a Name
Travis and I were still discussing baby names when I was seven months pregnant. We were waiting until birth to learn the gender, but we knew that if the baby was a girl, she would be named Teresa Elizabeth. The boy’s name, however, was undecided. I wanted to name my son Linus, but Travis strongly protested. I tried to point out that not many boys are named Linus, so the second pope was just sitting around in heaven with hardly anyone to pray for. I also explained that a boy named Linus would be sure to have a never-ending supply of blue security blankets. Travis rolled his eyes and said it wasn’t going to happen.
In the midst of this ongoing bickering, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen resurfaced in my life. As a volunteer for a local women’s ministry, I had the task of applying for a grant named after the late archbishop. My only impression of the man was still that he looked like a vampire, so I wanted to know more about him and his mission before I begged for money from people who loved him.
My husband and I knew who Fulton Sheen was in a peripheral sense. Sheen’s birthplace is twenty miles from our home, and he grew up in Peoria, very close to where we were both born and raised, and were raising our own family. We knew he had been a television personality in the 1950s. Aside from these facts, though, we knew very little of the man. Just as Nathaniel in the John’s Gospel asked whether anything good could come out of Nazareth (cf. Jn 1:46), I wondered whether anything good could come out of El Paso, Illinois — a small, simple town that is no different from thousands of other lackluster small towns across the world.
But just like Nathaniel, I would soon learn that I was wrong.
One day I sat in front of the computer, watching YouTube videos as I continued my research. Fulton Sheen had once appeared on What’s My Line, an old game show, and I called Travis over to watch with me. We were impressed by his humor and the way that everyone clearly liked him. The people on the show obviously respected Bishop Sheen and enjoyed being in his presence. We were shocked; never had we seen a Catholic figure so well received in a secular setting. Obviously, there was much more to the man than we thought.
We watched old videos posted on the internet, listening to him preach. We read about him on blogs and websites. Again and again, we were blown away by how intelligent and yet approachable he was. His face wasn’t foreboding like I had remembered. His broad smile was sincere, and he told jokes and funny stories, often at his own expense. I was especially drawn to how he spoke about children; it was obvious that he respected and appreciated them. Fulton Sheen was funny, articulate, and clearly loved Jesus Christ and his Church. Turning to my husband, I said: “His cause for canonization is open. This man is gonna be a saint someday.”
We decided then that if the child I was carrying was a boy, we would name him after Fulton Sheen. Soon enough we settled on the name James Fulton, a way to honor Travis’s brother and Saint James the Greater, as well as our new friend, Bishop Sheen.
After that day we began asking for Sheen’s intercession. We still didn’t know whether the baby would be a boy or girl but suspected that he was a boy. Most mornings when I prayed, I would reach out to Bishop Sheen and ask him to pray for my pregnancy, for a short and easy labor and delivery, and for a healthy baby. I asked Sheen to follow my child through his life, constantly praying for him so that he would grow into a good man who loved God.
I knew that I could trust Sheen to take good care of my child. Midwesterners tend to be hardworking and kind, and Sheen was a local boy to boot! It felt good knowing that such a holy man was praying for my unborn baby.
Chapter 5
A Troubling Dream
At the beginning of my eighth month of pregnancy, I began to second-guess my decision to have another homebirth.
My first two homebirths had been wonderful experiences, even though the labors had been long. But as this pregnancy continued, I began to think that another homebirth was no longer the best decision. I was already exhausted from being pregnant while caring for two very little ones, and I worried that I would labor for another seventeen to twenty-one hours as I had with Lydia and Bennet. If that were the case, when the time came to push, I was afraid I wouldn’t have it in me. I didn’t want to jeopardize our baby’s health or mine, so I brought my concerns to Travis, my midwife Bernice, and my mom. Mom liked the idea of the hospital, and Bernice was ready to support whichever decision I made. But Travis was convinced I had the strength of body and spirit and thought I should stay at home. He encouraged me to pray about it, so I did.
A few nights later, I had a dream. Even though Travis and I usually choose not to learn the gender of our unborn children, at that time I had always known what we were having because of my dreams. With Lydia I dreamed that I was holding and cuddling a newborn baby girl. The dream was lifelike, and the next morning I confidently told Travis that I was pregnant with a girl. Travis laughed; but when I had a lifelike dream that I gave birth to a baby boy while pregnant with Bennet, he didn’t laugh again.
So by the time I was pregnant with James, Travis and I had started to take my baby-related dreams fairly seriously. But this dream was troubling, and I carried its heaviness with me throughout the next day, awaiting a chance to discuss it with my husband.
Finally, after eating dinner, cleaning the kitchen, and tucking in the kids, Travis and I crawled into our queen-sized bed. With his head on the white pillow and mine on his chest, we pulled the quilt up to our shoulders.
“Travis,” I said to him, “I need to tell you something.”
The look on his face showed that he knew I was serious, and even a little anxious. “Okay. What is it?”
“Last night I dreamt that here in our bedroom, in the middle of the floor, I gave birth to a baby boy. It was a completely normal dream — nothing weird or out of place. Actually, it was really lifelike.”
He interrupted me and proudly said, “I knew we were having a boy!”
“Travis, in the dream he was blue; he wasn’t alive. I dreamed I gave birth to a stillborn.”
Fear made his eyes widen slightly, and his mouth formed a silent, slow, “Oh.” Then he softly said to me, “That can’t happen.”
“I know. I know.”
We didn’t talk about the dream again, choosing to ignore it, but deep down I couldn’t shake it. Anxiety bundled and knotted in my shoulders and stomach, and it drove me to prayer time and time again, each time asking for God to make it obvious to me whether I should have my baby at home as I wanted, or plan on a hospital delivery.
In the end, I felt great peace about giving birth at home. It was the kind of peace that didn’t come from me: I was confident that home was where God wanted us. I told Travis and Bernice that I would stay home for the labor and delivery, though if at any point I asked for a transfer to the hospital, they should take me there immediately.
The knots untangled, and my whole body relaxed into the last month of pregnancy. The baby was healthy, and I was in God’s will. I was ready.
Chapter 6
The Cusp of Something Great
In mid-September, I woke up to my two-year-old daughter climbing into bed with me. Bleary-eyed, I noted that my husband had already left for work and my one-year-old son was still sleeping. I had had contractions through the night, but I was grateful that I had still been able to get in a good night’s sleep. I snuggled up to my daughter,
