The Bay Region of Michigan...
I didn't grow up Catholic
But I grew up in a small town
And a small town with a LOT of Catholic churches
And I mean A LOT
The Virgin Mary statue in the front of lawns was common.
People praying to The Saints and The Virgin Mother was common
I never "got" it
But I respected it.
I mean
What's not to respect?
She was the chosen birth mother of the Son of God.
Just a girl.
Confused
Scared
But full of faith.
After Gabriel breaks the
Holy moly news to her,
She
In Luke 1:38
Replies
"Behold, I am the servant of the Lord;
Let it be to me according to your word."
Me?
I would have dropped dead from the news.
And then her prayer
The song of prayer she magnifies after meeting up with Elisabeth...
Study it.
It's profound.
So,
Fast-forward to June and July 2011
Specifically,
July 8, 2011.
I was on my six-week
Amazing
Life-changing trip
With Fulbright Exchange Program
To Greece and Turkey
(Followed by a little solo trip to Cairo, Egypt)
And we spent a day in Ephesus, Turkey.
For New Testament reasons alone
I was beyond trilled to be there
But then this experience came.
Here is what I captured in my travel blog from that day almost five years ago:
After exploring the ancient ruins of Ephesus, we headed to Meryemana (Mary’s House) which is where it is said that the Virgin Mary came to live with Saint John (or Saint Jean as he is known here) at the end of her life. The site consists of a small chapel that was built on top of the house that she is believed to have lived in and there is a wishing wall covered in rags where visitors tie bits of cloth, paper, plastic, stickers, tissues, etc. to the wall with a written wish. It was a special sight to visit.
I remember standing in front of the wall of wishes
Touched
But also skeptical
Interested
But also concerned
I didn't want to be superstitious
(Like those chain letters
Now emails
That used to come along...)
I didn't want to be following the crowd
But I felt moved.
Moved to write out my own prayer
A wish of sorts
And leave it behind.
I didn't wish to Mary.
That wasn't me.
Despite my respect for her.
But
I prayed to God.
I prayed to my Savior.
And
On July 8, 2011
I wrote out my own prayer
My own life's wish
Asking for what I had been praying for for years
But leaving it behind me in a different way than ever before
On a small tissue from my purse
Tied together with dental floss
And slipped it on to the wall
Amid some other wishes and prayers for
Healing
Peace
Leadership
Churches
Families
Marriages
Children
Dreams
Hopes
Desires
So,
Fast forward to today
Exactly 4 years and 8 months after
Writing out
And leaving behind
My prayer on the wall
Of the stone home in Ephesus, Turkey
Thought to be where Jesus' mother spent her last days of life.
(Did you know it's also National Women's Day today?)
Yes, today.
March 8, 2016
I spent time with my three little misses,
Their biological mom
And their biological grandmother
At Chickfila
I try to meet up with them once a month
For my girls' sake
For their birth mother's sake
And
For many
Many reasons
It is always hard
Hard in ways you would imagine
And hard in a ways I can't ever explain
For the girls
For the mom and grandma
For me
But for many
Many reasons
It's also good.
It's also right.
And today
As we left
This mother
The birth mother of the girls
My girls
My girls who will be my forever and always daughters
In a just few short months
Lord willing
Asked if it would offend me if she gave me a bracelet of the Virgin Mary.
I replied that of course it wouldn't
And that I would be honored
And she slipped it off her wrist and gave it to me
With the words that
The Virgin Mother Mary is the Patron Saint of Mothers
And I am her girls' mother, too
And she prays to the Virgin Mary that I will be protected
And gave me this bracelet.
And then the memory of me
In Turkey
At the wall
Writing out my prayer on that tissue paper
Tying it with that dental floss
Came flooding back to me
That prayer
That life-desire wish
That I wrote to God
That I wrote to my Savior
Came flooding back to me.
That prayer
That life-desire wish
That many of my closest family and friends knew
But I never told anyone I wrote down that day
But that I honestly forgot about until today
Came flooding back to me.
The prayer
The life-desire wish
That I wrote?
Please God
Let me one day adopt a daughter
And become a mother.
Um.
Yeah.
He's doing it.
Times three.
So,
If you see me
Wearing this bracelet
Just know.
It's another physical reminder
That God listens.
That God moves.
That God answers.
That God has his own time table.
That God will blown your socks off.
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