A New Creation

Ever since I left Pennsylvania and moved to Alabama, Genesis 12: 1 – 2 has made the journey with me. “Leave your country and your family and go to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a new creation.”  Sometimes what I was leaving was a real country – or at least a specific part of the United States (i.e., leaving Pennsylvania; leaving Alabama). At other times, it was leaving a familiar way of being a speech pathologist. This happened when I made the transition to full-time work in the public school system. It happened again when I left the familiar field of speech therapy and entered a new world as a classroom teacher. I have been at my present ministry for 10 years, but the little Catholic school will be closing in June, so it is time for my next change. 

Each time a serious transition like this pops up in my life, I find myself going back to that call from Genesis. It has happened to me so many times that it is now like an old friend – enticing me to say, “Yes,” to this journey to a new land (new ministry) and “Yes,” to becoming yet again another new creation. Along with the call from Genesis, I am also praying with a sentence from the prayer for the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Mother Saint John Fournier – “Mold me like clay in the hands of a potter, to a shape as yet unimagined and a future as yet undefined.”  

The closing of the school brings a great sadness on one hand, but the other hand, holds the excitement and challenge of becoming something new. What will this look like? Stay tuned.  

Sister Donna Loeper SSJ

 

Sister Donna entered the Sisters of Saint Joseph in 1980 at the age of 27. She worked as a speech-language pathologist in a variety of locations and with a wide variety of people. In 2005 she started her ministry as a Pre-K teacher in a little Catholic school in Savannah, GA.