January 13, 2012
‘He Uses It for Good’
Author writes of second chances and happy endings
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
Who would have ever predicted that the little girl who lived in the shadow of poverty, lies and family scandal would grow up and enjoy a life filled with joy and happiness?
That’s Mary Biever’s story, and it fills the pages of the book she has recently written.
It’s called “He Uses It for Good,” and in it she tells of a childhood filled with emotional pain, abandonment and rejection all because of decisions her father made.
In the book, she also talks about coming to the conclusion that “things in life aren’t perfect, but God is with us. He carries us, and he makes the happy ending.”
Life wasn’t very happy back in August of 1974. That’s when her childhood, as she knew it, ended. Authorities confronted her father about embezzling funds from a children’s home where he was a fundraiser.
He was sent to prison, and while he was there her mother was left to care for and support four young children. Biever began a paper route, hoping to help with the bills. Even during the blizzard of 1978, she went out on her route, knowing her family needed the money.
“I had a chip on my shoulder,” she says of herself as a young girl, even as a young women, “and I kept waiting for people to let me down.”
Some did, and some didn’t. She was from a strongly anti-Catholic family, and when she met Richard, she didn’t even tell her grandparents that he was Catholic. They married, and she agreed to raise their children in his faith.
Their first child was anencephalic and had Down syndrome. There was a miscarriage, and she remembers, “I believed in God, but we didn’t have a relationship. When I lost the baby, I was angry.
“I was furious at God and began a journal so I could rant at him daily. My anger at him was my first step back into a relationship with him.”
In the book, she writes, “In the bible, they wrote of the tears of the daughters of Rachel for their lost children, and for the first time in my life, I understood what it meant.”
When she gave birth to her second child, Elizabeth, she prayed, “Please, God, don’t let something happen to this baby too.”
She quickly learned that there were problems with the baby’s platelet levels. “By the hand of God she survived childbirth.”
A short time later, she was pregnant with her son, Nick. There was concern that he might have the same medical problem. “Every test came back worse,” she said, remembering asking everyone she knew to pray for the baby she was carrying.
“When a friend went to Medjugorje on a pilgrimage, I gave him an ultrasound photo, and asked him to pray for a miracle there. When he returned, he told us he had buried the ultrasound under a rock on the hill.
“That night, Richard and I prayed a rosary for our son together. It was the first time in our five years of marriage that we prayed together.
“That night I dreamed again of our son. This time, I saw the hill at Medjugorje, and Mary told me, ’We will pray for your unborn son.’”
The next day, the young woman made the decision to become Catholic. “That was the beginning of my conversion.”
As the pregnancy progressed, the doctor urged her to have an abortion. “We refused. I began to realize about the sanctity of life.”
She and her husband knew — despite the difficult pregnancy — that “bad things were going to happen, but that we would be ok.”
Late in the pregnancy, she began to hemorrhage. As she and her mother sped to the hospital “every stop light turned green,” she said, “and we faced no traffic, making the 30-minute drive in 12 minutes.”
She spent four weeks on bed rest. “At each step my faith was growing.”
When her son was born, there were no platelet issues, and he went home three days after he was born.
The following Easter, she joined the Catholic Church. “The more I researched, the more I read, the more it made sense.”
In 2001, the family home was destroyed by fire. It became, once again, a time to ask God to show her the way.
The morning after the fire, as the family listened to the homily at Mass, they heard the story of Abraham being called by God. “He had to make a journey and could only rely on God,” she said, adding, “God would show him the way. That’s how we felt too.”
Biever, a member of Holy Spirit Church, Evansville, says she began to feel a call to write a book about her life experiences, the childhood trauma and shame, the difficult pregnancies, the house fire and her conversion to Catholicism.
She was talking with a friend when she first verbalized the idea. “I felt God’s urging me to write a book. It was to be a book of encouragement, telling how we can overcome adversity and turn it to good.”
She told her friend that she would write something “if God ever calls me,” adding, “if he wakes me up tomorrow morning, I’ll post on your Facebook wall so you know.”
The next morning, she remembers, “I woke at 3 a.m. I prayed for an hour, asking God to show me what to do. By 4 a.m. I knew I had to write.
“Out came the candle and music. As I listened, the words flowed.”
She found her inspiration in the words from Genesis 50:20, words Joseph spoke to his brothers. He had been sold into slavery by them, yet became one of the most powerful men in Egypt. He said, “Even though you meant harm to me, God meant it for good, to achieve his present end, the survival of many people.”
She has learned that too, which is why she chose “He Uses It for Good!” as the title of her book.
“Things in life aren’t perfect, but God is with us, and he will carry us. He will make the happy ending.”
For additional information about Biever’s book, go to her website at MaryBiever.com.