Catholic author, mother, speaks of keeping proper focus in hardest of times

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“Just make the cake.”

Jennifer Hubbard’s brother simply wouldn’t let her off the hook.

He wanted her to maintain the traditions that had brought joy to her family before her 6-year-old daughter died in one of the nation’s most notorious mass shootings.

Ms. Hubbard’s 8-year-old son Freddy was back at school after a summer of mourning for his sister, and it was time to celebrate his first day by baking a school-bus-shaped cake.

Just like in years past.

“You make this cake and frost it and there would be this mini-celebration of a mini-milestone and new adventures to come,” Ms. Hubbard explained to a luncheon crowd of women at St. Patrick Church in Laurie.

“My brother called and asked how I was doing, and I told him Freddy was back at school, and it wasn’t getting any easier, ‘and now I have to bake this stupid cake,’” she recalled.

“And he says, ‘Just make it. You’re gonna’ be glad you made it.’”

Ms. Hubbard baked the cake, weeping through every step, and it wound up not even looking like a school bus.

“And Freddy came home and looked at the cake and looked at me and said, ‘You made the cake!’” she recounted with glistening eyes.

To this day, she’s grateful to her brother for loving her and respecting her grief but not letting her skip something difficult that needed to be done.

“I bristled at him,” she noted. “But because I made that cake, I also made the turkey for Thanksgiving. And I put up the Christmas tree. And I still make a bus cake for Freddy each year before he goes back to college.”

Ms. Hubbard, an award-winning Catholic author, writer and presenter, spoke at a women’s luncheon Oct. 1 to benefit the National Shrine of Mary, Mother of the Church, in Laurie.

She shared practical and spiritual insights that have come to her since her daughter, Catherine, died in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut.

The title of her presentation was “You Steer Where You Stare.”

“When things become really complicated in your life and you know the storm clouds are brewing, where do you stare?” she asked. “Where do you look? I think that’s the indicator of where you’re going to end up.”

She encouraged everyone present to stay grounded in their relationship with God and never stop looking ahead, to him, to heaven, especially in times of difficulty.

That, she’s convinced, is key to being able to put the Psalmist’s words — “This is the day the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it!” — into action every day, in every season, even in the face of crippling tragedy.

Don’t hold back

Ms. Hubbard is author of Finding Sanctuary, about how God mended his relationship with her in the midst of her shock and grief. She also writes reflections that are regularly published in the Magnificat devotional magazine.

She’s president and executive director of the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary, named for her daughter, who loved horses.

Ms. Hubbard warned her audience against focusing too heavily on the past, or keeping a ledger of suffering and sacrifice instead of looking to God in anticipation of his glories still to come.

She also counseled against holding back one’s own grief, anger and sadness while praying.

“I feel sometimes, when we hold our emotions because we think God can’t handle it, we’re putting ourselves at a higher level than God,” she said. “He wants it all! Sometimes, it isn’t pretty and makes us vulnerable. But sometimes, it’s where he hears us the best.”

She called to mind a moment of driving alone and having all the horror of Catherine’s death suddenly creep up on her, and remembering the unspeakable grief and confusion her 8-year-old son was experiencing.

“I started to saying to no one in particular, ‘Why is this happening to me?’” she recounted.

Her mumbling quickly escalated.

“There I am, yelling at our Lord,” she recalled. “And it ended with, ‘And you could have stopped it and you didn’t!’”

She gasped and quickly apologized to God.

“I was expecting a lightning bolt to come down out of the sky,” she said.

“And you know what happened? The most amazing peace that I’d ever experienced!”

Proficient in speaking and writing, Ms. Hubbard has tried for a decade to find words to describe the serenity that consumed her at that moment.

“And I can’t,” she said.

She’s come to understand that her stance that day was “one of a prize fighter, ready to go the mat.”

“But, my stare was at our Lord,” she said, and he gave her that peace."

Called to forgive

Ms. Hubbard has struggled mightily in the 12 years since Catherine died.

“What I know about each of my seasons of struggling: I’m more acutely aware of where my stare is being pulled,” she said.

And each time she turns her gaze back on the Lord, he puts another layer of protection around her heart, giving her strength to minister to others who are in their own seasons of grief.

“When we live through trials of loss, of devastation, of diagnosis, of whatever, we have the experience to be servants to those who go through it after us,” she said.

She called to mind the outpouring of support she received from her family, friends and members of her school and church communities.

“I know it was the prayers and the number of Masses offered — those were the things that kept me standing,” she said.

Ms. Hubbard prays every day for the man who’s responsible for the death of her daughter and 19 other children and six adults.

It’s still very hard, “but yes, I do pray for Adam all the time,” she said.

“He’s a human being,” she stated. “Do I condone what he did? No. Do I forgive him as a person? Yeah! I have to. We’re called to forgive.

“I’m not going to hold hatred and anger and resentment in my heart against him,” she said. “Absolutely not. That’s not who I am.

“When you hold those emotions in your heart, and you have this stance that ‘I’d never forgive him’ — okay, well, brace yourself. Because those emotions, they morph, and they seed themselves in your heart. And that’s not the heart I want to offer up to Our Lord.”

She pointed out that grieving cannot be rushed, in order for it to attain the higher purpose God intends for it.

“When our focus is squarely on our Lord, we produce fruit, we produce treasures,” she said.

Etched in stone

After speaking in Laurie, Mrs. Hubbard answered questions, greeted guests and signed copies of her book before heading out to the Mothers Wall of Life surrounding the outdoor sanctuary of the National Shrine of Mary, Mother of the Church.

There, she saw where her own name had been recently engraved among the thousands of others that have been added to the Mothers Wall since it was created in 2000.

The National Shrine is dedicated to honoring Mary, the Blessed Mother, and to all the mothers of the world.

Its mission is to promote a true appreciation for motherhood, the preciousness of life, the integrity of the family, and an understanding of the Church community that gives Mary the title of Mother.

Father John Schmitz, pastor of St. Patrick Parish in Laurie and the Mission of St. Philip Benizi in Versailles and spiritual director of the National Shrine, closed the event by asking God to bless everyone present.

“May those gathered here today continue to grow in love and understanding of all you ask in our life and journey,” he prayed.

“May their joys outnumber the sorrows. And in their sorrows, may they find that sense of joy and understanding that is your gift to us all.”

mothersshrine.com

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