Truth of the Spirit presents Unique Witnesses of Life in the Spirit. Three people from very different backgrounds share how the Lord revealed his love to them and drew them to live Life in the Spirit. Witnesses are Brenda Parrill, a young mother, Pete Metzger, a retired corporate executive, and Lissa Applewhite, RN, a divorced hospice nurse. Playlist link: (1) Life in the Spirit Fall 2022 at Patriarch House – YouTube
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Life in the Spirit Fall 2022 at Patriarch House Series playlist is available at Life in the Spirit Fall 2022 at Patriarch House – YouTube
Transcript of Unique Witnesses of Life in the Spirit with Brenda Parill, Pete Metzger, Lissa Applewhite and Host, Patti Brunner.
Welcome to Truth of the Spirit. I’m your host Patti Brunner. Today we are going to have several witnesses that participated in our recent Life in the Spirit. When we witness our faith, we show others how uniquely God loves us. And as we listen to the witnesses, we realize that the Lord loves us, too! We can share their lives, their experiences and then be more open for our own. Life in the Spirit invites us to seek God’s Face, to listen and to see and to hear with our hearts and our minds. We invite you now to listen to these very special witnesses as we continue our Life in the Spirit presentation series.
Welcome, I’m so glad you are here with us tonight. Let’s start with prayer. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Come Holy Spirit. We thank You for being with us here tonight. We ask that You help us to open ourselves to the fullness of your grace. Lord, be with us as we listen. Open our eyes, open our ears, open our hearts to your fullness. Be with our speakers as they share what You have given them–the wonder and the beauty of what your love does for us. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’d like to introduce to you our next speaker, Brenda Parrill. Brenda is a mother, wife, accountant, and is currently a teacher at the PRE program with the Edge aged children. Please welcome Brenda.
[Brenda] My name is Brenda Parrill and I would like to talk about the way God has introduced the Communion of the Saints to me. So, I guess a tiny bit of background. I have experienced Christ in my life since I was a young teen. But the intensity of those times with Him has varied but none compared to the last three or four years that I have spent, that He has spent with me and shown me the depths of His love. I will rewind to 2019. And in 2019, this is just before, the year before Covid hit and I had done a few studies. And these studies had led me to what true worship looked like. I had grown up as a cradle Catholic. And, I learned a new word today, which is a ‘CEO’ Catholic Easter Only! Patti Brunner introduced me, which, unfortunately, described also my life as a Catholic, because during the times when I had four very, very young children—two in diapers at one point—I was ‘CEO’ essentially, for several years until I felt like I could maybe ‘manage’ with only two arms and four children who would not obey. That kind of was my life for a little while.
As I did the study, I learned about Christ’s true worship and that led me to understand that the Catholic Church held that true worship. And so I went to a neighbor of mine; she actually had a very big impact in my life. She introduced me to something called ‘daily mass’. I had no idea at the time that people would want to go every day and I envisioned it being like a Sunday Mass—which, if you’ve ever been to daily mass, it’s not like that at all. There’s no singing and it’s very, very intimate. But in my mind I thought, “Whoa! How could somebody do that?” I visited for the first time and I actually saw her there and then shortly after, I visited a women’s group called “Mothers Growing in Faith”. And actually one of the people that was here that day or there that day is Katie, who is in the audience. That was the first time I ever heard of somebody talk about a saint and how they impacted their lives. Now, I had no idea that Saints could speak to you or that you could want to speak to them. She talked about the saint named Saint Therese. And Saint Therese is a saint who will, if you do a novena, which is a nine day prayer. I had to look that up too, what that was. A novena—and she will send you within those nine days a sign that your prayers have been heard. Not necessarily answered but that they were heard. And the sign that she sends is a rose. And after hearing this I’d never in my life, cradle Catholic, had heard of anybody having received a rose from a saint or had done a prayer for nine days and experienced this. So after that meeting I go home and I journal, but it was a quick entry into my [journal] and I say, “Guess what! I found out what a novena was and this lady named Saint Therese and I don‘t really know if I even like the idea of talking to saints because that’s kind of weird”, because remember I had just started to try to come back and learn more about the Catholic Church. And so I was a little skeptical. But I wanted to try it because her rose that she received was really neat. It was, she actually I think, she said she received a bouquet or something to that effect, like a real set of roses. And so I was like, “Okay, I’m going to try that.” So I wrote in there that I didn’t necessarily believe that I was going to get any roses and I didn’t have a specific prayer especially. A novena is not something you just pray for, you know, that you don’t burn dinner tonight. It’s supposed to be for something important like a career change or something. So I said, okay, well I don’t have anything, I don’t notice really that I want to entrust to you Saint Therese—no offense—but all I want, all I want is the rose. That’s it. So I asked God, “Will You allow her to send me this rose and if she does do this, Lord, then I’m in; I’m all in.” Like, I’m going to be a ‘sold-out Catholic’. If it happens; like the kind of Catholic where I’m going to put her picture on the back of my van, that vinyl sticker. I’m going to order it. And I’m going to put a rosary –and I told Him, “I’m all in if this happens. Turns out I wrote it down and I had the proof, right? In this journal! So I, of course you know, all this has taken time. It’s already past lunch and I need to go pick up the children. I go to school, pick them up and I rush back and I try to do a quick like you know, a meal of something for them to leave me alone. So, I have this L-shaped desk downstairs in the basement. And I knew if I didn’t do it quickly they were going to come find me. So, I got under my L-shaped desk, and I had a little flashlight so in case they peeked down in the basement they wouldn’t see my head and I would be hidden! So I already had everything ready and printed; I printed out the nine day novena. It has a sheet and you had the nine day prayers already ready. And so I got down on my knees and I’m under the desk and it’s dark and I have a flashlight. I’m reading it in the middle. I am almost finished; I had three sentences left when I hear, “Mom, what are you doing down there?” I was like, “Valencia, I have three sentences left—three!” And she’s like, “I know but I need to tell you something!” And I said, “I don’t ever get time for myself. Valencia, I have three sentences left. Tell me what could possibly be so important that you would take that from me?” And I was angry, right? And she is eight years old. And her little round eyes started to have water in them and I look at her and I’m thinking, “I’m on my knees here praying and then of course she would be wondering. Why did I answer her so ugly, you know? And so, she looks at me and says, “Well, I wanted..” This happened in October so it’s October-ish. “I wanted to give you something.” She goes into her pocket and pulls out a petal of a real rose. Okay, and I look at her and I’m, I’m…I hadn’t even finished the whole prayer! Like, I hadn’t! And, okay, so this is a little girl that is at school. I just picked her up. She has not been anywhere. There’s nothing special happening at school. Nothing has, um, nothing! And I can’t even speak to her because I’m in such shock that she—and it wasn’t crumpled! And I wanted to bring it so you could see it. [Holds it up on a page in her journal] [laughter] It’s crumpled now, but when she brought it to me it was not. And this is in an eight-year-old’s pocket that’s, you know, and I was in such shock that I couldn’t speak and I just have tears and so she thinks I’m—something’s wrong. I’m already under the desk and I’ in the dark and then mom’s crying and so she has to call for reinforcement. Dad and then everybody comes. But here’s the thing. Because I was just for my own self figuring out what the Catholic Church, just all of it, the beautiful truths that we have. All of these amazing sacramentals we have. I can’t even explain it to them yet because I don’t truly understand it all myself. And so in a quick way I tried to explain it to my family what it is. But afterwards, I thanked St. Therese. And I told her I could not absolutely believe that happened to me on that day. So I looked her up, of course, and I bought her books, and of course, she was my most favorite. She was my very first introduction into the Communion of Saints. And, goodness, we all have our own favorite saints now. And that was about three years ago. And I wanted to end with one of the quotes that I feel like really embodies her. She has this book done in her spirituality that they call, “The Little Way”. And so, one of her quotes is:
“Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions nor even at their difficulty as at the love with which we do them.” And that was one thing after meeting her and speaking to many of the other saints, after I knew that, I was convinced they are our living brothers and sisters and we can all, ALL of us can try for holiness, right? And she is the one who allows me to use each day and not count it as loss, but tiny little things can get me back on track. Right? So, I am very thankful for that introduction into the saints. And that was really the way that I was also introduced to Mary. That opening of my heart into receiving the communion—our brothers and sisters in heaven now was, I think, what allowed me, for my heart to be opened, to receive Mary as well. So that was a witness that happened in my life, I guess. [clapping]
[Patti] I now want to introduce to you our speaker for the Life in the Spirit, Mr. Pete Metzger. Pete has been a retired Wal-Mart executive and is now the manager/co-manager of our pantry, the St. Vincent de Paul Pantry in our parish. Welcome Pete!
[Pete] Thank you. My testimony begins as a child I was very devotional, I was an altar boy, I did all that kind of thing. And that went on and then I grew and went into the service and pretty much just forgot about religion and faith and everything else. But, thank God, He got me out alive and I moved to Colorado. That’s where I met my wife. And by that time I had driven more nails into his cross than anything else. She was not Catholic. She wasn’t hearing anything that the priest said about marriage but we loved each other so we got married in another church. Then, I think we examined every religion there is except Buddhism; that’s the only one we didn’t go through. But she fell in love with the Episcopal Church and that was fine. And, I still went my way without a lot of faith or a lot of anything. And I was working for Wal-Mart at the time and they sent me to Hong Kong, to run that operation. And the buyers would come over and the first thing they’d ask me for Sunday, “Is there a church we can go to?” I didn’t know where but I found out where and I started going to church with them. And that kind of rang a bell in me. You know, maybe I need to get a little better. So when we came back from Hong Kong, I asked my wife, “Would you mind sanctifying our marriage in the Catholic Church?” And she said, “No, let’s do it.” So, Fr. Sinkler, Mike Sinkler, did that and raised us. And then I became what I call a CC. I’d go to mass every week, and I’d look at my watch and “When’s this going to end?” And one day I was sitting there reading the bulletin and there was an ad for Eucharistic Ministers and lectors and all that stuff and I said, “Well, that’s kind of interesting.” And all of a sudden, there was a heat on my heart and a voice said to me, “I want you to become an Eucharistic Minister. I want you to serve the people with My Body and Blood.” The next day I became a Eucharistic Minister! And that really started me on my way. Then along came Patti and Rick and the St. Andrew School of Evangelization, which I still miss. And that really helped me. They helped me a great deal, still do to this day. And while I was thinking about my past I remembered and I realize that whatever I did God was always still with me. He never, ever, left me. He may not have like me very much; but He never left me. I got into with Patti and Rick, learned a lot there, and Tim and Darcy, and just following. Then one day somebody asked me, “We’re leaving the Pantry. Would you mind running it?” And I thought about it for a while. Went to the Adoration Chapel a lot! [I] discerned about it for three months. Finally God came to me again and He said, “I want you over there. I want you serving my poor. And that’s what I want from you.” That’s where I went. And that’s what I did and still do as a matter of fact. But the whole thing about my journey in my life is that like Patti says, He’s always there with you. I have been given the gift of charism of Evangelization and Encouragement and so far I’ve evangelized three people into the Catholic Church. But it’s a want to get down on your knees and pray and it’s becoming with God a person you can talk to. And sometimes He answers and sometimes He doesn’t!
But it’s always there. And today I just thank God, I go to the Adoration Chapel quite often, and speak with God and, more times than not–and the way I can tell—Patti kind of alluded to this—I get a burning in my chest, and then He will tell me—right now I’m kind of—I’m 83 years old! So I’m kind of wondering whether I should retire from the pantry or what. So I went to the Adoration Chapel and I asked Him, and He said, “Get over there!” [laughter] “I want you to stay there.” So, I am staying. It had been a time in my life when it wasn’t good, I wasn’t good, but God still sat on my shoulder the whole time. There you go! [clapping]
[Patti] Our next speaker is Lissa Applewhite. Lissa, who has been a speaker for Truth of the Spirit before, is currently a Hospice RN and we are glad that she is here with us to share her story. Ms. Lissa Applewhite.
[Lissa] I was a cradle Catholic. Raised by very devout parents. My father attended Mass every day, and we would have breakfast after he got home from Mass. My parents played a very strong role in my upbringing as well as CCD at the Church. When I became an adolescent, I didn’t, I don’t think I had a ‘crisis’ with God, as far as not believing –praise You, Jesus! – But I started saying, “Is this religion? Is this what I’ve been taught? Where You are? So I started, you know, looking around a little bit. But God did a wonderful intervention in that I got invited; I was able to attend “A Search for Christian Maturity”. I was too young to go; I was not old enough. But they needed people. So, I got to go. And this was an epiphany. A beautiful epiphany! I found out that God, Jesus, Holy Spirit—everybody that I had in my upbringing—was very real and He wanted to be a part of my life, in a very, in an active way.
Well, about the same time that happened, my mother, who was a convert, got invited to a prayer group at St. Thomas Aquinas. And she started going, and then soon after that I went with her because I was so excited about all this. And my dad didn’t want to be left alone at home so he came too! And the lead, the priest over that prayer group was Father Dienert.
It was a lot led by college students, and anyway, I could go into, it was a wonderful prayer group. And not too far into my experience I got prayed over for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and I had a beautiful outpouring and I was excited! There weren’t many other high school students that, you know, in my parish that were necessarily experiencing the same thing, so I kind of got close to some of the other, the other more, I don’t want to say religious, but more spiritual people and it was outside the Catholic Church. But God just did beautiful things in my life at that time and when I went away, I went to a Catholic college, and when I went away it was great. I still stayed in a spiritual community and I was very strong in my faith
After I graduated I moved away, you know, doing my wings, I’m going to be on my own, and I did not have that spiritual community that I had previously had. So I’m going to say, for the next probably 10-15 years I never lost my faith; I never lost knowing that God was a part of my life, but for that time I did not nourish my faith. I did not grow in my faith. I just did what was expected of me. Go to Mass.
Anytime things would come up in my life that were difficulties, I quickly pulled that faith back in and asked God to help me. And so my prayer life accelerated for that time. Until things sort of settled down. And then I kind of went back to the old habits. Then about 20 years ago I was going through a very difficult situation. I was not in a Godly marriage and I had to lean on God a whole lot. And I felt like I really had to step out in faith, to really start living my faith more and putting myself in the correct place which was with other believers and not just attend Mass. And, um, God (chuckle) brought me out of that marriage.
It was during that time that I really started again nourishing my relationship with God and praying. And like I said, I did not seek a divorce for a really, for years. Even though it had been recommended –more for financial reasons—but anyway, I just kept praying. I just kept praying; I just kept praying.
God has always been with me. … When I was baptized I received the Holy Spirit. In Confirmation it was ‘lit up’ and soon after that it really was not that long after my Confirmation that I had that experience with God. And I had such a vivid beautiful relationship with God as an adolescent and young adult to start out with, that I think always carried me through because I could think back to how happy I was and fulfilled. So when I kind of always held on to that just a little bit but I was doing, living my life, I wasn’t necessarily doing what I needed to do. But when I did start nurturing that relationship [with God] again it just builds. I mean Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit have been there the whole time, just waiting for me to want to deepen that relationship.
God created us. He wants to be in relationship with us. It falls on us to want to be in relationship with Him. And I’m going to tell you in the last, this last 20 years that I have worked on my relationship, tried to deepen my relationship, and I am ever growing. I am far from where God wants me to be, but as long as I continue to seek Him and allow Him to guide me, I’m moving in the right direction. I don’t want to go back to where I was when I was, you know, a young adult. I’m very happy with where I am and I know, as I said, I am by no means anywhere where I need to be but by being open to Him and being willing to seek Him and listen to that voice.
I have been through cancer treatment, and literally when I was in cancer treatment it was the Footstep poem[i]. He carried me through my cancer treatment. My relationship with God was so deepened when I went through that. I was not angry with Him. I didn’t feel like He caused it. I relied on Him to make it out the other end. And I did. Just got my yearly report –smiley faces from the oncologist.
You know it’s—I know that my life is in God’s hands as long as I allow it to be there. … And I hope that each one of you can take it to prayer and … let God show you where He is leading you and the bountiful mercy and blessings and graces that He has for each and every person here.
I’m no better no worse than anyone else, but God has a purpose for me, and as long as I allow Him to guide me I‘m going to continue to experience that richness that I have with Him. But it’s in our control. We received Him at Baptism, and He is just waiting for us.
[Patti] You’ve been listening to Truth of the Spirit; I am your host, Patti Brunner. We hope you have enjoyed our Life in the Spirit presentation. And we invite you to check out our website, PatriarchMinistries.com for more information about this Life in the Spirit and all of the other things that Truth of the Spirit has to offer you. And then we invite you to come back next time because there is more. With the Holy Spirit there’s always more! Amen.
[i] Footstep poem reference: “Footprints in the Sand” The authorship of the poem is disputed.
