Don’t Mess With Novenas

I got a phone call last week from my dear friend, the woman in the white minivan. She was laughing.

“My husband’s great aunt called me this morning,” she said.  ” She told me, ‘I’ve done something naughty.  I know you said that you had accepted that you would have no more babies, but I just this morning finished a novena to St Anne for you.”

I caught my breath.  My sweet friend has battled infertility for the whole of her married life, conceiving her only child through medical help which was nothing short of heroic.  She has grieved for this and put it behind her.  She has moved on.  Had this reopened that painful wound?

“Are you okay?” I asked her.  “You’re laughing, so I’m hoping it’s ‘that’s ironic and funny’ laughter and not ‘that’s still the most painful thing ever laughter.'”

“No,” she told me.  “It’s neither one.  Half an hour before she called I found out that for the first time in my life, after 14 years of marriage, I’m spontaneously pregnant.”

Those novenas must be powerful stuff, so don’t mess around with them unless you’re serious.  

But tell the truth, if you were her best friend and had cried with her through the heartbreak for 9 years, wouldn’t you be shouting from the mountaintops and whispering on your blog, too?