32. How to carry our daily crosses during Lent with Tammy Peterson and Queenie Yu

You know , it was redeeming .

I strive to tell stories that inspire , illuminate and enrich the lives of Catholic women , to help them in living out our vocation of raising the next generation of leaders and saints .

In his letter , Saint John Paul II highlighted women's God-given vocation , women's human dignity , equality and complementarity with men . A woman is called to be a mother , sometimes in the body , but always in the soul . Emily Stimson Chapman wrote succinctly and beautifully in The National Catholic Register about the feminine genius of women .

Who is the ideal woman , the ideal mother ? It is Our Lady who , sadly , is much maligned in our society because she embodies the opposite of worldly values and radical feminist ideals . Instead she embodies the opposite of worldly values and radical feminist ideals . Instead she embodies humility and . God's truth that love is sacrifice .

We know , as Our Lady and Our Lord have taught us , that the Christian life does not exist without love , service and sacrifice . To serve means to reign . St John Paul II wrote in his letter to Catholics called Mulieris Dignitatem , on the dignity and vocation of women .

When Mary said yes to the angel Gabriel to answer God's call to become the mother of God , it was not a response of weakness but of strength . Mother Mary's seemingly meek and humble yes turned into her pivotal role in salvation history . We cannot have Jesus without Mary .

After the fall of our first parents , adam and Eve , the gates of heaven were closed to all of us In his mercy . God said . Heaven can be opened once again after the coming of the Saviour Jesus Christ . Jesus' life is so closely intertwined

with his mother , a life that we can contemplate and emulate through the mysteries of the Holy Rosary . It was Our Lady's example of strength and this long-standing Catholic meditation of the Holy Rosary that serve as the bonds of friendship between Canadian podcaster Tammy Peterson and fellow Catholic convert Queenie Yu .

Queenie journeyed with Tammy when she battled the cross of cancer and illness . How did Tammy take up her cross ? How did Queenie have the boldness to share her faith with someone who was not yet a friend . We will listen to part two of their story of faith , friendship and conversion . Listen P art Two of their story of faith , friendship and conversion .

Let's begin with a prayer . Let's pray the Hail Mary , in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit . Amen , hail Mary , full of grace , the Lord is with thee . Blessed art thou amongst women , and blessed is the fruit of thy womb , jesus . Holy Mary , mother of God , pray for us sinners , now and at the hour of our death . Amen .

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit . Amen . Thank you . And finally , I just want to go back to . You had mentioned the Dynamic Women of Faith Conference over 500 women . You could hear a pin drop when you were speaking . Dorothy Pilarski , the organizer , had recognized your friendship . Both of you on stage gave you flowers .

It was just a beautiful moment to witness , and you had also spoken during your speech about the cross , the crosses that you have carried , your illness , your daughter's illness , and I believe you had also spoken during your speech about the cross , the crosses that you have carried , your illness , your daughter's illness , and I believe you had also shared the story

of your husband finding him in distress in your house . And how did all of these crosses ? And , Queenie , you were there with Mrs Peterson when she was enduring the cross of her illness . How did all of these crosses ? How were you able to carry all of these crosses ? What can we learn from you ?

She was born in 1992 , so that would have been oh yeah , and it was when we moved from Harvard , from Boston , to Toronto . That was in 1998 . That's when she started to show symptoms that I understood something was terribly wrong and I began to pray . I began to pray , but I prayed to my mother . I prayed to my mother .

My mother was ill , she had dementia , so she was dying and she died in 2007 . So from then on , I would have been praying to my mother , and I realize now , in later years , that I was praying to what was best in my mother , and what's best in my mother is Mother Mary . So I was praying to Mother Mary to help .

I was always asking my mom to help , help , help my daughter , help my daughter to find her way to health and protect her , and it was a daily practice of praying to my mother .

And then you know , so that I think , when I began to realize that it was Mother Mary that I was praying to , and I didn't realize that until I was sick and Queenie brought me the rosary and I began to pray the rosary and it was powerful to me , and so then I began to pray directly to Mother Mary for her intercession and my troubles , and it was very

powerful because it did help . It did help I didn't have as much pain .

So by the time I was well and my husband was sick , by then I had been praying for a very long time and had become much more sophisticated in my understanding of exactly even without entering into the church yet , even without entering into the church yet exactly what I was praying for , with the help of Queenie .

And I had some priests actually who had reached out to me too , and so I talked to them . Father Fred Dolan and he still reaches out to me all the time , and at that point it was him and also the priest who works , Father Eric , Father Eric , Nicolai yes , his last name is Nicolai .

And he came to my apartment where my husband and I were just before we left , and he blessed me and he told me to pray for gratitude and that would . That was very , uh , powerful for me , because I listened and I thought , pray for gratitude , okay . And so that began my journey of deeply , more deeply , understanding what it meant to pray for gratitude .

And I find now that if I'm too consumed by what's happened to me

and what is concerning me , if I start to think about what I'm grateful for , that takes me out of my head , so that I'm not focusing on myself and I'm focusing on others . And when Queenie taught me the rosary , she'd say what is your intention ? So then I'd think what's my intention ? And at first it was , I know , pray for my mother who's passed away .

So pray for all those who've passed away . And then , I had a little . That was my first granddaughter and she was very tiny , and so pray for all the new babies . Okay , so pray for all the new babies . And then , you know , I would want to pray for my children who are young parents . Okay , well , pray for all the young parents .

Young parents , okay , well , pray for all the young parents . And then pray for all the sick and dying , and pray for all the people in the hospital . I remember we prayed for all the peoples in the hospital . I was in the hospital .

So all those intentions , oh , when you get out of that , you're not thinking about yourself anymore and worrying about how downtrodden your life is or anything . I don't know , it just it's . It just seems like very practical . It seems like a very practical thing to do to pay attention to others , to give your best to others .

Somehow that miraculously stops you from any of your preoccupations that you may have come in with of your own needs or your own inadequacies , because you're feeling like there's something missing . So you look to yourself what do I need ? Maybe I need to shop on Amazon , right , maybe I need to go buy something .

But when it turns out , actually , if you start doing things for others , those preoccupations , they just go away , because that isn't what we need . We don't need another thing in our lives . We need each other . We need to help lift up each other . That's what we're here for . Lift up each other , that's what we're here for .

But now you're fine , right .

You need lumbar support because 95% of people have low back pain , and so it's a . It's a big problem because sitting percent of people have low back pain , and so it's a .

It's a big problem because sitting sitting is trouble , and so I would even suggest for you guys to use lumber support in your chairs because , uh , you want to keep and I'm I'm pretty strong , right ? I ? I had done yoga before . Now I do pilates and I do . I have a teacher who teaches me all the time but I still hurt my back .

So it isn't—you can be as well-prepared as you want , but then— anyway , my back got taken out and I couldn't go on tour with my husband . So my husband said you know your daughter's having some troubles . She could probably use your help . So I was no good .

I wasn't going to stay at home alone , so I came down here and I didn't even think I was that much help , but she was so grateful to have me here , her mother , who was walking with the cane and barely walking even because I could barely even walk , but every day I walked just a little bit and over the month of going to a chiropractor and getting treatments

to stretch me out . See , that's the other thing we have to do is we have to hang .

We have to hang from something so that our vertebrae get a little bit of space , and so that's one of the things that we're supposed to do daily to make sure that our spines stay , uh , without any pinched nerves in them , because things , just your , your vertebrae , the , the cushioning between them , it's vulnerable , and so if , if we go out to our kids , play

things and hang for a little while and relax , your feet have to be on the ground so that you can actually relax and let your spine lengthen . I did that like every day , every day , every day , and I don't do it , and I don't even do it that much anymore and I should , so that'll remind me to do it .

But through that month when I finally , when my month , when my back was better , michaela's situation had resolved and I left and I thought that's strange .

That's strange that I hurt my back , came to be with her and through this month of rehabilitation , everything has turned out all right and so God brings good out of everything yeah , yeah , but it's not always easy . Right , like you said , I was in a lot of pain . I didn't know whether at Easter I was going to be able

to come to the church and do what I had to do , because I could barely stand up . I was kind of bent over . It was not good , but it was fine . It was fine and it was a lovely day . And from then I got better . And it was a lovely day and from then I got better .

So I , just one day at a time , one moment at a time , sometimes one moment at a time and do the next right thing . What's the next right thing ? Well , to get your cane and go out and walk for a little while . Maybe you can only go a few steps , but to do it .

And you know , at the end of that month , when I got back that I didn't have to use the cane and I could start doing Pilates again , I was so much weaker .

I was so much weaker and I thought , gee , you know , if I had just decided I was going to just sit in a scooter and not do anything because my back was hurt , I would have lost all my muscle power .

And then how would I have rehabilitated a month later when my back didn't hurt , because then I would be so catastrophically weak that it would take forever for me to rehabilitate . So you know , if you can get up and do the next right thing , get up and do the next right thing .

Get up and do the next right thing , like , don't , don't lay in bed in self-pity . Get up , do what you can , rest as much as you need , but get up and do , do what you can and get yourself through that . You know , when I got better and Jordan was sick , that time we went back on tour .

When he was getting , you know , I thought you're not better , but you're probably better enough . We could probably go on the book tour , and he wasn't sure that he could do it . But I said , well , I think you could do it . I tried to . I actually was hopeful .

I think I was solidly in line with Mother Mary and she was telling me to be hopeful and to persevere . Right , that's what she was telling me to do . So I passed that knowledge on to Jordan and I was hopeful and I was asking him to persevere with me , and so he went back out on tour . But he wasn't well .

He was still in a lot of pain and it went on for months and I couldn't make inroads into his recovery . And we were in Detroit , quite close to Toronto , and I thought I'm going to go home . And so I went home and I wanted to be on tour and I wanted to be with my husband , but I wasn't able to .

And so I prayed and I said you know , I would really like to be on tour , I like to be with my husband , I don't want to be here by myself . But I don't know what to do . I don't know what to do because what we were doing wasn't working . And I heard a voice say to me get your own hotel room . And I thought , well , that's a strange message .

I mean , I didn't see that coming . And so I called a friend who is a spiritual friend of mine , so I was going to listen to what she had to say and I said I think God told me to get my own hotel room . And she said I think that's a good . Get my own hotel room . And she said I think that's a good idea , I think that you ought to do that .

And I thought , okay , so I went back on tour and I got my own hotel room and the first night we got there we didn't have a lecture . So Jordan said oh , you can stay with me tonight . I said I have my own hotel room , I think I'll just go stay . And he said really . But over time he came to realize that that gave him more personal space .

It gave him more time to do what he needed to do . He could come home after the shows and I wasn't sleeping in the bed , he didn't have to be quiet , he could probably watch a movie after , because he was all wound up from the night of the lecture and everything .

And then he could sleep in in the morning and I wasn't trying to , you know , get out of bed and do Pilates early in the morning .

And for me , in that other room , I began to open the blinds , do my Pilates and schedule podcasts , which I hadn't been doing Because we were sharing this room , we were too much in each other's way , we weren't taking enough personal space and we weren't doing . I wasn't and I was not doing what I needed to do .

If he had a podcast , I made sure that I sat in the corner and read a book in the hotel room , but I wasn't even scheduling mine and read a book in the hotel room , but I wasn't even scheduling mine . So you have to be really careful and see what it is you're doing in your relationship .

Are you getting what you need to be the best person that you can be so that you can offer to others what you have to offer , or are you submitting so much of yourself to your husband that you're being squashed ? But you know you're doing it to yourself largely because you're not saying what you need .

You have to say what you need , and God helped me with that . He spoke to me again and told me what I had to do , and it was nothing that I was thinking . So it was definitely not me . I didn't think that up , it was him .

And it's been very good and we've both been very happy with the result of that , because we've become more effective in our pursuit of helping others . So you know , I know it takes a lot of reflection , right , it takes a lot of self-reflection and a lot of listening to hear what God might have to say .

And you know , instead of talking all the time and saying what we think is what we think , listening and being attentive , but listening then you'll hear what you need to hear . Yeah .

prayed them , prayed the prayers , and I had had my first surgery . It hadn't gone well . They couldn't find anything they was looking for and you know they had a sophisticated way . That's why I went down there .

They had put dye into my lymph system so that my lymph was a color that would show up on an MRI screen , and they thought if they did that , they'd be able to see a plume come through and they would know where the leak was , where the lymph was leaking out of my lymph system .

But they didn't see it anywhere , which is kind of remarkable that they couldn't find it yet . I was still wasting away and then they told me they were going to have to cut me open .

So the next surgery was going to be coming soon and they had told me I would have to do a fat challenge , so I would have to eat something with fat in it , and I'd been avoiding fat so far , because I wanted the lymph system to rest , and maybe it would heal if it rested , because when you eat fat , that's when the lymph system works hard .

And so I ate something that was fatty the night before because I thought they're going to cut me with a knife , so I don't know , it just felt like the right , you know . So those are those moments where God is telling you what to do . So you don't know that you're doing it , because God's telling you to do it , but it seems like the right thing .

When something seems like the right thing to do , that's because you're having listening to your intuition and God is nudging you to to , uh , um , do the next right thing .

So I ate something with fat and I looked at the the bag , cause there was a bag that was sitting on the side of my abdomen , because there was a tube that was draining this fluid , because if it didn't , then my stomach swelled up so much . Well , draining this fluid , because if it didn't , then my stomach swelled up so much .

Well , it wouldn't have been , it would be then wouldn't have been the end of me . So it had a drain on it to keep it reasonably comfortable . And , uh , the next morning I was having breakfast and an intern came and then the head nurse came and they said we'd like you to do a fat challenge . And I said , "h , I did it last night .

Oh , they said , well , let's see this bag . So I lift up this bag and it was clear liquid . It looked like urine , it was just clear yellow liquid . Oh , they said there's no fat in the bag because it should be milky . It should be milky because if the lymph is still leaking out and you've eaten fat , then there should be fat in it .

They said you're better . I said , oh , that means I'm better . That had been months . Right , that had been months . And so then , within half an hour , I was in the hospital and they'd taken out my IV and this other plug that was in me . Oh , and I had a TPN diet tube that was here , so where you eat and the tube just takes the food to your heart .

So they took that out .

So they took out all these things and I went to the Airbnb where my husband was there and my mother-in-law was there and my sister-in-law and her kids and my son and his wife , and we all were together and I didn't have anything attached to me and I looked at my phone and I realized it was August 19th , it was our anniversary , and that was the day I told

Jordan I was better . I had no idea it was that day until the day was practically half over before I understood that this was the day that I was healed was my anniversary . The doctors didn't know what to say . They said sometimes when they put the dye in people's lymph systems , the hole will close . And they had put dye in my system .

So that may have been the mechanical reason , but that had happened . On the day I said it was going to happen was something that was difficult for my husband to ignore , let's put it that way . So I think it was good for his faith to have me healed that day . It was a miracle that he couldn't he couldn't talk his way out of yeah .

Some people are shy to approach people that they don't know well or they think , oh , I'm not gonna pray the rosary with this person because maybe they're not Catholic or they're not taking their faith too seriously and I don't want to impose . But no , go for it . People are seeking comfort , so bring them to Mary and , as I said , anybody could do it .

So if somebody is a senior and she's experiencing a lot of aches and pains , she could pray the rosary with somebody , or a child . Anybody can do it . It's not rocket science and it will really change somebody's life , as we have seen with Tammy .

If I got it from my husband , it easily could be a Carl Jung phrase because he's studied Jung for such a very long time . But I think it's a beautiful and succinct phrase because we often wonder what we should be doing and if we just think that it's up to us just to pay attention and listen .

So to listen and we have eyes and we have ears , that's what our senses are for to pay attention , and we will see or hear , or feel , or intuit . The next right thing to do , and that's all we have to do , is to take the next right step . We don't have to think about solving the world problems or to save the world .

What we need to do is to want to do good . That's our vision , is to do good to find heaven , really to find the kingdom of God . We want to find what is , you know , the ultimate beauty in the world .

But all we can do is to take is to do the next right thing , because here we are on earth , we're mortal , we have feet and hands and a brain , and we're mortal , so we have to work our magic in the world . So we do that , one step at a time , but we don't know what the outcome is going to be .

And we don't worry about the outcome , because that's not our problem . Our problem is the process to take the next right step . It's process , not outcome . The outcome is not up to us .

their mother during their difficult times , and I look forward to hopefully seeing you again . So , God bless and thank you so much for taking this time . Appreciate it . Thank you . Thank you , it was great to see you both . Thank you . Thank you . Great to talk to you, and my kids say, "ello , thank you .

Woman helped in the redemption of man , as Jesus' sacrifice redeemed us all , and we see how Mary is the new Eve . Mary became our mother , a mother to all . May the story of Tammy and Queenie's faith and friendship inspire and strengthen you in your faith and motherhood , especially during this Lenten season .

My family wishes you a blessed and holy Lent Until next time when we turn the tables and my daughter interviews me about the retreat I recently went on and the spiritual nuggets

that are helping me in my journey of motherhood . Take care , thank you and God bless . Thank you for listening to the Veil and Armor podcast .