“An Incredible Witness to the Power of Prayer”

By Joanne Fusaro, Salesian Cooperator

The following is a witness talk given by Joanne Fusaro on Saturday, May 9.

Happy Anniversary, my beautiful Salesian Family! I am so humbled to have been asked to share my story with you on this very special day.

As a Cooperator, I’ve grown in so many ways and, each day, realize how special it is to be a part of this incredible family. Even in preparing this talk, I was reminded of the friendships that I have made here.

Now, I am not going to lie, I must have changed my talk ten times. Each time a decent message, but I always felt there was something missing. So I stepped away from writing and prayed on it. I reached deep into my heart, and all of a sudden, it hit me, and I started writing.

When I was done, and before I submitted it to Bernie (who, by the way, is a truly special friend in my life, whom I love to the moon and back and whom I promised to keep this talk under 10 hours), I called my dear friend, Denise Dunn, and asked if I could read my talk to her to see if anything needed adjusting. Even after all that, my best friend, Kim, made me adjust some thoughts because, as she said, “there were just too many powerful moments that can’t be left out!” You see, she was on this journey with me and experienced, firsthand, on a day-to-day basis, the many God moments! At the end of the day, it is all a beautiful reminder that our Salesian Family is always there for us!

So, I am going to start off by asking a general question: How deep is your faith? Well, at this point, I am sure all will reply, “Joanne, I’m a Salesian Cooperator; clearly my faith runs deep!” So, I am going to ask a follow-up question: How deep is your unconditional faith? Now, some of you might be thinking, “Ok, so where is she going with this?” Well, fortunately or unfortunately, I am about to share that with you.

Back in November, I had to go for open heart surgery because I had an aortic aneurysm that was located right on top of where the heart beats, a very dangerous and delicate procedure. When I was first told this, I freaked out. I was so upset that for quite some time, I couldn’t even discuss it without breaking down. Now, I know, under the circumstances, that’s a pretty normal response given the fact that I’m, you know, human!

It wasn’t until I completely surrendered to the will of God and truly trusted in His outcome that things for me began to change. What do I mean by this? Well, I prayed like we all do, for the positive stuff! “Please, Lord, let everything go ok. Please, Lord, heal my heart. Please, Lord, don’t make my suffering be deep!” It wasn’t until I completely surrendered the entire situation to God — “Lord, this is what I am hoping for, but let Your Will be done, and I will accept that outcome with my entire heart” — that everything shifted for me.

I had a peace come over me that I had never before experienced. Literally, going from frantic, frazzled, and furious to secure, comforted, and calm. My doctors had made it clear that the best-case scenario, after the surgery, was that I would be losing my independence for a few months, and the worst-case scenario would be not surviving! So, with this knowledge and my newly calm state of mind, I compiled a folder and set out a dress. I left the folder on my desk with instructions “just in case,” and I hung the dress on the door of my guest room to spare my family any additional pain since I have been on the receiving end of burying loved ones.

When my family learned I did this, they were so upset with me. My cousin tried to make light of it by telling my aunt, “Mom, she was just focused on taking care of the details so she can go straight to paradise. She didn’t want to waste time haunting us because we dressed her in something that she would deem inappropriate!” Seriously, I wasn’t trying to be morbid! I was in an accepting and calm frame of mind and was trying to take care of details so that things could be easier for my family. To quote one of my nurses who did all my pre-op testing, “Joanne, I don’t get it; you are speaking about your open heart surgery like I do when I say ‘I’m going out to walk the dog!’”

So what was different: I accepted the whole package. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I accepted that it was very possible these days would be my last days. And here’s the kicker: I wasn’t sad about it, but rather, I was grateful, joyful, and felt immensely blessed for the life I have lived, the people who walked my roads with me, the opportunities that I experienced, and the love and comfort I felt just being a child of God.

Well, I made it through my eight-hour surgery and thought I was on the mend in the cardiac ICU. Little did I know that two days later, at the stroke of midnight, my hospital room would replicate New Year’s Eve. Only, no joyful confetti, but rather, every alarm was ringing and every light flashing. Ironically, a family member was on the phone with the nurse’s station because she had a feeling that I wasn’t doing well, and the nurse had to hang up, saying, “I’m sorry, we have an emergency on the floor.” Little did she know, at the time, the emergency was me.

They had to perform another surgical procedure. There was no time to get me down to the operating room because I was crashing. I was told there was no time for anesthesia; they quickly explained all the things that could go wrong by doing this. They asked if I understood, so I nodded, said yes, and wrote a scribble that was supposed to be my signature because, in reality, the alternative was that I was about to die. The doctors couldn’t believe how calm I was, how well I handled the procedure, and when they were done, I actually smiled and said thank you.

During the entire time I was in the hospital, I held a rope rosary that was made for me on Gospel Roads last year. When they started the procedure, the nurse took the rosary out of my hands and said, “I know how important this is; we need to place it here for now,” and she gently placed it on the side table. “Joanne, I will give them back to you as soon as we’re done.” And, when they were done, I was taken aback when the nurse, as she was placing the rosary back in my hands, looked at the doctors and said, “You see, they work!” Looking back, I can’t help but think what an incredible witness to the power of prayer.

Well, here we are six months later (almost to the day), and I am with you and doing well! So why do I share all of this with you? Because that trust and that peace are a foundational part of our vocation, if we believe that God has placed us exactly where He needs us. Think about it for a moment: how blessed we are to be able to discern a genuine vocation, live in the world in whatever capacity we choose —single, married, with children or no children — and have our footsteps formed and guided by Salesian religious. Now, couple that with unconditional faith to walk to the roads we are called to walk. What kind of impact are we making! What kind of impact can we make in a world that so desperately needs the face of Christ!

In the moment when I almost died, my rosary sent a message to the nurse, who sent the message to the doctors in the room, which was all triggered by how I reacted to everything that was happening, especially when most people would have been unconscious from the trauma! But God had another plan for me: I was alert, calm, accepting of whatever was about to happen, and quietly prayerful as nurses and doctors held me tight as they operated on me in the room with no anesthesia! I truly believe that God used me in that moment to bear witness to His power. He was in control, so there was no need to panic, cry, or complain. With that understanding, we need to realize that we all have the ability and obligation to share our faith, revealing to others that God can move mountains.

Now speaking for myself, and there might be one or two people who can relate to this thought, I fall. My faith gets shaken and challenged. This all stems from our humanity, right? We are not always in the headspace we need to be in. It happens. I joked all the time with my young adults that I am the worst person when it comes to paying attention. I truly have the attention span of a two-year-old sometimes. I often miss the messages God puts right in front of me because I am too distracted by all the noise around me. These last few months, I have realized more and more that always being busy isn’t always good. Running isn’t always necessary. My favorite bible passage is from Psalm 46: “Be still and know that I am God!” Be still: we need to pause to be alone with our thoughts. We need to pause so we can truly get deep in prayer and not just get lost in the rote words of prayer because we think reciting prayer is what we are supposed to do. No! We need to surrender to those words, completely wrap our brain around the purpose and the message of every word! We need to surrender to God and allow Him to take charge, accepting the unknown by trusting that, if He leads us to it, He will lead us through it.

A lesson that I’ve learned these last few months is that I have to accept that there is nothing wrong with asking for help. I went from this totally independent woman to a woman who couldn’t hold a coffee mug. Very frustrating at the start, but what a blessing to realize how many people were there to help me.

My family lives in Canada, and they relocated for two months to live with me. Kim drove every day, after school, from Brooklyn to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in the Bronx and stayed with me for hours. Bernie, once he learned I was being discharged from the hospital, ran into the city from Pennsylvania to take me home and was quite disappointed to find that the second they signed the discharge papers, I made a break for it! So he met us at the house, and my family did what any Italian family would do: they fed him.

And, we need to be kinder to ourselves. Grow through the challenges. Grow through the mistakes. Grow past that which we cannot control with the confidence that God’s got the moment, God’s got our families in those moments, and God has given us a very powerful gift, through this vocation, and we need to continue to focus on bringing that witness into the world.

I am a huge Steve Harvey fan. What I admire most about him is that he brings himself, recognizing and embracing his design by God. Recognizing and embracing his flaws and limitations and not allowing those flaws or limitations to stop him on his journey, but rather, using them to strengthen his life and his message.

Recently, I was going down the rabbit hole of watching reels on Instagram, and one of his came up. He shared a beautiful thought, but what resonated with me was how he ended. He said, “I am an imperfect warrior for Christ!” An imperfect warrior for Christ! How can we, in all our humanity, be warriors for Christ? Well, we can do it in quiet ways, as I did in the hospital. We can do it when faced with challenges by how we react. Bringing love, trust, confidence, and compassion. Emphasizing His will, not ours.

When I think of being a warrior, I think of overwhelming strength and power but, if we stay true to our own individual design, we can define the word warrior in our unique ways and bring Christ in the smallest and largest of ways. I was physically weak in the hospital but that didn’t stop me from giving witness to my faith that the Man upstairs was in charge! At that moment, I was a quiet warrior — it was a sneak attack! There are all kinds of ways to fight the good fight! So, when those challenging instances arise, rather than get lost in the negative, let’s remember “Be still and know that I am God,” and let’s count our blessings, be grateful for the little moments, and most of all, be grounded that we have a very important mission in this world that will be guided and supported by God and our fellow Cooperators!

At a recent retreat, the speaker shared, “Our witness may be the only Gospel some people ever read!”