By Nicole Rodriguez
Have you ever noticed that God likes to work outside of our paradigm? He loves to do the unthinkable and the unimaginable in our lives. With the most ordinary of circumstances, he creates the extraordinary. Such as with the simple question posed to me many years ago: “How many children do you want?”
My story begins with a desire to have children in the beautifully ordinary way. After losing our first child to miscarriage, my husband, Lance, and I waited six long years before discovering with delight that I was pregnant again. Our excitement and joy for Thomas, our second baby boy, were understandably tempered with anxiety, and within just a few short weeks, our hopes were dashed.
We were both heartbroken. Instead of turning inward in our suffering, we made a choice to turn to God and our prayer community. As our community gathered around us to share in our suffering and to pray with us, one friend asked what seemed like an odd question under the circumstances: “How many children do you desire?” As faithful Catholics, we looked at each other and responded, “However many he wants to give, of course.” Our friend continued, “God is saying you can have as many children as you want.”
Another friend chimed in, “I have an image of many children and they just keep coming.” We felt a mixture of excitement, encouragement, and complete bewilderment, all at the same time. How could this happen? These words of hope, supposedly from the Lord, didn’t make sense to us at all. We were already in our midthirties, and my biological clock was ticking rapidly. Time was running out.
It would take us a long time to understand what the vision of many children meant and how God would fulfill this promise. The journey began with deep sadness and an unexpected invitation into Jesus’ own passion. I vividly remember, during the night of my miscarriage with Thomas, an image flashing through my mind of Jesus being scourged, then carrying his Cross. I knew in this moment he was with me in my physical and emotional pain of loss. Carrying the Cross and looking intently at me, he said, “I had Thomas in mind; this was for him.” I was struck by the great love in Jesus’ eyes, and I knew it was love that drove him to the Cross—not just love for me but the reality of his love for this life I carried within my womb for only a few months. Jesus bore his suffering so that Thomas could dwell in glory with him. I realized that this life in my womb mattered—not only to me but also to the Savior of the universe!
Oh, how my heart ached with longing to hold my baby, to hold close this part of Lance and me. As I struggled forward in the following days, I distinctly understood that God was inviting me to enter into the pain of this moment rather than repress it. I encountered the knot of fear looking right at me. All I could do was be in my tears, in my pain, right where I was. This confrontation with the pain began to undo a huge knot of fear in my heart.
I recall sitting on my couch, weeping with grief for the loss of Thomas, when I heard the gentle voice of Jesus within my heart: “This is what it means to be human—to feel all your emotions is to be fully alive.” With those words, a veil was lifted, exposing the depth of my ache and reconnecting me to the vulnerability of my little-girl heart. The utter abandonment I felt in that moment took my breath away. A new and deeper memory had cracked open, a deeper knot of abandonment that needed to be tenderly undone.
I was suddenly and simultaneously in touch with my heart as a child and as an adult grieving for the loss of my family. Just months after I was baptized into the Catholic Church at the age of eleven, my parents decided to divorce. Memories came flooding forth of how alone and abandoned I felt as a little girl. I saw images of myself yearning for my parents to be together and crying myself to sleep. The ache to belong to a family consumed me. As the memories played through my mind, I understood that not one of those moments was insignificant to Jesus.
As I began to connect to my foundational desire for family life and the deep wounds of my vulnerable little-girl heart, I recognized a hidden knot in my heart that distorted my understanding of my fundamental identity and had driven so many negative choices in my life. The painful wound of lost familial love had been caused by the lie that I was alone and I was abandoned in the moments when I was most in need. The Lord was patiently helping me embrace the reality that I am not abandoned in my suffering. He is closer than ever.
Worship music was very powerful during my grieving process. As tears filled my eyes and rolled down my cheeks, I could clearly feel in my heart the Father’s love for me in the midst of my sorrow. As much as I desired this little one, oh how the Father desired me. I sang out in my tearful mess, and his love became real for me; his voice became more steadfast, and he spoke into my heart the revelation that I was a kiss of the Father’s love. I became beautifully undone; the knot began unraveling as his words of truth sank deeper into my heart. The words I spoke over my son in the womb also expressed the Father’s desire for me. Entering into the loss of my son felt like dying a million little deaths, but it was God’s invitation to me to realize my true identity.
Two years later, Lance and I conceived our third son. I was completely in love without even seeing his face, because he was a gift of the Father’s love to us. The sheer joy of being pregnant filled us with hopeful excitement. We were devastated when this pregnancy also ended in miscarriage.
Bafflingly, just a few short months later, we were informed that I was suffering from a serious kidney disease that made it extremely dangerous for me to be pregnant. We were hit with the reality that not only would we never have more biological children but also I wouldn’t survive another pregnancy. I would lose my life and the life of a baby. It was a mind-numbing moment! My heart sank as my eyes met Lance’s. Our mutual heartache was communicated in the silence of our tears.
How could I reconcile this news with the reality that my body is created to receive and cocreate new life? Every fiber of my being seemed to cry out, “I’m made to be a bearer of life, I am made for motherhood!” All our hope for children died. Reeling from the finality of this moment, I heard the words spoken by our friend a few years ago echo inside me, “You can have as many children as you want.” Utterly bewildered, I felt an alarming question rise up within me: “Was that really God? How can that be true now?”
A few days later, a postcard from a friend arrived at just the right moment. I came completely undone as I read a beautiful quote from St. Francis de Sales, reminding me that God knows the crosses he gives to each of us—each one is a gift of his mercy. Tears filled my eyes, and I knew in my devastation that this cross was the Father’s crazy invitation into something more. Here he was, standing in the middle of what felt so messy, tenderly calling me into freedom and deeper love by drawing me into trust and into what it means to not be abandoned. I was encouraged to remain open and receptive before him and to give him my yes and permission to be loved. There was nowhere else to turn but into him. This became a moment of grace to respond with courage and vulnerability and trust in the truth that I am not abandoned in my suffering.
As I embraced my weakness, I experienced the strength of Jesus, his tender love, and his care. From some place inside myself I knew that the resurrection of my heart and my desires for family life would come and that I would bear life in ways unknown to me.
It is amazing how God placed just the right people in my life at just the right moments, often when I didn’t realize that I needed them most. Lance and I met Bishop Sam at a youth conference, where he shared how his fatherhood is fully alive as he wrapped his arms around a spiritual son to his left and a spiritual daughter to his right. As we listened, Lance and I both felt a longing in our hearts for a spiritual father. With a boldness for which I will be forever grateful, Lance went up to Bishop Sam and simply asked him, “Would you be my spiritual father?” As Bishop Sam embraced us both, a beautiful lifelong relationship began to unfold. He has accompanied us with unconditional love, understanding, wisdom, and accountability.
God gave another beautiful gift to my heart that longed so deeply for family, as he soon brought Jim and Lois into our lives. They are an amazing married couple who are sages of love. Within their home I feel the deep history of love—it’s written in the walls; I can feel it seep into my very bones. They have shared in the joys, the laughter, and the sorrowful tears of our lives. I didn’t realize at first the legacy that Jim and Lois were leaving to us. The spiritual inheritance that has been passed on through the gift of their vast love has had a deep impact on our lives. We didn’t have a word at that time for what they were, yet they were becoming spiritual parents to us. Their legacy of love has helped us in turn to pass on this inheritance to our own spiritual children.
An inheritance it was! It was only looking back that I realized how the Holy Spirit had been nurturing multiple children within our home for a long time. The seeds were planted through our commitment to relational youth ministry. We simply opened our doors to youth we were walking with. Relationships grew as the fruit of our genuine love, and became a part of our family life.
It began with Benjamin, who affectionately will say he is our firstborn, and Beth, who became a daily presence in our home for dinner, games, prayer, and conversations about life and Jesus. As Beth graduated from high school, she brought our relationship to college with her, and this naturally progressed into doing relational ministry with college students. This ministry, in turn, led to several more young adults asking us to be their spiritual parents.
I remember standing in my kitchen one day and reflecting on the reality of what God was birthing through our suffering. The fragrant aroma of family love came to my mind. This revelation burst open joy in my heart as the Lord began to show me how he planned all along to bring the gift of spiritual children into our lives. All of a sudden, the words spoken to us in prayer so many years ago came dancing through my heart: “You can have as many children as you want, and they just keep coming.” I saw how this prayer was truly being fulfilled. I distinctly understood in that moment that God had intimately called us to spiritual parenthood.
Five years later, I witnessed my first spiritual son’s ordination. Sitting in the pew the morning of Fr. Ben’s thanksgiving Mass, I realized clearly in my heart that this moment was the fruit of our suffering. I remember tears streaming down my face and Jesus asking me, “Would you be willing to do it all over again?” With total shock and joy, I knew the answer without hesitation. It erupted and rose up within me: Yes, yes! I would do it all over again. I would suffer all the losses again. It was worth this moment.
God is creative, and he will not be outdone in his generosity. He is all about creating family. The fruit of our love is over thirty spiritual children. Some have become priests or religious, and others are married with children of their own. What we have experienced with our spiritual children is far more than just mentorship or spiritual companionship. It is living an extraordinary life of love together.
This excerpt from Undone: Freeing your Feminine Heart from the Knots of Shame is reprinted with permission of Ave Maria Press.
