The story of Susan and Mark

Feelings before the ligation

“I’m Pregnant!” I exclaimed to my mother. My husband and I were overjoyed at the news of my second pregnancy. We had been married almost 2 years, and it seemed as if we were invincible. We were both taking graduate classes in the evening to finish our Master’s degrees in Education; we had a healthy and beautiful baby girl, Caitlinn Alissa, born in September 1988. We were young and mobile, and with just one try we conceived our son. We seemed to have it together.

I was born in 1964, the second of four children, and named Susan Kristin. My parents were elated at the birth of their first daughter and tried to instill in me a sense of values and respect. I attended a Lutheran Sunday School and church. I was raised with conditional love that was based on my acceptance of my parents’ ways of behaving and thinking and on a sense of loyalty to my family. I had an odd sense of belonging; I always felt out of step in my family and I was always on a crusade with some group that my family was speaking out against. I would not eat veal because of the way calves were raised, I refused to wear fur because of the slaughter of the baby harp seals, and I would defend all peoples’ right to be American. My high school and college years were riddled with pain and experimentation partly due to my parents divorcing when I was a senior in high school. When I attended college for a B.A. in Psychology, I was not attending any church, had a new age, existential philosophy, was anti-Catholic, a thought I was doing just great!

My husband Mark Stephen was born in 1962. He has four brothers and one sister in a strong extended family, and in his world, everyone was Catholic and Polish! He went to a Catholic elementary school and lived across the street from a convent. In his early teens his parents divorced, and the family went through a rough time adjusting to a new world of separated family. Mark eventually went to Ithaca College in New York for a B.S. in Psychology.

Mark and I met in September 1986 when we began our Master’s program at Lehigh University. During the day we worked, and in the evening, we attended class. It was a grueling pace for over a year. We began dating in February 1987, fell in love, and got married in a Lutheran church in 1988. My family suggested we marry in the Lutheran church. Mark’s family agreed because there were very few prenuptial preparations needed to marry in our church. We sat down with the paster; he asked us if we were married before and checked our baptismal, birth, and confirmation certificates. We talked about the details of the ceremony, and with in a month we were married. Nothing was mentioned about married life, birth control, finances, and other issues a couple would face during marriage. To make matters worse, Mark did not know that he could request a dispensation from his parish to be married in another church. Thus, our marriage was not a sacramental marriage.

When we married, we were in a lot of debt due to our college loans. To boot, we both had incurred credit card debt from purchases made before our marriage. We had never discussed or even thought about how our lives would change after the birth of the baby. When Caitlinn was born, we still did not think about what would happen when she was a little older. Although Mark was working full time teaching, he was not making enough money to cover our monthly bills. While we felt supported by our respective families, we knew that financially we were on our own.

When Caitlinn was 3 months old, I worked part time in the evening. I knew deep down in my heart that I could not put Caitlinn in day care. I wanted her to be influenced by us and wanted to be there when she took her first step and spoke her first words. I did not want a stranger experiencing those things that to me were too precious to lose. In January 1990, I had the opportunity of finishing up my Master’s for free and working part-time in the evenings in a residential home. In April 1990, we conceived our son. Throughout our pregnancy I had morning sickness and hypertension. Our son was born on January 25,1991. I had been in hard labor for only 2 hours. We named him Adam Michael. When Mark and I arrived home with Adam, Caitlinn would not even look at me and promptly ignored her brother for about 2 weeks. In addition, Adam was rather active as an infant, rarely sleeping and frequently ill with ear infections. Things started to unravel fast.

Because Adam’s conception came rather easy for us and because we were not using any birth control, we were in a panic thinking that any month I would announce another pregnancy. Pure fear overrode logic. Although I had had sex education in school and understood how a woman becomes pregnant, I was unaware of the natural signs of fertility and thus assumed that it would not take much effort to conceive a third child. After a month of panic, Mark announced that he would see a doctor about a vasectomy. He made an appointment and went to the initial consultation. Finally, he went to the doctor’s office for the surfer. Thanks to Our Lady’s intervention, the doctor had an emergency and could not do the surgery as planned. Mark saw this as a sign from God and never rescheduled the appointment.

This, unfortunately, did not help our situation, and I volunteered to have a tubal ligation. Mark seemed somewhat relieved at my suggestion as it solved the major problem regarding children in our marriage. He knew that some Protestants affirmed use of artificial birth control and that I agreed with that belief. So, in March 1991, I went to the hospital for same-day surgery. The surgery itself took about 15 minutes. The doctor went through my belly button and cut, tied, and burned both fallopian tubes. When I awoke, Mark was in the room and helped me get dressed. I felt physically exhausted. I went home later that afternoon. My stomach was sore, and I felt out of sorts for several days. It took me a couple of weeks to feel back to normal.

Feelings after the ligation

Many relatives had their “tubes tied” with seemingly no adverse effects, and emotionally and spiritually we felt at ease with our decision to sterilize. We felt as if a burden had been lifted from us. We had chosen the family size we felt we could handle. I even asked Mark if he could one day have the vasectomy so that if we were widowed, neither one of us could have children by other spouses. Unbeknownst to me, my conscience was dead. I lived for days that suited our lifestyle and me. I felt morally good, even though I attended no church and did not pray.

Throughout Mark’s life, he knew that he was Catholic and would never consider leaving the Church. He would often recite the rosary and would read books on private revelation and Catholic theology.

Unfortunately, he was not clear on the Church’s teaching on birth control, and he had assumed that Catholic couples were to have as many children as they could, without regard to finances and the emotional wellbeing of the family. Hence when we made the decision to sterilize, Mark felt relieved because in his mind he felt that, financially and emotionally, two children were what we could handle. The spring of 1992, Mark told me that he wanted to have our marriage validated in the Catholic Church. I did not see anything against it, so I went along with him and spoke to a priest about getting married in a Catholic church. It seemed like a blur. He asked us if we were married before, if we were open to children, and if we saw this as an act of permanency. We said yes to all of these questions without much thought. We laughed a little, signed a paper, and off we weren’t to be married the following weekend. No one thought about Pre-Cana classes, birth control, and the like. In Mark’s mind he felt he was open to children because we had two children already. I hadn’t a clue as to what was being said and the significance of the words spoken. I just went along with it and I felt good about it. Now I believe that only our ignorance saved us from the wrath of God and that He gave us a shake to the shoulder that eventually opened our eyes. We were beginning to see a dim light in the fog we had created for ourselves.

My energies were fixed on my children and trying to live out my daily existence with semblance of order. I would get up in the morning, fix breakfast for the kids, get dressed, fix lunch, play, read, fix dinner, greet Mark, go off to work till 11 p.m., return home, and follow the same routine the very next day. By this time, we had moved from our apartment into an even smaller one. Things seemed so dismal, with us trying to get ahead and into a home. We still were trying to pay off our debt from college and the purchases made prior to our marriage. Our relationship seemed to run hot and cold. It felt as though Mark was mad at me one day, not made at me the next. He seemed frustrated by the lack of funds for his idea of a future and my lack of concern for our future, we were still unsettled.

Caitlinn began preschool at Mark’s parish and enjoyed the education, and I enjoyed the friendship of other stay-at-home moms. While their husbands were away on business trips, they would take care of the household and children. They lived in big, beautiful homes, had two children and sometimes a dog, and would run children to various activities. More and more I felt emotionally trapped, but I did not know why. I felt as if I had accomplished enough. I had enough education, and I spend enough time with my husband and children. Yet I felt something was missing. I would cry in the car whenever I was alone, begging God to help me, but I did not know what kind of help I needed. I felt empty inside, and I did not understand why. God was pricking my conscience, and I didn’t like it one bit!

More and more, I felt as if Mark and I were on different planets. I felt totally unappreciated and totally in the right. I thought I was doing more than enough and so did he. We were stalemated.

During the next couple of years Mark would faithfully listen to the program Mother Angelica Live, and he contented attending mass. Mark would also go to confession on a regular basis. He had spoken to a priest about his part in the tubal cauterization and his absolved and that due to lack of funds for the reversal, he was not mandated to have the tubal reversed. I would listen to Mother Angelica Live and other Catholic programs with an aloofness, so as not to further prick my conscience and upset myself.

Toward the end of 1994, the Holy Spirit enabled me to reopen to the teachings of the Catholic Church! My children were becoming more involved with the Church. Caitlinn was attending the parish kindergarten, and my son was involved with the preschool program. Slowly Our Lady was inviting me to learn more about the faith.

Unbeknownst to me, I was becoming Catholic. My conversation began when I began defending the Blessed Mother. Someone at work would ask me something about the blessed Mother or about the virginity of Mary, and I would end up defending her. I wouldn’t have the answer, but I felt Mary needed to be defended.

By the time I had made the decision to become a Catholic, we had moved into our first home. We remained in the same parish, but now we were blessed with many wonderful new neighbors. In my mind, I was totally Catholic. I believed everything that I heard from Mother Angelica. I would listen to Mark talk about the faith and would read small passages about the Church teaching. Granted, I did not read the Bible as Mark did, but I thought I was gaining in understanding of the faith. I suspect Mark was reciting the rosary daily for my conversion. Our Lady answered him. Now all I needed to do was attend RCIA classes.

It was during my experience in RCIA when I met a priest who had been a convert to Catholicism and who helped make the transition to Catholicism wary for me. Although he did not teach the RCIA classes, he heard my first confession and brought me into the Church in April 1995. The RCIA program was inadequate because it did not explain enough about the Church’s teaching on marriage and birth control, so the priest guided and taught me about doctrine, the Ten Commandments, the Bible, and the Catechism.

I spoke to him about my tubal ligation, and he asked if I regretted having it done. I responded, “Absolutely.” I felt so much guilt and remorse over my tubal ligation. Every time I would see a child, I would feel sad. I would become envious of any relative or friend who was pregnant. God in His infinite wisdom chose to open my eyes to what I had done and allowed me to feel the pain and sorrow He must have felt at our decision to sterilize. To cope with these tumultuous feelings, I distanced myself emotionally. I was on an emotional roller coaster.

Both Mark and I regretted the decision we had made for sterilization. He felt as if we had lost a part of ourselves and felt disconnected from God. Although we knew that God had forgiven us, we wanted to correct or undo what we had one. However, we felt there was nothing we could do. Mark’s insurance would not cover my reversal, and we could not afford $10,000. We felt that, for the time being, we had no recourse.
During this time, our faith was deepening thanks to our acceptance of God’s grace and His will through the frequenting of the Eucharist and penance. We felt as though the Holy Spirit was leading us, being drawn to a magnet. My husband and our daughter had strong attachment to St. Therese of Lisieux; my husband learned about a novena to her. We would get up early in the morning to pray to her for the miraculous healing of my tubes and a third baby. Also, we had met a priest who had had a relic of Padre Pio, a slipper worn by him, stained with his blood! I had never heard of Padre Pi. The priest offered to come over to our house and lay the relic on each one of us. It was life altering. When I placed the slipper on my stomach, I felt an electric current run through me. Spiritually we felt an overwhelming peace and acceptance of God’s Will and a fierce determination to follow Him regardless of the costs. We became curious about Padre Pio’s life and after a friend bought us his biography, we were hooked.
One day I asked the priest for the relic of Padre Pio in order to seek the miraculous healing of my tubes. He gave it to me for a week. One night I placed the relic on my abdomen and felt a rush of energy in the area of my fallopian tubes. I prayed fervently and hoped that my tubes were healed so that I could have a third child. I wanted back what was mine to begin with. I had carelessly thrown it away but wanted to be restored physically and emotionally to God. When I gave the relic back, I told him what I felt when I had placed it on my tubes. He said that I would know if it was a miracle if in a year, I was pregnant with my third child! Mark and I were both thrilled at the thought of having another child.

A year went by and there still was no pregnancy. We were growing in our faith, but we felt a gnawing need to know if a miracle had occurred within me. I did not know enough about my faith to ask relevant questions about marriage and children to my spiritual director, and we still and no real understanding what the Catholic Church taught about birth control! We did not thoroughly understand what the Church taught about marriage, either! Clearly, we needed a more mature understanding of what we had entered into many years ago.

When my son had entered kindergarten, I had gone back to work full-time during the day. Still wanting to rectify the sin my tubal ligation and somewhat convinced that the tubes were not healed, I called my new insurance company to see if a reversal was covered. Surprisingly, the operation was covered by my insurance! I was ecstatic! When I told my husband, he was thrilled. We had been saying daily family rosaries, and we would ask Our Lady for the miraculous healing of my tubes and fora while to be conceived. To me our prayers were bring answered.

By this time, we had an understanding of how a sacramental marriage is different from a non-sacramental marriage and why all artificial birth control is against God’s Law. A sacramental marriage is likened to the Trinity. When a couple comes together giving themselves totally to each other with no barriers, Christ becomes a part of the union and blesses it. He guides and protects the couple in all their needs. When a couple uses artificial birth control, God is no longer a factor. This is not because God leaves but because the couple doesn’t trust God and out of arrogance and fear says, “I know what You said to us, but we just can’t believe You. We are going to fix the problem ourselves.” I find that it takes humans three times as long to fix a problem when the don’t make God part of the solution. It took us 7 painful years to be able to say yes to God and no to ourselves. The funny thing is that when you say yes to God, you ARE saying yes to yourself. Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humor?

I first went to a gynecologist who was pro-life, or as pro-life as I was going to get. He was not Catholic, and he saw nothing wrong with artificial birth control. When I went to my other doctor, I told him about my hopes of having my tubal reversed. His practice did not perform the original surgery, but he seemed completely supportive of my desires. I was thrilled when he gave me the name of a reputable doctor who did reversals. I spoke to my husband, and he said we should call him. After several months of hassle with our insurance company, we were able to set up the appointment. We sent for the postoperative report from the doctor who originally performed the surgery. The postoperative report stated that my tubes had been burned in three areas, and my doctor said I needed at least 3 inches of healthy tubes to perform the surgery. The report did not say where the burning occurred. The doctor said that there would be a 33 percent chance of him not being able to reconnect the tubes, which meant there was a 67 percent chance of reconnecting. I was nervous and worried about not regaining my fertility.

I was detrained to find out if the tubes were burned in places that could be reconnected or not. I called the doctor who performed the operation, but I got no comfort there. I was told that the surgery performed on me was irreparable. The tubes were so damaged in too large of an area that no surgery would fix the problem. Tears streamed down my face. We had come so far, and I felt I had to have done this for God, to give Him something of real value and worth. Here was my one attempt at loving Him the way He ought to be loved, and I was at a seeming dead end. I called my doctor and told him what the other doctor had said. He said to go through with it, and that time would tell all. I was not at all reassured.

On August 5, 1998, I went in for the surgery. I felt like a little girl going in for a tonsillectomy! Mark and I refused to get our hopes up because there was a 33 percent chance that it could not be reversed, but we knew we had to go through with this. When I awoke, I was told that the surgery had been a success. The doctor told me that he cut off 8 centimeters of damaged tubes on each side and reconnected the healthy tubes. I still had 4 centimeters of my tubes left. The operation from start to finish took about 4 hours. I could not believe it. When my husband and our children arrived, we were on cloud nine. Emotionally, we felt so strong and could feel God’s mercy streaming down upon us. God was so infinitely kind.

We had chosen to have the tubal reversed during the summertime so that I could recover at my leisure. Initially, the pain and fatigue were somewhat overwhelming. I was in the hospital overnight and went home the next day. I was in bed for 2 days sleeping on and off, but within a week I was able to walk relatively normally. By the end of the month, I was able to walk normally and could do most things that I could do before with relative ease.

Feelings after ligation reversal

When I went to see the doctor after the surgery, I asked him how he was able to reconnect my tubes. He said that when he went in, he saw only one area of burning. The other two areas had disintegrated! In other words, it was a miracle performed by Padre Pio and his intercession. The burning that I felt when the relic had touched me was the reconnecting of my tubes in four places. In a most loving way God knew that I would have the surgery and gave me the opportunity to have it reversed. I was stunned, elated, dumbfounded, and filled with a joy I will never forget. Mark and I felt such a renewed sense of commitment to our marriage and a connection to each other beyond the present moment.

Through wonderful friends and our spiritual directors, we had grown to be more open to God’s grace and love. We had a deeper sense of commitment to each other due to our struggles, spiritually and emotionally. We had bonded through this and felt truly blessed. Yet there was still one more obstacle to go through. After having studied our faith that year following the surgery, God’s grace pricked my conscience and showed me that my marriage to Mark was not a sacramental one. God took me back to the interview tithe the parish priest and allowed me to see that we had not been honest in our answers to the questions asked prior to our marriage. When asked whether we were open to children, we said yes, when in fact we were not because of my surgery. My spiritual director advised me to speak to the tribunal of our diocese. I called the tribunal and asked if a marriage would be valid under our circumstances. After several conversations we were informed that we were not validly married! What a blessing God had given us in awaking us to the truth! And so, we were validly married on November 13, 1999, which was 12 years after we had met! We had come full circle.

Even though we have not conceived another child, we are richly blessed with the opportunity to live our faith. We hope that single Catholic considering marriage outside the Church will learn from our experience. Within days of our “real marriage”, the effects were life altering. God had taken root in our everyday existence and had filled in the blemishes and flaws that we both had. He had “polished us” and allowed us to love each other as He wanted. We became more charitable and patient in our speech and our actions. We were more unified in our understanding of childrearing. We were more conscious of each other’s feelings. We though more about what the other was thinking, and our respect for each other in all ways heightened.

In His infinite love and mercy God allowed us to feel His mercy and also His justice. He allowed us to feel His mercy and also His justice. He allowed us to go through these events so that we would never forget what we had lost by our own poor decisions. His mercy also lets us embrace Him as a Father and a Savior in such a way that we would never want to leave His side. By our saying yes to having children, we allowed the Creator to be a part of our marriage. Our marriage was blessed by our submission to the Church’s teaching on what a true marriage is. We had become a true union bound by God.

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