My family, minus one sister in CA who was very sad she couldn't be there.
Two of the adorers featured in the movie.
These two twin nuns (on my husband's immediate left) are amazing women.
The one closest to him was basically my spiritual advisor for a while.
The priest at the parish where the chapel is located.
The same priest with the woman in charge of the chapel.
One of the children featured in the movie. How cute is she?
The man who provided the music for the film, with his wife and new baby.
A portion of the packed theater before the movie started.
This was taken right as the movie ended.
The chapel's coordinator speaking at the end.
My husband was basically the m.c. for the night.
People lining up to buy DVDs after the movie. We never expected this in a million years.
One of my aunts and one of my uncles buying DVDs from my mom.
The same aunt. She actually made me sign her copy (for my faithful readers, she is the aunt who went to Omaha with me for my second surgery).
My husband and I with our dear friends, who also happen to be some of the stars of the movie. They are an amazing family, really special people.
It's safe to say we are still on cloud nine from the event. Thank you, God!
Oh, I'm just so happy for you!
ReplyDeleteAwww, I don't even know you irl, and I'm sooo proud of you!! And what an amazing Aunt you have. I can't wait to see your movie, I'm sure I'll be giving in a standing ovation right in my living room :)
ReplyDeleteThis is an article a friend passed on from a wonderful priest,
ReplyDelete''Infertility…
“As painful as Mom’s dying was six years ago, including her not living to see me get married, it is a far greater suffering that I experience every month when I realize that we have not achieved a pregnancy.”
These are the words of my younger sister Terese regarding her and her husband Darwin’s painful struggle with infertility. Yet, on October 7th, 1995, as the thousands were cheering the arrival of Pope John Paul II to Giants Stadium and the Meagher and Rigel families were doing our own cheering and dancing as we celebrated Terese and Darwin’s union as husband and wife, such suffering was the furthest thing from this happy couple’s minds.
My sister was my parents’ 6th child and is ever so grateful for their openness to life in such a generous and sacrificial way. She and Darwin were eagerly looking forward to welcoming their own blessings from God, and were immediately open to as many children as God would give them capacity for (physically, emotionally and financially). They were ready to be parents, and understood that waiting to have children would quite possibly mean missing an “opportunity” of eternal significance – being co-creators with God of a creature of inestimable value - a human person. Yet, despite their openness to life, they painfully experienced a very sobering reality and mystery - that children are a gift from God and not a right. After 6 years of trying, they were still unable to conceive.
I will never forget the conversation that I had with my sister when she told me of the pain and anguish, hope and discouragement they were experiencing through all this. When hope rises and falls so many times it is so very hard to keep the faith. She also shared with me how it was a great challenge at times to trust in and to uphold the Churches moral teaching in this area, both in the testing and the treatment options (to achieve pregnancy). Distraught like so many other couples, they made themselves available to the tests, treatments, and prodding of multiple doctors.
With much effort and struggle they educated themselves not only on the various “medical options” and the Church’s sexual and medical moral teachings sheding light on those “options.” With every new doctor, they were casually presented with various “options”, which often amounted to one offense after another against the sacredness of human life and of the sacredness of their marital union. The standard “option” they were presented with again and again was invitro fertilization (IF). This procedure involves the creation of multiple human embryos (i.e., human persons) outside the womb, for the purpose of reinserting into the womb, or for experimentation in a laboratory.
Most offensive (and paradoxical) to them was the basic reality that those multiple embryos created in the petre dishes, were their children, including the “spares” for later “use,” destruction and/or experimentation. This “elephant in the closet” was the most disturbing of all the aspects of the IF procedure. Yet, obscenely, it seemed hardly an issue with the doctors and technicians who at times seemed more interested in cashing in on their intense anguish and longing for children.
They were told that modern science, held out a promise to provide the fulfillment of their hope - the child they “rightly should have.”
They also discovered that they were not being adequately informed about the potentially serious physical side affects upon the woman of many of the common treatments being offered by the medical community. A further surprise was the emotional and marital/relational issues IF helped create or at least exasperated in the marriage. Medical science alone, void of the Gospel, unsubmitted to an authority greater than its own, will always leave one unsatisfied and painfully unprepared for the realities of life.
For Terese and Darwin, there were times in which the Churches’ teachings served as an anchor in the storm of intense human longing. At other times that teaching served as a rudder to guide them in navigating the waters of modern fertility medicine. They were guided with the help of those teachings and some support of other people of faith, as they labored to set a course for their future family; or rather, to allow the Lord to set that course for them. They wrestled with the thought of “jumping ship” or to board a passing “luxury cruise liner” of medical promises that declares itself to be the answer and authority, based on the notion that “what can be done (biologically), ought to be done.” Each procedure or practice promised to take them out of the storm and into the peace and joy of giving birth to the child they so longed to have.
The “problem” was that they already knew the truth – that they were not the authors of life, nor could they claim a right to the children they so deeply longed for. They knew that the only true option for them was to stay in the Boat of the Church and to ride out the storm. How long that storm would be or where it would cast them they did not know. But what they did trust is that the Captain of that Boat was Jesus, and that His Blessed Mother, and all the Saints, virgins and martyrs, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers in heaven, were with them encouraging and guiding them along the way. And although they were very “sea sick” from all that was occurring mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually, they knew that they would eventually come to a safe harbor.
What they initially thought of as their safe harbor, the birth of a child, has not come. Yet, they have discovered that there is much peace and joy which is possible in the midst of this and the other storms of their lives. What they are seeing more and more, is that this peace, is not, as they sometimes thought, in achieving their will, but is only in the will of the One who out of his perfect and extremely generous and sacrificial love, created and redeemed them, and desires that they share in his very life here on earth and then finally in glory – the only true safe harbor.
Thanks be to God, they are now the adoptive parents of 4 beautiful children ages 4-9. The youngest of which - Joseph - is my godson.
The anguish of my sister and her husband is all too common today. Such intense suffering of infertility, apart from an awareness of God’s love guided by our Catholic Christian faith, can make a couple virtually insane – spiritually, morally, mentally and emotionally. The strain upon even relatively healthy marriages can have dire consequences.
“How as Catholics are we to deal with such anguish?”
“Where is God in all this?” “Does He even care?”
“What about all the IF children?”
“What difference can I make, I’m not a scientist or a doctor?”
These questions and more will be explored in the next issues of the Catholic Advocate…
''
This is by Fr Joseph Meagher of the Newark Archdiocese, in NJ. he is the ProLife Director, I think.
Wow!!! Congratulations!!! I am so happy for you too - and I can't wait to see the movie!
ReplyDeleteI just hv to drop my comment here-
ReplyDeleteYOU LOOKED FABULOUS!!!! I love your hair! :) I can easily imagine how your baby daughter (YES!) will look like!
looks like you had a wonderful night! congratulations!!!!
ReplyDeleteI am so proud of you. This whole thing brought tears to my eyes. There is no doubt that God is using you and your husband to bring new life to the world in many beautiful, mysterious ways during this time. I know it is sometimes hard to believe this, but this premier is living proof that we don't have to be pregnant or mommies to be life-giving in the spiritual realm.
ReplyDeletePraise be to God for your faithfulness, for your love, and personally I thank Him for your friendship.
You are such a beautiful woman, you remind me of Brook Shields!
Yay! Congratulations! What an accomplishment!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to hear the night exceeded your expectations in every way!
Congratulations on such a wonderful achievement! Thanks for sharing everything with all of us in cyberworld. It's great to share in someone's joy!
ReplyDelete