Replies

I left the faith when I first went to college. I did avail myself of the Catholic Priest there, not for absolutions but for Confession. After I finished Grad school I was consulting, teaching adult and had married.

I got sick one day, kept smoking and my throat swelled like a bullfrog, with a 104 fever. My throat felt it was on fire. After a hospitalization, I could talk and asked for a real confession. I got the most liberal Priest at the Hospital, but I didn't know it at the time.

He heard my confession for a half hour, patiently. He gave me a sorta Absolution and I asked can "I get Absolution?" He then gave me a proper one. I asked him if he had an Rosaries around I would love to pray one for Thanksgiving. He said use your fingers. Five minutes later he came in with one excitedly, it was a red cheapie that I still have as a prized possession.

A little later a person came is and was asked if I wanted Communion, he was sent by the Priest.

A week later I went to a book store and got to know the owner, who helped me re-Cathechize myself. I got reading material galore, Catholic Answers, videotapes and audio tapes. I read books upon books. I did pretty well getting up to snuff.

A few of us had dinner, and I told them this story and they related to me this was quite the liberal Priest. I was pleased he was so good to me.

I mentioned the date of my Hospital stay. It was 2-3 Feb. 3 Feb is St. Blaise Feast, where your throat is blessed. I never realized it, it being ten years since my last throat blessing.

When God wants your attention, he knows how to grab you by the throat.

**When God wants your attention, he knows how to grab you by the throat.**

Thank you for sharing.

When God wanted my attention he grabbed my husband's throat. We had been on a Marriage Encounter weekend and had also been a M. E. team couple. We thought we were having the best years of our lives and our five children did NOT want their old parents back.

My husband umpired Little League games and that is when the coughing started. First they thought it was inhaled dust from the baseball diamond. Then a virus. Oxygen tank in our home and an appointment with a specialist for a biopsy.

So we drove to Portland and the biopsy failed, but the x-rays showed lung cancer. The phases of grief kicked in with the denial and bargaining for me. The oncologist told us in April that my husband had six months to live. He died the last day the following August.

He underwent two series of chemotherapy and started radiation and then told me he was quitting. I was furious and the two next phases of grief kicked in -- anger and depression.

After my husband's death I survived with the help of a Jewish counselor, pretty good lady, really. But a year after my husband's death a friend from Marriage Encounter whose wife had died in six weeks from lymphoma encouraged me to attend a Beginning Experience weekend.

It was in the same facility in Portland that my husband and I had experience numerous Marriage Encounter weekends -- never do that to anyone. It was a terrible weekend for me because I relived the vivid marriage memories connected with the building and chapel, etc.

I attended my scan B. E. weekend a year later and started the last phase of my journey through grief -- acceptance.

I am now in what Elisabeth Kubler-Ross refers to as "Reaching Out".

God touched me so vividly during the chemotherapy -- I found the courage to tell my husband that it was OK for him to die. Maybe that's why he had the courage to abandon the radiology treatments. He died at home with our family around him saying a Rosary. It was beautiful as we all said good-bye to him -- and even though he was in a coma he reached out to give me and each of our five children a good-bye hug.

The essence of the Holy Spirit lingered in the room for nearly 5 or 6 minutes. It was amazing.

I am now actively involved in the B. E. ministry, a ministry for returning Catholics, just finished an evangeliztion program in our archdiocese of which I was the chair at my parish and this last year I served as chair of the Pastoral Council.

I really have come full circle from being so angry at God for taking my husband to reaching out to all and doing the work that Jesus would have me do.

From my story -- you can deduce why I chose the screename Salvation!