God Moments: At a Wedding

The Second of our God Moments comes from our same source as the first, Eileen Hooper Chapoton who is from the Loyola Institute for Ministry in New Orleans.

My daughter, Melissa met her husband on St. Anthony’s feast day, June 13, 2008. On December 13, 2008 she became engaged, and on June 13, 2009 she was married. She was living in New Orleans and once engaged decided to move to Charleston, where he was, to be in the same city before they were to be married. We did most of the planning of the wedding before she moved in January of 09. She returned home in late May, 2009.

Her husband Collin tells the story of how they met. They were both at a wedding in Mobile Al. and talking after the rehearsal. They all of sudden realized they were the only ones around, everyone else had left. Melissa was telling Collin how my husband, Mike and I met. Melissa said how love stories like ours just do not happen anymore! Mike and I met, were engaged in 5 weeks and we married in 4 months! It was love at first site and we are still in love after 31 years. It was then that Collin says to her that the same thing is happening right now!

We love that story!

Well, the week before the wedding our music person, a teacher of Melissa’s from high school who was also her piano teacher, informed us that he can no longer do the wedding music because his mother was having emergency surgery. So Melissa has to meet instead with the person that does the music for our former parish in Bay St. Louis. This was a person she did not want to use, because of stories she heard about this person being difficult. Melissa and her father went to meet with him the Saturday before the wedding to plan the music, the wedding programs were already done.

My husband is not Catholic, but he attended church every Sunday when raising the kids, once they were confirmed he no longer attended Mass. I have never stopped praying for his conversion. Well the next day, on Sunday morning around 2:30 am, I woke up and he was in the living room. I sat down with him, he said, "I am glad you are sitting down, I want to go to Mass with you today." He proceeded to tell me about his experience with Melissa and the Music director.

He was moved to tears during that Saturday meeting with the Music director and my daughter. He shared with me how the Music director explained the Wedding Mass music, played the songs on the organ, explained how they fit with the ceremony, and how important the role Mary plays is within the ceremony. (Melissa chose to bring flowers to Mary and have the Ava Maria sung) The music director said that our daughter is a beautiful Catholic woman, who knows her faith, is firm in her beliefs, and obviously knew so much already in preparing for the ceremony with the director of music.

The experience was so moving he wanted to attend Mass. The whole wedding experience, beginning with my husband’s God moment, the Nuptial Mass, the reception, the day-after brunch, sending Melissa and Collin off on their honeymoon, the entire week was so beautiful for our whole family.

God gave us so many blessings. Melissa found her true love, and my precious husband found God! The memories from the week of the wedding will remain with me for a long time. God worked with my husband through the Sacrament of Matrimony, his daughter and the Music Director of Our Lady of the Gulf Parish (ironically, all this was able to happen because the music person selected 6 months prior to the wedding could not be part of it). We felt God’s presence so strongly that whole week. At the reception people would come up and say "Look at how happy Melissa and Collin are! Eileen you are glowing!"

All of my dear friends knew that God had everything to do with it!

God Moments: Grocery Store

This week's God Moment comes to us Via Facebook from Melissa McKerroll Francis:

"I was in line at the grocery store. The woman ahead of me was buying more than she could afford; I could see her agonizing over what to put back. It was just starting to hit me when the man behind me tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a twenty. I passed it to the cashier and looked back at him with a question in my eyes. He shrugged at me and pointed behind him. The cashier cashed her out and handed her change before she realized what had happened.

She turned and thanked me with tears in her eyes. "It wasn't me," I said.

"Then who?" she asked.

"It came from back there," I pointed down the line. She looked down the line.

"Who?" she asked.

"I don't know," said the guy behind me. "Someone passed it up."

"Thank you!" she called down the line before grabbing her bags and leaving. She never did find out exactly who it was that paid for her groceries. And neither did I.

And for some reason I kind of like it that way. That was my most recent God sighting. About three weeks ago."

God Moments: Knowing What's Enough

It's amazing how often we fail to see God all around us, or even right in front of us.

Haiti and Nicaragua are the two poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. I have visited the latter several times and we've heard much too sad news about the former for most of today.

I blogged earlier about Pat Robertson's stupid comment which claimed in short (and I paraphrase here) that Haiti has been under some kind of curse by God. If that's the case then God must hate an awful lot of people.

Two-thirds of the world live on less than $1 per day. Anyone here make more than that? We probably all do. Therefore we are amongst the world's elite third. I'm sure Mr. Robertson makes more than the top 10 percent of the world. Maybe even the top 1 percent.

I haven't been to Haiti, but I have seen poverty in Nicaragua. I've seen people living in garbage dumps scavenging for food to eat and goods to resell. I've seen young men who long to simply go to school working in the garbage dump, hoping that one day they will be able to leave this place of destitution. Most don't. And the truth is that most die in the poverty that they live in.

The orphanage that I visited in Nicaragua was for abandoned and disabled children. Elvira was one of the little children that I loved to hold in the early mornings. Some love the morning paper, some a nice hot cup of coffee, some the Today Show, some quiet time to read or pray and some a big breakfast but I have never been more satisfied in the morning than I have been by simply holding this little girl in my arms in those early morning hours in a developing country.

Elvira couldn't walk and couldn't talk. She could giggle a little and her smile was broad and wide. All she wanted was to be touched and to be held. Poverty has a way of letting you appreciate the simple pleasures of a touch, a morsel of bread (without butter or jam, I might add), fresh water or a place to call home. It was Elvira who allowed me, the one who was supposed to be offering service, to get in touch with what it means to be poor. For I was unable to fix Elvira. I was unable to cure Elvira's illness. Elvira didn't need an iPod or a Wii.

All Elvira needed was me. I was enough for her and she was more than enough for me and she has been up to today--even though I sometimes need to remember that time spent with her and recall that fulfilling feeling of being and having enough.

Can we be enough for the people of Haiti? Can we call upon ourselves to live simpler, love deeper and reach farther than we usually bother to do? We should be able to be more than enough. Just $1/day, $365/year is often what people live on in this poor country. We usually have that to spare. Think about making a donation today to Catholic Relief Services or to the Jesuit Relief Services or to a charity of your choosing. We don't know poverty in our country as they do in Haiti and that indeed is a crime in which we are all complicit by our indifference.

But also think about what is enough for people. Money goes a long way but time and presence often matters so much more. So when and if the opportunity presents itself...go to a place like Haiti and see what nobody should ever have to see and let it change you. Go and meet the Elviras of the world, who have nothing to offer you but their smiles and for whom YOU are more than enough.

It will change you. More than the pictures on CNN, more than the casualty numbers you read. The experience of these people will change you.

And if "enough" of us do that, we can change the world.

God Moment of the Decade #1: New Orleans

The first of our many "God Moments" to come from Eileen Hooper Chapoton who is from the Loyola Institute for Ministry in New Orleans.

She writes:

On January 14, 2009 my husband, Michael was laid off from his job unexpectedly with a bank. I left my job in 1991 as the Alumni Director with Loyola University New Orleans to stay home and raise our young children. I had a couple of jobs between 1991-2009, but most recently was operating a home based business. As soon as we found out about Michael I went to the Loyola website to see what jobs were available. They were looking for a Manger of Recruitment and Promotion for the Loyola Institute for Ministry. I applied, never dreaming I would be their choice. I knew with the economy, my husband’s age (59), the state of the banking industry it would be very difficult for him to find something locally. The real estate market being terrible, the idea of selling our home would be impossible. We lived in Bay St. Louis when Katrina hit and lost it all. We later moved 11 miles north to Diamondhead and houses were not selling at all. Our daughter became engaged in December and the wedding date was June 13, 2009.

During the interview process I turned it all over to God and kept saying "Your will God...whatever is your will." All along I was thinking "What are we going to do about healthcare?"

When Tom Ryan, the director called to offer the job, I was in shock. Never thought they would hire a 57 year old women that had been working at home. I started April 13, 2009.

Now I will admit, the pay is extremely low, but I have health care! I love my job, I love taking classes, I love spreading the word about our programs that assist the Laity of the Church to answer God’s call of spreading the Good News! My husband is working, the job does not offer health care, we are together making two thirds of what he use to make…..but we have health care! God is providing all we need!

Indeed, sometimes our prayer is one of surrender and when that happens we are open to the expectation that God will give us what we need. Not merely what we want, but most certainly, what we need.

Send your "God Moment" of the last decade to mike.googlinggod@gmail.com

What were your "God Moments" of the Past Decade?

Everyone's doing a decade-end recap but most of these have no depth to them. So I turn to you the readers for help here. I'd like to compile a listing of the top 100 God Moments in the lives that have intersected with mine.

Now the obvious question is what's a "God Moment?"

Simply put the term comes from a book title written by our good friend Jeremy Langford. It means recognizing and remembering God's Presence in Your Life.

We all have moments where we are surprised by God, where we have an experience that transcends our very selves--not an out of body or near death experience necessarily--but something that takes us beyond our mere sense experience into the spiritual. It is there that we find God interacting with us--waking us up perhaps or simply tapping on our shoulder, reminding us of His presence in our lives.

For some of us it may be an experience with a person. For some, it may be an experience with nature helping us to realize that there is so much more beyond us. For others, it might be a book that awakened us to a new way of being. For many, it may in fact be a tragedy that helped us find God in that pain and brought us into healing.

I'd like to ask all of those here to send me your Top 3 God Moments of the Decade 2000-2010. You can send them all to mike.googlinggod@gmail.com. We'll publish the best ones here over the course of this year as a celebration of the Holy Spirit working amongst us in 2010.

Here's one of mine to give you an example:

2009: I was considering leaving BustedHalo® a place I had come to love and cherish as a place of ministry and where I really loved ministering creatively for the past 9 years. In particular, I loved doing direct ministry--retreats and mission trips-- with young adults and had begun to felt that ministry growing lax as BustedHalo® grew, for the better into more on a solely online ministry entity.

I was encouraged to apply for a Campus Ministry position in Buffalo at St Joseph's University Parish. I wasn't sure if it was a place that I belonged. I didn't know much about Buffalo and while I had two friends who worked at the very parish that was interested in hiring me, I wasn't quite convinced that God was asking me to uproot my wife and dog and move towards the Western span of the State.

I took a quick flight to Buffalo from JFK and from the greeting of the smiling pastor who met me at the airport, to the hospitality that everyone showed my wife and I, to the wonderful arts community it was one engaging moment after another.

The jaded New Yorker in me remained skeptical. After all, my wife would need a job and we love taking our dog out for long walks in our neighborhood. We hoped for a dog-centric neighborhood and hoped that my wife would find a job that she liked--and in a bad economy, would she even be able to find a job?

However, my colleague Patty Spear offered to take my wife Marion and I to the Elmwood Arts Festival, (for New York City folk: think "glorified street fair with better arts and crafts for sale." It was there that Marion spotted a beautiful golden retriever. We love dogs and considering that we had spent the day with the pastor's huge english sheepdogs, we were comforted by the dog friendliness of the city.

Marion: "Hey! He's a cool dog! Oh he's a service dog! Oh he's a hearing dog!"
Mike: "For deaf people?"

My wife happens to teach deaf children and is fluent in sign language.

Marion: "Yes." (She walked to the dog's owner and signed) "That's a beautiful dog!"

Owner signed back: "Thank you! Where are you from?"

Marion: "New York City"

Owner: "Oh! Me too! Where in NYC?"

Marion: "Queens!"

Owner: "Me too! But my wife and I are moving here. Seems like a nice place so far!" (Turns out he lived just a few miles from our apartment.)

Marion: "Yeah we're thinking of moving here too! My husband was just offered a job but now I need to find a job if he accepts."

Owner: "Oh, yeah! Hope you find something. How do you know how to sign?"

Marion: "I teach deaf kids!"

Owner: "You teach deaf kids!? Hold on! Wait right here! Don't go away!"

The guy comes back with his wife and he signs to her the words: "She teaches deaf kids!"

His wife then hands her a business card that stated her name followed by "Principal: St Mary's School for the Deaf." She asked Marion to send her a resume and yes, that is where Marion works today.

My colleague Patty looked at me and said: "Um, do you need ANOTHER sign that you should move here?"

Indeed, I didn't. And we've loved living here ever since. Coincidence, you say? Perhaps...but I say it was God letting me know that Buffalo would be a place where we would be happy.

And indeed we are.