We overcome by the word of our testimony and by the blood of the Lamb!
Part 2 ...
I left this Independence home, under very difficult conditions. They were a very young couple, and very social people. I was used as their built in nanny and cleaning person. Their family was growing, and needed my bedroom. I had been making my room in the basement and promises of it’s development were not coming. I dreamed of a place of my own. I desired to have better transportation, hoping to go on to art school.
My move came at a very costly price. My life was very lonely because I had no one. I tried to find comfort in my attendance at mass. I wanted so much to be wanted by someone and was very scared of the neighborhood in which I lived. I found a bedroom in a house owned by a girl. Her parents lived close and were helping her with its upkeep. Another woman who worked as a Halle Department Store elevator operator rented the other room. The girl who owned the house had the third bedroom. She entertained her friends but I didn’t feel like I belonged for we never really communicated with one another. I couldn’t find the local church. Evidently it wasn’t in walking distance. I was fearful when I rode the city bus. No one talked to no one. Work was 9 to 5 and back home to the lonely house. All my salary went to such important things as rent. At times, I couldn’t afford to eat, thus I couldn’t contribute to Birthday gifts and the likes when my company supervisor demanded me to do so. One supervisor, threatened me as well for not having the ’team spirit’. I was aware that she lived at home with her parents and wore matching expensive clothing. I couldn’t believe that everyone had someone to depend on and I had no one. In time she had me fired.
One day, I got a call from a strange girl identifying herself as a friend of a friend who suggested she ask me if I wanted to share her apartment in Lakewood. It was a very beautiful apartment in a very nice neighborhood. I really loved the brick colonial look that it had. My roommate and I shared all expenses. She equipped the living room and I was to equip the kitchen. We bought college style bedspreads and we each bought a set of matching drapes for the windows.
She was raised by her grandparents in a small farm in the southern hills of Ohio. She had some training and thus held a decent job. She was able to lead me to the local church. She was dating a fellow and then announced that she was to marry him. I panicked, realizing that I didn’t know another friend to share the apartment with and my job didn’t pay enough to do solo rent. I applied for an airlines job and that fell through.
It was then that I reasoned, I must have been born to be a nun. So I went and applied. Since I had no one who could provide me with a dowry of things like sheets, the nun who interviewed me, said that they would be glad to take care of it for me. But she also said that I should go home and pray one or two more weeks to be sure that I was doing what God wanted of me. So I did.
This is the picture which was taken when I met Fred.
He used it to draw the portrait which hangs on our wall.
It was at this time that I met Fred who later became my husband. We dated a short time and he showed me that he loved me greatly and at the same time taking care of some of my expenses. I had a very difficult time accepting that someone really loved me but he kept reassuring me. I then became convinced that he would take good care of me so I agreed to marry him. I continued to attend mass and church religious functions whenever I could. We attended mass at my local church. He would first drive his mom to her Byzantine Church and then come and we would go together.
My Father has Brought unto Me a Husband
Our wedding.
For my wedding, I had no one to help with the wedding items. I decided to design a straight dress to hide my body as well as skimping on expensive material. I wanted so much to do the ’right things’ that I had the many buttons sewn on the zipper and sleeves. I knew that fathers walked daughters down isles, and so I asked the young father with whom I last lived with. But since no one was volunteering to help me with wedding plans, we did it ourselves. I chose a particular song which we sang at the Catholic orphanage instead of the traditional Ave Marie ...PANIS ANGELICUS... Oh Lord Most Holy. For our first Christmas together, I asked to purchase a Nativity set instead of a Christmas tree since we were on a very tight budget. I reasoned that then we would always have our Nativity. This was important to me.
As we entered our Cinderella life together, I decided that I needed to have a baby right away so that when my husband ’woke up’ one day and decided to take a real look at the nobody, called me and would leave me, I would have a baby to prove that someone at one time really loved me.
The first child brought us much joy. We bought our house and I was extremely happy with my family and husband. But at times I would look around the neighborhood and see the other families with their extended families helping out in many ways. I was quickly becoming aware that we were without family or help. I was kept very busy, but yet I was aware of how lonely I was.
My walk through the valley of the shadow of death ...
I soon became pregnant with my second child. The pregnancy was difficult. I gained too much weight and had no time for myself. I was sick and the house was extremely hot in the summer. We celebrated Christmas and I soon delivered another girl. Within three months I was pregnant again. Two children and without any help, I started experiencing some severe sore throats. Lumps came and went on my neck. As the winter came, I became aware of a lump that didn’t seem to go away. I was so sick, that I begged for my husband to stay home to help but he couldn’t for we needed the money.
I became aware that the sore throats would come by three in the afternoon and then I could only whisper until the next day. I became so sick, that I would stack the diapers in the living room and get the babies their toys and lay down to sleep because the sore throats were now coming early in the morning. I would wake to check on the babies to be sure they were safely playing near me and. By my delivery date, I still didn’t have anyone to watch the two babies for me. I asked everyone and they were all busy. Finally I was able to work out a schedule with volunteers spending a few hours each day while I was to be hospitalized. Some of them, the babies had never seen before. I was feeling very depressed. I was very sad because my babies had no one and daddy was very busy trying to make a living for us.
I was delighted to have a boy for my loving husband. But before we left the hospital, my ob recommended the hospital’s head surgeon to explain that I would need to be operated on immediately to have that lump removed. He explained that there would be a possibility that it could be cancerous, but I knew I was to young for that problem.
The operation took place and everyone was hushed around me. Days went by and no one came to tell me that all was ok. Finally, I started asking for the results. When the Doctor came with the results, I fell apart because they were not good. He wasn’t sure if I would survive 3 mos., 6 mos., or 1 year. It was a very fast growing cancerous growth. I realized that my babies would be motherless very shortly and my sister-in-law would most likely raise them. I was devastated. I cried through the night.
Then I saw lightning strike the flag pole that was outside my hospital window. I heard the door to my room open and in walked a figure in a white robe. I stopped crying and he told me (not audibly) that I would be all right. I felt a real warmth with an unusual peace. He left and I fell asleep. I never told anyone about this for a long time. I asked to speak with a priest. I wrote many questions and the hospital priest told me that most of the bible was nothing but tales. He told me that the creation didn’t occur the way the bible says.
When I was permitted to go home, the doctor recommended that I was to have help, which one neighbor said she would give. As I was leaving , one nurse came with a little vial of precious Lourdes water for me to use. She said that when babies were very ill, they prayed and used the precious water.
When I got home, my helper went home for lunch and never returned as did no one else. Grandma was allow by my sister-in-laws to spend one day with me. Afterwards when it was time to care for my babies I did what I could by myself. I hung the diapers, even though I couldn’t raise my head to see the clothes line. It was then that we got our first dryer. I was devastated about my condition.
I used the little vial of Lourdes water the first day that I arrived home. I prayed a prayer asking God to use this water like the crippled man in the gospel who said to Jesus why he wasn’t healed ... because he couldn’t get to the water first after the angel stirred it. When I went to use the water the following day, it was gone.
The Catholic Church was in the midst of big changes. Things that I learned would cause me to go straight to hell if I didn’t do, such as eating meat on Friday, were now said it was only church law and now it would be ok. I became very upset regarding the priest of the local parish constantly emphasis on the lack of funds for the churches’ school. This he would follow by threats. I observed his fancy new car and all the nice things he surrounded himself with. I couldn’t understand why we didn’t have the necessities for the children, yet we were being threatened regarding not contributing. I looked around at my fellow neighbors and saw the amount of family help each received. I became very upset and stopped attending church. When local pastors of other churches came to my door, I politely refused them, remembering what the Catholic nuns and priest had said about their heresies. The news media was informing us that someone was saying that God is dead.
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