Contacts & Publisher

Subscription Form

Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2008 /  Mother's Day

by Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published May 9, 2008

Gregg McIntosh | The Michigan Catholic Ellen Salter holds her youngest daughter, Meghan, 5, who suffers from an undiagnosed illness restricting her movement, speech, eating and breathing. Ellen says Meghan has taught her, her husband and their three older children (all shown below) new lessons about God’s grace.

Dearborn — What advice do you have for your average mother, struggling to keep up with her children and all the vast responsibilities of motherhood?

That's the type of question that leaves Ellen Salter reaching for words.

It's not that Salter's an inexperienced mother. Contrarily, she's had to carry a cross that few mothers can claim. For more than five years, she's cared for a daughter who — inexplicable to the medical community — cannot move, eat, talk or even breathe on her own.

But it's in reflecting on her own care for her youngest daughter, Meghan, that Ellen finds her answer.

"I just keep saying, 'It's just God that's doing it," Ellen says. "I couldn't fathom a day without His intercession."

This Sunday, Mother's Day, families across the United States will be celebrating their mothers. In many parishes, the Sunday Masses will include special blessings for moms. For Catholics, the day also can offer an opportunity to reflect on the spiritual reality of parenting.

"The challenge of parenting — one of the challenges — is how to be good parents and yet always remember that you are but stewards of children who are, in fact, God's," says Fr. John Riccardo, pastor of Our Lady of Good Council Parish in Plymouth Township and also Ellen's longtime spiritual mentor.

Ellen, Fr. Riccardo adds, offers an example to Christian parents.

"Ellen helps us understand the tension that's always present in a mother — or a father for that matter — between caring for their child as if they're the ones responsible for the child, and yet relying on God, knowing that God is the true Author of life."

The Salters' story

Gregg McIntosh | The Michigan Catholic

Ellen became a mother 14 years ago when she and Michael had their eldest daughter, Lauren. Two years later came a son, Michael. He was followed by another girl, Shannon, three years later.

Ellen and Michael prayerfully discerned that they would have more children if God willed it.

Three years passed, and the couple had not conceived their fourth child.

In prayer, Ellen began to sense that God was asking her to take a child with special needs. And in her prayer, she accepted, telling the Lord she would take a child who would otherwise be aborted, or a child who had a disability.

"I said, 'I'll take one that no one wants,'" Ellen recalled.

A year later, in October 2002, Ellen gave birth to Meghan, a healthy baby girl.

Because of her conversation with God at prayer, it was confusing to Ellen that Meghan was, indeed, healthy — why, she thought, had the Lord asked her to accept a child with a disability?

The answer came quickly.

Less than two months into her life, Meghan started developing serious problems. Her limbs grew limp, with no explanation. Then, one day as Ellen was toweling her off after a bath, the infant stopped breathing.

Michael performed CPR on the child, receiving instructions over the phone from the 9-1-1 dispatcher. That day, Meghan was flown for the first time to the University of Michigan's Mott's Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor.

Meghan's mysterious health problems have continued now for more than five years, with plenty of drama. She's been flown by helicopter to Mott's Children's Hospital now five times.

Looking at her brain, doctors say they can see no reason she's not a normal, active five-year-old. Yet Meghan must be watched, day and night, to make sure her breathing continues and her tracheotomy tube is clear.

Meghan's reactions to the care she receives are limited to opening her eyes, smacking her lips, making soft sounds with her voice, and flashing an occasional smile.

For her parents, it's more than enough to know that she was created by an infinitely loving God.

Message of Life

Over the years, Ellen and Michael say they've learned to joyfully accept their cross as parents, even as it's meant watching their youngest daughter bear her own, difficult cross.

The couple and their children have opened up their lives to their parish community and even the broader community, speaking about their experiences with Meghan at churches, on Ave Maria Radio (WDEO 990AM), through their Web site, and at big events such as the Archdiocese of Detroit's Women's Conference. They're well-known in the pro-life community, Ellen having won last year's Right to Life — Lifespan Mother of the Year Award.

Though it's been a journey of sleepless nights, mad dashes to the hospital, and frustrating diagnoses from doctors, it's also been a journey with plenty of rewards, Ellen says.

"What I have learned through this is the gift of grace," she says. "I never knew what that was before. No matter what the situation is, He will give us the grace."

Signs of that grace have come through their faith community. They've grown close with Fr. Riccardo, Fr. Stephen Burr — an associate pastor at Our Lady of Good Counsel and a regular visitor to the Salter household — as well as Detroit Auxiliary Bishop John Quinn.

Upon hearing about the Salters, Bishop Quinn visited the family. Early last year, he asked Ellen and Michael if they'd considered having Meghan receive communion.

They told him they thought she would have to understand and give consent in order to receive the sacrament.

So the bishop turned to Meghan, and asked if she wanted to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.

"I've never seen her smile like that," Ellen says of her daughter's reply. She says Meghan — as opposed to flashing her normal smile for a second or two — beamed for 20 seconds.

She still smiles at the mention of Bishop Quinn's name. He visits the family and gives Meghan the Precious Blood each month, and says the family helps him as a bishop become a more faithful servant to others.

"Mike and Ellen and their three children, Lauren, Michael and Shannon, surround Meghan with great love," Bishop Quinn says. "They are a living witness to Christ's love, which is faithful, generous and always giving — even to the point of being sacrificial."

Prayer-filled days

Today, the Salters deal with what, for most families, would be abnormalities.

There's a parade of nurses and friends spending the night in their home, monitoring Meghan's breathing.

There's a tempered hope that Meghan would somehow snap out of her unexplained condition.

There are people who have told them they should take their daughter off her ventilator and watch her die so they could "get on with their lives."

There are regular surgeries on their daughter's spine, necessary to help her breathing.

There's anxiety about the next emergency trip to the hospital.

Each day, the family lives through it all riding a strong undercurrent of prayer. They say the rosary together each day. They pray on the way to Divine Child High School and Grade school, which the children attend. Ellen says the Blessed Mother "knows my heart as a woman" and is a constant companion.

And on special occasions, such as Meghan's confirmation last year — when 500 people showed up at Divine Child Church — they see those who have been praying for Meghan and the family, many for years.

Ellen and her children show a mutual love for each other, as well. In the letter nominating Ellen for Right to Life — Lifespan's Mother of the Year Award, Lauren — on behalf of her siblings, too — called her mother "a shining example of what it means to be a mother and a defender of life."

In turn, Ellen speaks proudly of the love Lauren, Michael and Shannon show to Meghan.

"Really, they're the little heroes here," she says.

And in the end, Ellen says the family finds its joy, and it comes from knowing that the Lord will give them everything they need. "You drain yourself every day, but we have this life and this energy to us," she says, "because God keeps giving us this life and this energy."