Prayers on Pilgrimage

I've thought so much, and so long, about going on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella.  The reasons why are as numerous as the people traveling the Milky Way, as it's sometimes known.  Some have questions, some are penitents.  Some do it for others or to pray for health. Some trying to decipher the way forward in their lives.

I guess in some ways I'd always thought mine would be possibly a little of each.  I hadn't really thought of it as a pilgrimage of rejoicing.  I think now this maybe a part of it.  My youngest son and daughter-in-law popped over to the house today, and by the grace of God, I wasn't at work!  They brought the most beautiful pictures I've ever seen, and her name they tell me is Anna Karina.  I blown away by the clarity of todays ultrasounds, and truly feel like I've been able to visit with her already.

I gave her parents a tiny dress I bought thirty odd years ago.  Stranger still, I just remembered, that it was bought on a pilgrimage.  A pilgrimage to St. Anne de Beaupre in Canada, made in 1981.

I'd gone there hugely pregnant with my second child.  Hoping, as we had a boy, that maybe I'd have a girl.  More importantly, praying that this one would be in perfect health.  Our first son Peter, was born with a cleft palate, requiring major facial surgery at five months old.  I was all of 23.  So at the shrine, I prayed simply for the health and well being of my baby.  And a few moments perhaps...wishing for a little girl!  Five weeks later I gave birth to a strapping beautiful healthy screaming ... boy!  Thomas was and is (although I'm sure he'd squirm to hear this) a wonder.  Healthy and hungry for life.  Two years later, Patrick arrived.  Three healthy, sturdy boys. Somedays it was more like having a litter of puppies!  I can not imagine anything other.  They were wonderful.  But...no one to wear the tiny pink and white dress with rosebuds on it.

So prayers on pilgrimage do get answered, just not always in the way, or the time frame, we expect.  Oddly enough, Patrick and Adrianne went to Quebec on their honey moon a year ago.  Paris was a little to pricey for them at the time. They stopped at St. Anne de Beaupre, never knowing I'd been there 29 years earlier.

So a tiny hand knit dress, folded in tissue and tucked in a drawer all this time, went home tonight.

St. Anne in Quebec