My Life is Not My Own By Deb Bauer

As I was ran down the halls of Durand High School in my usual attire of shorts, T-shirt, and high tops to make it to basketball practice on time, I never could have anticipated the change my life would take a few years later. My basketball attire would be exchanged for a blazer, skirt and high heels and the DHS hallways for the corridors of schools, chapels, universities, chanceries and office buildings.

Besides enjoying life as a member of a state championship varsity basketball team, I attended Sunday Mass regularly and was involved in the La Crosse “Teens Encounter Christ” retreat program, even skipping class to attend the three-day retreats. On one of these retreats in my junior year in high school I experienced Christ’s presence. I had known him before but now He was close by, personal. He loved me, and I recognized him as a friend who wanted the best for me. This was clearest to me in the and through the grace of the sacrament of Confession. I started to realize my life wasn’t about how many awards I received, or what career I had, but it was about knowing and loving Christ, the one who made me and redeemed me.

My senior year of high school had given me a new outlook on life; it was in that year that three of my best friends were tragically killed in a car accident.

My outlook on life was drastically changed. I had to make sense out of something that caused me so much suffering and loss at a time in my life when the only things I wanted to think about were the normal concerns of a 16-year-old. I was faced with a real sense of time and eternity at seventeen years of age when the friends I went to parties with and shared my hopes and dreams with were suddenly taken out of my life.

Perhaps because of this I started college with the desire to work to form people in the through youth ministry or catechesis. Now this didn’t mean I turned to bowing my head and hiding myself away. I also didn’t want to miss out on the “full college experience”. So, I made sure to explore all the facets of college life and the “independence” every young teenager out of high school wants to savor. This caused me some conflicts as I saw a hedonistic and materialistic culture, yet I hoped for something more. Yes, it was fun to be with friends and to have a few drinks, but isn’t there more to life? I would date, but if my boyfriends didn’t take their faith seriously enough for me, I wasn’t satisfied. Meanwhile, I started to become hungry to know my faith and to help others to discover it. One day, while lying in my bed in my college dorm room, I popped in a tape my had given me. It was a testimony of a priest and his experience of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The tape moved me; I realized how close I could be to Christ, despite the lack of God and the loneliness I was experiencing in day– to-day college life. From that experience I decided to go to Mass as often as I could.

After four years, I received my degree with honors, and I was free. But free to do what? I wanted to help people; I wanted to help young people learn about the God I had experienced in my life. This desire pressed me to apply to graduate school and I found myself the following semester at Franciscan University of Steubenville in search of a Masters Degree in Theology.

Steubenville was like walking onto another planet after my previous college experience. It seemed like someone had turned the world upside-down. I would find college-aged men and women on their knees in the chapel at 10:30 PM on a Friday night praying the rosary. Professors actually wanted to know my name and they were available both intellectually and spiritually. My friends were caring, respectful and were genuinely seeking to grow in holiness. It was here that the idea of a “vocation” first occurred to me.

Franciscan University is a storehouse for fostering vocations, yet I had never given the idea much thought. I remembered the I had in as very dedicated women. But I thought those ladies were born like that; they came out of the womb holy and “-like.” At Steubenville I saw another reality: young religious sisters, brothers, and priests were all over the campus and many of my friends were “discerning a vocation.” Yet for me “having a vocation” still didn’t cross my mind until one day that I had a very unusual encounter.

I was walking in the hallways of one of the buildings, and a young man stopped me in the hall. I recognized him as someone who had been at my house for a party the day before, but there were so many people at the party I never learned his name. He just looked at me and said, “Have you ever thought about becoming a nun?” My first thought was “Where in the world did that come from? How would becoming a nun have anything to do with me?” I didn’t say another word to him, and I quickly dismissed the conversation. But the question lingered. “Deb, you are studying theology. You want to help the Church. Don’t you think you should at least consider the possibility? What if this is what Christ is asking of you?” I continued my studies and my “secret” discernment began. I befriended several priests and nuns on campus. They invited me to their monasteries or activities they were having. I was looking, but from a distance.

Steubenville gave me a substantial theological background, but it also gave me a substantial college debt to pay off. I felt the “vocation” question necessarily had to be put on hold, as I had to pay off my loans. So, by God’s providence, I found myself working at St. Bronislava in Plover, Wisconsin as a youth minister. I wanted to be holy, to be an authentic testimony to bring others to Christ. This became my mission.

I took this enthusiasm to my new mission. Here, I spent three years working at directing a religious education program for students 6-11th grade and confirmation. It was a time of foundation for this youth ministry program, and I was given completely to helping the youth meet Christ. I enjoyed the challenges before me and I also suffered at seeing how many young people hardly knew Christ. Meanwhile, the aching in my heart to give more kept me aware that I still had to figure out God’s plan in my own life. I had no problem directing young men and women in discerning their vocation, but I still had to figure out my own.

In April of 1998 I attended a Regnum Christi convention in San Diego, California. One of my friends from Steubenville invited me to her home in Los Angeles and we decided that we needed to check out this “Apostolic Movement” that many of our Steubenville friends were joining. I fell in love with the vision and mission of Regnum Christi right away.

The Regnum Christi Movement is a response that springs from The as a way of empowering the to re-Christianize the world. The objective of Regnum Christi is to foster holiness in its members while giving them an active ministry to help the Church. The spirituality is centered on five loves: Christ, Mary, the Church, the , and . Its chief virtue, and what drew me to the Movement, is . Instead of hearing complaints about the situation of the Church, I met young well-balanced men and women who were answering the challenges of today in a positive and loving way, and at the same time with great efficacy and professionalism. I was so impressed with what I found at that conference that I decided to get “incorporated” as a lay member of Regnum Christi. This meant I would remain in the world, working and I could be single or married and have the commitments and resources of the Movement available to me to help me in my own personal work in the parish back in Wisconsin.

This was a step God was asking me, but I was still restless. Regnum Christi also has members that are “consecrated”; these men and women live in community and give their lives to Christ through the promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I had met some of the young consecrated women and I was very impressed. These women were living a life very close to Christ. They lived in community and prayed together very much like religious sisters. But the charism of Regnum Christi was for these women to be “lay” apostles so as to work in the world. The more I learned about the Movement the more I realized my heart resonated with this mission.

During my years working in Parish life in Wisconsin I had sought out solid spiritual direction, confession, and I had spent a lot of time in prayer before the Eucharist. These were also very key elements of the spirituality of Regnum Christi. I also had a tremendous love for the Church and the Pope, which I saw reflected in the Movement’s adherence to the Pope and the Magisterium. I began to realize that my life was not my own, that I had to give God the first chance in whatever he might be calling me to do; and so I decided to enter a two month discernment program with Regnum Christi. It was there that I realized Christ wanted me to be his spouse in this particular way, as a lay woman in the Church but fully consecrated to him in poverty, chastity and obedience through the spirituality and life of the Regnum Christi Movement. I was consecrated to Christ on August 29, 1998.

(DebBauer will be celebrating her 5-year anniversary Aug. 29, 2003. She is currently working at the formation center of the Regnum Christi consecrated women in Greenville, RI. For more information about the Regnum Christi Movement or you can visit our website at www.regnumchristi.org or, call the vocations director at 877-866-7738.)