When the time came, my mother pressured me to go for that burial, she actually told me, “ A good friendship is known at [a] time like this. How can you fail to show up to support your friend at his time, can you prepare and go?” This was a day before the burial so since I never learned how to argue, I prepared, stiff-necked, and so much unwilling with the feeling that I looked ugly with sunburns and not beautiful. I therefore prepared and left [for] her place. They then lived in town, so I needed to leave earlier before the actual day. The day I arrived, I found they had a meeting in a certain hotel for the final contribution for the burial, so her brothers-in-law were present. I knew no one apart from her and the husband. I was not used to spending [the] night outside [the] home so I was not really comfortable with the unknown people around me. As usual, I was ever quiet and never said anything unless I was asked. The following day we went for the burial and when everything was over, I opted to travel back home but she requested me to remain with her till the next day. I would have accepted her request, but I was afraid of the environment where I was new and didn’t know what these people liked or disliked. Hence the cause of my discomfort around them. But I gave an excuse that my mother asked me to arrive on the same day because she had somewhere to go the following day.
Then when they knew I was leaving, one brother asked to escort me. I hesitated because with my sunburns I didn’t think I would deserve his escort. I was still naive and didn’t know what I could talk with him [about] or maybe answer him if he asked anything as we moved on. I opted to hire a motorbike instead and leave. He seemed to be not comfortable with my decision and so he asked me if he would pay on my behalf the transport fee. But I told him no, I was not secure since I had not met him before or the family before so to me it was like I was a stranger in their family. So my friend later told me that the brother-in-law asked her so much about me and he wished to have my phone number. I asked her not to share it with anyone. Needless to say, she told them — the brothers-in-law now) that she is joining a convent soon so they should dare not think of anything. But this brother maneuvered until he reached me. My friend later told me that he asked the elder brother, her husband, who took my number from her phone and asked me to meet him, but I didn’t want to say yes or no. The first time he traveled all the way from the capital city to our local market. I failed to show up and he went back frustrated. In my mind, I was saying I cannot date a Protestant because I won’t be able to proceed with the Sacraments of the Catholic Church. If I marry a Protestant I won’t be able to go for confession, I won’t be able to go for Eucharist; I won’t be able to do all the things I have been doing in the church. And, by then, I was under the movement of the Blessed Virgin Mary so I knew all these things I would stop, and I wouldn’t get the blessings of the priests as I live for marriage life. After a long tug of war with him, I finally decided to meet him, and my main objective was to study him and quit. After meeting him four times, I realized he was a good man with a big heart to persevere things and on the fifth meeting, he asked me to meet his elder brother and wife. Still, my prayer to GOD was please give me the right husband if this is your will for me. After all that, we finally agreed to involve the parents, and the journey to marriage began — to be married to the same protestant guy I once never wished to meet. But when God decides, He decides alone and in His own way. So, since there was a process for marriage between a Catholic and a Protestant, he agreed to follow the process needed for two faiths to marry. We went all to the office of the parish priest, to the bishop and all went well. I loved him [more] than I ever imagined, and our union was awesome. It was a very beautiful wedding and even today he is the love of my heart and I honor him as Christ honors His Church.
Now, a true Christian must meet ups and downs. After our wedding, my first pregnancy [after] three months, shed and I miscarried. I was lost deep in despair and frustrations, and I couldn’t find real comfort from him or my mother. I always tucked my face under pillows and cried and cried to God for help. I remember telling God I only want my child back and not another one but the one I have, I underwent severe pains to lose. No one could console me enough by then. Even my sister-in-law. I once again reduced in shape due to stress and [many] thoughts I had by then. That struck my mother so hard as well, as her “girl” kept on suffering yet. Everyone knew I was “Mama’s girl”. Seeing her that way worsened my situation and I needed to be counseled. I could not get it right losing the first pregnancy but with time I got to accept it all and embraced the will of God on the same. As some people are so eager to calculate for others after [the] wedding, they calculated amiss because they couldn’t figure out the answers they got. They could see me three, four, five months, or six and they couldn’t see any promising weather (that is the pregnancy they were looking for). So according to their calculation, they were calculating that the wedding was this month, she is now supposed to be having a pregnancy of two, three, four, or five months. So they talked and talked and talked that she is unable to carry pregnancy—something that struck me afresh once again. This reminded me of the child I lost — that if this child were inside my womb these people wouldn’t talk. I had no one to tell my frustrations to if not God. He is actually the giver of life and as new couples and so green to the marriage life, one can be frustrated easily. They could tell my husband even, “The clothes she came with from her mother’s places are the ones to wear even now, why don’t you buy new ones for her?” By this, they meant that I still remained the same as I was in my mother’s place when I am supposed to be pregnant and nowin marriage. These again tore my heart into pieces. I could really pity my husband because he couldn’t answer that. I witnessed him once drying his tears and I felt like I had no need to live anymore if I would be just getting pregnant and having miscarriages. And I could not see him suffer such words from people outside there. I think they were asking him some because they were not aware of the miscarriage and according to the doctor, we were to take at least a six- month healing process after a miscarriage before we try another pregnancy. My husband is an electrical engineer, and I remember this time he was sent by the company for two weeks to install their machines far away from the city where we lived. I spend the two weeks in tears and in prayer, I decided to sleep on the floor and asked God to take away this shame from me. I ever used that time to go to Adoration whenever I could at the nearby church. Although my husband was a Protestant, he never fought my Catholic faith. He embraced it even to date.
That church had a beautiful chapel, and I remember the first time I entered there I failed to contain my tears and was unable to hold them back. I cried until I was satisfied, and I felt like I disturbed those who came to speak to Jesus there. But, to my surprise, no one left the chapel left the chapel or confronted me to keep quiet. I had no other alternative than to empty my broken heart to Jesus at that moment. I did the same for the two weeks when he was away — that is to go to Adoration, and I tried to hide it all from everyone even those who blasted my husband. I loved to pray the prayer of St. Simon Stock, the prayer that was given to him by the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Carmel about the Brown Scapular. I decided to have a Novena of the same prayer and I always asked Blessed Virgin Mary to bless me with a child, like the one she holds on her lap. That is that picture of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel where she holds the scapular. She holds her Son. and they are giving a scapular to St. Simon Stock. After two weeks, my husband came back. After a few weeks, I experienced dizziness at work. I thought it was all about the stress I had over conceiving. Some asked me to check my hemoglobin for it may be so low therefore causing the same. I even remember I fainted once at the workplace. I never had time to eat, even in the house, and when I tried to, I really forced it because I had no appetite at all. When it became worse I had to go for a thorough checkup where the doctor said I was pregnant. In my mind, I never thought I would be pregnant. I never had an idea of becoming pregnant even because I knew, maybe, always it would be a miscarriage, miscarriage, miscarriage. That was after a month, and I couldn’t trace when I became pregnant. Even during my clinics one day, the doctors and nurses used to ask about the gestation period. I always guessed and they wondered how come you don’t know. But even now I can faithfully say I really don’t know, I really don’t remember when it happened. It was true, I didn’t know. So I was given a wrong due date by nurses because of the wrong information on the gestation.
Immediately [when] I realized I was pregnant, I went back to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and I told Her, “My Mother, thank you for praying for me. At this time I was still in tears. I couldn’t imagine that my prayers had reached God. I beg you for a favor, pray for me to God, to put in my womb a baby boy, so bouncing like the one you hold on your lap. I would like him to have Eritrean hair like mine, a left-handed boy and with a big space between his teeth, as I always admired such—and energetic. Also, the boy who will grow to be an obedient boy, who will serve God in His Holy place when He grows up as a priest, and who will have a special call like Padre Pio.
But this pregnancy threatened to miscarry at three months. I remember that morning I just woke up bleeding heavily. I was so heartbroken that all the joy I had turned into tears once again. We had to rush to the hospital with my husband where a gynecologist was attending me, and she confirmed that there was a serious danger. He took some tests and asked me to have bed rest until nine months.
When the time came to give birth, I didn’t know what were the signs of labor, so I began feeling unusual. Even the favorite food I had prepared I didn’t enjoy that day. I called my sister-in-law for help, and she told me, “ You better now prepare to go to the hospital just now before it is worse”. Due to fear that others would realize I’m in pain, I woke up, prepared myself, and left for the hospital. I walked for two hours a distance which should take around twenty minutes trying to hide that I was in pain. Whenever the pain was too much, I could just sit down in the scorching sun, trying all means to hide it from people that all wasn’t well — I was unable to move and trying to pretend I was okay. But the baby inside the womb was really kicking hard so the passers-by would ask me if I needed their help and I always told them “No, I’m okay”, but you could see they were not okay with my answer. All that continued to the hospital until I reached there where upon arriving, the nurse just realized I was in need. I found him with another patient near the door and I didn’t proceed to the receptionist. Instead, I sat down in a chair and pretended to be okay. All I wanted to hide was the pain and that people should not know that I was in labor. But what made me wake up from that chair was the movement of the baby inside which turned my stomach to look like a rugby ball and it stayed like that for some minutes, I could hide no more. The stretching of the baby led me to show I was in pain actually because I could not pretend anymore. So the nurse took me to a check-up room where they confirmed the path was opening up to some point.
After some upstairs and downstairs exercises with the nurse, they chose to induce me at 6 pm and I was in labor until 10:45 pm. It reached a point where I called my husband and told him to take a scapular from the bag I had carried and put it around my neck. I was surely tired at this point and the doctors suggested I should be taken to the theatre for a cesarean section with an immediate effect to save the baby or the mother. After my husband gave me the scapular and it was put on my neck, I told them to give me a last chance to push the baby. In my mind, I wanted to tell my husband to take care of my baby when they succeed to have him alive. I told him, that if he comes out alive, call him “JUDE” and these words seemed to have disturbed him so much. I knew I was going to die before I saw him, but they asked me to push the baby once more. I then asked St. Jude to give me the last Miracle, and the strength to push. This is the time the baby came out.
So, when I was totally exhausted, is when I managed to push out the baby. It followed that I had no milk to breastfeed the baby. This child cried day and night for four days with nothing on its stomach. My breasts had nothing to help and had wounds and sores. It was so painful to be sucked but I allowed it anyway because he was trying to suck and get something. I totally had no milk and the baby’s skin began to stick together. I could see his green veins just on his skin, He began to be emaciated, the skin began to look like an old person and the bones began to appear. The child changed in those four days, I had no one around me — there were people but not relatives or anyone to tell me anything about a newborn, or what to do as I was a first-time mother, and my husband was a first-time father. On the fifth morning, I woke up and took my son to the same hospital where I gave birth. He had no voice to cry at all and I knew my child was dying. When all the pain I experienced during birth was so fresh still, I cried uncontrollably, and I called St. Jude once again. We were new to the town, and we were not aware of the hospitals nearby, we were just guided by someone. It was just by good luck, as my husband was wondering what to do because someone asked him, “I can see you have a patient here, what is it?” He told him he is looking for a better hospital to take her four-day-old son. This person decided to take us in His car to a big Children’s Hospital in the region where the baby was admitted.
The next challenge now was, that there were no tests to be taken from our son even from the urine because the child had no liquids in the body. His blood sample was also not enough for them to carry out any test, so he was admitted with immediate effect and was put on a drip throughout the night. But before the admission of our son, we were to give at least 400 dollars to admit the baby. We had no coin at all, either with us or back at home. But this man, upon hearing that, decided to give the hospital cash to admit the baby. We stayed in the hospital for 8 days and we were released to go home. Now my son looked better—looked beautiful, so handsome I could cry tears of joy. But, again, I cried to ST. Jude all through because I could not breastfeed my son. Throughout the night the child was asleep and didn’t know whether he would wake up and I had that fear. And that was the time I cried to St Jude thoroughly, asking him to protect my son, to heal my son, to revive my son, to give back my son… All those tears were contributed by the thought of I have not forgotten the pain and experience of giving birth and now he is going away from me, what shall I do? And so, from this experience I truly see God — the approachable God see the approachable God even through His saints. Thank you Saint Judd for saving my son. Today I can say my son has all the qualities I asked blessed Virgin Mary and those long-term qualities also I asked for, I’m very much certain that God will bring them into fruition at the right time
Now when my son was one, I approached his father for baptism in Catholic Church and he told me that in their church, they don’t baptize little children until he himself goes through their catechism and be baptized. This struck me again. I kept quiet and being unable to argue, I took my time and when he was out, I got a good chance to cry. Then when I finished crying, I decided to take that petition to God. I began paying for a Mass every 1st Friday of the Month and a daily Rosary. I went back to him again after one year with the same request and his response was the same. I kept the tradition of the Mass every 1st Friday of the month and the Rosary, as well as praying to the souls in purgatory for their help on the same issue for another whole year. I therefore went back to him again after another year and upon asking him the same question, I added that, “Sweetheart, don’t forget that that baptism is the descending of the Holy Spirit in our lives, remember I and you are baptized and this child is not baptized, we are not God and we don’t know how long He has given us to be with our son. So why don’t you let him be baptized or do we worship different Gods in our churches?” He asked me,” When do you want him baptized?” I took a deep breath and hesitated to answer him immediately, at the moment because of excitement and shock at the same time. I was so cautious not to show excitement. I then told him, “Whenever you give me an okay, I will work on the rest”. He told me to tell him on his son’s baptism so as to prepare and sure enough, he prepared for his baptism.
Now my son is seven years and two months old. I have tried several pregnancies only to end with miscarriages. I sometimes feel I am worn out in grieving my babies through miscarriages, but I have offered it to the Lord for the salvation of the souls, mostly who embrace abortion willingly and those terminated souls the womb. I have lost three pregnancies in one year that was the year 2020 and the year 2021 lost one pregnancy. I tried to be pregnant after every loss because I was really in need, and I had asked God about it. Whenever I confirmed my pregnancies, I would go to Jesus and seek His will about it and He would tell me that, “This pregnancy will shed but trust in me,” and sure enough, and to my shock, whenever He gave me such a message, it really happened within 24 hours. I would wake up early in the morning with bleeding or sometimes a very severe abdominal pain. Upon going to check what was going on, I would find that it was the one. So my mind would ring back, “Oh, I was prepared about it”. I found God so much approachable at this time. I was so much heart broken and He prepared me for the worst and helped me in my situation. Because if it were to happen without any word from Him, I don’t know where I would be. But I am still waiting for His time to bless me with another child.
Brethren, though I wait at His time, I still cry for my babies whenever I remember those situations. Please help me in your prayers, whenever you pray, that he will bless me soon. But I never lost hope in Him. If it is not His Will to bless me that soon, I still bless His Name. May His Name be praised. It’s my prayer that one day my tears will be presented in a chalice before the high thrones of God and find favor to be answered.
Apart from finding God the Approachable Father, I can say He has also blessed me with other gifts especially in visions. I have prayed to Him to bless me with some Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and I Have seen this come true as well. So my heart Glorifies God for being a Father who is so much approachable in all the situations I have shared with you guys. He has helped me also [to] come out victorious as well.
So, may His Name be praised. Thank you, Lord, for you Love and for all those who have helped me, to share my experience — my journey with You, and How Approachable You Are. Love you all, guys!
—Magdalene
Published by