Excerpt:
A year and a half later, I was promoted to director of youth ministry at St. Thomas parish. I had thought about answering the call to priesthood, but I was still discerning the married life. The problem was, I couldn’t find the right girl. It was precisely at this point in time when a friend told me that sister Teresita had left the monastery and was working as a tutor in town. I immediately called her up, and I tried not to sound too excited. I asked her if she would be a catechism teacher for one of my ninth-grade CCD classes. She came in and we talked about it. A couple of weeks later she signed up as a teacher, and we were on our first date!
After a few weeks of dating, Carrie opened up and told me about her tragic past. I held her in my arms as she cried and told me she was sexually abused by her father her entire childhood. She was very upset and fearful of being hurt by another man, and I didn’t blame her. Her situation broke my heart, but it did not lessen my love for her. I promised her that day that I would always respect her, body, mind and soul, and I would protect her from harm. She had a lot of courage, because she decided to trust me, against her own fears and insecurities.
Soon we were engaged, and that’s when her cross became very heavy. She suffered from a lot of PTSD, which often took me by surprise. She got a lot of help through counseling, but she believes her greatest strength was her faith in Christ, and I would certainly agree. Whenever things became almost unbearable for the both of us, we had to rely totally on God’s help. We had many struggles and hardships during our engagement, but we turned to Christ with all our questions and difficulties. As a result...
No comments:
Post a Comment