This evening, I am reminded of the beginning of the novel
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. It goes like this:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
I also am reminded of the section in Ecclesiastes which talks about a time for everything, and the spinoff song "Turn Turn Turn" by the Byrds. There is indeed a time for everything, a season if you will. Well I seem to be in the season of Gifts.
My vocation to the Holy Family Institute has been a Gift to me, well, to both of us really. In accepting the gift of this calling, I have made a Gift of myself to the Lord God. Two days ago, my husband and I knelt down together, and into the hands of Fr. Matthew Roehrig, SSP, we vowed:
We, Kermit Youngblood and Celeste Youngblood, to the honor of the Most Holy Trinity, moved by the firm will to consecrate ourselves more intimately to God and to follow Christ, the Master, more closely, in the presence of our brothers and sisters here and into your hands, make Vows according to our state for one year of Chastity, Poverty and Obedience, together with a special promise of fidelity to the Pope, according to the Statute of the Holy Family Institute.
We offer ourselves with all our hearts, for our own sanctification, for the sanctification of our family, of all Christian families and of the world.
Through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Queen of Apostles, of St. Joseph her Spouse and through the assistance of St. Paul the Apostle, may the grace of the Holy Spirit lead us to perfect charity in the service of God and of the Church.
This was the culmination of three years of preparation, and is but the beginning of our path as Professed members of the Holy Family Institute. In five years, after renewing our vows 3 times, we will make this vow permanent, or perpetual. This is a gift to us, and our gift to Jesus, to our family, to your family, to the world, this offering of ourselves.
Life is a gift, too. As a result of the gift of myself to my spouse, I have been privileged to receive the gift of life in my womb eleven times. That's right. Eleven. You see us with eight of our gifts, but the others we have been asked to give back to the Lord, and have been given a different gift in its stead...
Suffering.
"You are with child. This is your gift," I heard just a couple of weeks ago. I heard it in a way I have heard other things, just a couple of other times, but just as distinctly. I didn't have a positive pregnancy test to prove it yet, so I thought maybe I was just getting a little imaginative there standing at my kitchen counter. No. I really was with child. I also had a little son randomly come up to me, pat my belly and tell me, "You pweganent with you baby!!" He was being silly, but the timing was hard to ignore.
I was scared, though. I know, by now, what God means when He gives us "gifts." No gift comes without suffering. The suffering of the Son of God on the Cross is the greatest Gift given to all humanity. When we suffer with Christ, we participate in that redemptive suffering and our suffering helps to redeem humanity. I voiced my concern about the suffering, but it was wisely suggested I not dwell on how...or if...that would really come to fruition.
We got our proof, and once again the household was abuzz with the joy that comes when a new baby is on the way. There is really nothing like it. The whole air of the household changes. I announced the pregnancy to Kermit in a fun, unique way, by giving him an arrow with a quote from Psalm 127 attached to it, and the positive test taped to it. We told the kids the way we told them about their last little sibling, whom we tragically lost in the second trimester. We made memes, one of them being a spinoff of the Success Baby meme we had made with the previous baby. They were amused and excited. We wondered about the timing of the birth--very near DD4's First Communion--and considered how other things would change as a result. Each person had his or her own dreams of this baby, and the baby wasn't even the size of a grain of rice yet. No matter. This child was a unique creation of God, with a purpose, whether two-celled or 8 pounds and full-term. This child even had a nickname, Baby Bobo, for Saint Bobo, whose feast day is near what would have been my due date. Saint Bobo was a hermit and a crusader. My kind of guy. We even had a girls name, for the first time in several babies, a girl's name easily came to us...but we weren't feeling that it was a girl. I was suspecting a boy, even very early on.
You know where I'm going.
We arrived in Ohio, on cloud nine about our impending vows and the wonderful time we knew we would have at the Triduum, our yearly retreat with the Holy Family Institute. As one prepares for the arrival of a baby, and dreams about that amazing day, so we spent so very long preparing for our vows and dreaming of that day, but also of that whole weekend, and how wonderful it would be. I had prayed many times that we would be prepared exactly as Jesus wanted us prepared for our vows. That Jesus. He just has a way about things. You cannot mistake his fingerprints.
Friday morning, we arrived at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon and attended morning prayer at 9:00 am. Prayer ended, and we made our way towards the dining hall for refreshments and greeting other members we hadn't seen since the previous year. I stopped off in the bathroom, as something wasn't quite right, and there it was. I was miscarrying already, and right at the start of the Triduum weekend. The rug had once again been pulled out from under us, and what timing!! We weren't going to bask in our First Profession weekend. We were going to enter into our vows Jesus' way, and that way involved climbing up onto the Cross with Him. I asked for Him to prepare us, and He did.
The weekend was hard, there are no two ways about it. Some moments were harder than others, like having to see the looks on each child's face as they realized they lost another sibling, and that moment we were asked to recite Psalm 127 during the Holy Hour on Saturday and I had to flee the sanctuary before I lost it (Remember the arrow? Yes. I up and ran away from Jesus. Worst moment ever.), like being told by someone who had no idea what was going on that someday I would catch up to the lady who was expecting her thirteenth child as I was losing my eleventh. Then there were the beautiful moments - the members who kept checking on me throughout the weekend, Sister Mary Peter who prayed so hard for me and made me put my feet up when I clearly felt unwell after making our First Profession, Father Michael Harrington who checked up on me frequently and carved out some time to have a heart-to-heart, and the lovely ladies who sat and played with yarn with me and listened to my ramblings.
Gifts. The gift of a call. The gift of a vow. The gift of a body and the gift of a life. The giving back of that life. The gift of suffering. The gift of comfort in our sorrow. Gifts.
I came home from our weekend to gifts. My house had been straightened beautifully by my friends in my absence, and they left behind cards, a statue, and a stuffed animal for me. I returned home with gifts: a Bible for a friend, Christmas gifts for family, a prayer book to pass amongst my prayer group, gifts given to us for our First Profession.
I embrace this suffering that we have once again been asked to bear, and I rejoice in the fact that we are able to suffer in the state of being vowed and consecrated to God. This adds merit to our suffering, makes it more efficacious. I still have a ways to go with this miscarriage, unfortunately. It was not something that wanted to get itself over with, so for now I will go through my days back in that funny limbo I found myself in last winter. You know something is missing. You know it isn't supposed to be this way. You know life is going to--and needs to--march on and yet...what about this little person we were supposed to be expecting? You don't just move on and act like your lost babies never existed.
This little person, like our other two babies who were called home early, has a name. Some, no, many, would call this pregnancy a "chemical" but it wasn't a "chemical." It was a baby, with its own DNA, and its own unique, unrepeatable soul, created by God. This baby's name is James Mary, for Blessed James Alberione, founder of the Pauline Family, and of course, the Blessed Mother. James Mary has joined Fulton Mary and George Mary in the formidable task of interceding for us from above. Their eternities began early, and nearly their entire existences have been a gift to us and to God, spent in heavenly service.
We in the Holy Family Institute pray this prayer daily:
My God, I do not know what will happen to me today. I only know that nothing will happen to me that was not foreseen by you and directed to my greater good from all eternity. This is enough for me. I adore your eternal and unfathomable designs. I submit to them with all my heart for love of you. I offer the sacrifice of my whole being to you and join my sacrifice to that of Jesus, my Divine Savior. In His name and by His infinite merits I ask You for patience in my sufferings and perfect submission, so that everything you want or permit to happen will result in Your greater glory and my sanctification. Amen.
Truly this is a season of Gifts. I pray that I may have the courage to continue to give without counting the cost. As a special Gift to you, I will now end this very long blog post.
May you be blessed abundantly and always remember that although we are surely blessed in our joys, we are profoundly blessed in our sorrows, and the greatest gifts many times come wrapped in sorrow. Jesus was very clear that He didn't want us giving ourselves to him on our high horse, but instead in our brokenness. James Mary IS our eternal gift, and one we received seemingly in exchange for the gift of our Consecration to God.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Now and forever, praised be Jesus Christ! James Mary Youngblood, pray for us!
