“What’s a nice Jewish girl doing in a place like this?” I often think, when I have a quiet moment between customers. It must be God’s sense of humor. Me, a Jewish girl running a Catholic T-shirt company. “How did this happen?” I’m often asked. My answer: “Grace — and God’s overwhelming gift of faith, love, and mercy!” My name is Joni, pronounced “Johnny.” This greeting usually evokes the same response: “How did you get a name like that? Johnny is a boy’s name.” It is with the reply that my story begins . . .

I was born the younger of two daughters to Elaine and Stanley Felser, a Jewish couple from Pittsburgh. In the Jewish tradition, children are named for deceased members of the family to give them honor and to guarantee the memory of the dearly departed. I was named after my fraternal grandfather, who passed away when my father was fifteen.
Our family’s Jewishness was more cultural than religious. We believed in God. We were taught that God was our Creator, and that He gave us rules to live by. Other than that, I really didn’t think much more about Him.

I did, however, enjoy the many wonderful traditions that our Jewish ancestors handed down. I especially appreciated the foods and holiday festivities of Purim, Chanukah, Rosh Hashanah, and Passover. There was nothing like the feast after the fast of Yom Kippur. Or at least I didn’t think so.
My maternal grandparents, however, abandoned their Jewish faith for the teachings of Christian Science. They came to live with us after my grandmother became seriously ill with heart disease, and they lived with us for most of my life as a child.

I remember going with Grandpa to his Christian Science meetings and the Sunday school there. Something didn’t seem right. Grandpa was always grumpy. He couldn’t deal with Grandma’s numerous doctor appointments, her medications, or her frequent ambulance trips to the hospital in the middle of the night.

He was always fighting with her about something he called “faith.” Grandpa felt that if Grandma had enough “faith,” she wouldn’t be sick. He was angry because of her lack of “faith” and the burden she had become to him.

Why couldn’t he see what peace and joy she brought to the rest of us? Why couldn’t he enjoy the many hours she would spend with my sister and me, listening to the events of our day? Why couldn’t he find pleasure in just being with us, as Grandma did? It was so peaceful to sit with Grandma, as she would make her beaded flowers and hum her favorite tunes. Why couldn’t he love her as she loved us?

My sister and I decided that we didn’t want to go to the Christian Science meetings any longer. If we were Jewish, then we should go to the Jewish temple and learn about Judaism. Learning the stories of Noah, King David, and Esther were the more memorable lessons for me.
Learning Hebrew was not! Regrettably, all those new letters and words made me anxious. I dreaded our weekly Sunday school lessons. I remember thinking, “If this is what being Jewish is about, I’m going to make an awful Jew.”

The Sunday school lessons came to an end, and life went on as normal for awhile. “The family across the street were better Jews than we were anyway,” I thought. “We can go to their Bar Mitzvahs and Passover Seders to fulfill our Jewish obligations.” Obviously, I was clueless about what being Jewish was about. But life seemed good and I thought, “Who needs religion or God anyway?”
I did the worldly life for the next few years. I attended a few youth group meetings at the temple. I partied. I went to college and got my degree so that I could teach art. I partied. I learned that my boyfriend was involved with the occult. We broke up. I partied. I got an ulcer. Life went on. And I partied!

Then the nightmares started. For an entire year it was the same nightmare: chanting, evil nuns and monks burying me alive. The paralyzing terror!

I became depressed and confused. Life wasn’t fun anymore. I felt so alone. I couldn’t sleep, because sleep made things worse. The chanting, the nuns, the monks, sheer evil terror!
I couldn’t escape the nightmares. I was disenchanted with life. I couldn’t escape into sleep, and I was too afraid to die.

But Grandma wasn’t afraid to die. She said she’d had enough of the pain. By then, Grandma had abandoned her involvement with the Christian Science Church. I can’t recall her discussing her relationship with God with us, but I feel certain that she had developed such a relationship. I don’t know for sure what shape her faith in God finally took in her last days, but I know that she wanted to go to God. I remember the events as if they happened yesterday . . .

It happened the day I came home from my sixth-grade field trip. Mom was shopping, and my sister wasn’t home from school yet. Dad was sleeping. (He worked the night shift and slept during the day.)

Grandma was in bed. She’d just been released from her latest hospital stay the day before and was still too sick and weak to be out of bed. Grandpa hadn’t been home in a long time. He’d moved to Florida.

I went to the back bedroom to see Grandma and tell her I was home from school. Grandma looked really bad. “I need to go back to the hospital now,” she said. I called 911, wrote a note to Mom, left it on the kitchen table, and accompanied Grandma on her final trip in the ambulance to the hospital.
When she was settled into her bed in the intensive care unit, I kissed her and told her that I loved her. I turned to leave. “I’m ready, Joni. I have lived long enough and I am ready to go.” It wasn’t what Grandma said, but how she said it that I remember most. She spoke her final words with such peace, with a joyful anticipation.

She carried her cross in peace and with confidence, praying, I believe, that we would one day come to know God and love Him. Grandma died because her heart wore out. It was worn out because it endlessly loved a man who didn’t know true love and true faith. It was worn out because she continually loved us, her family.

I had forgotten about Grandma’s last moments for a long time. But now, this evening, I could hear Grandma’s heart beating loud and clear in my own. I was terrified of another nightmare! I knew I’d go out of my mind if I had to endure one more.

Who was this God from whom my Grandmother drew such peace in her final moments? Would He share this peace with me? I heard that He was there for us, but I didn’t know Him.
I sat on the edge of the bed and cried out, “God, if you’re there and you want me, give me a peaceful night’s sleep. Stop these nightmares and I’m yours!” I lay down and went to sleep.
The next morning, I sat up and returned to the edge of my bed. “Okay God, now what? I’m yours!” I was surely going to have to keep my end of the bargain. For the first time in a year, I’d had a peaceful night’s sleep and I was no longer afraid.

Immediately good, faithful, Christ-filled people came into my life. I knew that I had to be a Christian, because I didn’t have a problem believing that Jesus was the Messiah. In fact, I’d asked a rabbi years earlier at one of the synagogue teen gatherings: “Why didn’t we accept Jesus as the Messiah? It seems to me that he fulfilled what was written in our Bible” (or at least the little I knew from the Scriptures). I was told not to come back. It was obvious that I made a lousy Jew.
or the next few months, I religion-shopped. I went to churches of different denominations and even went back to temple to make sure I wasn’t making a big mistake. “What if the rabbi was right? I could be in a lot of trouble,” I thought. As I visited different churches and the synagogue, I realized that something was missing, but I didn’t know what.

Finally I went into a Catholic church to see what it had to offer. I arrived for their celebration and immediately felt comfortable. Many of the gestures were reminiscent of the worship in the temple. I liked the reverence, the Old Testament reading, and the psalms. All seemed kosher. They even celebrated what looked a lot like the Passover meal.

Then something happened that changed my life forever. Bells rang and the celebrant took in his hands a white circle. As he held this mysterious disk high for all to see, my eyes were opened. I saw reality for the first time. “My Lord and my God!” was proclaimed through my entire being, and I wept. I was home.
I immediately went to my parents and told them that I was going to be Catholic. They had seen it coming, but figured that this whim would pass.

I decided to contact the mother of my childhood friend Terri, who was Catholic. I still remembered how Terri and I had played board games at her house when we were young. The picture of Jesus that had hung on the wall in the room where we’d played had captivated me. In the picture, Jesus was holding something. I couldn’t figure out what it was.

After months of wonderment, I’d finally concluded that I’d figured out what it was Jesus was holding. So I’d asked Terri, “Why is Jesus holding a cupcake?” Needless to say, this question had provided a wonderful opportunity for Terri and her mother to talk with me about Jesus and His Sacred Heart. Now I would need to know more, a lot more! So I called Terri’s mom, who still lived around the corner from my family’s house.

“Barb, this is Joni. I want to be Catholic, and I don’t know how.”
Soon I entered RCIA with Barb as my sponsor. I read everything I could get my hands on about the Catholic faith. God gave me the opportunity to read and study thoroughly.

For the next year, I had plenty of time to learn, because I underwent two surgeries on my knees.
Complications arose, and I got blood clots in both legs and broke my leg while sitting up in bed. I used this time in bed to absorb as much as I could before my baptism and First Communion at the Easter vigil. I didn’t realize then that Jesus was trying to teach me what I had asked for: to know Him and to love Him.

I remember driving by a Catholic church one evening and seeing the illuminated crucifix through the window of the church. “True love and the pain of suffering,” I thought. “I don’t understand, but I know that they go hand in hand.”

I knew in my heart that this would be a lesson Jesus would teach me. I didn’t know how. But I knew that this was a lesson I would have to learn if I was truly to love. The next ten years were filled with the joys and sorrows familiar to many. I married the man God had chosen as my spouse. The “specialists” told us that I probably wouldn’t be able to conceive a child because of endometriosis. But through the grace of God, I conceived and gave birth to my four beautiful blessings.

Then the endometriosis became so debilitating that I had to have a complete hysterectomy at the age of thirty-two. At that time the doctors discovered that my bone density was that of an eighty-year-old. From that point on, my body seemed to fall apart.

In October of 1994, I knew something was coming, and I was frightened. Things started to hurt in my body. One day I went to Mass, and after Communion, I prayed that God would heal me.
ith all my being I wanted to be well and not have to go through what I felt was coming. I prayed with the faith that my grandfather wanted Grandma to have. “O God, if you make me healthy, what good I could do for you!” I prayed with all my heart.

“Joni, the weaker you are, the more I can work through you,” was God’s reply. I was angry! How could this be? I was ready for His healing and totally open to it. And this was the answer He gave me. I didn’t like it, and more importantly, I didn’t know what it meant.
When I arrived home, my husband, Bob, could tell that I was upset. I told him how I’d prayed harder than I’d ever prayed before for God to make me a healthy person. I told him what I felt in my heart was God’s answer and that I

I didn’t understand it. Bob immediately grabbed his Bible and showed me that St. Paul had written something similar in his second letter to the Corinthians (see 2 Cor. 12:8-10). He said that it was biblically sound, and the fact that I wasn’t expecting this probably meant that it was from God and not my own thoughts. I didn’t like God’s answer and I didn’t like Bob’s. I would just ignore it and it would go away.

The pain got worse. I didn’t sleep. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and told that I should do aerobic exercise to relieve the pain. My doctor also said that weight lifting would probably help my bone density problem. So I joined a gym and made up my mind to get healthy.
Five months later, however, I found myself unable even to get off the couch. I couldn’t walk, sit, or move without excruciating pain. I lost feeling in parts of my body. At times, my limbs turned blue, and my body would swell all over.

I went from doctor to doctor. Tests would show where the problems were, but not why. The doctors didn’t know how to relieve my pain or how to help me. I was scared! I was hurting. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t care for my children or my husband. I didn’t understand. So I prayed.
fter nine months the doctors finally diagnosed me with a rare genetic connective tissue disease called Ehlers Danlos. It was also likely that my collagen wasn’t being made correctly. The doctors concluded that the muscle and connective tissues attached to the base of my spine had ripped away from the bones in my lower back.

My bones were weak; my whole structure was now unstable. I couldn’t move. The pain medication was helpful, but when I used it, I couldn’t think straight. All I could do was pray.
And God answered. While lying on the couch, I felt despair. But God allowed me to see despair through the eyes of a person with faith. I learned in an instant what faith was, and the difference faith in God made in a person’s life.

Faith had made the difference in my grandparents. It made my grandfather nasty, because his faith relied on himself. My grandmother’s faith gave her peace because she relied on God. It was now time for me to rely on God too. It was obvious that I couldn’t rely on the doctors, my loving family, or myself.

G race came. The grace to believe in Him who loved me more than anyone else loved me. The grace to accept that my illnesses would be around until He who created me was ready to heal me. The grace to trust Him, who knew better than anyone, how He wanted to use me for His good. And He showered me with His peace.

With this new awareness came an acceptance of my deteriorating health. Although the illnesses wrought havoc with my body, they didn’t steal my peace. The pain didn’t subside, but now I was able to deal with it better. God taught me how to “offer it up.” I had heard the expression, but now He wanted me to live it.

“O God! Please don’t let this go to waste!” I cried out, with tears rolling down my cheeks, as I waited in the emergency room for another useless attempt to get relief from the pain. It was with that pathetic plea that I learned my favorite prayer. In the time to come I would pray this many times in the darkness of my sleepless nights: “I don’t know how You turn this pain into graces, but I know that you do. Please don’t let this go to waste.”

“Lord, you’d better be working through me!” I cried out in my heart as my father helped me put on my shoes before taking me to yet another doctor’s appointment. I couldn’t do it myself. I couldn’t put on my socks or shoes without help and I couldn’t pray without help.

My parents, husband, and friends were always there to help, and so were my heavenly family and friends. I learned to love the saints. They had “been there, done that,” and now they were helping me, their sister in faith. I received so many graces through their intercession, and God was calling me to share those graces by praying for others.

Our Lord was teaching me how to pray with my body. How to “offer up” my pain, my fear, my self. “Now,” I prayed, “God, give me something to do, or I will go crazy lying here on the couch.”
God planted the idea in my head that I could draw Catholic T-shirts from the couch. After all, how many times did my husband Bob say to me that we really need some strong Catholic T-shirts out there? Not just Christian, but Catholic.

Father’s Day was coming. I could make Bob a Catholic T-shirt for his Father’s Day gift. So I drew a picture of the Blessed Mother with fabric crayons and ironed it on a shirt for him. Our friends came over to visit, saw the shirt and told me that if I made more, they would sell them in their Christian book and gift store. That night our T-shirt business, Biblically Correct, was born.

Soon the doctors fitted me for a back brace to hold me together. I went to physical therapy to break up the rock-hard muscle spasms throughout my body. I wore supports in my shoes to keep the ligaments in my feet from tearing. And I was getting epidural nerve blocks with cortisone to help relieve the pain.

I started a bone treatment I.V. program to improve my bone density. I used a wheelchair to get around. I was a new woman, and I was ready to get off the couch. I was finally able to go back and pray with our Tuesday night Rosary group at Sacred Heart Chapel.

One night while we were praying the Rosary, God said to me, “Joni, you know how you always say that you would rather have these illnesses instead of your children? That you would rather suffer your migraines than have your children suffer them?”

“Yes, Lord,” I said, concerned about what He was leading to. “Well, don’t you know that is what I did for My children? I suffered for their sins. I suffered their pain and punishment so that they would not have to suffer the pains of hell. I did this because I love them and because I love you.”

That night Jesus taught me what love is. That night Jesus invited me, as He invites all of us, to love as He does. “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12-13).

That night Jesus taught me the meaning of His holy cross. He taught me the meaning of His Sacred Heart. That night Jesus taught me about true love.

Meanwhile, my health continued to decline. We had to stop the epidurals because they were destroying my connective tissue even more than the Ehlers Danlos was. The bone treatments weren’t helping my bone density, and they aggravated and intensified my migraine headaches. But I couldn’t stop the treatments because my bones would get even worse, I was told.

Even so, my bones were already worse. I now had the bone density of a ninety-year-old. My foot broke while I was walking out of church. I tore my rib cage from my sternum while I was sleeping and had to get a new brace to sleep in. Without this huge and cumbersome brace, I would continue to dislocate my ribs. I thought I had trusted God before. Now the time had come for me really to trust Him.

Our T-shirt business continued to grow, and now God gave me a children’s book of saints to write and illustrate. He wasn’t going to let me lose my mind as well as my body! The worse I felt, the more inspired I was to draw and write.

God gave me the gift of my artwork and our T-shirt business to keep me sane. He gave me the gift of praying with my body to make me holy and to make me humble. I became well aware that I can do all things only through Christ who strengthens me (see Phil. 4:13).

Through these challenges, God gave me an awareness of what so-called “mercy killings” were stealing away from the sick and elderly. The “culture of death” mentality was trying to steal us away from an intimate walk with Jesus Christ, from the loving sacrifice that He had waiting for those who suffer. This world wants to steal our peace, our joy, and the uniting of our sufferings with His. This world wants to steal our chance to love as Jesus loves.

But thanks be to God, Jesus kept the world from robbing me of that blessing. He taught me what it means to “offer it up.” All we need to do is to ask Him to pour out His grace on our brothers and sisters and to offer up our pain and illnesses, our disappointments as well as our joys, for the sake of others. God loves us so much that He wants us to share in the loving sacrifice of His cross, the instrument of His love and grace, His peace and life in us — the mystery of His Most Sacred Heart.
It was a great lesson to learn. Yet I’d actually begun to learn it, not through my own trials, but through my grandmother’s example. Somehow she had come to understand the redemptive power of suffering.

She hadn’t wasted her suffering with a bad attitude or a “Why me?” mentality. Instead, she had prayed through her illness. By offering up her suffering, I believe, Grandma had asked our Lord to shed graces on her little Jewish granddaughter, so that one day I might learn to live and love as Jesus does.

Visit Joni Seiths website at http://www.biblicallycorrect.com

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