On the path to peace and joy: St. Thomas More woman says, ‘if not for my infertility, I don’t think I’d be Catholic’

Rachel Walters, a member of St. Thomas More Parish in Mooresville, receives the precious blood of Christ from Deacon Joseph Beauchamp for the first time during the Easter Vigil Mass at St. Ann Church in Indianapolis on March 30. St. Thomas More and St. Ann are sister parishes. (Submitted photo)

By Natalie Hoefer

Rachel Walters has been on a journey for the last five years. Two journeys, actually—one medical, one spiritual—that were so intertwined they became inseparable.

It began with turmoil and questions surrounding her infertility. Along the way, she found peace and answers in Catholicism that led to joy this Easter as she was welcomed into the full communion of the Church at St. Thomas More Parish in Mooresville.

Walters sums up the two-in-one journey like this: “If not for my infertility, I don’t think I’d be Catholic today.”

‘Eventually I said I’m done’

Walters married her husband Braxton in 2014. They delayed having children as she worked on a master’s degree, then a near-fatal illness she suffered in 2017 pushed their decision to try having children to 2019.

“I was charting from day one, taking my temperature every morning,” she says. “By the time we hit six months, I knew something was off.”

She took her charts to an obstetrics-gynecologist. It was discovered that her illness had affected her thyroid, causing her body temperature to be too low for conception.

“We tried medicine, but it made me feel like a train hit me,” Walters recalls. “I was worn out by everything I tried to do.”

In 2020, a surgery revealed that she had endometriosis, a common cause of infertility, in which uterine tissue develops outside the uterus.

The couple tried intrauterine insemination (IUI), an artificial form of conception Walters now understands as immoral—“My husband isn’t religious, but even he felt uncomfortable with IUI,” she notes.

“Eventually I said I’m done, I’m not putting my body through anything more.”

Then Walters began to have severe abdominal and lower back pain. She started receiving progesterone shots, and another surgery in 2021 revealed her endometriosis had worsened.

By this time, she had started to turn to another source for help—faith.

Walters was raised in a Protestant faith tradition, “but wasn’t really attending church faithfully as I was raised to do,” she admits.

“Everything hit me all at once around January or February of 2020. That’s when I started to attend church way more regularly than I had been.

“At that point I remember telling my mom, ‘I’m so glad I’m not Catholic, because that would make this journey so much harder.’ Oh, the irony!”

‘The Catholic Church had an answer’

Despite returning to church, Walters admits that “2020 through 2022 were really hard. I struggled with God’s timing, jealousy and bitterness that [fertility] wasn’t happening for me.”

Although raised Protestant, Walters had never been baptized. She decided to “take that step” in September 2022 at the non-denominational Christian church she attended.

It was a memorable event, she says: “I felt God ask me to leave my desire for motherhood in the baptismal water.”

Walters’ sister Elizabeth in Pennsylvania was on a faith journey, too. She had enrolled in the local Catholic parish’s Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA).

“When she told me she was becoming Catholic, she was worried that I wouldn’t be accepting of that,” Walters recalls. “I said, ‘No, I don’t think you’ll burn in hell, but I don’t think I could ever join.’ ”

Three months later, Walters visited her sister for Christmas.

“She was watching videos to catch up on RCIA, so I took notes because that’s my habit,” says Walters. “I found I really agreed with what they presented.

“I was raised that you just don’t ask questions about God. But it seemed like every question I have had, the Catholic Church had an answer that was easily understandable.”

When Elizabeth started Father Mike Schmitz’s “The Bible in a Year” podcast, Walters joined her—and went on to listen to the priest’s “Catechism in a Year” podcast, too. She even downloaded the Hallow app to pray the rosary.

Out of curiosity, she searched the app for “anything on infertility.” That’s when she discovered The Fruitful Hollow, a Catholic infertility resource site. (Related: The Fruitful Hollow offers Catholic resources to help bear cross of infertility)

As she dove into the podcasts, The Fruitful Hollow site and other material, Walters discovered a concept that would help her redefine her struggle with infertility: redemptive suffering, the act of spiritually joining suffering to Christ’s suffering and death for the salvation of souls or other intentions.

“Redemptive suffering was huge in reframing how I saw my infertility,” she says. “God definitely used it to bring me closer to him and to bring me home to the Catholic Church.”

There was another defining concept she learned specifically through The Fruitful Hollow: spiritual motherhood.

“That was new to me, to look at nuns and observe the way they live fruitful lives in ways that didn’t involve biological children,” says Walters. “I started to focus not on, ‘I have to have a biological or adopted child.’ Neither has to happen for me to be fruitful in the way God has commanded in Scripture.

“I felt like I had all this new deepening of faith and tradition and framework to open my eyes.”

‘It was something Jesus told us to do’

By the time the Easter Vigil arrived on March 30, Walters was more than ready.

“Not participating [in the Eucharist] was one of the hardest parts of transitioning from my non-denominational church to the Catholic Church for me,” she says. “My other church had it every week, even though it was only symbolic. It was something Jesus told us to do.

“Finally getting to participate just hit me when I got back to my seat [after receiving her first Eucharist], and I just cried. I did the same thing the two weeks after—and I’m not someone who naturally cries.”

The Easter Vigil Mass was celebrated at St. Thomas More’s sister parish, St. Ann in Indianapolis. The parish name was significant to Walters, who chose St. Ann, the grandmother of Jesus, as her patron.

“She saint-stalked me,” she says. “I credit St. Ann with bringing me—kicking and screaming at first—into the Church.”

Elizabeth was present for the Mass, as well as Elizabeth’s sister-in-law with her fiancé. Walters was thrilled to learn the couple were hoping to join an RCIA program this year at a parish in Greenwood.

“I talked with them for two hours, sharing my story and answering their questions,” she says. “I hope she asks me to be her sponsor. It would be another call to spiritual motherhood.”

In the meantime, she is living out spiritual motherhood in other ways.

“One big moment was last year when St. Thomas was doing a drive for babies of unplanned pregnancies,” she says. “It was a gigantic deal for me to walk into the parish with a bag of baby lotion and wipes.”

Another opportunity came last fall when The Fruitful Hollow posted a need for a social media coordinator.

“I do that in my day job” as an adult education librarian for Indiana Wesleyan University, she says. She started in the volunteer role for The Fruitful Hollow in December.

“It keeps me going on days that might be hard,” she says. “They’re a wonderful group of ladies, and I really believe in what they’re doing.”

Still, Walters has some difficult days in her struggle with infertility.

“I accept it, but it’s not easier,” she admits. “It’s like grief—after you initially accept it, there are times of the year like holidays when it comes back. It never goes away, it just changes shape. It’s an everyday surrender, at least in my experience.”

Walters did conceive twice last year, both ending in miscarriage within a few weeks.

“At this point, I know it would have to be a miracle for me to have a child,” she says. “As of right now, I don’t see it ever happening. But I know if God means for it to happen, it will.” †