.  Let me know if you have any questions.” 

How is that for perfect – for me? 

I read every page, and I wrote pages and pages of questions, and I went to Father Check’s door with them, over and over and over again, and I sat in a wooden chair, and he sat in a wooden chair, and we hashed it out…

for a year.

I started a lot of questions with “What about…” and “Yeah, but…”

and he calmly explained to perfection.

I was fresh out of my Ivy League education, but – I am telling you – this was the best class yet.  The brilliance flowing from this man’s mouth made those highly-paid Ivy Leaguers fade in comparison.

How could one priest take so much time on ONE soul?

I have no idea, 

but to say I am grateful doesn’t even come close to expressing how grateful I am.

I left there informed…to say the least.

Back in Pennsylvania, the Blessed Mother statue was claimed by my mother, who still attends the little Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania to this day.  She explained to the Church Board that her daughter was now Catholic, had a deep love for the Blessed Mother, and she took the large statue home and called me.

We were meeting in Myrtle Beach that summer.  Everyone on my side of the family would be there – grandmother, mom, brother, sister-in-law, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews…and the Blessed Mother statue.

My mother wrapped the large statue in towels and blankets, and she placed it in a clothes basket in her loaded-down-for-vacation trunk.  She drove the highly fragile statue from Pennsylvania to Myrtle Beach.

I drove across the country with my – then – four children…I drove without my husband, who had to work.  It was a pilgrimage…driving four young kids from Texas to South Carolina is nothing short of a pilgrimage. 

When I arrived and saw this statue, I couldn’t believe its perfection – the blue of her robe was a blue I had once painted a wall.  It was THE blue.  It is a blue that is bottomlessly deep – you can jump in this blue for a Baptism. 

I stared at her and her, both of my mothers, with tears,

and I couldn’t believe my little church found this and agreed to give it to me…just me….

It was as if, somehow, my little church was telling me it was okay to go, to be Catholic, that we were all One.

And my mother, my very own mother, had carried this statue across six states,

for me.

The Blessed Mother had been waiting for me in that little church…

while I sat through my Sunday School classes;

played in the nursery;

attended Vacation Bible School;

sang in the Children’s Choir;

she was somewhere, hidden, waiting for me.

and I was taking her with me now.

She fills this room in which I now sit

with a peace that I come straight to each morning.

I remember the urgency I felt when driving to get this statue.

I would have driven anywhere to get Her.

And, I know that my mother would have met me in Anywhere – to give Her to me.