Reading the latest issue of Ombre e Luci, I find myself reliving my life's journey. Only now do I see its meaning and find answers to so many things that happened along the way. My husband has walked this same path alongside me.
We have six children. Two were lost to miscarriage. Today we are deeply grateful for our family—but when Daniele, our son, began to regress at fifteen months, losing everything he had learned, suffering hardened my heart and clouded my mind. This happened even as we tried to walk a path of faith. I was desperate. My world was collapsing. I could not make sense of what was happening to us. Why had God given us a healthy son who, for no apparent reason, was losing his speech, his independence, his awareness of danger—a child who remained genetically and physically intact?
It is not easy to find balance when you fight a disease with no name. You don't know what stage it's in, how it will progress, or where it will lead. My despair was deepest in this: I could see no trace of God's love in any of it. But God is faithful and merciful. He does not rush. Through the help of our parish, He shed light on our story. I began to see in my suffering His suffering. I learned to look at Daniele with different eyes. Daniele has taught me so much, and he is my reason for conversion: to learn to rest in God's will, to live in silence as Daniele does. He accepts with a smile whatever life brings him.
Read also: And I Reconsidered Everything!
I learned to stand before Daniele as Martha and Mary stood before Jesus—in service. I learned to see him as a gift of the love that God has for us.
Naturally, in the midst of all this suffering, I no longer wanted to have more children. But now I see clearly: God was clearing a path that would lead me to Him. He was taking me in His arms and consoling me in His love.
At a parish talk on family and openness to life, I heard words that spoke directly to my own story. They spoke of love—of love in the gift of marriage, of what it means to "give life." Those words reached my heart with such simplicity and truth, breaking through every barrier. When I abandoned myself to Jesus's love, I entered a peace so profound, without fear or oppression.
A few months later, we received the joyful news that God was giving us another child. Our daughter Chiara said that "God had finally listened to her prayers." We lived through that pregnancy and the ones that followed with some anxiety, yet certain that we were not alone. The Lord was with us. A gynecologist, Professor Noia, helped me greatly. He always encouraged me and supported my "psychological struggles"—another angel God placed on my path.
I want to share my story as a brief introduction before speaking with you, the Fede e Luce community, about abortion. It is a most delicate and deeply personal matter.
I have lived through two miscarriages. The pain runs very deep. But abortion is not a solution. Let me explain: sometimes life doesn't go as we wish. The answer is not to eliminate the problem but to find the right help to face it. If I had done amniocentesis and all the prenatal tests during my pregnancy with Daniele, they would have told me nothing. Daniele was born healthy. No complications at birth. But reality changed without any intervention, and Daniele became who he is. What changed was only our awareness of what Daniele means and represents.
The choice is ours: to remain crushed by suffering, excluded from life, or to let God help us and turn our suffering into blessing and praise. In the journey of life, we never know what waits around the corner. We can understand what happens to us only much later, almost always after enormous suffering. Now, looking at my life, my children, my husband, and Daniele—who continues to smile at me (I seem always to "hear" his voice: "thank you, I'm happy to be here")—and Emanuele and Benedetta, who drive me to despair (though they're just doing their "job") but bring so much life to our home, I ask myself: What if I had given in to my despair?
Annamaria Manfucci, 2006
