As a friend, I lived intensely in Faith and Light. I was fully present, entirely committed. But when I came home, I felt a strange distance—a difficulty in sharing what I had experienced with my husband. I didn't know where to begin. Everything felt too hard. Silence filled the space where words should have been. Time went on. Our three children came to community gatherings with complete joy. They married and celebrated with Faith and Light.
My husband and their father attended the big moments of the year with curious detachment.
By then, the seed of Faith and Light had taken root in his life. It surfaced in small ways—in quiet testimonies, in signs of belonging he wouldn't quite claim, even in passionate defenses against skeptics.
But when I spoke of my enthusiasm, he would smile with a subtle, skeptical irony.
Then tragedy broke into our lives. A cruel illness struck my husband.
Beyond the agony of hospitalizations, treatments, and the unique pain of such an ordeal, our family lived through it all in deep communion. Faith and Light was there—always there—with friendship, closeness, prayer.
The great Pilgrimage to Lourdes in 2001 was approaching. Our family's dream was to go together, all of us.
But it seemed like only a dream. His illness was getting worse.
Yet Someone willed that we would go—children, grandchildren, and him. My husband came.
It is hard to say in simple words what grace we experienced there.
The Virgin Mary gave my husband his last days of joy, of peace, of profound emotion lived in an enormous dimension of brotherhood and boundless love.
- Vanna, 2003