Category Archives: My thoughts

SEPTEMBER THE ELEVENTH

Posted in Healing, My thoughts, Travel by

On Monday I returned from Scotland after leaving my youngest and last child off to university in Edinburgh. Fourteen years ago Brendan and I left our daughter Mary up to Aberdeen. We returned home to rear nine more of our children. Whew!!!! How did we do it? I can say it was by the power of the Holy Spirit that we accomplished the work. God gave us the strength one day at a time. Thank you Lord.
As I was thinking back I began to wonder what work I will return to do when I go home this time.
I did not have to wait long to find out. A taxi picked me up to take me to Glasgow airport. The taxi driver was friendly but I did not want to engage in conversation. After a while I thought I should respond to say something to him. He asked if I had enjoyed my time in Glasgow. I told him I was leaving my fourteenth child off to university. The questions came fast and furious after that. How old were my other children? How did you manage to rear that big family? You don’t look old enough to have all those children. I felt free to tell him how Jesus had helped me over the years, how he gave me strength to keep going, how he healed me of cancer. It turned out his mother was from Donegal and he was from a family of ten.
When I arrived in Belfast I got a lift with a young man to pick up my car. He was asking me if I had been to anywhere nice. I started over again telling him my story. He said I was too young to have so many children. I went on to give God the glory for him renewing my youth and keeping me alive.
Psalm 103 says He renews your youth like the eagles and satisfies you with good things.
I was feeling quite encouraged as I drove off home.
I saw a sign along the road which said “Potatoes for sale”. I screeched the brakes and turned left off into a side road. I always enjoy fresh potatoes grown locally. You can’t beat freshly boiled new potatoes and butter. I don’t like the packaged potatoes from the supermarket. It has been the staple food in Ireland. The crops of potatoes failed in the mid eighteen hundreds due to disease and many people died or left the country because of the famine. I have always had a bag of potatoes in my kitchen. My children would never go hungry.
One year a young lady from Boston came to help me for the summer, as my husband was travelling to India. Her mum rang her one day and her mum could not believe she was sitting down to a dinner of potatoes and beans! Back home Sheila would live on Mc Donald’s food or her favourite was a Sub sandwich with lashings of Ranch sauce. She was none the worse from living with us.
Sheila was to fly home on September the eleventh, when the twin towers fell. She was in shock as we watched the tragedy unfold on T V. We comforted her as best we could as she cried with her people back in America. She was able to get a flight home a few days later.
I am reminded of another young American woman who arrived into Dublin a few years later on the eleventh of September. Susan was coming to stay with her mum who lived here in Ireland. I met her in the airport. She was in a wheel chair with one suitcase. She had advanced M.E. a fatigue syndrome. It was amazing they let her fly in her condition. A kind friend on the other side in America had helped her get on the plane.
Susan lived with her mum for the next while and with rest, good food, love and the beauty of the Irish scenery she was getting more strength, but could not walk unaided. She came to visit us with her mum. Brendan and I offered to pray for her. The power of God touched her and she rose up and walked unaided. She completely recovered. In time she got married and had a child. There is a story in the bible where Peter and John spoke to a man who was crippled and commanded him to walk in the name of Jesus in Acts 3 v 6.
Back to my story about the potatoes. I met the potato man. I asked him if his potatoes were grown locally. He went on to tell me he used to grow crops himself but had to stop because he had arthritis in his spine and was in constant pain. He brought the potatoes in from Portrush. I soon forgot about the potatoes. I felt compassion for this young man who could not do the work he loved and support his family. I had been healed of cancer and pain and I wanted to tell James that Jesus could heal him too.
I spent the next thirty minutes telling him how I was healed by prayer to God. He told me his wife and children were praying for him. Well I said “God is about to answer their prayers, because I would like to pray for you”. He was agreeable. I believe the next time I call with him he will be healed and restored and growing his own potatoes. God, who made the universe and who made you and I, is kind. He can deliver us from our troubles, heal and restore.

I have just had potatoes for dinner.  Every time I have these potatoes I will remember James. I believe my work is to continue what I did on Monday, telling others what God has done for me.

Angela

Newspaper Article

Posted in Family Friday, My thoughts by

Here is an article about my daughter Angela.  She was joint first  in her A level year at Assumption Grammar School in August 2013

http://www.downnews.co.uk/local-schools-celebrate-after-as-and-a-level-results-are-released

Assumption Grammar School Principal Paul McBride with top performers Niamh McKeating and Angela McCauley with 2 A* and 2 A's at A-Level.

Assumption Grammar School Principal Paul McBride with top performers Niamh McKeating and Angela McCauley with 2 A* and 2 A’s at A-Level.

Our Fourteen Children go to University

Posted in Family Friday, My thoughts by

Our Fourteen Children go to University!

Angela is the youngest of our fourteen children.  Today she got her A level results, two A stars and two As and shares top of her year in Assumption Grammar, Ballynahinch, Northern Ireland.  Angela is going to Edinburgh university to study Neuroscience.  Now I can say all our fourteen children have succeeded in going on to university, two went to Aberdeen, Abertay Dundee, Edinburgh, Liverpool, L S E London, Oxford Brookes, Peterhouse Cambridge, three went to Queen’s Belfast, Strathclyde Glasgow, St Andrew’s, and  Ulster University.

In Northern Ireland we have an excellent education system which is free up to the age of eighteen.   Our children attended various schools, Coleraine Inst, Loreto College Coleraine, Dominican Portstewart,  Coleraine High, St Patrick’s  Downpatrick and Assumption, Ballynahinch.  They achieved good results at A level. Thanks to all the teachers out there in all the schools our children attended.  Thanks also to friends of our children and their parents who welcomed them into their homes, helped with lifts and encouraged them.  Thanks also to the praying community we are in touch with at home and abroad.  We would not have succeeded without you.

There is a song which goes “Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.  Let them be lawyers and doctors and such”, sung by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.  My husband Brendan and I did not plan to have a big family.  We were open to have children and God blessed us with fourteen!  It would have be too daunting task if we had know beforehand.  Each addition to the family fitted in and the other children helped with the younger ones.  Our children, who have left university, work in various fields.  We have a doctor, a lawyer, a midwife, community child nurse, an artist, a design engineer, managers in tourism and commerce and volunteers in the third world.

We laid down rules for our children and expected them to kept.  They enjoyed school and flourished at reading, writing and arithmetic.  Raising the younger half of the family has been a challenge as they have grown up in the world of computers and access to the internet.  Knowledge has increased and we have access to it through the media giving our young people many choices.  Brendan and I hope we have helped our children to make the right choices.

It was not always work and no play for our girls and boys.  They were never alone and could easily play together. Our children were involved in various sports and music.  I said, “You can attend as long as I do not have to give you a lift.”  Thankfully they could walto the rugby, soccer or gaelic playing fields.  Many trustworthy young men worked voluntarily as coaches in these sports.  Some of my children liked music. They got a bus to orchestra practice or they could go rowing on the river nearby.  Some American friends introduced us to skateboarding and rollerblading so our boys really enjoyed those activities.  There was a swimming pool nearby where they all learned to swim.

When I was in India I saw how mothers had someone to help with their children, as well as extended family at hand.  When I told our friends there, that Brendan and I worked with our children ourselves, they could not believe it.  In India, ordinary people have servants for cleaning, cooking and helping with children. They do not have to be excessively rich either.

We are not perfect parents, our children will vouch for that.  All children need to forgive parents and also I have learnt parents need to forgive their children.  Brendan and I hope for the goodness of God in the land of the living.  We have been through many troubles but God has been with us when we were weak.  I am glad to be alive today to celebrate my daughter’s success.

Angela

A Little Tender Loving Care

Posted in Healing, My thoughts, Prayer by

I needed to visit my hairdresser badly.  I had my left arm in a cast and could not drive so I was dependant on my son or husband taking me into town.  I had put off going but there comes a time when a girl knows she needs to visit the hairdresser.

I made the appointment and my son left me off. This was the first time I was in town since I broke my wrist. I looked at my left hand.  It had been pulled and bruised in order to set my bone in my wrist.  My thumb and four fingers were protruding just a few inches out of the cast.  I decided they needed a little tender loving care.  I made an appointment in a beauty saloon nearby to have a manicure.

When I visit Rosaleen, my hairdresser, I catch up on how her children are doing and how she is coping as a single mum with four teenage boys.  Very often she talks away, the scissors keep snipping and before we know I have a shorter haircut than I had planned. Does that happen to you?

I think hairdressers have an important job.  They are counsellors and comforters.  Very often they are the only people some pensioners meet in the week.  Getting one’s hair washed is soothing.  They know all the news in the community.  They tell you how well you look.  It is a lot cheaper going to Rosaleen than going to a therapist.

Rosaleen was one of the first people I told I had cancer.  She kept me looking beautiful through the weeks of my treatment and was always caring.  The saloon would be all abuzz when I came in and told them I was healed of cancer.  Rosaleen has read my book and passes it onto her customers.  I enjoyed my beauty treatment at the hairdressers, so on to my next stop the manicurist.

I had not told my husband I was going to have a manicure.  I thought everyone is okay at home and will get on with whatever they are doing while mum is down town,  the first in a long while.  I thought I would treat myself and get a little pampered after the trauma of suffering a broken wrist.

I was not taken immediately for my appointment.  My mobile phone kept making noises telling me it was out of battery, so I turned it off.

Eventually Michelle invited me to get my nails done.  She was soft spoken. She massaged my hands.  She applied the nail polish and chatted.  One hand had to dry under the heated box, while she finished the other hand.  I was put at ease and was very relaxed. I did not notice the time passing.  I thought Michele would be finished soon.  No, she started the whole process all over again.

Another assistant came in and offered to paint my toenails.  I had not time to refuse.  In my mind I thought time is going on.  Maybe this is taking too long.

Bronagh knelt down at my feet and proceeded to wipe them.  Whooa.  This has not happened to me before.  I continued to enjoy all this attention.  I could not get a quick get away now.

I had lost all tract of time.  Perhaps Brendan will be wondering where I am.  I checked my mobile phone when I was finished at the nail parlour.  Sure enough Brendan had been trying to get in touch.  I called him.  I had completely forgotten that we had to have our passport photos signed by an official in order to get them sent off in the post that day.  Brendan had tried to contact a few people who could have signed them but they were not available.  He could not get in touch with me either!  It was now five o’clock and the post went at five thirty.  The pressure was on.  Those passport applications had to be in the post that evening.  I said a quick prayer. Help Lord.

I suggested Brendan and I meet at the police station and an officer there could sign them.  We met there, got the photos signed and rushed to the post office before closing.  We made it.  I am so glad we did.  I did not let on to anyone I was in another world for an hour when all my cares had blown away.  I got a quick wakeup call back to reality.   I did not care if the nail varnish was all smudged.  I smiled to myself. Thank you Lord for getting to the post on time.

Angela

Restored to Health – 4th Stage Cancer

Posted in Healing, My thoughts by

On April 5th 2010 I was diagnosed with 4th stage colon cancer.

I had been bleeding from my back passage for three years but had not told anyone.  I thought it was something that would go away on its own, perhaps I had haemorrhoids or colitis.  I had met some people with these conditions and they seemed to be coping.   I was fifty six years old when my condition started.  I had five children still living at home.

Up until then I coped well as a mother of my big family of fourteen children, doing the cooking , shopping, caring and managing the household.  I am a woman of many talents; an engineer, putting in woodburner stoves; a carpenter, my son and I made a big table for all of us to sit at for meals; and a gardener, my sons helped me clear our neglected big garden.  I made nourishing meals on a budget.  A lady I met at an IT class said I should get a job in management.  I continued my job as a mother at home.   Nine children had left home already and had gone on to university.

Being a stay at home mother is not an honoured job in the world.  Some people think you are not right in your mind to have a big family.  As our family grew we got less invitations to visit with friends.   My son was telling me that the hot plates he took out of the oven were a health hazard.  I said back to him, “Having children is a health hazard.”

My energy began to wain and I lost interest in the garden and home.  I did not go outside the home much.  I just kept things ticking over. The children had always helped with meals and my husband picked up the groceries.  I was feeling rejected, discouraged, depressed and hopeless.  My children were getting stronger and doing well at school and work.  Those who were married did not live nearby so I did not get to see them so often.  Everyone seemed to be getting along fine without me.

Tensions built up between my husband and me as we were both under pressure.  I would argue a lot.  I began to get annoyed with the children if they did not co operate with me.  I began to get bitter and angry.  Things were not working out the way I had hoped.  I had to get up in the night to use the bathroom and often I did not get back to sleep.  The bleeding continued and my life was spiralling downhill.

I told my husband that Easter Monday that I wasn’t feeling well, that I had been bleeding for a while.  I didn’t tell him the truth.  We went to the hospital and I was referred on to a specialist in cancer.  I was diagnosed with malignant colon cancer, fourth stage.  I had an eight centimetre tumour the size of an orange.  When the nurse told me what I had I did not panic.  I was already numb and had lost the will to live.

My husband rang round my family to tell them the news.  They were sad of course, but they and my husband had courage to believe I would get better.  They began to pray for me.  They showed their love and cared for me.  This began the road to my recovery.  People I didn’t even know prayed for me when they heard I had cancer.  My symptoms changed.  The bleeding stopped and my appetite returned.

I went through five weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy in July.  I would get the maximum dose of radiotherapy one can have in a lifetime.  The treatment was given to reduce the tumour before an operation to remove the tumour and part of my bowel.   I had no side effects from the treatment.  I believe I was being healed.

Three months later I was called to the hospital to arrange a time to have the operation.  I knew I did not need an operation.  The doctor wanted to check and arranged a colonoscopy.  The monitor showed there was no trace of the tumour and the wall of the colon was like a baby’s skin.  I have a letter from that doctor to say there was no tumour.  I did not have an operation.

Three years later I am in better health.  I do not argue any more.  If someone annoys me I don’t retaliate.  I don’t get angry.  I try to be more loving and thankful.  I cast my care onto The Lord.  I know Jesus has forgiven me my failures and healed me from cancer so I chose to forgive others and tell others about what God has done for me.

My husband has written a book about my healing called “Staying Alive”  It is available on kindle.  I hope you will take courage from my story.

Angela

Ps. This article was written as I am taking part in the following writing challenge – http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/writing-challenge-health/

LEAVING HOME

Posted in Family Friday, Ireland, My thoughts by
My eldest daughter Shann went to Liverpool university to train as a nurse in September of 1989. It was natural to chose a career in a caring  capacity, because she had plenty of experience helping me to care for her nine siblings.
Before we left her to the airport we had a farewell meal for her.  This was the beginning of a tradition that we have had for each child leaving home.  It was difficult for us as parents to say farewell.  Would she return to Ireland to live after she finished?  Many Irish children have gone to England in the past to study or get work and settled there.
Down through the years many young men and women have left these shores because of famine, forced exile, to find work or to avoid the troubles. The Irish are to be found all over the world.  When young people last century went to America the family would have a meal and get together with friends.  They called it a wake because the family would not see them again.  It must have been heartbreaking for parents to say farewell without the hope of seeing their son her daughter again.  The sadness is often found in the songs and music of Ireland.
Brendan remembers seeing men having to register for work twice a day in his home town.  If they did not find work they had to go to England.  His two uncles went to England and never returned.
Ireland is known as the Land of Saints and Scholars.  Down though the centuries young men and women left Ireland voluntarily to bring the Gospel  to the nations.  We have a wonderful Christian heritage despite the internal wars.  Brendan and some of our children work in the nations.
We left Shann to the airport and said our final farewells.  Brendan was sad to see his little girl wave goodbye. We were all in tears.  The children would miss their big sister.
Many years later, Shann told me she was crying on the plane.  She had mixed emotions; sad to be leaving home but glad to get away as well.  This was Brendan and myself’s first experience of letting our child fly the nest. Parents rear their children but have to let them go as well.  We had plenty of work to do back home to take our mind off our sadness.

Holidays

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Holidays are like sleep; problems don’t seem so big after a good night’s sleep.  There is a saying that goes “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”.  It is time to walk or drive to be together and enjoy the beauty of our country.  We always went places where our children could have fun for free, a beach, forest or playpark.  One time we even saw elephants without going to the zoo.  We just parked alongside a field, where a circus was letting the animals graze.

One may think he cannot afford to take a holiday.  We have found God is faithful to provide the money we needed for holidays.

Psalm 23 says The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.

When Brendan and I got married in June 1971 we went on honeymoon to Southend to visit relatives.  We got the ferry overnight to Liverpool and then the train to London.  It was the first time I was in England.  When we returned to Ireland we did not go immediately to our new home but hitch hiked to Donegal and travelled around having an adventure until our money ran out.

The adventure of our lives has continued till this day.  Travelling did not hinder us when we had children. We were interested in community living and we heard about people who lived together in Findhorn in the north of Scotland.  I got some money from teaching.  We headed off the next day with two children to Scotland.  We travelled by boat, bus or hitch hiked.

Our travels took us through Glasgow, Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh.  Isn’t it interesting that seven of our children have gone to university in the same towns we visited back then?  Scripture says he will give us the ground where our feet shall trod.  We did not stay in the community.  We returned home and grew our own community!

Each summer we would always plan to go on holiday.  For a few years when we had three children we went on summer youth camps as volunteers.  We got to have a holiday and got paid for it.

Corrymeela is holiday centre in north Antrim, hosting families on holidays from troubled areas of Northern Ireland.  A lady who worked there offered us a holiday.  Our family was growing but that did not deter us.  I think we went there about three years running.

When we had seven children Brendan bought a car, a Peuguot 505.  We felt so blessed.  Brendan and I decided that year to venture out on our own as a family and rent a holiday home.  We were talking together and Brendan asked me, “Where would you like to go on holiday”.  I had a desire to go to Kerry.  Brendan heard of an organisation called the Full Gospel Business Men.  He had one of their booklets.  He looked it up to see if there was anyone in Kerry who organised meetings.  He got in touch with the leader and asked him to look out for a house for us.

I was expecting my eighth child.  We headed off with the car full, Brendan myself and seven children.  The house was a dream.  Plenty of rooms, washing machines, showers, and rainbows outside.  Our children loved the space.  Kerry is famous for milk and golden butter.  In the field beside the holiday house our children got a close up view of the black and white cows and heard the sounds of them tearing and munching on the grass.

We attended prayer meetings in our friend’s home.  I was praising The Lord and dancing.  People were afraid I would go into labour.  My son John held on for another two weeks.  We have been going to Kerry since, over the past twenty seven years.  We have made many friends and were always warmly received and blessed.  It became an oasis for us from the troubled North each July.

We are just back from a week’s holiday in a house quite near the mouth of the River Shannon.  We never went to Kerry for the sun.  Normally it rains, but this year we had wall to wall sunshine.  It was as good as being in Greece without the flights and expense.

Getting to University

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Tomorrow I am getting the cast off my left lower arm.

For over six weeks I have felt I am carrying around a heavy weight.

This has restricted me so much.  I have needed my husband and family’s help to dress and get washed.  This is humbling and keeps me dependant on others.  Others have had to do the cooking, shopping and housework.  Lucky me.  I have had an enforced rest.

I cannot drive so I cannot escape from the house if I wanted to.  I am learning to be patient and to ask for help.  Others in the family are learning patience as well.  It has been a good learning curve.  We are more forbearing with one another.

This accident happened at the beginning of June.  Normally my husband and I take a holiday in May, which refreshes us before the busy summer, when some of our children are back from university and our home is full again.

This year our fourteenth child, Angela, completed her secondary education and plans to go on to university in September.  We needed to be here with her to help her with university applications and to encourage her through her final A level exams.

Brendan and I have found this to be an important part of our work.  From last September Angela had to fill in forms to apply to university, write her cv, go to a formal, travel to interviews and make a video.  We have had to keep her focused when her studies became overwhelming. Then in the spring, expectation heightened as she waited to see if applications were successful.

Angela is a clever girl and had applied to do medicine at university.  In January Angela received a letter from one university to say she was unsuccessful in her application.  That was okay. There was hope that she would get accepted from the next one.

In May hopes were dashed when she got her final refusal.  Her dad and I helped keep her spirits up to focus on her final exams.  I remembered Winston Churchill’s words,  “Never, never give up”.  She could always take a year out and re apply.  I did not relish the thought of another year of ups and downs.  We prayed for her and trusted that the Lord would guide.

Many years ago when I had five children I read in Isaiah 54 v 13

“All your sons (and daughters) will be taught by the Lord, and great will be your children’s peace”.  I held on to that promise in the past for my other 13 children who have been successful to go on to third level education.  We had peace.

Angela was now able to reflect and ask herself the question, “Did she really want to do medicine”.  Were we as parents or her teachers putting expectations on her?  As we talked it became clear she did not want to do medicine!  It seemed the right thing for her to do.  Many are the plans in the mind of man but the Lord directs his path.  Getting the refusals lifted the pressure.

A few days later she received an offer from Edinburgh to do Neuroscience.  She was delighted.  She accepted this offer and hopes to go there in September if she gets suitable results.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  I felt as if I had given birth and was glad the pain was over.

Brendan, I and children are just back from a holiday in Kerry.  A friend had called to say a house was available in Kerry.  We were all in need of a holiday.  Tempers were short as pressures came when we were feeling weak.  We all crashed, slept long, ate good food, and enjoyed the sun on our bodies after a long cold winter.  I firmly believe holidays are not a luxury.  They are a necessity for body, soul and spirit to be refreshed.

My heart overflows with gratitude to God for his faithfulness to us these last thirty four years since I prayed to have a baby.  He has been with us to help us rear our fourteen children, to keep them healthy and give them good success.

Ref  New International Bible.