Sian over at High in the Sky had a brilliant idea. Sian has lots of great ideas.
This particular one follows on from her very successful Advent Stories at the end of last year. On the first Sunday of the month, we have an opportunity to link our stories together.
I haven’t felt able to write anything until now, so here is my story for March 2011.

No one was in the least bit surprised…

… when she left the big city, her birthplace, and moved to the middle of nowhere, to join a convent.
It was the way she was, the way she had always been, kind and quiet and prayerful. Not Holy, just, well prayerful. Just our sister and our friend.
She cared for our eldest sister during her illness. She was the one who got her special meals, little treats, sat through the night with her, prayed with her and over her, until the end.
She nursed our father. Moving the great heavy iron bed over to the window so that he could watch the children and the men coming and going. She bathed him in his bed, brought him soup and bread, sang to him and prayed with him. We visited him of course bringing stories of our days but it was her who sat with him.
So, no, it was no surprise that when he passed she took herself off to the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood (FMDM) at the Portiuncula convent in Ballinasloe, out in the country, in county Galway.
She stayed with them for a little under twelve months; writing letters telling of her days, mostly in prayer it seemed to us, until she was ready for the move to the Novitiate house over in England. A young woman in her early twenties to make that journey, we all thought she was crazy. But her faith was so strong. This is what she wanted to do with her life she told mammy in her letters home. She took a different name of course as is the way of life in a convent. She was a novitiate, a nun in learning. She needed to learn the ways of the sisters, of the convent and of a life devoted to God. She told us it was like a marriage but to God. She would be there for some time, thinking and working and praying until she was positive that this way of life was to be her way life.
In England she would learn and devote herself to God.
One day, out of the blue, we got a letter to say she was returning home, this life was not for her. The Lord had something else in mind for her.
In August of 1951 she boarded the Irish Mail in Euston for Holyhead for the boat home.
The Lord did not reveal to her that her life would change again on that journey home.
The first any of us knew about her meeting on the train was the day a letter arrived with an English postmark.
She told us that on the train there was a young man who was also on his journey home. She watched him board the train in London. He was about her age, much taller than her with dark hair and a wide smile. He had been running and was out of breath, he almost missed the train and it was hours until the next one.
He was heading for his home in Wigan, changing at Crewe,
For the previous twelve months he had been at the beginning of his training for the priesthood…. It was not to be.
Such a momentous occasion should have so much more detail, snippets of remembered conversation, may be a hope or a thought or a dream but it was just a part of their shared journey, no detail was ever passed on, just a few facts and later a magazine article written by the Franciscan brother who had counselled the young man through his decision to leave his training.
A young couple at the end of one chapter of their lives: were about to embark on another.

Daffodil, a symbol of re-birth and new beginnings