The awesomeness of God is something I am just beginning to awaken to in this life. Since I was a young girl, I’ve often sensed His loving Hand conducting a beautiful symphony all around us, interweaving themes of sadness and turning them to joy, concluding measures of pain with crescendos of triumphant love, and always lacing suffering with the most profound notes of beauty. That is why some things that are learned the hard way are most wonderfully learned, for they can teach us profound truths that we would have missed if the lessons had been easy.
I stopped sidewalk counseling two and a half years ago for one reason alone: I was uncomfortable with how the Holy Spirit wanted to work in me and in the other members of our small group of counselors and prayer warriors. We had hit a rut in being able to reach abortion-bound men and women, and so one Saturday we gathered together and prayed to the Holy Spirit for a way to break through to them. The answer was, to me, way too astonishing to accept.
So, I stopped going. Sure, I came up with so many “other” excuses — an active toddler, burnout, needing more rest on Saturdays. But the real reason I quit fighting the good fight on the front lines was because I was not ready to be obedient to the promptings of the Spirit when they did not conform to my (admittedly) “rote” spirituality. Soon, our entire group disbanded, and I fell into a comfortable complacency regarding the murder of the innocent. Accompanying this, not surprisingly, was a growing complacency in my faith and prayer life.
Around the time of the presidential election, I felt an inward draw to silence, which made me brace with anxiety because I instinctively knew God was going to ask something of me. A very human feeling of, “Oh no, what now?” overwhelmed my feeble heart.
Then the attacks came. My husband lost his job. My children started having nightmares and tantrums seeing shadowy figures. My husband and I felt like there was a heavy weight sitting on top of our marriage. I was awakened countless times during the night and was unable to sleep for weeks. A fear would grip me as I prostrated myself in prayer. In vain I sought the reason for these attacks, and in vain I sought spiritual direction. I was terrified to the very core of my being because my faith was weak.
Then I heard the call — it was unmistakable. After attending a pro-life prayer vigil at our new parish on the eve of the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I sensed very strongly that my Lord Jesus wanted me back out on the front lines of the pro-life battle; He was calling me to the modern day Calvary, where every player in the Passion play has a part to enact. He was calling me to the place where innocent blood is shed for pieces of silver, where so many Pontius Pilates wash their hands of murder and give their “support” to the abortion-bound women, where so many crown Him with the thorns of blasphemy, beat Him with rods of pro-death rhetoric, abandon Him with selfish excuses, and crucify Him with their unborn children, whose blood runs deep with His. “My Lord, I hear You, and I want to be Veronica’s veil at Your Calvary,” I wept.
Before I could speak of this to my husband, he came to me and said, “I really feel in my heart that you and I should start sidewalk counseling again.” We had gotten to know each other in college and had fallen in love through our university’s sidewalk counseling ministry. As a couple we had felt so battered in recent weeks that this mutual summons to the front lines seemed to us a refreshing means of repairing our relationship through ministry and service. After all, we had pledged our troth and taken each other in marriage “for a noble purpose” (Tobit 8:7) — which we mutually considered to be the mission of devoting our lives to ushering in the Culture of Life.
Still a bit uneasy about sidewalk counseling again after what had caused me to stop active ministry two years before, I continued to seek spiritual direction from any priest I felt would understand what I was talking about. After much discernment, I chose to seek the counsel of a priest whom I thought would instinctively understand the more “charismatic” workings of the Spirit that I was so uncomfortable with.
The results of this were disastrous and humiliating. The priest totally misunderstood my intentions in seeking spiritual direction, accused me of things in my marriage which were unequivocally untrue, proceeded to give a (rather traumatizing) “dark view of human nature” rant, and denigrated all women, saying they were evil and manipulative even when they weren’t trying to be.
I was stunned. To top the matter off, the priest continued, “And another thing: You should not sidewalk counsel! It is my absolute opinion that this will harm your marriage, and you should not be involved in that ministry at all!”
I calmly told him that my husband and I had discerned the opposite. Strangely, I knew it was not the priest speaking at this point, but the Accuser, and so I said, very calmly, “Father, now I’m wondering who you’re listening to.”
That statement made him pause, and it seemed that he came to his senses a bit. “You know, Teresa of Avila used to take the advice of any priest, even if he was wrong, just to be obedient and to practice humility.”
To say that I struggled with this new turn of events would be the understatement of the millennium. I clearly was not bound in obedience to this priest; he had blatantly insulted me, and on a human level, my husband and I wanted to punch his face in. Clearly God wanted us to sidewalk counsel. Clearly He Himself was calling us to do this good ministry for His kingdom. Clearly it would also bring my husband and me together in ministry and mission.
Our parish’s respect life group had gained a new fervor in recent weeks as we began planning a consistent outreach to the abortion clinic we’d spiritually adopted. When my newfound pro-life friends asked what time I’d be out there that coming Saturday, I broadcast an email stating that a priest, whose office as an “alter Christos” I respected, had suggested that my husband and I not sidewalk counsel for the time being, and that I was going to adhere to this suggestion; in response I received letter after letter complaining about how unreasonable this was. They insisted that this was just another demonic attack, and were flabbergasted that I even considered obeying the priest’s admonition rather than rushing out to sidewalk counsel at the abortion clinic at the first possible opportunity.
My head could not see the reason in all this contradiction, but my heart knew that, underlying everything, God was going to bless our sidewalk counseling ministry through my obedience on this issue. I knew I had something difficult to learn here, and trusted that God would work unspeakable good through it. The experience, as a whole, thrust me to the foot of the Cross just in time for Good Friday.
For some agonizing weeks, I was faithful to the decision not to participate in the ministry, until another priest unbound me from the exercise of obedience. It seemed the longest, darkest road — spiritually speaking — that I had ever found myself walking. The other attacks stopped on Easter Sunday, when God graced my heart with the courage and strength needed to press on in faith and without fear; He also gave me the grace, over time, to forgive the offending minister.
Looking back, this humbling experience of obedience was exactly what I needed to open my heart to the promptings of the Holy Spirit so essential in the sidewalk counseling ministry. The results were not long in coming. Almost immediately, my husband and I felt a great peace come over our marriage, with a renewed, deepened love.
On the eve of Pentecost, our group had two saves at the abortion clinic. Two weeks later, on the eve of the Feast of Corpus Christi, while our parish was celebrating a 40 Hours Devotion for the conversion of our culture to a Culture of Life, we had two more saves. Last week, we had another. I am humbled and honored to say that God used me directly in four of the five saves, and I was blessed to be present and praying while the fifth happened.
Five weeks. Five saves. Five little babies who will walk the face of the earth. Five mothers who were spared the trauma of having killed their children. Five wounds of Jesus pouring the swift Blood of His Mercy on our ministry…
Instead of “preparing” for sidewalk counseling these days and thinking of catchy things to say as I used to do, I simply pray that the Holy Spirit will possess me, take over, and let me be His instrument. It is an easier obedience, once learned the hard way, and I am humbled that He has chosen to first fix this instrument, and then use it in His beautiful symphony of Life.
Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
