Lessons from Columbia parishioner’s journey to faith find expression in new storybook for children

I wanted to write a story that we would have wanted to read to him back then. The message that even in hard times, God’s light will shine through. No matter what happens, your spirit will always soar in the love of God. Embrace his grace. Look for the helping spirit in others. There are good people out there.”

Laura Theissen, author of Cuthbert: The Eagle Who Found His Wings

Children’s author Laura Theissen was taking a French test at the University of Missouri when she found out that terrorists had flown commercial airliners into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

She got back to her room and turned on the TV in time to see another plane slam into the second of New York’s most massive skyscrapers.

“That day shaped my life forever,” she said of Sept. 11, 2001. “Because I knew more than ever that I wanted to serve my country and give something back.”

That conviction led her into a 17-year career as a counterterrorism officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

It also launched her into a faith odyssey toward a level of communion with God that she never imagined possible.

“I tell people that God literally led me through the desert to bring me home to himself,” said Mrs. Theissen, author of a newly released children’s storybook, Cuthbert: The Eagle Who Found His Wings (Christian Faith Publishing).

The book, modeled on the life of St. Cuthbert, a seventh-century Anglo-Saxon saint, stemmed from a project to name the mascot of her son’s Catholic grade school during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Cuthbert is the tale of a majestic American bald eagle who loves to swoop and fly above the clouds until one day, his life changes,” Mrs. Theissen stated. “Through adversity, he learns the power of God’s love and grace and what it really means to soar.”

The first copies of the book arrived at her home in Columbia in October.

“All the glory goes to God!” she said. “There’s just no other way to explain the miraculous things that have transpired for me and my family.

“And not just in the past year but through our whole lives!” she said. “Because I’m confident that all of these experiences with my family and work and life and coming home to the Catholic Church came together for this book.”

“You who dwell ...”

Mrs. Theissen was born into a devout Christian family in Jefferson City and lived for eight years in a home overlooking the Missouri River, where she watched eagles soar.

Her grandmother on her mother’s side was an avid bibliophile whose home was filled with books.

Young Laura once borrowed a book of prayers and used it to memorize the “Our Father” and the “Hail Mary.”

“There was no reason logically for that, because neither side of her family was Catholic,” she recalled. “But I now know that it wasn’t my logic, it was God’s.”

Her family moved to St. Peters, Mo. near St. Louis when Laura was in second grade, and her father began work as an agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

After high school, she went to the University of Missouri in Columbia to study political science and international affairs, with a minor in French.

She met her husband, Andy Theissen, at a student-government event they helped organize for children of international students.

They talked for four hours and started dating.

Laura’s grandmother died that year, and Andy’s, a devout Catholic, became her adopted grandmother.

The couple went on to get married in St. George Church in Hermann, where Mr. Theissen had grown up as a parishioner.

Mrs. Theissen was working for the Institute of Public Policy at the University of Missouri in 2005 when her application to the CIA was accepted.

The Theissens spent about two years back in Missouri after their son, Lucas, was born. They moved back to Washington, D.C., and later overseas — Mrs. Theissen is still not allowed to say where.

She found her work with the CIA to be challenging and meaningful, yet inhospitable to a close relationship with God.

“I felt very proud to be able to do my part for the country and help keep people safe,” she said. “But that kind of work is hard on you mentally and hard on your family.”

Both husband and wife drifted away from their faith.

“There were definitely a lot of years that I not only put my light under a basket, I covered it with dirt and buried it and did everything I could to tamp down my relationship with God at work,” said Mrs. Theissen.

Upon returning to the United States, she was determined for her family to get right with God.

She and her husband went to a Sunday service at a nondenominational church.

His reaction: “It just didn’t feel right.”

So, where should they go?

“I want to go to a Catholic church,” he told her.

Mrs. Theissen said she’d try it, although as a counterterrorism officer with secrets to keep, as a non-Catholic wife of an inactive Catholic, and as a mother of a 7-year-old who was being raised with no faith, she worried about being judged.

But the pastor of the church where they went to Mass was a military chaplain and understood her completely.

The couple were making arrangements to have their son baptized just before his eighth birthday when the director of religious education said to Mrs. Theissen, “And what about you?”

“It hit me like a ton of bricks,” she recalled.

Mrs. Theissen entered the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults a week after Lucas’s Baptism.

Her husband, who had stood beside her and served as the “glue” for the family while she was working — agreed to be her sponsor.

“And you know, through those classes, not only did I fall in love with the Catholic Church, but Andy fell in love with it again,” she said.

She received the Sacraments of Initiation the following Easter.

“Just an inspiration”

The Theissens became active parishioners and enrolled their son in All Saints Catholic School in Manassas, Virginia.

“It’s been an incredible experience to find this thing in your life that you didn’t even know was missing, but you can’t even image your life without it now,” said Mrs. Theissen.

She had been carrying so much trauma from what her work had brought her into contact with.

“So, to be baptized and start over as an infant was the most freeing experience you can imagine,” she said. “I can’t even describe the weight that’s been lifted.”

All Saints School went to virtual learning at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020.

As a way to raise spirits and preserve a sense of community, school administrators opened up a contest for giving the school mascot, a bald eagle, a name.

Mom and son did an online search for saints that are associated with eagles. They found out about St. Cuthbert, who was known for protecting birds, as well as praying to ward off plagues.

Fellow students liked the suggestion, and Cuthbert became the eagle’s new name.

One day in Lent, while Mrs. Theissen was reading her daily devotional, she started thinking about St. Cuthbert, in light of all the turmoil that was going on in the world, with children feeling sad and frightened about the pandemic and being separated from friends and loved ones.

She started writing the story of Cuthbert the Eagle.

She included her close friend, a veterinarian who was at that time with the University of Missouri’s Raptor Rehabilitation Project.

She thought back to happy memories of taking turns reading to Lucas at bedtime when he was little.

“I wanted to write a story that we would have wanted to read to him back then,” she said. “The message that even in hard times, God’s light will shine through. No matter what happens, your spirit will always soar in the love of God. Embrace his grace. Look for the helping spirit in others. There are good people out there.”

She had the whole story written in about an hour.

“There’s no explanation for it, just an inspiration from the Holy Spirit,” she said.

Friends and family members, including her mother, who holds a degree in editorial journalism from Mizzou, encouraged her to publish the story as a children’s book.

She put together an afterword about the life of St. Cuthbert and submitted the manuscript to a handful of publishers.

Months later, she got a voicemail from Christian Faith Publishing. They liked the book and wanted to get it into print.

That process, including editing and illustrating, took about a year.

Mrs. Theissen remembers the first finished copy she saw.

“It’s really surreal,” she said. “It certainly wasn’t something I set out to do. It wasn’t a life goal or a childhood dream for me. It’s just something that happened.

“But it’s such an incredible blessing, and I hope the book can be a blessing to others,” she said.

“Hand-in hand”

Mrs. Theissen also made a decision to let God’s light shine through her at work.

She began praying during each day’s commute: “Let me be the face of Jesus to the people I meet today.”

“Of course, I couldn’t verbalize that because I was in a federal workplace,” she noted. “But in how I spoke and treated people and how I cared and how I didn’t speak sometimes and just listened — people responded to that in a way that was overwhelming.”

Last year, the Theissens decided that it was time to move back to Missouri, to be closer to family and their roots.

How they’d do it was still a mystery.

In prayer, they determined that if they had not figured out a way by the time their son started high school, then relocating was not what God wanted for them.

“Lucas had already moved so much,” Mrs. Theissen noted. “We wanted him to have some stability.”

One of her coworkers, a devout Catholic, encouraged her to keep trusting God and stay open to his guidance.

Mrs. Theissen and her husband both wound up getting job offers from the University of Missouri. They found a good home to move to in Columbia and had offers to buy their house in Virginia.

They wanted Lucas to go to a Catholic school, but Fr. Tolton Regional Catholic High School had a waiting list.

They found out in May that a slot had opened up for this fall.

“It just reinforces the importance of trusting in God,” said Mrs. Theissen.

Now, she gets to work across the street from the St. Thomas More Newman Center.

“It’s great!” she said. “I can pop over for weekday Mass in the middle of my day. It’s such a gift to be able to do that.”

She hasn’t forgotten what it felt like to not  have God in her life.

“I knew he was walking beside me, but not to be holding his hand was awful,” she said. “Now, I know what it’s like to walk with him hand-in-hand. It’s wonderful!

“You just want to shout it from the rooftops: ‘There’s nothing better! This is it!”