We are so blessed in Florida with the water still warm enough to swim. I remember when I entered and thought I would never be able to swim as a nun. At that time we had no possibilities. Later, when I was able to return from Chile for a visit in 1968 after nine years away, my mother brought me a swimming suit and I found out that one of our schools now had an indoor pool under the gym. I begged the Superior Vicar to allow me to go there to make my retreat before returning to Chile. She thought I could make it at the college where I was staying and wanted to know the reason I was asking to go to the school. I told her that I just wanted to be able to swim. She let me go and, after eighteen years, I still found it just as delightful and contemplative as it had always been for me. Now, we have a pool and I rejoice to be in it when I have time and it is not raining. I think it must be part of the hundredfold God gives.
You know, not having children of my own seemed a big thing to consider before I entered the Society of the Sacred Heart. God took care of that for, even as a second year novice, I had the entire high school and the 7th and 8th grades for sports everyday including longer periods on the week ends. Then I had the Primary School and taught First Grade for years before my Profession in Rome. I sometimes thought that the Lord gave me too many children! Not really, as I loved them all but I also had many little children as boarders and that meant I was really with them, took them for baths, saw that they were dressed, combed hair, etc. At Clifton, the uniform shoe was a black and white saddle oxford - when I told my superior that I did not have time at night to polish the children's shoes, she replied that they should learn to do this. The first night I tried to have - not the first and second graders in the dormitory, but a sensible fourth-grader learn to do this- she shook the white polish and it went all over my Sunday habit and veil and never came out of the veil. After that, I just polished the shoes by myself!
God does give us the hundredfold!
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