Tragedy and Grace

It’s strange to think how a tragedy of immense proportions, like that of 9/11 can have anything good come out of it, but my husband confessed years later it was the turning point for him, when he started reading more conservative columnists and began to consider the possibility of God. When our older child began school a few years later and we felt overwhelmed with all the outside influences we didn’t want him to have, I naturally turned towards God. That was my childhood, but I wasn’t sure how open my husband would be. See, I’ve seen marriages fall apart when one spouse wants to talk about God and the other is vehemently opposed, and I loved my husband more than anything and didn’t want to cause a rift in our marriage. I loved him far more than an invisible God.


Imagine my delight and surprise when I bought a beautiful children’s Bible with pictures and historical tidbits, and my husband offered to read it to the children. I didn’t appreciate then what I do now. He held the Word is his hands and began to fall in love with Jesus… “How is it that I do not know this?” he asked. We became hungry for more.

A couple of years later, when the pull towards God became stronger and I could no longer deny my desire to return to church, it was easy to broach the subject to my husband. We didn’t have to debate much which church … there was one at the bottom of our hill, but it had a slogan “No weird stuff” that turned me off. It implied that other churches had weird stuff. I thought about going back to my Anglican roots, but when I looked at all the changes, we thought, no. We must go farther back, before the Reformation, before all the heresies (and there were plenty), and seven years after 9/11 we stepped into the nearest Catholic Church. During football season. The rest is history …

The seeds of our conversion were planted 9/11 in my husband! I see how grace flows from the head of the family to all its members. I might have had the religious background, but without my husband, I would never have stepped into that church. From a tragedy, this one good thing has happened in our family. We turned towards God. We recognized how much we need Him. And He used that crack to burrow Himself into our hearts. And so we pray for those who died; may they rest in the loving arms of our Lord Jesus Christ for all eternity.




We entered the digital age fairly late (in fact, my husband won this camera at some engineering conference) ... so this picture is the closest one I have to 9/11. As you can see, we're preparing for Thanksgiving at Chez Bodach.

My grace is sufficient for thee ~ 2 Cor. 12:9