Stories of Providence
Sister Marilyn Hoffman
One day, when I was in the sixth grade, Sister gave us a questionnaire to answer. One of the questions was “What do you want to be when you grow up?” At that time, I wrote down that I wanted to be a Carmelite nun, and do sewing as my service. Evidently, as time went on, I changed my mind about what order I would join, and what work I would do, but it seems that relatively early in life I had known that I had a call to religious life
Although I did not know any Carmelites, I knew many Sisters of Divine Providence, since they were my teachers from second grade on through high school. So, after my junior year of high school, in 1955, I entered the Sisters of Divine Providence, hoping to be a teacher. I made profession in 1957, and immediately began teaching.
It has been fifty years from that first profession, years through which I have tried to live out my vocation in service. I have taught in elementary schools, high schools, and now at Northern Kentucky University. I have worked in financial capacities in a hospital, many non-profit organizations, and in the business world. As I look back on this time, I realize how much Providence has guided me through the various experiences. For example, one year when both the teaching and the community living were especially hard, I was coming down a flight of stairs and caught my heel on one of the top steps. As I caught myself by grabbing the banister, the thought came into my head that the Lord must really want me to be there, because if he didn’t that nasty fall would have taken me away from that school very quickly.
All through my religious life I have been aware, sometimes very acutely, sometimes not so surely, that Providence has been guiding my life. There were times when Providence’s plans were not my plans, but somehow I always knew that I was being guided. I was not always sure to what I was being guided, but I struggled to put my life in the hands of Providence, and to trust in his care for me. I am extremely grateful for the care of Providence in the past 50 years, and hope to be able to carry out whatever is in store for me in the future.