Radiating Christ

The summer before my senior year of high school, I spent a month in a small coal-mining town in Kentucky. Several friends and I went to serve with the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order, at their summer day camp.

I had never been around women with such abject joy. The joy of the Lord was their strength. These were the happiest people I had ever met (and I had grown up around a lot of really good, faith-filled people!). These women radiated Christ!

By the end of my time with the Sisters, I found myself praying about a vocation to the religious life, in spite of my desire to be married. I had tasted the joy these women had, and I wanted it for myself. Lord, I remember praying, I just want to be deeply happy.

This willingness to consider becoming a nun stayed with me for several more years, as I navigated my last year of high school and started college. In a beautiful full-circle moment, it was at another summer camp with the MCs, this time in Harlem, New York, that I recognized my call to marriage and also fell in love with Paul, now my husband of thirty years!

What the Sisters showed me in those weeks being around them, and in many interactions with them since, is that a deep, abiding joy is available to us all. God offers this same freedom and wholeness to each of us; our job is to be open and to surrender. This is what the Sisters have in their life: surrender. It’s life-changing, and it’s contagious.