“All my life I have been haunted by God.” —Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Possessed” 

Lauretta Hannon

Once bitterly anti-Catholic, a convert reflected on a memory as her baptism approached. 

When I was 5, my dad sustained a grave injury in a motorcycle wreck. The doctors insisted his leg had to be amputated or he would die. For some reason, he didn’t believe them and instead decided the cure would come from ocean salt water. 

Once the motorcycle was put in the shop for repairs, off the family went for a month at Jacksonville Beach. During all of this, his faithful Catholic aunts in Connecticut prayed. 

Being at the beach was a treat. Mama and Daddy didn’t fight or engage in any alcohol-fueled tomfoolery. Since I had no idea about the severity of Daddy’s situation, this was just a fun vacation for me.  

I liked the beach so much that I refused to leave one afternoon, even though an angry sunburn was on the rampage. My father told me nicely that it was time to call it quits, but I held my ground. Arms crossed in defiance, pouting peeling lips. Minutes passed.  

As he grabbed my hand to lead me back to the hotel, I went limp and forced him to drag me. Not just a few feet but the entire way. At least a hundred yards through sand, the parking lot, and up nubby concrete stairs to the second-floor room. Ferocious, obstinate, renegade child. 

“Lauretta, get up! Lauretta, I said to get up now!” 

Every time he spoke my name, I disobeyed more stridently. 

At the end of the month, we returned home. By this point, Daddy’s leg was miraculously restored. But oddly, his motorcycle had vanished out of thin air while we were away.  

The shop owner threw his hands up, saying the bike was there one day and gone the next. No sign of forced entry. Nothing disturbed in the shop. A complete mystery–to everyone but the aunts. 

In addition to pleading for his healing, the aunts had petitioned the Lord to make the dangerous motorcycle disappear. They successfully prayed away a fatal infection and made a Honda 450 go bye-bye for good. 

All of this came to mind as my baptism drew near. But most striking was the scene of my rebellion on Jacksonville Beach. 

Like my father on the water’s edge that day, God had been calling me by name since the beginning. Hounding me, nipping at my heels. I’d been on the run, not just from him but especially from his Son.  

It was how I was raised, by a cradle Catholic Daddy who’d rejected the faith long before I was born. No wonder I’d sought every spiritual channel outside of Christianity. 

But by the age of 51, this resistance fighter was worn slap out. I ended the chase; stopped to listen with the ears of my heart; and finally laid down my sword. 

The dissident daughter would protest no more.