[music] Marcus Grodi: Good evening, and welcome to
'The Journey Home.' I'm Marcus Grodi, your host for this program. Our guest tonight,
Rebecca Frech, is a; when you try and use
a couple of terms to kind of summarize
the whole journey to give you a flavor for what our story's
going to be like tonight, a revert, but former agnostic. Rebecca Frech: <i>Yes.</i> Is that a good summary? Rebecca: <i>Yes.</i> There's some homeschooling
stuff in there, too, we'll talk about
later, though. Right? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Very good. So, let's; let me
back out of the way and invite you
to go way back. Let's start the journey. Way back
in the beginning? Yeah. So, like a lot
of children from the '70s, I was raised
not really Catholic as much as hippy Catholic. Like, my parents, my father was
in the military. My dad was
a naval officer, and my mom was
just amazing. And they were so
into the reforms of Vatican II. They were so happy that the altars
had turned. They were thrilled that
Mass was in the vernacular. They were all about
the guitar Masses and... Marcus:<i>
The tie-dyed stuff.</i> ...all the tie-dyed
and the stoles and the felt banners and all of the
things that... Marcus: <i>And the macramé.</i> ...people go,
"Oh, my gosh" now. Like, my parents
loved that. One of my earliest
memories of Mass is actually
a Godspell Mass, on Easter Sunday morning, and my father and another
man from the choir walking in
with their ram's horns and going
[imitates trumpet] And then they took like
four more steps and [imitates trumpet] And then my mother and
the women from the choir with their ribbons
on sticks, like dancing their
way down the aisle... Marcus: <i>There you go.</i> ...as the
processional of Mass. So, that's
really very much the way that
I was raised. It was very emotion
rather than theology, and very, very strong
in that all through the '70s. You would say, though,
well-meaning. Very well-meaning.
Oh no. Absolutely well-meaning. They were very alive,
in the '70s especially, in the joy of God, maybe not rooted so much
in the Word of God, but very, very much
in the joy, and it was reflected
in the way that they celebrated Mass. And so, that was
very much the way that
we were raised. And went to
Catholic school. And I started off in
Catholic school with nuns. And God bless those ladies
and poor Sr Catherine, my First Grade teacher, who would send letters
home every day to my mother
that I would talk in class. Surprising nobody, I, every year of school
got letters sent home to my mother that said I would not stop
talking in class. My mother eventually
pulled me aside one day, and she said,
"You have to learn to get control
of your tongue. Like, you have to
control that mouth, because nobody is ever
going to pay to hear you talk." Like, this is not a thing
that people do. And so, now when I go out
and I speak at conferences, I always start with that. And I tell
the audience that, this is what
my mother said. And I take my phone out, and I have everybody wave
and say "Hi, Mom," and I just, like,
scan the audience. So, like "Hi, Mom.
I'm on TV talking." [both laugh] And she thinks
it's hilarious. And she goes, "Okay.
Perhaps I was wrong." She does think
it's very funny to this day. So, I was always raised
in Catholic school. But I was raised also
in the military. And so, we moved every
six months to two years. And my parents would look for the most liturgically
liberal church that they could find,
not socially liberal. They were very
socially conservative. You know, they
were very pro-life. They were, you know,
very, very... Marcus: <i>So, they were
solidly Catholic.</i> They were solidly
Catholic in their morals, but they would
look, like, the more guitars you could
put up on the altar, the happier they were. They really, really loved the reforms of Vatican II. <i>I was going to say,
and we look back,</i> and we might,
with hindsight, have criticism, however. Rebecca: <i>Right.</i> But in the time, I think; I wasn't
a Catholic then, but I was a Protestant involved with
the same stuff. Rebecca: <i>Right. Yes.</i> So, at the time, majority of those
celebrating that way would have thought,
this is what's happening. This is right. This is great. This is in line.
This is good. "This is great. This is a wonderful thing
that we're doing." Yes. And... And those are the seeds that were planted in you
way back when. Those are the seeds
that were planted way, way back. Right. And I was always
a reader. And so, all through
elementary school, I would always, you know, go away to the library and just pick up whatever
books I could find. And I remember we moved
to Kingsville, Texas, which is where I lived
the most of my life. The military kept sending us
back to Kingsville. But I went to the library in St Gertrude School
in Kingsville, Texas. And they had a whole
shelf of saint stories. And I read my way through
this entire shelf of saint stories
and came home convinced that I wanted
to be a saint, and prayed in the
Fourth Grade every night that God would give
me the stigmata so that everybody else
would know I was a saint. Like, I didn't really
need it for myself, because I was pretty sure
like I was holy, but if I only had
the stigmata, like that was, like,
the golden ticket to Heaven, you couldn't go
in any other way. Or you could have
found the saint who was the patron saint of those
that used the sticks and the banners,
you know. I could have.
I could have looked. But no, I was
very convinced that the story of Padre Pio
just really hit me, the fact that
he had the stigmata, and I was convinced that that was what I
really, really needed, and told everybody. I mean, I didn't care what
denomination you were, I didn't care where
you went to church, I didn't care who you were, if I even knew you
at all, I was; You know, 'I'm going
to be a saint, and I'm going to have
the stigmata.' And my mother
would shush me. "Sh. We don't
need to tell everything we know to
every person that we know." I was going to say, those Baptists
in the Bible Belt really would,
not really sure what you were
talking about. Well, we weren't
so much Bible Belt. So, we were very
South Texas. Kingsville is south
of Corpus Christi. So, it's 30, 45
minutes from Mexico. So, there's not a lot
of Bible Belt going on in South Texas. There's a lot of
Hispanic Catholicism and very deeply
in the culture there, and which was
very different than what my
white parents with their felt banners
were kind of pushing. So, it was very different. And our small town of, gosh, at the time,
15,000 people, 16,000 people had
three Catholic churches. I mean, it was very,
very Catholic, the community
that we were raised in. And still my mom
was like, "Sh!" Like, "We don't need
to tell everybody that we're going
to get the stigmata." And as I got older, I started to take that as "We shouldn't talk
about our faith," and I started to
really internalize that; and, you know, my mom
would impress upon me that some things
were private, and they needed to be
between you and God, and that you didn't
need to go out. And there were other
people whose job it was to go out and evangelize, and there were other people
whose job it was to go out and tell
everything that they knew, and that maybe
in the Fifth Grade that wasn't my job, or the Sixth Grade
or the Seventh Grade or the Eighth Grade. And so, you know,
over the years, I began to internalize
this idea that faith and religion were not something
that we talked about. In the meantime, I was confirmed
in the Sixth Grade, and we had to pick
a Confirmation saint. And I flipped through one
of these saint books and picked Catherine
of Alexandra, because she was
hard to kill, like, you know,
the Egyptians just kept trying
to kill her and she wouldn't die. The sword would break. The wheel would break. Everything they tried
would break, and finally at the end,
she was like, 'All right, God,
I've had enough. Like, can you just let
them kill me already?' And I thought she
was kind of funny. And as a Sixth Grader,
I picked her. What I didn't realize,
I think actually, she probably picked me. She's like the original
big mouth girl and wouldn't stop
talking about God, no matter who
told her to, no matter where
they put her, and ended up evangelizing and converting
everybody around her. Marcus: <i>Oh.</i> So, she was my girl. I always say, you know, she just kind of looked
down from Heaven and was like, 'I'll take
the little loud one.' You know, like,
'That one's mine.' And, you know,
she's been there ever since. And so, that was
kind of my way. And I wandered
through the Church. And we put on
a good show. Appearances were very
important to my parents because of their own
backgrounds and where they had
come from. My mother had grown
up incredibly poor. My father was adopted
and felt that very deeply. And so, appearances were
very important to them. And so, we looked like
the "perfect Catholic family." My mother was
in the choir. My dad played the guitar. I lectored. Both of my brothers
served Mass. There was nobody sitting
in our family pew. Like, everybody was up and performing
on the altar. My mother's purse sat in
our pew, and that was it. And... <i>Funny.</i>
Very funny image. Our guest
is Rebecca Frech. With all wanting
the stigmata, being a saint,
all that stuff... <i>Yes.</i> ...was it in here? <i>It was </i>when I was young. It was when I was young. And then my mom was in
a horrific car accident when I was 14-years-old, that left her
brain damaged. She was in a coma
for a month. She was in rehab
for nine months, left her physically
and mentally disabled. And that really just
kind of ripped the rug out from under all of us. And I got
very angry at God. My brothers got
very angry, like, "How could You take
our mother away?" And my dad, she was
really his touchstone. And so, when she was gone, he really had nothing
to lean on. And so, he would leave us
with family members and disappear
for days at a time. And so, our entire
family fell apart... Marcus: <i>Wow.</i> ...at the time
of my mom's car accident. And I think my dad was
probably internalizing a lot of anger
at God, too. But we, as children,
never heard it. Just as an adult, I can
see it in his actions. And so, by the time
he came back to being with us
all the time, because he
would come in and out. By the time I was
15 1/2, I had moved in
with my aunt. My mother had come home
from the hospital. And like a lot of
brain-injured people, as they're healing, she had
some violent tendencies. And so, I was sent away
to live with my aunt and would come home
on the weekends. And I had wandered
away from the Church. I just couldn't see how I could reconcile the love
that I had for God with the implosion
of my family. And I would say just
flat out to people, "There may be a God. He may be there. I don't see why
I should worship somebody who allowed
this tragedy to happen in my family." And my father actually
applauded me for being, you know,
this open-minded, broad-minded thinker. And so, I wandered away, and I stopped going to Mass
at the age of 16, and never went back. And had I been in
a different situation, had I had
different parents, had somebody,
anybody said to me, 'Just come with me,' had I been invited
to come back, I probably
would have gone. But I think our situation
with our family was so frightening to the people
in our parish, because we had been
the backbone of the parish. And so, to see our family
fall apart, people just kind of
scattered to the wind. And... <i>They probably</i>
didn't feel they had the
answer either... They didn't
have the answer. ...to that
question that you... And to be fair, I was the
incredibly angry 16-year-old
at that point. But you kept it all in.
You didn't talk. Oh, no. No. That's never been
my way, Marcus. Right, right, right. So, actually
at the age of 16, I was so angry
at my parents, that I went to court and had myself declared
an emancipated minor, because I was so angry
at my mother for being brain-damaged. I was angry at her
for being disabled. And I was angry
at my father because he had left
and come back, and the way he had
run the family, that I went to court and had myself emancipated, so that I
could be responsible for myself and make
my own decisions. And I explained that
to the judge, who agreed with me
that of the three of us, I, at 16 was
the most capable of making the decisions
for my life. And so, at 16,
I was an adult... Marcus: <i>Oh.</i> ... legally. <i>Wow.</i> And worked and moved in and out of
my parents' house, moved in and out
of my aunt's house, went to college at 17, and went just; I was going
to start my life, and it was not going
to include the mess that was
in my parents' house, and just led exactly
as dissolute a life as you would think
a 16-year-old put in charge of
herself would live. I discovered boys,
and I liked them a lot. I was never like a drinker
or a drug person. I watched people
do drugs, and I watched
people drink, and I was afraid
of their loss of control. And so, I stayed
away from that. But, you know, boys,
I liked kind of a lot. And by the time I was 18, I was just kind of burned out
on everything. I had been in charge
of myself for two years and not really equipped
to handle that. And just before
my 19th birthday, I went out on a blind date
with a guy who lived in
our apartment complex. Our apartment manager
set me up on this date and said, "There's this guy
and you should meet him." And I went out on a date, and he didn't talk.
I did. I thought he was
a snob, and he thought
I was obnoxious. And at the end
of the night he leaned in to kiss me
good night anyway. I, you know,
and the moment that his lips touched mine, I had this vision
flash through my head of us as old people with lots of
grandchildren. And I stepped back
and I just looked at him, and I thought, 'No, God. Like, I don't even
like this person. And you know, this
very clear picture of us 60 years down the road
with this huge family. And I'm not even sure
that I want family, because I don't even
really like children.' And so, I went in and I looked at
my roommate, Carrie, and I said, "I think
I went on a date with the guy
I'm going to marry." And she was like, "Okay." And I said, "He was awful. He's the most obnoxious, like, rude,
snotty person ever." And she's like,
"Well, what his name?" And I said, "It's Ben." And she said, "Ben what?" And I was like,
"I don't know." And she said, "Well, I guess you should go
on a second date with him to find out
what his name is, if you're going
to marry him." And she was joking, and he called me the next
day and asked me out. And we went
out to a movie. And I was
really not sure. We went to go see
'Bram Stoker's Dracula,' which, you know, was
the thing at the time. And the whole story of it
is that Winona Ryder - it was Winona Ryder
and Keanu Reeves and Dracula, that she has an affair
with Dracula. And about 10 minutes
into the movie, my now-husband
disappeared. And I started
looking around. And I got up,
and I found him, and he's in the lobby
reading a newspaper. And I said, "You know,
where'd you go?" Because we were
watching a movie. And he said,
"I see absolutely no entertainment value
in infidelity. But if you want to keep
watching the movie, you can. It's just not for me. There's nothing
attractive to me in a woman who's cheating
on her husband or a husband
cheating on his wife." And I just went, 'I have found
the Promised Land.' And I found out that
his last name was Frech. And I found out all kinds of wonderful things about
him and met his family. And they were
just more... Marcus:<i>
He wasn't obnoxious.</i> <i>He was just quiet.</i> He was just very quiet
and listened. And, you know,
so here's the thing. Like, God's so
smart, right? Because he puts a girl
who likes to talk with a guy who likes
to listen. And it worked. And it's worked 26 years, 24 years of marriage, but 26 years now together. And it still
keeps working. And it was just
this moment. But I still didn't
understand, you know, this blanket of humanity that had been on my lap
in this vision. Then we got married and had our first baby
within the first year, despite our efforts, because I was still
a nice agnostic girl. And I was on the pill, because we were
going to wait until we graduated
from college to have babies. <i>Where was he
coming</i> from, religion? He was Lutheran,
but "Lutheran." I mean, he went because it made
his grandparents happy. We got married
in the Lutheran Church because his grandparents had literally built
the church. And so, they said to us,
"As a favor to us, will you get married
in this church?" And I was like,
"Well, I mean, it's as good a place
as any." So, we got married
in the Lutheran Church and had our first baby
within the year, despite our best efforts. And she was baptized
in the Lutheran Church because his grandfather
asked us to. And so we did. And then she was
about six months old, and I realized that
I didn't know how to raise a Lutheran. And I went on a walk
with my husband and I said, "We need to decide," as she's in her
little stroller, and we're still
poor college students, and I said,
"But we need to decide, are we going to raise
her agnostic? In which case we need to
stop going to church. Are we going to
raise her Lutheran? Or are we going to
raise her Catholic? And I guess what
I'm asking is, which one of us is going
to be in charge of her, you know,
religious upbringing, because I don't know how
to raise a Lutheran. So, if you want her
to be Lutheran, that's fine with me, but then you
have to raise her. Like, you're in charge
of the God stuff, because I, I mean, I know
stigmatas and saints. I don't know
Martin Luther," you know. <i>At this time,</i>
you were still agnostic? I was still agnostic.
I mean... I mean, you
weren't atheist. I was
never an atheist. I always entertained
the idea that there was probably
somebody in charge, that there really
wasn't any; the randomness
didn't make sense to me. Coincidence
didn't make sense, that there had
to have been some sort of
purposeful creation. But I had a really hard
time believing that whoever had
created the world wasn't just sitting back and, like,
watching it on TV. You know. That actually
was compassionate and loved us and was
in charge of things. I thought we were more
like an entertaining television
program for God. Marcus: <i>Okay.</i> Yeah. <i>But it wasn't
a </i>main issue between you
and your husband. No. No. We were both
in the same... Yeah. Okay. ...dispassionate place. And so, he said, "I don't want to be
in charge of religion." And I said, "Well, then we're going
to be Catholic." And he went, "Okay." And so we started going
to the Catholic Church. I mean, it was
just that easy. It was, "Well, if we're going to raise
her something, and our families both say we should raise
her something. So, in order
to keep them quiet, we'll raise her Catholic." And so, that
first Sunday that we took our sweet little baby,
Madeline, to Mass, and I sat in the pew. And I hadn't been to Mass
since I was 16. And they started to play one of the songs
from the '70s that I can't even
remember which; 'Eagle's Wings' or something that people roll
their eyes about now, but to me, that was familiar
and that was church. And the chords
of the organ just kind of
washed over me, and I just
started to weep, because I had come home. And that was really the
beginning of my reversion back into the faith... All right. ...was that moment of,
'Well, I mean, I guess if this is what
we're going to do, this is what
we're going to do.' I said, you know, seeds. Seeds. Seeds were
planted in you there... Seeds were planted. ...well-meaning people. They're
experimenting a bit. But that hymn,
the power of that hymn. <i>Right. The power of it.</i> And I had a grandmother,
my father's mother, who was
a daily communicant who prayed for me
the entire, the entire journey. She prayed me the whole
way back into the Church. So, I mean, grandmothers
just need to know how powerful
those prayers are. Well, then two things. So, you're back
in the Church. I mean, literally,
you're back in the Church. In the Church. Yes. In the Church, but that doesn't mean that you're
a full-flung Catholic. No. No. Or that your
husband's even close. No, he wasn't even close. He was just going
through the motions because we were there and we had agreed
to do something. And then I got pregnant. We had a miscarriage, and then I got pregnant
with our second child, Wyatt. And he was born
10 weeks premature. He was three pounds,
one ounce. Everything had been fine
up until the moment that my water broke
and we had this baby. And he was in the
hospital, dying. He was not doing well. He had contracted this
horrible bacteria. And they called me
at home and said, "You need to come
to the hospital right now, because he deserves,"
the nurse said to me, "He deserves to die
in his mother's arms." And I got in the car
and drove myself, which I don't
recommend anybody in that situation doing, because I made
a 45-minute car drive in about 25 minutes. I don't even
remember the ride. I just know it
was 25 minutes. And walked in, and I walked into my husband
standing there, holding our son's hand. And he was very
clearly dying. And he was
holding his hand, and my husband
was saying to him, "It's okay. It's okay if this is
too hard, if this hurts too much, if you are in
too much pain. It's okay to let go. I'm your dad, and I'm going to stand here
with you till the end, and you have already,
in six weeks, fought harder
than any man could ever be asked
to fight. And it's okay. It's okay if this is
the end for you. I'm going to hold
your hand all the way to Heaven,
little boy." And I have never
been angrier at my husband
in my entire life. I think it took three
nurses to hold me back from trying to, 'Don't you dare
give my baby permission to die.' And my husband was right. I mean, I'll say that. He was the better parent
in that moment. And losing
my last support, which was my husband, losing that,
all that I could do in that moment was hit
my knees and pray. And finally at last, I called on God the Father
to have mercy on my son. And six hours later,
he was out of the woods. And now he's 20 years old and in college
to become a teacher, and just,
in fact, we laugh because he had
this horrible, horrible sick start
to his life. And he is the child
who never gets sick. The flu will sweep
through our house, and Wyatt will be the one that's making soup
for everybody. And he is the one who will
make soup for everybody. And... Yeah. I was
putting myself in your husband's shoes,
doing that. Yeah, his words weren't
so much to your baby as to himself to let go. It was, you know... Yeah. ...it was tough. It's hard and it's okay
to quit. And he was right. He was going
to walk our child all the way to Heaven. And that's what parents
are supposed to do. Like, that's my job
as his mom, is to get him into Heaven. Yeah. Yeah. So, you saw
an answered prayer. I did. Did that
kick-start even more? It did. It really, it began to
kick-start it for me. And then the next step
on my journey back was, we had a neighbor move in
next door to us who was a very
devout Baptist. And nobody will make you
learn the Catholic faith quite like having a
Baptist next-door neighbor. And she would ask me
all kinds of questions that I didn't know
the answers to, because I was "catechized"
in the '80s when it was, you know,
God loves you, and that was all you
really needed to know. And so, she
would ask questions. And I would start
doing research, so that I could
give her answers. And then I would
give her answers and feel so proud
of myself. And then she would ask
me another question, and I was like, "Oh, I don't know
that one either." And so, I would have to
go back to researching. So, I became a furious
researcher of the faith. And about the same time, my brother was sent
to Iraq, my younger brother
was sent to Iraq. And he would use, and he had run
into Protestant circles over in Iraq. And they were asking
him questions he didn't know
the answers to. And so, he would use
his one phone call home every two weeks to call me
and ask me like, "These are the questions
they're asking me. I don't have the answers.
Can you look them up?" And unfortunately, I could not research
fast enough for him. And my brother fell away
from the Church and is now a Baptist
minister out in Utah. So, Thanksgiving at my
house is very, very fun when we get together. It can be very loud, but we all admit that
we love the same Jesus. Marcus: <i>I was going to say,
you celebrate Jesus.</i> We love the same Jesus. Like, there was a day I pointed to
the crucifix on my wall, and I said, "Listen. The bottom line is,
we both agree who that is, what He is,
and what He's doing." And he was like,
"Yes, we do." So, we both
love Jesus very much, and we just come at it
from very different angles. Mine is right. And I tell him that
all the time. "You're coming from
a different angle. Mine is right. And someday,
you'll know that." My grandmother
used to say, "You know, you can be
whatever you want on earth, but everybody in Heaven
is a Catholic." So, eventually,
one way or another, he will come back
to the Church. So, but that was really,
really the push, is that through
trying to find answers for my neighbor
and my brother, it really forced me
to catechize myself. And then we came out
the other side. And I found that I really
knew the faith pretty well. And I started looking
for maybe deeper liturgy than the felt banners of the church
that we were going to. And there was nothing
wrong with that church. <i>Well,</i> <i>had your </i>research
at this point had an effect on Ben?
Right? On Ben. Yes. Kind of. I mean, I think he was kind of tired
of listening to me, because I kept having
these ah-ha moments. I would, like, reach over
and shake him awake and go, "Oh, my gosh, this unbroken
line of popes, and like, here they are, and I can read them
to you." And he would be like,
"Great. It's 2 AM." And I would
be like, "I know. Isn't this exciting?"
And... <i>I can envision him,</i>
during this time, he'd reach over
and look at your hand and say, "Well, no.
Not yet." Yeah. No. Not yet.
No stigmata yet. You know,
it's not there yet. No stigmata yet. Nope. No. Not at all. And then we started
homeschooling, because; and by accident. So, the first time I ever
heard of homeschooling was in People magazine. And one of the girls
from the show 'The Facts of Life'
was homeschooling. And I can remember
being in high school, and I read that story. And I thought, 'Oh.
That's so ridiculous. Like, what on earth
is wrong with her? Why would you homeschool? Like, there's perfectly
good schools. Like, why would
you do this?' <i>I'm going
to pause there.</i> Yeah. Let's take the break
on that question, why... Why would you do this? ... why would
you homeschool? And what cracks me up
a little bit now, which we might want
to talk about is that, during this COVID crisis, with the way it's
affected schools, there are a whole
bunch of people that think they've
been homeschooling... Yes. ...and it isn't exactly... They say, "Well,
I've homeschooled. It doesn't work." Well, that's not really... It's not quite the same. No. It's not. So, anyways,
we'll pause right there. And we'll come back. We'll come back for the rest
of Rebecca's story. Again, before I take a break, I want to remind you
of our website: chnetwork.org, where we have not only lots
of stories like Rebecca, but she's going to talk about homeschooling
a little bit and how that connects
with the faith. And I think if you went
to our website, if you're wondering about that, you'll find lots of other
members and converts who have explored the
issue of homeschooling for lots of reasons. So, check out chnetwork.org. And we'll be back
in just a moment. [music] [music] Welcome back to
'The Journey Home.' I'm your host, Marcus Grodi. And our guest
is Rebecca Frech, revert, former agnostic. We've got her in the Church. Rebecca: <i>Yes.</i> You're in the Church. I'm in the Church. Husband's still
somewhere along the line. He's on his way. But you said;
the last question that, before we took the break, was a question,
someone would say, 'Why would anybody...' 'Why would
anybody homeschool? What a crazy person. What kind of crazy
person would do that?' And then our beautiful,
brilliant oldest child taught herself
to read before, just before
her fourth birthday. She was three and
about 10 months or so. And we were walking
through the grocery store, and she started reading
the signs that didn't have
pictures with them. And I just kind of looked
at her and was like, 'We're not doing this
at three.' And by her
fourth birthday, she was really reading, and very clearly. I mean, there was
no doubt about it. And we were getting ready to enroll her
in the local preschool. And I went to them
and I said, "This is great socially." Like, "Put her with the
four-year-olds, please." Because I mean,
I had graduated early, and I knew that
that was a mess that she didn't want
to be in. "So, please put her
with the four-year-olds. But what are you going
to do for her mind?" And at the time,
we lived in Oklahoma, and the school
district said, "The state of Oklahoma does not do any
advanced placement classes until Second Grade." And I thought, 'Oh, no. Because she's advanced, and she needs
advanced help here.' And I said,
"So, what will she be learning in preschool?" And they said, "Well, her colors
and her letters." And I said, "Well, no.
She knows her letters. So, she's reading
and, you know, you're going to be
wasting her time. She's going to end up
being that nightmare student that won't stop
talking in class." My poor mother. [laughs] And so, I went to the
local private school, and I said,
"What can you do for her?" And they did have an
advanced curriculum. And so,
we downsized houses and put her into the local
private school, which was just
a non-denominational Christian school,
because we could not afford the Catholic school. We had gone to them,
and we just, there was no way. We could eat, or we could put her in Catholic school. So, we decided
we like to eat. And so, we put her in
this non-denominational Christian school. And she was there
and she was doing well for about four months. And there was a bully
in her class that, she kept coming home
with bruises. He was swinging toys
around and hitting her, and they wouldn't remove
him from class because he was
the principal's son. And so, he was
the principal's son. So they would not
remove him from class. And so, he jumped off
the monkey bars one day and landed on one of
the girls in her class and broke this
little girl's arm. And that's the day we
pulled our daughter out. Yeah. Because if you
can't keep her safe, the rest of it
doesn't matter. But then what were we
going to do with her? Because, you know, she's
now even more advanced than she was. And so, I said
to my husband, "Okay, this is what
we're going to do. I'm going to
homeschool her. It's preschool. How hard could it be?
Right? So, we're going
to homeschool her. And I'll homeschool her
until the Second Grade, till the end
of First Grade, because that's when
they do advanced, you know, placement. And so, we'll go till
the end of First Grade. I don't want to
do this forever. This is a crazy
ridiculous thing." And he said, "Okay," kind of tentatively,
but "Okay." And by the time we got
to Second Grade, Madeline was reading
on a Sixth Grade level and was doing
Fifth Grade level math. And we went to the school
district and said, "Okay. This is who
we're bringing you." And they said,
"We can't make that big of a leap. Like, we can't send her
to junior high as a Second Grader
for reading classes." And they were really
in a conundrum. And our son, Wyatt, was
coming up behind her and was loving everything
we were doing. And he was absorbing it
like a little sponge. And I went, "Okay. So, I'll keep
homeschooling her and maybe him. But anybody who comes
after him, like, they're all
going to school." Well, Lincoln,
who was after them, had severe
learning disabilities. And I was spending
four days a week up at the local school, the year we
put him in school, to see if they
could teach him. I spent four days
a week up there trying to teach
the Special Ed teacher how to teach my son. And I thought,
'This is ridiculous. What a waste of my time.' And so, I ended up
bringing everybody home and ended up; I'm like
the accidental homeschooler. We just sort of
fell into it. It was never our plan
from the get-go. I love these people who, before they're
even married, they're like,
"We're going to homeschool." And I'm like, 'Wow.' I didn't even know
what homeschooling was at that point
before we had children. But we sort of
fell into it. And... I'm wondering
if that happens more often than not. I think it does. I think it becomes... It did for us
in many ways. ...a last resort that you just end up
falling in love with. And I loved having
my children at home and being the person
who got to hear them learn to read and got
to teach them about history. And I love history. I'm such a history nerd. And now
all of my children are these giant
history nerds, and they absolutely
get it from me. And so, it has been
this great joy. And then somewhere
along the way, we moved to
this neighborhood which was
all elderly people. So, it was, everybody
was retired. And then our little
family of, I think at the time,
we had four children. We had just had Ella. And I was so lonely. I've never been so profoundly lonely
in my life. And I started blogging, just because
I needed to talk about grown-up things
with grown-up people. And through blogging, I started to find other
Catholic writers that I hadn't even known
were out there. I didn't know that there
were people like me, that there were women
in their 20s. At the time,
I was in my late 20s, and I didn't know
that there were women in their late 20s who had large families
and loved the faith, and that I wasn't alone and I wasn't
this weird freak. And the bloggers
really pushed me to read 'Humane Vitae,' because although
we were Catholic, we were still
contracepting. It wasn't working
particularly well. We are the failure rate. Had no one
in the local... I had never... ...told you? I had never
heard anybody preach about
contraception. I had never heard anybody
talk about contraception. It just wasn't,
it wasn't touched on. It was, you know, kind of the third rail
of religion, and nobody was
going to discuss it. But people kept talking
about it on their blogs. And I kind of wanted to join
in on the conversation, but I didn't know. And somewhere in the back
of my head, I thought, 'Well, I mean, I'm a woman with all these children. So, clearly,
I know better what's good for me than these old men in Rome who've never even
been married.' And I was so dismissive
of the old men in Rome. And then I read
'Humane Vitae.' And it was beautiful. And I sat there
and held it. And my husband came home,
and I was crying. And I just looked at him and he said,
"What's wrong?" And I handed it to him, and I said, "It's right. And when you know
something is right, you have to act upon it. And this is so beautiful and it's so true
and it's so right. And oh my gosh,
what are we going to do?" Because we had
four children. And we were beyond done. So, when we got married, I had said I wanted
four children, and my husband
said he wanted one. And we were at four. So, you know... [both laugh] And so, we were done. And my husband had
scheduled a vasectomy. I mean, like,
it was on the books. It was scheduled. And his doctor required that I sign a paper
that said I knew he was going
to have a vasectomy and that I have
a pregnancy test done, because they found
that sometimes if the wife was pregnant, and then lost the baby, that she would
change her mind and want to have
another baby. And so, they wouldn't; his doctor would not
perform a vasectomy if I were pregnant, and if I refused
to sign the paperwork that said I knew
he was having this done. That was just
their office policy. And here I am, you know, having just read
'Humanae Vitae', sitting there
holding this; we called it
the permission slip; holding this
permission slip for my husband to
have a vasectomy, and sobbing. Like, I had this huge
mental breakdown, sobbing in our bathroom, going, "I don't want
to go to hell. I just don't want
to go to hell." And he was like, "Okay." And I was like,
"I can't sign this." And he's like,
"Listen. It's me. This is, you know,
my choice I'm making." And I was like,
"And that would be fine, except I have
to sign this paper. And I can't sign
this paper." And so... <i>And he wasn't </i>onboard yet
faith wise. He wasn't onboard.
He wasn't Catholic yet. And so, we went in
the next day, and he was going to talk
to the doctor; "Can we do this
without my wife signing this
permission slip?" And the doctor said,
"I can't do this. Your wife is pregnant." And I went, "Oh, no. Like, this is
not the plan." Four was the plan.
Four was the plan. And we found out
I was pregnant with my daughter,
Bernadette, who went on
to be my favorite saint. Bernadette was stillborn. And this child
that we hadn't wanted, that, you know, had been such a sore spot
between the two of us, because we were
done after four. He was done after one. We were done after four. And then this beautiful
sweet baby died before she was born. She died on the Fourth
of July and was born
on the 6th of July, and we buried her
on the 9th. And I don't know
what moved the priest in our parish. They were renovating
the parish. And we were still kind of
pretty nominal Catholic. We were not, I mean,
I knew the Catechism, but we were not like
the daily Mass goers. You know, we were
not the people you would say were super
on fire for the faith. And he called me
and he said, "God has really moved
my heart to say to you, we have pulled up
the marble tiles that are underneath
the tabernacle, because we're replacing
the floor, and would you like
the marble that had sat under the tabernacle to line the inside
of her grave?" And so, she is buried, surrounded by the marble. Marcus: <i>Oh, wow.</i> Yes, that had been
directly underneath Jesus. And then they offered us, they had had
to jackhammer out a piece of the slab
that was even under that. And he offered
that to us, which now
is her headstone. We had... Marcus: <i>Wow.</i> ... a brass plate bolted to this slab
of concrete that sits
on top of her grave. And then she's
surrounded by the marble. So, she is surrounded
by the Presence of Christ. Marcus: <i>Whoa.</i> And she's the most
powerful intercessor that I know, my daughter, because it had become, as I was becoming
more Catholic and my husband wasn't, it had become a real
sore spot in our marriage. And it was becoming
a lightning rod. And I just, I said to her,
"Sweet little girl, you are standing
before the throne of God, and you need to pray
for your father. You are standing there. This is your job.
This is your only job. I'm your mother. I'm telling you so. Go talk to God. Like, this is on you." And about
six weeks later, my husband, we were
doing something, and he kept looking
at his watch. It was a Wednesday night. And he's like, "Yeah. I got to go take a shower.
I got to go." And I was like,
"Where are you going?" And he goes,
"I'm going to RCIA." And that was it.
And he went. And the next year,
he was confirmed a Catholic. And on our 10th
wedding anniversary, we had our marriage vows convalidated
in the Church. And pretty soon after that,
we had our son, Colin, who I had gotten
pregnant with almost immediately
after losing Bernadette. And so, and went on to have quite a few
more children after. Colin is our number five. And we now have nine. And so, you know,
God knew what He was doing when I was, you know,
too pregnant to, for my husband
to have a vasectomy. But our sweet little
Bernadette is, you know, our favorite intercessor; and when we're in
times of need; and we've had several
friends who have been in pregnancies that they
thought they were losing. And every time, I say
to them, you know, "Ask Bernadette for help, because, tell her,
'Mom said.'" And every one of them
has somehow miraculously kept their pregnancies. So, she is our sweet girl. You've homeschooled
these children. Yes. Has the faith been...? You look back
on your own upbringing... Rebecca: <i>Yes.</i> ...you know, the way
you learned the faith or didn't learn the faith and the seeds
that were planted - has that been a real
strong impetus for you in your homeschooling to make sure this is an
opportunity for witness? It wasn't
in the beginning. But it became; being Catholic became just a flavor in everything
that we do in our life. I have a friend,
my Baptist friend who pushed me
to learn my Catholicism, and she said, "The difference between
then and now is," she said, "Now it's almost
like Catholic bouillon." You know, like bouillon
cubes that you put in soup. And she said,
"Your Catholicism is just the flavor that kind of infuses
your whole life." Like, it's your whole
life has been steeped and stewed and cooked in the Catholicism that just kind of
permeates everything. And we're seeing that
with our children as they're growing, that it is the flavor
that colors their lives. <i>An email </i>from Catherine
in Maryland. <i>Yeah.</i> So, this is actually one of my beefs
with how we do things. Right now,
there is no mechanism for Catholics who are
coming back into the Church. You just show up. You just show up
and sit in the pew. You should go
to confession, but nobody even
says to you, 'You should go
to confession.' You just show up,
and you just come back. And so, we have these
people who are coming back who still don't
know the faith, who still are
not catechized. It would be... <i>Because for Catholics</i>, you can be very committed
to the externals. Yes, and have it
not touch your heart. So, when you go away
and you come back, you jump into
the externals again. You just run
right back in. Right. You're just
right back in Mass. And it still may not be
something that you know. And so, I would say
to invite them. That would be my first
thing is invite them. Invite them to RCIA. Maybe invite them
to a Bible study, or a Catechism class,
or something. But reach out to them
and say, "Hi. I'm so glad you're back. Let us help you learn
what it is; the reason that you left
in the first place - why did you go, and how do we help
to fix that?" Maybe we could have
these little badges that say, "I was a Catholic
and gone for 15 years, but I'm back." I would have walked up
to that person and been like,
'Tell me your story.' The reason I say that
facetiously is that one of the problems
I've often thought with Catholic churches, you know,
that when we work with men and women
coming to the Church, they often say, "Well,
there's no fellowship. They don't talk to me,"
and all that. Well, part of the problem
with the Catholic Church is you have this
big Catholic church that's got five Masses. Rebecca: <i>Right.</i> So, when you
see somebody that you've never
seen before, you don't know
if they're a new person, or they just went
to the other Mass all their life. So, Catholics
aren't very good at reaching out to do
just what you said. Right. How do you
invite somebody with... I just,
I don't know. How do we encourage
Catholics to actually reach out
and invite someone? Right. I think that that has
to start at the top. That has to start
with the priest. You know, he is the father
of that family. And I have seen
from my own children that children tend to follow
the lead of their father. And so, if you have
a priest who is open and welcoming and a part, an active part of the
family life of the parish, that it helps definitely to influence the people
around you, but also to encourage
small groups, and to encourage people
to reach out, and do you know
the people around you, and to be welcoming, and to help people
in their moment of need. That was an issue for us. We had a daughter
who became disabled and could not get
the church to return
our phone calls. We were in the hospital
and called repeatedly and said, "We need somebody
to come and bless, you know,
anoint our daughter," and got a return phone call
a month later. And so, there is this gap. And so, and it has
become better now. We came to learn later that part of that gap was our priest
had Alzheimer's, and they were just
not telling people. So, I would say also that the Church
needs to be honest with the people
who are in the pews about what's going on. Had somebody told us
he was sick, we probably would have
reacted differently, you know. But our Catholic Church, we were; I was talking
with a friend about this earlier today, that we still assume
that people live with their family. We still assume that
Grandma's across the street, and your aunt and uncle
are on the corner, and that you have
this network. And people in America
don't live that way anymore. And so, we need to reach
out to each other and help to create
kind of family units within the parish. Our guest again
is Rebecca Frech. We have another
email here. But I want to make sure, before we jump up
into the email, to let them know
that you did more than teach homeschooling. You actually got involved
with curriculum. <i>I did. </i>I actually wrote
a book on homeschooling. Okay. Seven years ago now. I wrote a book.
I went out. And I had been homeschooling
for about four years, and a friend
of mine said to me, "Can you help me
find a book? I need a book. I need somebody
to tell me how. I don't feel comfortable
just jumping in." And I started reading all of the books
that were out there. And they were
so intimidating. I ended up, I called her, and I said,
"This is ridiculous. I can't homeschool." And she said, "No, you've
done it for four years." And I said, "No, but
I'm reading these books, and I can't do this." And I realized that the books were
written for a different personality type
than I was. And they were written
for people who were more introverted, who were definitely more
organized than I was, who had a vision
and a plan for this, rather than the person
who says, "Oh, my gosh. My daughter can read. She can't go to school, because she's
too advanced. Now what do I do today?" And so, I set out to write a book for the kind of scatterbrained,
extroverted, fly-by-the-seat-
of-your-pants, 'what are we doing today', kind of
Catholic homeschooler. <i>Well,</i> on the process
of homeschooling; and my wife, Marilyn,
did most of it. So, I've got
to be careful, because she's really,
she'd be sitting here. She was the expert
at homeschooling. But we learned
in the process that homeschooling can happen in lots
of different ways. Rebecca: <i>Yeah. It can.</i> It doesn't have
to be Type A, ordered. <i>Right. It doesn't have to</i> <i>look like school </i>at home. Right. Right. No, you don't have to
have a teacher's desk and children's desks
and a blackboard. I think most of
our boys learned homeschooling just
doing stuff on the farm. There's all
kinds of stuff. But they were readers. I mean, that was
a big part of it. Yes. If they become readers,
then you're... Then, right. And to me,
in my opinion, and other people have
their own opinion, but in my opinion, the purpose
of homeschooling is to teach your children
how to learn and how to teach
themselves how to acquire information. And if you have
taught them how to assimilate
information, how to go find it,
research it, take it in, sift it, and figure out
what it all means, that will last them for the whole rest
of their life. It doesn't matter
what they've memorized or not memorized. I want to be careful. I don't want be critical
of schools. No. But the one thing that homeschooling does, depending on where
you're living, is you can make sure that the faith element
is a part of what they're receiving. <i>You have a lot
more control</i> over what your children
are learning and what the influences
on them are. Yes. What about; get your answer for this, because the number
one question about homeschooling: 'What about
the social aspect? They don't get to
know other kids. They don't learn how to
talk with other kids.' That's the easiest one. I know everybody always
thinks that's the big one, and I always
flash back to those days in Catholic school when I got in trouble
for talking, and Sr Agnes Marie,
the principal, would say to me, you know, "Rebecca, Rebecca Lynn, the purpose of school
is not socialization." And I would have to put
my head on my desk. And I can't even tell you
how many days I spent with my head
on my desk, because I was socializing
too much in school. Unless you are locking
your children in a basement, unless you are
keeping them away from every human being
they will ever see, and your children
will learn socialization. Get them out there. Expose them to
other children. Take them out
into the world. Socialization is more
than just being able to operate within
a framework of 30 kids who are your same age. It's also being able
to talk to the people at the grocery store, and have conversations
with, you know, the elderly woman
next door, and play with the children
across the street. It's being able
to hold down a job, and hold down
a conversation, and know how to be
in the world, and how to have relationships
with other people. And I actually am not
100% convinced that a classroom of people
all the same age is the best and most
appropriate way to learn that. I was going to say, you have a better
control as parents over the selection of who
they socialize with. Yes. And our boys were
in community theater, which was a huge input. And then they were
in local sports. And we had good
Catholic families that were our
closest friends. I mean, they had plenty
of socialization. And the truth is that you cannot pick
your children's friends. They're going to befriend
who they befriend. But you can
absolutely select the pool of applicants from which
they're going to pick. Right. Another email. Rebecca: <i>Yeah.</i> <i>Danny from Grand Rapids.</i> <i>Invite them.</i> Reach out and ask them. I think that's
the number one thing that we as Catholics
don't do. We don't call
our friends and invite them
to church. You know, my Baptist
next-door neighbor invites me to church... <i>And you
said yourself...</i> ...three or four
times a year. ...along, you were
never asked back. Nobody ever asked me. No. I left the Church
at 16, and nobody,
between 16 and 20, nobody ever invited me
to come to Mass with them. So, if you have friends
or family members who have lapsed,
ask them. Just reach out
and ask them. Yeah. Yeah. I remember my last
Protestant church, every September,
we had a, we called it
'Fill-A-Pew Sunday.' We had a picture
of a guy named Phil A Pew. And we had a
cookout afterwards. And the goal was you
invite everybody you know. Everybody you know.
Yeah. "Come. Fill the pews." Right. You know,
and sometimes I hear about churches closing
down because of pew; fill the pews
before you close it down. If you truly believe
that we have the answer of how to get to Heaven, if you truly believe
that we have the answer
of Eternal Life, how selfish
do you have to be to not tell
everybody you know, because you're afraid
of being embarrassed? Like... There you go. Tell everybody. Invite everybody. I mean, so they say no. So what?
Ask them again. All right. We've got an email from Nancy
from South Carolina. <i>Okay. First of all,</i> <i>realize that </i>what you see
online is a lie; that everybody who has those beautiful homes
on Instagram, if you go to their houses - and I've been
to a lot of these like influencers' houses. I know them from
writing circles. It's beautiful here, and a huge mess has been
kicked behind them. So, first of all, do not
compare your outside; your inside to everybody
else's outside. That's the first thing. And the second thing is
to start small. Nobody says that you have
to jump in today and do all of the things, and celebrate
all of the saints, and all of
the feast days, and all of the everything, and go to Mass,
and, you know, and do all of the things. Pick one thing. Pick one and start small. So, this week, we're going to go to daily Mass
on Wednesday. And that's going to become
a part of our routine. And once Wednesday becomes an easy part
of your routine, then you add
one more small thing. And you just do
small things because that's how
you do big things. You do them a small
thing at a time. <i>Yep. </i>Yep. Yep. And of course,
we have that part that was so much a part
of our lives. And on Friday fasting, that's kind of been lost
by the wayside. How do we communicate
to our family that's maybe
still something to try and get
back up again? <i>Right. I mean,</i>
first of all... When all the traditions are changing
all around us. When all the traditions
are changing; I mean, I think
you just do it. You know, you just look
at your kids and you go,
"Listen. It's Friday. We're not eating meat." I mean, it's not going
to kill them to have, you know, cheese pizza
on Fridays, or a salad, or some kind of
a, you know, casserole with
no meat in it. A lot of
catechesis there. We've got a little
over a minute here. I'm thinking there's
someone watching who's left the Church
and is angry and just happened
to turn on this program. What would you
say to them? You're not hurting God
by your anger. You're only
hurting yourself. I mean, there's like that
old saying about anger, that 'Anger is
drinking poison and expecting
the other person to die.' So, if you think that
you're punishing God with your anger, all He's doing
is looking at you in sorrow and saying,
"Come home to Me." So, set down as much
of the anger as you can, and take a step
toward God until you can
set down more, and then set down more,
and take another step. Because before
you know it, you will have
set it all aside, and you'll be back home. And you seem to
also be a witness for those whose spouse
isn't quite there yet. Not quite there yet. Just keep inviting
and keep loving, and keep praying. And ask my Bernadette. I mean, apparently,
she's really good at this. Ask my Bernadette
for some help. Tell her, "Mom said." Ask the saints for help. And also, look to the
saints for inspiration. Go and find saints
like St Rita, who had a spouse
who was not in the Church, and she loved God so much that, you know,
she prayed him home. Thank you, Rebecca. Thank you. Thank you for
sharing with us all that you are doing
for the Lord and all that the Lord
has done in your life. Thank you very much. Thank you
for having me here. And thank you for joining us on this episode
of 'The Journey Home.' I do pray
that Rebecca's story and her return to the faith is an encouragement to you. God bless you. See you next week. [music]
