Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2009 / 'Something has awakened my heart,' woman says
'Something has awakened my heart,' woman says
by Robert Delaney of The Michigan Catholic
Published March 20, 2009
Editor's note: This is the third in a series to help readers get to know those who will join our Catholic family at the Easter vigil.
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Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic
Diane Dzieczkowski will be coming into full membership in the Church at St. Mary, Wayne. |
Detroit – One day last summer Diane Dzieczkowski was driving past St. Mary Church in Wayne and decided she would go to Mass there someday.
"Then, one Sunday morning, I woke up and said, 'Today's the day,'" she recalls.
Dzieczkowski, 54, has been going every Sunday since, and at this year's Easter vigil Mass, she will be baptized, confirmed and make her first Communion.
She can remember being taken to Mass as a young girl at Holy Redeemer Church in southwest Detroit, but had never been given any of the sacraments.
"I was never baptized as a child. I thought I had been, but when I asked my father, he told me I never was. So, this will be a whole new experience for me," Dzieczkowski says.
She says she would go to church from time to time during the intervening years, perhaps accompanying her children, who are now grown up and in their mid-20s.
"My attitude to church was kind of like it says on some medicine bottles: 'Take as needed.' I would only seek God when I needed to." Dzieczkowski says.
But it's different nowadays. "Now, it's a daily thing. Something has awakened my heart. I really think this is coming from my heart—this is what I need," she says, adding, "I think God is pushing me and drawing me."
Dzieczkowski says it really helped that, on that first Sunday at St. Mary, the director of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults program, John Buehner, stood up and announced that anyone interested in joining the Church should see him.
And it has helped that the parish has been so welcoming. "The people are very nice to me, and I feel very comfortable there," she says.
For Dzieczkowski, learning about the faith and the Church has "been a wonderful experience."
"I feel ready, even though I don't feel I know enough – I think learning will be a lifelong thing," she adds.
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