Have you ever felt God's graces simply being showered on you? Hopefully most of us can answer "yes" to that question, even though grace is such an ambiguous thing. Well, last week I felt like God was literally showering graces on me, and it was an experience so profound that I feel I need to share it--if nothing else, just so I can capture it for my own mind which might forget someday.
On most Fridays I load up my kids and head to a place where I hate to go, but feel called to go; a place most people would never choose to go unless they have the heaviest "choice" of all to make---choosing life or death for their unborn baby. The place is Planned Parenthood. Going there to pray on Fridays (the abortion day in our town) is a ministry that I never would have chosen for myself, but one that I feel compelled by God to fulfill even though I rarely see any fruits or feel any consolation while I'm there. What I normally feel is a heaviness, a sadness, a longing for no more women to be hurt by the choice they make when they enter those doors, for no more babies to be torn from their mother's womb way before the time God intended. Despite these heavy feelings, I go.
This Friday was no different. My boys and I parked ourselves on a little blanket on the sidewalk of Planned Parenthood, pulled out our rosaries and a snack for my littlest one, and started to pray. The parking lot already had many cars, and I tried not to imagine who came in each of those vehicles and what they must be going through inside Planned Parenthood's doors. Then another car pulled into the lot. Dread came over me, and after what seemed like 15 minutes, a Planned Parenthood employee came outside to escort the woman from her car into the building. The woman kept her head down, as if a great heaviness were weighing her down (or perhaps she was simply trying to avoid eye contact with myself or my 3 wide-eyed boys). My sadness grew as I desperately said one last prayer for her heart to soften to the life that was growing inside her.
A few minutes passed, and then my spirits lifted slightly as my prayer-warrior friend Beth and her 5 little children showed up to pray with us. To people passing by, our blanket full of children, rosaries, toys and snacks must look like a happy little picnic...until they put it all together and ponder the absurdity of a picnic at Planned Parenthood. It is absurd. It's absurd to bring my children to a place other children are being killed, but I think that is why God has called me to be there--to bring the absurdity to light, to pray that one day it will be absurd for people to even consider abortion as a choice. But for now it is still a choice, so for now I continue to be a prayerful witness, a warrior in this invisible spiritual battle with my little children as arrows in the fight.
As Beth and I and our little "arrows" continued to pray and offer up the heaviness we were feeling, it started to gently rain on us. This startled me because the sun was shining beautifully and there were no rain clouds in sight. Immediately, I became filled with warmth and hope. The heaviness was lifted as the rain sprinkled down. Oddly, it seemed as if only our tiny blanket was receiving the raindrops. The rain lasted only a minute or so, and a second later I was reminded of a miraculous story I had read only a few months ago in the book, "Our Lady of Kibeho." The book describes the many apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to some young students in Kibeho, Rwanda, a poor, remote town in Africa. During one of the apparitions, people from hundreds of miles away flocked to Kibeho on foot, enduring terrible heat, exhaustion, hunger and thirst, just to be in the presence of God's mother who had been sent to give the world messages from heaven. Here is a short excerpt of the scene that came to my mind as I prayed in the rain at Planned Parenthood:
Anathalie (the young girl who was having the vision of Mary) began singing every song I've ever heard about the Blessed Virgin. Then, after two hours of praying, singing, and giving messages from Mary, the girl looked at the crowd and said, "Look how many flowers there are in the field today! Our Lady says she know that many of you have traveled great distances to be here with her. She knows how much you've suffered to be here, that your bodies are sore and your souls are thirsty. She wants me to water her flowers..." Anathalie then reached for a container of holy water to sprinkle the crowd, but exclaimed, "Oh, Mother, there are so many of them that I can't water them all. Won't you help me?" At that moment, it began to rain on the entire crowd. The surrounding countryside remained dry, but all the pilgrims were washed and cooled by the beautiful shower Our Lady blessed us with. I can't describe how the water felt, especially after an entire day beneath the hot sun, except to say I felt as though I'd been baptized again. My spirit felt renewed, and I was so filled with love that I began to sing... When the rain stopped and the sun dried our clothes, we all noticed that the shower had also healed the cuts and sores on our feet and legs. I felt as if I'd been touched by the Holy Mother herself, that I'd just experienced a miracle, which of course I had.
I felt like God placed this story in my mind to confirm what my heart was feeling---that He indeed was pleased with our feeble but prayerful presence at Planned Parenthood, and that His mother, too, was smiling on us and showering her children with heavenly graces. The gift of rain was to thank us for standing up for her precious children who cannot stand up for themselves. What a sweet, sweet consolation. Grace no longer seems ambiguous to me. It's as real as rain.
