Discovering the Faith
I met my husband, Mark, in the Peace Corps in the Marshall Islands. Mark died on May 11, 2024. We had been married almost forty-three years, and it was a day and fifteen minutes before his sixty-eighth birthday.
When we met, we were we were both Catholics who thought we were good people because we went to Mass sometimes. We were not well catechized. Then we became Jesuit volunteers on an Indian reservation, ran a group home for delinquent boys, and started having children.
Mark and I were partners in adventure. When things got tough, we turned our life over to God and started practicing our faith. However, first we had to learn it! We learned that you can’t miss Mass on Sundays; we learned to pray the rosary. The adventure began in such a beautiful way. I wrote for the secular media—ten years with Women’s World and some time with the National Enquirer. But as I grew in my faith, I realized they don’t care about people or help anyone. Even though we needed the money—we always did, with raising kids and me staying home—we just went deeper in our faith, and things started to straighten out. We fought less, and when we did, we were more cordial. We started praying for each other.
I began to understand that when you turn back to the Church, you don’t immediately go from point A to point C. It happens little by little. At one point, I said, “We already have four kids”—and I pressured Mark to have a vasectomy. We were still growing in our faith and praying the rosary. That was before there was Catholic radio and TV, but just by going before the Blessed Sacrament, I realized the mistake we had made, and I prayed for God’s will to be done. Mark did not want to have another surgery. So, we both began praying. Shortly thereafter, I said, “God, I can’t convince him, but You can.” And I continued going before the Blessed Sacrament. One day, Mark said, “I can’t go in for a vasectomy reversal this month, but I can next month.” I asked what changed his mind, and he said that he had a dream in which we had more children. Amazingly, I had had the same dream! We ended up having four more biological children.
I tell people, “I don’t think everybody’s supposed to have ten kids. It’s whatever God’s plan is for you. I don’t know what that plan is, but you need to check with Him.” We should have checked with Him first and saved ourselves a lot of trouble.
Somebody told me that we never would have known the difference—but I think on some spiritual level, I would have missed the fullness that God had for me. We had four more children post-reversal. I wrote and talked about it, and Mark and I spoke about it, and people sent us pictures of their children and said, “This is because we heard you talk.”
Even my bishop said, “Wow, you really let it all hang out!” But you can stand in the grocery store line and hear somebody talk about “getting fixed.” I didn’t even know as a Catholic that it wasn’t OK. We need to talk about it and all the blessings that came to us.
It’s not always possible; it takes some action of God. But we put ourselves in God’s hands. Later, we adopted two AIDS orphans—first one, and then two years later, his brother. They were orphans suffering from malnutrition. The first son we adopted had read a book about a boy who came to US, and he started praying that one day he could come here too. He’d never even met an American; it was a ridiculous prayer. He told me this story after being home with us for a week—and I realized we had been chosen to answer this prayer.
Parenthood and Free Will
We have ten children, and there was a time when we thought we were doing it all right. I homeschooled or we sent them to Catholic schools. You think you will have all-in Catholic kids—but the cultural winds are blowing strong. Every one of our kids left home strong in the Catholic faith, but what you never expect can happen. Everybody is a work in progress. Everybody has free will, so some of my kids are no longer Catholic. And I have one who just joined the seminary. They are all over the board, and I’ve learned that we don’t get to decide others’ free will. It can be tough.
If your kids leave the faith, you will probably be judged by people who are doing their very best. Back when I was doing my best, if I saw kids who had left the faith, I thought the parents must have missed something. There are a lot of people in Catholic media whose kids have left the faith, and they don’t like to talk about it. I don’t blame them, because when I was raising my kids, if I heard a speaker say some of their kids had left the faith, I wanted to listen to somebody who was getting better results.
It’s very humbling. When your kids are following the faith, you pat yourself on the back for doing the right thing. And then when one gives way to the culture, you think, “What did I do wrong? What did I miss?”
You must surrender your kids to God and accept that you don’t get to control it. You just love and pray for them even more than before.
What Would Monica Do?
I coauthored What Would Monica Do? with Roxane Beauclair Salonen. We created a book that we wanted and needed.
Conversations and debates with loved ones away from the faith don’t always yield good results. Once you feel you’re pushing, you need to stop. If you’re pushing, they’re going in the other direction. Once you realize they’re not listening to you, stop and go deeper into your own prayer life. You’ve probably given them an article or a book or sat down to talk with them. But they might not listen, they might not read the book, they might ask, “Why are you judging me?” It’s like St. Ambrose once told St. Monica: “You need to talk less to your son about God and more to God about your son.”
Initially, I didn’t like St. Monica’s story. She prayed for her son for seventeen years and got one conversion out of it. I wanted better results! But then our pastor noted that St. Augustine’s books were still in print today, 1600-plus years later. The fruit of her prayer wasn’t just one conversion; it was one of the greatest conversions! St. Augustine is one of the greatest evangelizers and theologians. He’s a doctor of the Church. He has touched all of Christianity.
We have a private Facebook group (Catholic Parents: What Would Monica Do?) to support parents whose children are away from the faith. It is for parents praying for their loved ones. If you have walked that road, if all your friends’ kids are still practicing, you want to be with people who understand.
Many of the people on that page didn’t expect to ever be there. I never did. When Roxanne approached me about doing this book, I said, “No, I’m waiting until all my kids are back.” What a horrible book that would have been! That would have been me telling everybody how it works, when every kid is different, and every story is different.
Bearing Fruit in Suffering
Prayer and fasting are very powerful. But take it one step further. When your children cause you pain, don’t waste it—offer it to the Lord so they can receive it back as a gift. They can’t stop that from coming. It’s very powerful when we offer up sacrifices and our own suffering, united to the suffering of Christ, as a gift for them. The more they hurt you, the more you have to give them.
Often, we’re having conversations with people that we hope someone will have with our kids. So, don’t slow down in what you’re doing to love others. Love the world. Pray for others. If somebody hurts you, pray for them. Venerable Sr. Mary Potter was devoted to the dying and wrote about something parents can do. She encouraged people to pray for the dying, because this is their last chance between heaven and hell. She said that if they are saved, they will pray for the fallen away children of those who prayed for them. This hit the nail on the head! I prayed for souls in Purgatory, but I didn’t think about praying a daily Divine Mercy Chaplet or at least praying for those who are dying and for other people to be saved, just like we want our children to be saved.
This article originally appeared in Renewal Ministries’ April 2025 newsletter. It is condensed from a 2025 The Choices We Face episode called What Would Monica Do? with Patti Maguire Armstrong.You can watch the original interview here.
You can find What Would Monica Do? and Patti’s other books here.
rmartin@renewalministries.net
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Great article. Our 5 kids are all still practicing the faith, but the grandkids are growing up… And we have friends whose hearts are broken because their kids have left the faith. I regularly pray for all of the kids who have left, because it could have been my kids. Prayer is the best way to go.