In setting out on this adventure that is Substack with you, I began to think about what I would most like to hear as a new subscriber, and I decided that if I was you, I would most like to know a little bit about the person behind the screen, writing and sharing with me. So, here we go…
I was born in Aotearoa, New Zealand, 43 years and almost four months ago. From my conception I was bathed in prayer and Scripture. In the final birthday card my mother penned for me in her dying days, her hands shaking, she reminded me that she and my Dad gave me the name Anna after the prophetess Anna in the Bible:
What I love most about that story is that my Mum’s gynaecologist laughed at my mother’s God-given conviction that I was a girl and an Anna, before the days people had ultrasounds to confirm if they were having a girl or a boy. My Mum had the last laugh, when I - Anna Louise - graced this world. Louise after my God-fearing paternal grandmother.
At the time, my Dad was teaching at a Catholic Girls’ High School as an Evangelical Christian. So, I also like to think I was being bathed in prayer by those who knew my Dad there also. In the meantime, my grandmother-in-law, a devout Catholic, was on the other side of the world bathing her family in prayer also. And there too, I see God’s graces too. Though I never met this beautiful woman, I feel her love for my family, also in the common name God gave us both. She is an Anna too. Yes, I said is, not was: because I believe she’s very much living in that cloud of witnesses cheering me and my family on.
As my Mum’s best friend reminded me about my own Mum: “But Anna, she’s not missing out, she sees it all.” It still brings tears to my eyes. The providence of that moment too: only God. We were on holiday, back home in New Zealand and at a random petrol/gas station, there she appeared out of nowhere. At that exact moment, we were both on holiday and ended up at that exact petrol station at that exact time. As I lamented all the special moments my Mum was missing out on with my younger sisters that she got to experience with me and my little family, my Mum’s friend pointed out the truth that set my heart ablaze with joy and delight.
Anyway, I digress. When I was four my parents moved with their then four children to the other side of the world, following God’s call to Germany. They sold all their possessions and moved into a campervan in Southern Germany, letting God lead their every step. Their heart’s desire was to show Catholics there that they could have a personal relationship with Jesus.
What I love about this story is that it was my Catholic nun teacher who then, through her love and prayers for me, led me into a deeper knowing and relationship with Christ, through her love and devotion to our Lord. This is the blessing my teacher, Schwester Juliane, gave me on the eve of our departure for New Zealand after almost six years in Germany, a blessing that is continuing to bear fruit today:
To the right, she wrote, in German: “You can’t fall any deeper than into God’s hand, that He has compassionately stretched out for us all.” To the left she wrote a blessing: “That you can stand with both feet in life, while at the same time feeling yourself carried by God, Sister Juliane wishes you.”
Isn’t it beautiful and humbling how Christ builds His Church. Yes, my parents gave many Catholics and me too, through Christ at work in and through them, the gift of a personal relationship with Jesus that continues into today. But in turn, my Catholic teacher gave me that same gift also.
To this day, I remember her gentle presence and the attentive love and care she showed me, during a time that wasn’t always so easy for this third culture kid (TCK), who struggled to know herself loved, chosen and accepted in Christ Jesus, especially when one day the local kids told her to go back where she came from. But every time I entered Schwester Juliane’s classroom, I felt that love, chosenness and acceptance of Christ. And so it was with great joy and delight I got to go visit her again, when I returned to Germany as a nineteen year old au pair.
Now, all these years later, living in the Netherlands with my Dutch husband and TCK daughters, I am coming home to Jesus, discovering a richness and beauty in the Catholic faith of my teacher, my grandmother-in-law and my Mum’s sister. I don’t know where God is leading in all of this.
But I do sense that His heart aches for His Church, in having given us the same grace Moses once extended the Israelites through divorce because their hearts were hardened toward Him and the unity in marriage He was holding out. Yet, I also know that He always takes what the enemy meant for evil and turns it into good, for the saving of lives. So, I know that as He brings that unity He has promised us in the Church, we will get to see how He has used the breaking for good.
More personally, I am seeing that the verse the Lord led me to begin praying over my little family, shortly before my baptism (in my Protestant Pentecostal church), almost eight years ago, is continuing to bear fruit (Isaiah 30:21 RSV):
And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.
The more I read, the more I learn, the more God is revealing to me, I am being so deeply humbled, moved to more and more repentance and being given a willingness to lay down my own understanding and way, for His. This space is a part of God’s calling upon my life to follow Him into the unknown, and my obedience to that call. May you and I both discover the beauty of the One, who desires to be known and to make Himself known, as we gather in His Name.
This is beautiful and inspiring.