June 4, 2010
Second graders are connected by prayer
St. Benedict second graders Benjamin Sloan, Isabelle Merkel, Eden James and Mason Auker, and parent Amy Samm work on a quilt for Jonathon Craw. He was recently diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, and the students have been praying for him this year. Eden said, “We prayed for him — that he gets better.” He is the grandson of Marty Horning, DRE at St. Benedict Cathedral in Evansville. Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
Priorities can change in an instant — sometimes because of a devastating diagnosis. Marty Horning knows that well.
She’s the DRE at St. Benedict Cathedral in Evansville, and recently talked about how her priorities — and those of her entire family — have changed since her grandson, Jonathon, was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.
He’s eight, and the son of her daughter, Lisa. “Ever since he was little, he never really ran or hopped or jumped,” his grandmother says. “We really didn’t pay that much attention to it.”
When he was five, “we realized he wasn’t able to do gross motor skills like most kids,” and so at six, he began physical therapy.
She remembers quite clearly where she was when she heard the term “muscular dystrophy” applied to her grandson. “I was at the Catholic Center at a DRE meeting, and Lisa called me. She said, ‘Mom, Jonathon has muscular dystrophy.’ I just cried. [The late Benedictine] Sister Geraldine was there, and I just broke down.
“Everyone prayed, and the prayers are still coming.”
Jonathon knows he has “sick, sore muscles,” but he doesn’t know he has a disease. His family knows more than they care to know, Marty said. “By the time he is 10 to 12, he may be in a wheelchair,” she said, adding, “it’s not a pretty thing.”
She said she is inspired by her daughter, Lisa, who is a “dynamic, spiritual, spirit-filled person. She’s doing so well with it,” with a determination that “we have it. We are going to work with it.”
When Marty shared the news about Jonathon with the teachers at St. Ben’s, they took it to heart. At the time, he was a second grader at a Catholic school in Fort Wayne, preparing to make his First Communion.
The two second grade teachers at St. Ben’s, Abby Adler and Kelley Coppens, “took him on as a prayer partner” and encouraged their students to pray for him and his family “for whatever God’s will is.”
They prayed for him all year, and this spring they made him a personalized quilt.
Marty was with the students the day they started working on it. Children were choosing colored pieces of fabric, when Kelley asked, “Marty, do you know what this is? It’s your grandson’s quilt.”
“I got really choked,” she said, remembering how diligently they worked on the project and how they prayed for Jonathon as they put it together.
She’s quiet as she remembers his recent First Communion. “He looked like every other kid — to watch him walk up to his First Communion and think, ‘what can he walk up to? Not his graduation. Not his Confirmation.’ That went through my mind.”
Sometimes she “kinda wonders what Jonathon is going to teach all of us” as he struggles with the progression of the disease. She is sure that “God has a message through Jonathon.”
She’s already learned “to just stop and enjoy him while I can enjoy him. His life is so important.”
Her daughter Lisa is also learning lessons “with this awful dreaded disease. God sends angels your way,” she said.
Of the young children who pray for her son, she says, “it’s wonderful they are taking the time to pray for him and lift him up. It’s reassuring to know we have that support.”
They haven’t “fully disclosed” information in Jonathon’s classroom about the disease, so it helps to know that “there is a class taking him on.”
Lisa says it‘s been a process, “to see how God works.”
“Angels seem to come our way all the time. It’s wonderful.”