Back from Omaha

I just came back from Omaha.

So many emotions.

So many things that happened that I have a hard time believing all is true.

Amazement at God´s hand in all of this, inmense grief, meeting with another blogger and feeling as if I had known her forever
I left Sunday to Dallas and stayed over night there with my Napro buddy, an amazing woman that has been supporting me and this project selflessly since year 2 of this project. She also had decided at the last minute to travel to Omaha.

We left very early on Monday for Omaha. As our plane touched down and was heading towards the gate I opened my phone and guess what?

I receive a call from the bishop himself, just seconds after I opened my phone. I could not help but smile. Wow. This was an amazing sign.

Well he was calling me since he did not remember well when my trip was and was setting up the appointment with the famous pro life donor. That same week for lunch. wow.

He then gave me very encouraging words and said he would make sure this would come. He was personally making sure. ASAP.

Then we arrived at the hotel and began to meet again with the amazing PPVI people. I was so happy to see such faithful people.

Then classes began. It was intensive, but amazing. Every day mass at 7:30 am and ending the days with conferences at 9 or even 10 p.m. Theology of the body, Humanae vitae in depth, the person according to JPII, amazing stuff. Lunch and dinner were spent working, discussing, sharing.

During the week I experienced extreme grief as my due date was nearing. Tears came at the most inappropiate and surprising times. My emotions were completly raw.

Things were not helped since I received news about two births very close to me this same week. I was inundated with new born photos the very same week Miguel should have been born.

My feelings were at the very same time inmense sadness since I could never ever hold my baby in this life and also so very happy to be there among many good people.

One episode was specially hard. We had a talk about the effects of abortion on women and discussed how grief resurfaced much later in some cases. The sheer numbers, the enormity of what we were doing to inocent babies really got to me and I began to cry (acutally several of us cried) and I was asked then by the teacher what was going on and I said that my due date was near and that I could not imagine how anybody would do this.

After the talk I went to the bathroom and a girl came up to me and began to cry inconsolably. She would not stop and I could barely understand what she was trying to say to me.

She asked me how many children I had and I said none here, only Miguel in Heaven.

She cried even harder.

After a while I could make out what she was saying: she told me how sorry she felt for me. She did not understand why God was punishing me this way.

Her words made my heart sink even further.

She then began between sobs to tell me that she had 6 living children and 2 abortions. I could not belive what I was hearing. I had never ever met somebody who had had abortions and told me directly.

She said she had not valued life before her conversion some years before and while she had confessed to the abortions she could not help but wonder if she had been forgiven and also why she was so fertile and good people like me unfertile.

I could not even think.

why? why? I kept hearing in my heart.

She had said what I have always asked: why?

Then another person came in and she told this also to her and this person was then consoling her. I left completly hearbroken and shaken and for the rest of the week I could not shake this inmense sadness from my heart.

Here I was fighting with all my might to become a mother and people were given the gift of fertility and discarded it. I saw right in front of me the effect of abortion on women even many years later and it made me even sadder.

I knew this existed, it just had never hit me with such brute force and with my emotions being so raw the impression in my heart was so very deep.

After this I was very blessed with a ray of light on a dark day.

Meeting Hebrews!!!!

She picked me up at the hotel and we went to dinner to a delicious Italian restaurant. She gave me the most thoughtful gifts: a prayer card to St. Michael, a stamp of Pope JPII and a scapulary with an image of the Sacred Heart. The St michael card touched me very, very deeply.

She is both beautiful inside and out. An amazing woman and I was sorry to see the time with her end.

She was such a light in a day of sadness.


So this was a week of pain, surprises and intense feelings.