I was shopping at Whole Foods recently when I took a second look at a petite woman perusing bottles of protein beverages. Wearing a black veil and floor length pleated black tunic, her little face peered out of the white headpiece (called a coif) underneath her veil. I hadn’t seen a Catholic nun in full floor length garb in about twenty years since I was in the waiting room at my orthopedic’s office for an appointment. Since then, any nuns I’ve encountered were wearing below the knee plain skirts with a simple cotton blouse and small veil.
I just had to speak to her.
“Excuse me Sister, my name is Mary….” I asked her about the Order she was with and told her about my time in Catholic school.
“Our convent is about thirty minutes away. I never come to this store,” she informed me, “but we were given a gift card. I’m taking one of the Sisters to an appointment and this store was on the way.”
Even though there was another nun waiting for her in the car, she seemed very eager to converse.
At some point in the conversation, I shared how God spared me from being murdered as a child, and how I became a Christian in my 20s, eventually forgiving my abuser and leading him to Christ at the end of his life. “I even wrote a book about it,” I told her. “It’s called, ‘The Road to Mercy.’”
“That is so encouraging to hear,” she said. “All we ever hear about is the bad that’s on the news every night.”
A few minutes later we said our goodbyes and headed in different directions. The whole experience left me pleasantly surprised that my story was an encouragement to a nun.
Romans 12:6 says, “We have different gifts according to the grace given us…..If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.”
God uses us all in different ways, and we don’t have to be a man or woman of the cloth for Him to do so.
Mary Therese Hutchinson 