© 2015 Sabina Theodore. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 08/10/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2912-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5049-2911-0 (e)

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter One Expectations

Chapter Two Fairy Tales And One Shining Knight

Chapter Three All In

Chapter Four Bring on the Rain

Chapter Five A Kiss on the Hand

Chapter Six Value in Vulnerable

Chapter Seven Something More

Chapter Eight Receptivity and Grace

Chapter Nine A New Hope

Chapter Ten Wounds Heal

For I know well the plans I have in mind for you says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for woe!

Plans for your future full of hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

INTRODUCTION

S t. Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have been beckoning a New Evangelization in the Church for decades. It is a call for all Christians to humbly and courageously share the real, personal, and concrete stories of their otherwise seemingly un-special and un-noteworthy lives. The truths of our Faith do not change, and those truths are easily accessible in Church meeting rooms, in Bible Studies, RCIA Classes, YouTube videos, Catholic blogs, tweets and posts, as well as in a wealth of video series and books created by scholars and theologians of our time. But it’s the intimate and personal stories of real people—the commoners of society, that best reveal God’s masterful love, truth and fidelity in a world desperate for proof that there is somehow purpose to our existence, to our sufferings and to our hope for the future.

This is what motivated me to write my story—the hope that through it someone may come to know and trust God just a little bit more. I am not a celebrity; I have no letters of prestige following my name; I have no degrees in theology, psychology or medicine; and the only people who know me at all are my family and members of my church. But I do have a story. A story of God’s perfect, faithful, awe-inspiring, and trustworthy love. May He use it to help you recognize Him in your own story, and help you to persevere, surrender and trust Him in all things.

CHAPTER ONE

Expectations

I was born in 1970 and grew up in suburbia Lancaster, Pennsylvania with my Mom, Dad, sister and two brothers. Lancaster is where both Mom and Dad grew up, and I suppose no reason to leave was ever more captivating than building a life at home.

Though all four of us kids were born within five and a half years, we lived in a neighborhood filled with other kids, and we created closer bonds with them than with each other. We experienced the same love from the same parents and shared the same dining room table for breakfast and dinner, but outside of the shared girls’ room and boys’ room, most of our time was spent with the kids we went to school with. There were always extra kids in the house and though their parents always referred to my parents as Mr. and Mrs. Lefever, all of our friends were introduced to them as Mom and Dad—and that usually stuck.

As for names, Mom always told me she wanted a little girl named Binky. She heard it at some point in her life and it had always stuck with her. She knew she couldn’t baptize me by that name, so she and Dad gave me my other name: Sabina. That was Sabina Marie when Mom really wanted to get my attention. I will never forget my very first day of school. When Mom walked me into the classroom, my kindergarten teacher reached for a nametag with a picture of Lucy from the Peanuts’ cartoon on it and the name Sabina already written on it. Mom looked at my teacher and corrected her by saying, Her name is Binky. You will call her Binky and you will change her nametag right now before I leave. Obeying my Mom was always highest on my priority list, so I never questioned her about my name and never answered to anything else but Binky.

Mom always called me her Little Domesticate. Though I had several friends within a few houses down and across the street, I was most contented to entertain myself. All I wanted to do was play with my baby dolls and Barbie dolls. I was never interested in playing outside or getting my hands dirty. Mom never could quite understand how I always seemed to be the one with the bumps and bruises and trips to the emergency room; but maybe I just didn’t mind being the one lifted up to the kitchen counter to get cleaned off, sealed with a band-aid, and healed by Mom’s all-powerful kiss.

Once when I was about six years old Mom asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. With all the purity, honesty and sincerity of a child I answered, I wanta be just like you and do nothing! Not likely an answer I will ever live down, but it is still true even to this day, now going on forty-five. Mom was a loyal wife, a stay-at-home mom and a homemaker, and I have never wanted to be anything but just like her. She was always there. Always, always there. Truly the greatest gift God could ever give me.

Along with being the self-contented, baby-doll-carting, injured child of the family, I was also teased and reprimanded for being the bossy one. I honestly don’t remember any incidents of my being bossy towards my siblings growing up, but I can site many in a week’s time as an adult. I was a rule follower—obedient to a fault and rarely ever getting in trouble. My siblings saw me as a goody-two-shoes, but I was just too afraid of ever getting caught. Outside of my mouth getting washed out with soap once for accidentally biting my sister, I don’t think I was ever grounded or reprimanded for much more than being bossy. All it took was the look from Mom or Dad, and I never wanted to do anything bad ever again!

We all went to Mass every Sunday at the same church my mom grew up in, St. Anne’s. Mom was Catholic, Dad was not. I think he went just to help her keep the four kids in line for an hour while she could practice being a good Catholic. Rarely a week passed when I didn’t ask when we got in the car after Mass, Mommy, Daddy, was I good today? Most of the time they couldn’t pin-point who was being fidgeting or chatty or otherwise misbehaved, so we all usually got the look. I would accept that during Mass, but I couldn’t wait to verify my good standing once we were permitted to be ourselves again back in the car. If I didn’t get the answer I wanted, I had to live with it, because anything else would be considered talking-back and I’d get much more than a disapproving look.

Mom was raised in Catholic schools and resented so much her being forced to conform to the strict rules and obedience of the Church that she resolved never to subject her own kids to such orthodoxy. We all went to public school, and therefore had to endure about ninety minutes of CCD every Sunday after Mass in order to receive our First Holy Communion and Confirmation. We were supposedly learning all the important truths, dogmas and practices of the Church, but all I got out of eight years of post-Vatican II CCD was Jesus loves me. Not a bad lesson to learn, certainly, but a far cry from the foundation of faith I would need later in life to sort through inevitable trials with any sense of God’s purpose or plan in them.

I’d say our childhood experience of the Faith was pretty much summed up in our prayer before dinner, our prayers of blessing for each family member (and pet) by name before bed, and our watching the annual three-night mini-series, Jesus of Nazareth, that aired on one of the three available TV channels on primetime television near Easter.

My high school years were filled with being a bubbly teenaged blonde rifle twirler in the marching band, trying to make sense of what it meant to go with boyfriends (that seemed to change each year with the passing of another grade), and adamantly disapproving of anyone who thought they were cool for drinking. I had a set of ideals already formulated in my mind—those being primarily whatever Mom and Dad said to do or not to do (to avoid any possibility of their disapproval), and anyone who fell short of those ideals was not worthy of calling themselves a friend of mine. Surprisingly, I did still have a set of very close co-ed friends all through high school, but they somehow managed to keep their differing ideals undetectable by me, and our friendships thrived just fine in my ignorance. Though my sister to this day remains in touch with many of her friends from high school, I was eager to move on to college, and never had much interest in looking back (aside from an occasional class reunion I attended out of sheer curiosity).

Never having any interest in a job or career outside the home, my only motivation for attending West Chester University was: 1) Mom and Dad were paying for it, 2) I would have, for the first time ever, control of my own life, and 3) where else would I find a husband? I am not joking when I tell you, when the guidance counselor presented me with a list of schools to consider for my higher education, the most influential school statistic was the ratio of boys to girls. Well, that, and West Chester had a marching band with a pretty impressive rifle squad; and it was only an hour away from Mom and Dad (just in case my new-found freedom became a little too much for me to handle or I had another trip to the emergency room—which I did—several times).

College proved to be not all that different for me than childhood or high school. I was still quite content to entertain myself and uphold my scrupulous ideals. Many nights throughout my freshman year ended with an hour or two of cross-stitching alone in my dorm room, watching Columbo or Star Trek (don’t ask—I have no idea!) on my tiny portable TV while my roommate and co-ed dorm neighbors went to some wild off-campus party.

I met my all-time very best friend on my very first day of college. After Mom and Dad finished lugging all my new dorm room paraphernalia up to the sixth floor of Sanderson Hall, my