My Vocation Story

"Sketches" is a booklet written each year about the lives of Daughters of Charity from our province who have died in the past year. They are “Reader’s Digest” condensed versions. As I read the lives
of the sisters from the last year, I couldn’t help wondering, “What would be written about me?” I know that it won’t be
saying “She was raised in a good, strong Catholic family.” My family was crippled early on through divorce and further broken by a second marriage – a fairytale stepmother.

After a little bouncing around I went to boarding school with the Visitation Sisters in Frederick, Maryland. It was there that I first learned what it meant to be Catholic and how to pray. From fourth through tenth grade, in two boarding different schools, I stayed with a couple of different families during vacations or friends when I could.

In tenth grade I got the inevitable news that I couldn’t return because my bills weren’t being paid. At that time I was spending my vacations with John and Angie Martin, who at the time had two little boys. With open arms, they welcomed me to live with them. John and Angie never had any legal relationship to me, but it is John, Angie and their children that I call family. I have five Martin brothers and sisters and two LaRock ones.

John and Angie were part of a network of couples. I was amazed to witness so many great couples and their families. I learned a lot from them.

It was at the end of my time in college, Franciscan University, that I seriously looked into being a sister. I briefly thought about it in seventh grade and then again tenth grade only to be put aside with being a tractor trailer driver and other possibilities.

I was looking for a community that is solid in its Catholic identity. I was and still am interested in foreign missions – so I looked for a community with international missions. I was studying to be a teacher, but more importantly I wanted to serve the poor. I wanted to server the poor while living with a group of women who would be there for one another and bonded together in prayer.

I began sifting through info about lots of communities. There was just one that my heart kept returning to – the Daughters of Charity.

I have found a home among a group of women who vary in personality like the colors of the rainbow, each sister is her own person. Yet, these women who individually are so different stand so strongly united as women given to God, in community for the service of the poor.

It is through my journey of learning a love for the Church, the generosity and example of the sisters I met along the way, and the love of the Martins and many others along the way that has led me to this special place of belonging – a place in which I can offer to others the beautiful gift I have been given.