And a Little Child Shall Lead Them
By Jane Harriman
WILMINGTON, Del.--When their daughter was born five weeks early on Christmas, John and Cari Brunelle felt there was something spiritual about her.
"She's always been a very spiritual child," Cari said of Jordan, now 5. "When she took her first airplane trip she looked out at the clouds and said, 'Mommy, I don't see God.'"
"She's the one who brought us to the Church," said John Brunelle.
After almost seven months in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, John and Cari Brunelle will be welcomed into full communion with the Church at the Easter Vigil at St. Ann's Parish, Wilmington.
John Brunelle, 38, is a psychologist at the University of Delaware Counseling Center in Newark, and Cari, 34, is a public relations executive. Jordan's spirituality may be related to the almost 13 years the couple spent looking for a church that was right for them and their child. Jordan received more than average pre and post-natal exposure to various religions.
Cari was baptized in the Methodist Church, but her family was not religious. John's father was a naval officer and the family moved frequently making church attendance difficult. When he was 9, his parents arranged for his younger brother to be baptized. "At that time, they realized they'd forgotten to baptize John. Oops!" Cari said.
Cari and John met at the University of Virginia in 1988, and dated for a few months before John graduated and went to Los Angeles to pursue acting. Two years later Cari graduated and was hired as a reporter-anchor at a West Virginia TV station.
"We reconnected about the time of the Rodney King riots," Cari recalled. "He said he was thinking of me and mailing me something that was mine. It was his UVA football shirt."
They eventually planed to meet at a UVA football game. "But my grandmother died," Cari said. "I was very close to her so I couldn't go to the game. I called John to tell him and said of all the people I could be with then, I'd like to be with him. He drove up from Washington right away. After the funeral we knew we wanted to get married."
They married in the Methodist Church where Cari had been baptized, and John returned to Los Angeles; soon Cari joined him as a producer for KCOP-TV.
When John realized he was not going to find fame in Hollywood, they returned east and he went to graduate school, at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and then at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, where he earned a Ph.D. in counseling psychology. Cari worked for the news offices at the universities. In their spare time they kept looking for a church.
Two and a half years ago, John was offered a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Delaware and the then family of three moved to Newark, Del. The following year he was hired as a staff psychologist.
By the end of 2002, the Brunelles had bought a house in Wilmington and began to look for a faith-based kindergarten for Jordan. One Sunday in January 2003, they attended Mass at St. Ann's. It was Catholic Schools Week and St. Ann's had an open house.
"Both of us looked at each other and felt 'This is it!' It felt like home…Jordan loved it. She loved the kids," Cari said.
So the Brunelles returned to St. Ann's and everywhere they went, Jordan would see kids she'd met there. It seemed clear that St. Ann's was the school for her. But they wanted to learn about Catholicism, to see what it would mean to the family if Jordan entered St. Ann's.
"John, being the Ph.D., bought 'The Catechism of the Catholic Church.' I got 'Catholicism for Dummies,'" Cari said.
As he read, John saw he'd had misunderstandings about Catholicism. "I thought it was judgmental…very negative and shame-based. I'd heard a lot about 'Catholic guilt.' But I was pleasantly surprised about all the things I didn't know – how positive and compassionate it is."
"We realized we were meant to be at St. Ann's," Cari said. Jordan brought us here and in the process of RCIA we realized we were really coming for the faith and for ourselves. We know we are doing the right thing with our lives."
"It's been an amazing experience," said John. He's always known that clients who have a spiritual base do better in therapy and become happier people. But the peace he's gained from the church "makes me a better psychologist."
At the Easter Vigil, John and Cari will receive First Communion and confirmation, sacraments that lie in Jordan's future. She has already been baptized (in the church where her parents were married) but, as seems only fair, she will be in the sanctuary that night, the small leader, standing proudly beside her parents.
Jane Harriman writes for
The Dialog in Wilmington, Delaware.