After grade school and high school, my story doesn’t continue into college. Instead, I worked about six months writing up notes for organizing personnel in a U.S. Military Records office in nearby St. Louis, MO.
You could say I was more of a “homebody” type of person; I never really went out. I wasn’t interested much in dating. Yes I was enjoying life and happy, but never thought further about what I might be missing with a vocation. As a young working adult, I was still living at home with my sister, one brother was in the service, my other two brothers worked with Bell Telephone in St. Louis. I never thought about Religious Life, but it was always there. However, I remember hearing that St. Joseph intercedes for vocations, so I kept praying to him for a good man during my after work church visits; he sure sent me a good One!
After that temporary job, I found an opening in the paper at a Mercantile Bank. I would take the bus downtown into St. Louis. The customs center was my first position until I moved up to a bank teller. I was a loyal employee from 1966 to ‘72. The year I quit was sad having had good coworkers at a dependable job, but I felt God was moving me onto bigger blessings.
One day I saw in the Catholic Digest Magazine an ad with our Carmelite DCJ Sisters. My desire wasn’t to work with elderly, so I inquired about serving in the children’s homes. I wrote a letter to one of the Provinces closest to me, but the letter mysteriously disappeared into the oblivion of postal circulation! Since I never heard back from them I thought, well, the California Province is too far away so the next big one to contact was our Motherhouse in Wauwatosa, so I visited there for a week. First thing that struck me was how everybody I was introduced to had the name Teresa! I thought, I'm not going to choose Teresa. I ended up later taking my dad's name, Zachary. Nothing against the ‘T’ saints, I was even reading Saint Theresa's autobiography. During it, I grew attached to her charming title, ‘of the Child Jesus’ which I ended up choosing for myself. But I’m getting ahead of the story here. The visit was nice, it felt almost like home for me, same type of structure and different things I guess you can say. The following weeks were shopping and readying to enter Carmel. Time to trade in counting coins to graces like St. Matthew did.
I was more of a “later vocation” entering at 27 years old, because the rest of them were in their teen years. I arrived the 23rd of September, 1972 as a Postulant and was Invested the next July as a Novice. We laugh about my final train ride up to enter Carmel now with the Sisters. I had my big footlocker ready to load which I expected help with but the conductor man just looked at it…so I hauled it into the coach myself. Seems some spiritual powers weren’t amused at my giving my life for Christ! But my family was supportive, even my brothers! We laughed at my sister Margie’s comment, “if it doesn't work out, tie the sheets together and throw it out the window and climb down”, I guess you could say we liked watching cartoons. My dad used to tell people, “she’s not going to get married” but he was wrong because I did get married, just to a different Person than expected!
It took one day at a time to get to where I am now. The Vow of Obedience bid me transfer around the Province at many stations, once as little as a month, caring and crossing paths with countless children known only to God in number. The model our founding Sisters gave us by crossing oceans to build up Carmel DCJ convents is amazing. That was really something for them to do all for the reparation of souls and Jesus. This life never made me unhappy; the Lord must have known how easy-going I was when He proposed. He supplied me with patience and I gave my constant ‘yes’. Looking back on it, simply doing God's Will in a spirit of perseverance with an honest heart makes the years float by. I always tell people that this is a beautiful life living for God even with all the difficulties and misunderstandings or whatever else is included in the daily life. It's the climbing over that you have to get through, I chose to climb via the Mt. Carmel route. And I’m still here almost 5o years, come this 2025. When I was younger I thought, “oh that’s old”, now I’m in that stage!
Also for the record, I never knew or studied anything about the other Orders: Dominicans, Franciscans etc. The Carmel spirituality seemed to find me; not as a high ordeal I searched for. It’s hard to explain when you notice something with new eyes or an open heart that God had put in your path… a special blessing that was there all along.