This is part of a larger article and on-going discussion called The Faith Project. Click here to get to the beginning.
Elaine Lynch, 70, and her older sisters Elizabeth Gough, 75, and Hilda Gough, 81, don’t need to encounter those things alone. They have each other.
On a recent Monday morning, like they do most days, the three ladies dressed in their Sunday best and headed to daily mass at St. Therese in Granby.
There are few people at church on this cold morning. The three sisters sit together and enjoy the peace and feeling of strength they get from each other and - more importantly - from their faith.
“I hope they’re getting the same peace and inner feeling that I’m getting. I get a very, very strong loving feeling. That I’m so pleased that my sisters are there to get the same feeling that I’m getting. I still feel blessed.”
Their faith gives them strength, helping them deal with the bad along with the good. Their faith and unity are helping Elizabeth deal with the passing of her husband of more than 50 years.
“Although we have hurt, with God there’s nothing that we can’t accept or put up with,” she said.
Elaine said the three share a common belief: “I know I’m not going to die. I’m going to be reborn in heaven. I’m going to be with our Lord and that’s what I’m looking for. That’s what I was put on earth for.”
She also spreads that view as a Eucharistic minister, visiting the homes of shut-ins.
“They become loved ones to me. I feel that I’m bringing the Lord to them. And what better gift is it to be able to do that to someone? To bring the love of God to them,” she said.
Love of God, she believes, will help people survive turbulent times.
“I feel that the people that have faith will make it through these days. The people that don’t have faith will have trouble,” she said. “People with faith just say ‘the good Lord will watch over us’. And that’s how you have to live when you’re our age. To be happy and peaceful every day, you have to know that the good Lord is watching over us.”
She said that as she and her sisters get older, there’s one thing they find true peace and strength in - and it’s something she wishes she discovered earlier - true faith.
Her hope is that more and more young people will find out now what she found later in life.
“We should be putting our faith in God. Put things in his hands. Pray, pray, pray,” she said. “There’s nothing we can’t do without God.”
