The Front Porch
August Acceptance
By Mercy Gutierrez
Last month, I delivered a series of talks for women attending an all-day summer retreat. Although I was given four hours to teach, I was the one who walked away really learning a valuable truth. Let me explain:
The title for the retreat was Transformed by the Spirit: Living in His Truth with Conviction and my lectures addressed the journey of a Christian life. We started the day examining our lives, especially the areas where we are in most need of repentance and reconciliation. After recognizing the need for Christ to transform our hearts, strengthen our minds and cleanse our souls, we discussed the importance of learning the faith, living in Truth and growing in love for the Lord. Then, during the closing lecture, we discussed the importance of persevering in holiness in times of joy and suffering.
During the joy-filled moments in our life, it is easy to rejoice in God’s faithfulness and mercy (as long as we remember to give HIM the glory). However, during times of suffering, it is not as easy. Suffering is complicated. It is intellectually difficult to understand and emotionally draining to discuss. So in preparation for the talk, I asked the Holy Spirit to send me a word that would lend comfort during those times of suffering in our lives. He sent me two words in prayer: availability and obedience. When God calls us to persevere in love and service to Him and the Church, we need only be available to His wants and obedient to His needs. Just as Samuel said in the Old Testament, “Here I am Lord (available), I come to do your will (obedient),” we need to respond with an open and willing heart. In doing so, we allow God to truly penetrate the daily circumstances of our lives, especially in times of sorrow and suffering.
As I wrapped up the session, I decided to open up the floor for personal remarks. At that, an older woman in the front humbly raised her hand. She thanked me for the day’s presentations and asked if she could add a “word” regarding the last session. She said, “we surely need availability and we must be obedient, but in my 60 years of living, I understand that we also need acceptance.” Acceptance. How true. And no one knew this better than the women in the room.
You see, throughout the day, many of the women approached me to tell me about what God was doing in their lives: one woman had just lost her husband and was left to raise their three teenage sons; another had lost her daughter to a brain aneurysm just days before her wedding was to take place; another had two sons with severe disabilities; another was devastated that her thirty-year marriage was falling to pieces; another was lamenting that her grown children had left the Church. These women knew suffering. They were living it out everyday. Just as the women on my retreat knew suffering, so do many of the women in our ENDOW groups.
It is difficult to accept certain crosses that we are given, but we must make it an act of faith, trusting in God’s plan for our lives. Although we may not be able to answer the “whys” of such sufferings, we patiently wait to discover “how” God will use them for the good. We must find consolation in the trusting words of the prophet Isaiah: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts, says the Lord” (55:9).
Sisterhood
By Jamie Gruber
“How to Get Him to Dump Her.” This was one of the recent headlines of a tabloid I noticed while standing in the supermarket line. I was not shocked that the world was promoting boyfriends over sisterhood. But as I talked with my girlfriends in the local Catholic young adult community, I realized we were not exempt from this mentality. We too have chosen to concern ourselves more with the potential of a romantic relationship, than friendship with each other.
Jimmie and Linda
By Eileen Love
It was the kind of phone call you know is coming, yet it still takes you by surprise. Jimmie was dead. The voice on the line belonged to one of the women in my ENDOW group, and she was calling all of us to share the news that Linda’s husband finally ended his battle with cancer.
I first met Linda at an ENDOW gathering a couple of years ago. It was an informational meeting. There were one hundred women in the room that day and all were captivated by the description of John Paul II’s teaching on the genius of women. Some of us banded together and that day was the beginning of our own little ENDOW group.
With the love of our faith as the common bond, we all quickly became friends. We learned about each other’s families, dissected our struggles and discussed successes. Always throughout, we prayed for one another.
Linda, the extrovert, and Jimmie, the quiet one, were married for forty years and were entirely devoted to each other. When Linda shared with us how sick her husband was, I was struck by the language she used. When she spoke of the doctoring and the hospital visits, she always used the plural, as in…“We’ve never had cancer before…” and “We told the doctor we didn’t feel good…” In our group, Linda often prefaced her comments with self deprecating disclaimers like, “I don’t know much but …” and then a priceless gem would drop from her lips. She had the faith in her heart and loved stretching intellectually. And she had the theology of Christian marriage down pat. She knew, better than anyone that the task of Christian spouses is to help each other along in the path of holiness.
This she did all during Jimmie’s long illness. When our group did our latest study on Salvifici Doloris (The Christian Meaning of Human Suffering) Linda could not always be with us because of the demands of caretaking her husband, but when she could steal away, she would come to our meeting, one of us would fetch her coffee, and we would read John Paul II’s message on the redemptive power of suffering. We all took in the words and pondered their meaning, but it was Linda, with her quiet courage and untiring love, who made the message come alive.
At the funeral Linda looked beautiful. She was dressed in a pretty green top and wore a faint smile much of the day. Serene during the Mass and stoic during the ceremony at Fort Logan, we, her friends, knew she was taking comfort in the knowledge that her beloved Jimmie was now beginning his eternal life. If you have a quiet moment this week, please say a prayer for the repose of this good man’s soul. It would mean everything to Linda.
A Little Help from My Friends
So, over the next several days and weeks, you will start to meet them, and I am sure you will come to love them just as I have. Many of these men and women helped to found the ENDOW program, and all of them have made it what it is today ~ a fast growing, educational program for women based on the teachings of the Catholic Church. I can honestly say that it has been a grand adventure for all of us and it is our greatest hope that a few people have benefitted along the way.
Now a little bit about friendship…taken from ENDOW’s Discover Your Dignity: A Woman’s Journey through Life, Part II study guide:
“…True friendship is one of mutual love and goodwill. Communication is an essential component. True friends want to share the most important things in their lives; they want to do the same kinds of things and do them together. They want their lives to coincide in a very real way. As Aristotle put it, they must “eat salt together.” This kind of friendship means helping each other grow in virtue and communicating to each other that we are lovable. It means taking the time to really know one another for who we are and looking beyond each other’s shortcomings to what we can ultimately become. Essentially, true friends help us to see ourselves as we truly are and they give us an insight into how God loves us…”
Perhaps more than ever, today we need to sit on the front porch with our friends. Both the porch and our friends remind us that we are human. We need to be reminded. Never before in history has our humanity been so severely tested. In a world that has lost its affinity for closeness, we need to remember that we were made for relationship. Frances Weaver, the author of The Girls With the Grandmother Faces and a friend of mine from years gone by once wrote, “The fabric of American life began to disintegrate with the disappearance of the front porch…When we moved to the patio in the backyard, then to the TV in the house, we lost important human contacts.” She was right. Let’s do our best to recapture them.
Born to Lead
Today my son is leaving for Officer’s Candidate School with the Marines. Even though this part of the training will be combined with his last two years of college, he will be a different person when he returns at the end of August. I have no doubt he will have grown quite a bit. From personal experience, I know a thing or two about growing. First of all, it can be challenging (painful) and secondly, it is worth it.
However, as his mother, I am stuck on the painful part. No mother would willingly send her child into a challenging situation without a little bit of her heart packed in the suitcase. Maybe that is why I had to retell my favorite story about him to the group that had gathered last Sunday night to wish him well. I just couldn’t stop myself from sharing the fact that for the first five years of life, he rarely (never) took the McDonald’s “Happy Meal” bucket off of his head. No kidding. This child walked around with a bucket on his head for years.
I confided to my friend that I had shared this story. She consoled me by telling me that most families are unwilling to let their relatives evolve. Possibly; but I think in sharing that story, I am confirming in my own mind what I have always known. This child is different; he is not a follower. He was born to lead.
One day I will see him in an Officer’s uniform. Will that new picture replace the picture of the child with a bucket on his head? I can hardly image relinquishing it because I have hung on to it so tightly for all of these years. My hope is that I will be able to see them side-by-side.
Please pray for him and for all of the brave men and women who serve our country.
It was the Holy Spirit
By Terry Polakovic
So, what inspired you to start ENDOW? I get this question fairly frequently, both from people who are actually interested and from those who are not. The truth is, it was the Holy Spirit. Even though it is certainly an option, it just isn’t easy to say “no” to the Holy Spirit.
Eight years ago, I knew there were a few things in my life that could use some tweaking, but I didn’t necessarily think I needed an entire overhaul. The Holy Spirit thought differently. Out of nowhere, He started introducing all of these new people into my life. I was a bit uncomfortable at first because they spoke a completely different language. Their conversations revolved around Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, the “New Feminism”, and a woman’s conference that had been held in Beijing. At the time I remember thinking how appropriate that was, since all of these concepts seemed like Chinese to me.
However, I was drawn into these conversations in a way that I had never been drawn to anything before. As an avid reader, I could recognize a good book when I saw one. Unexpectedly, however, my literary tastes started changing. Even the most riveting novel didn’t compare to the writings of Pope John Paul II. There was so much to read and I just couldn’t read fast enough. I started looking at every single thing differently.
By God’s grace, the same thing was happening to a couple of the women whom I had only recently met. That is the goodness of God; He sends you exactly what you need. I needed people who were being transformed in the same way I was. It would have been too frightening for me to go through it alone.
The three of us didn’t know very much, but we knew that what we were experiencing was real. We wanted to share it with other women, and we were just naïve enough to think we could. There is a saying, “God doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called.” That is wha
t He did for us. Again, thanks be to God. He sent all of the right people – an excellent Archbishop, the Religious Sisters of Mercy and literally thousands of women who were as hungry as we were. He sent us great authors, a great staff, and lots of good counsel. There is something beautiful about being a little bit clueless. You have to depend on other people. I am not saying it has all been easy, but every bit of it has been worth it.
As I said earlier, each one of us has the option of saying “no” to the Holy Spirit, but I wouldn’t recommend it. My life today is so much better than I could have ever imagined. I will be forever grateful that He thought me worthy of this gift called ENDOW.
It must have been her simplicity…
Just as I sat down to write this I heard the familiar sound of an ice-cream truck.
I was actually going to write about something else, but now I am going to write about the ice-cream man. Actually, not really about the ice-cream man, but more about what he represents. Summer, swimming, hide and seek, kick-ball, bike riding, fresh cut grass, shady trees, the 4th of July…SECURITY.
As I was growing up, none of the kids on my block had a home life that compared to
“Leave it to Beaver.” But idiosyncrasies really weren’t that big of a deal back then. For example, the lady down the street cleaned her entire house every day. Her five kids weren’t allowed to play until they had completed the exact same chore which they had performed the day before. My mother, on the other hand, got up and went to 6:30 Mass. Then she came home and fixed us all a big breakfast of bacon and eggs (everyday!). After that she booted all five of us out the door, locked it and didn’t unlock it until right before dinner. It wasn’t anything personal, mind you; she just wanted her peace and quiet. In truth, we didn’t really mind this routine. We had a park at one end of the block and a pool at the other. Plus, she kept the refrigerator in the garage stocked with food, and we always had enough money for the ice cream man. So, life was good…
So good that 50 years later, the sound of an ice-cream truck brings me right back to my mother’s schedule. She wasn’t that complicated, she didn’t wear fancy clothes, she didn’t necessarily fix fancy meals. In fact, one summer she shared a side of beef with the same lady who cleaned her entire house every day. That summer, we had steak, baked potatoes and salad every night for dinner. It sounds great today, but we had it every night.
It must have been her simplicity that made me feel secure. It reminds me of that quote from St. Edith Stein, “The nation…doesn’t simply need what we have. It needs what we are.”
Reason for Hope
Several years ago, I delivered a speech at a Pro-Life Conference in Dallas. I wish I could say that it was the most memorable presentation of the day, but it wasn’t. In my opinion, a Boston attorney named Frances Hogan claimed that honor. I have never forgotten her story. Ms. Hogan spoke about graduating from Boston College Law School in the early 1970’s, at the height of the cultural revolution, the effects of which are still evident today. Eager to include women, various organizations such as the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, Teacher Associations, etc., snatched up these young female attorneys and signed them up as board members.
As Catholic professional women coming of age during this turbulent time, Hogan and the others quickly realized that the organizations with which they had associated were adopting pro-choice positions. In protest, they resigned, which she claimed was the biggest mistake of her life. In her words, “we left the table.” As a result, they lost their voice. The rest is history.
All of this reminds me of my daughter. Newly graduated from Providence College in Rhode Island with a degree in Theology, she and four of her college roommates just spent the last couple of weeks driving up and down the West Coast. Since Denver was their beginning and ending point, I made sure that we had time for Mexican food, margaritas, and some lively conversation before they ventured off. What a gift!
As I listened to them, I thought of Frances Hogan and her graduating class of 1972. As the saying goes, “you’ve come a long way, baby…” These 2009 graduates are different. Full of life and confidence and smart as a whip, these young Catholic women are armed with all of John Paul II’s teachings on the dignity of women. They aren’t going to leave anyone’s table. We have every reason in the world to be hopeful.
My new blog!
By Terry Polakovic
Dear Friends,
It is with great excitement and a bit of healthy trepidation that I begin this blog. Excitement because in some small way I think it will help you to come to know the ENDOW (Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women) program and all of us a little better. We are very proud of this work, so naturally, we are eager to share it with anyone who might be interested. Trepidation comes from the fact that in preparing to start this blog, I have been reading and watching what other people, particularly Catholics, write on their blogs. Since I rarely read the local newspaper, and almost never watch TV, I have found most of the information on the various blogs to be very enlightening. That being said, the lack of civility and charity shown by some is disturbing. I am afraid that the internet has somehow given us the permission and protection to openly criticize one another, something we wouldn’t necessarily do if we were speaking face to face. This is not going to be that type of blog… 
The ENDOW program began just over six years ago. At that time, we decided that ENDOW would be an educational program aimed at “the woman in the pew.” Since we considered ourselves to fit this description, this seemed to us to be an appropriate audience. Six years later, I can tell you that there is no one type of woman who fits this depiction. We are all so different. Our stories, our lives and our dreams are not the same. I know so much more now than I did then, so I am excited to share with you what I have learned.
Stay tuned….