Coming Home
My name is Abe Michaels. In 2002, my wife Shelly and I came to the realization that the truth exists most fully in an orthodox understanding of the Catholic Faith. The last and most difficult hurdle we had to face was the Church’s teaching on the use of birth control. In November 2002 I finally confessed my sin of having had a vasectomy in 1999, and of the use of birth control throughout our then 14 years of marriage. At that time I had no desire to have a reversal, due to the pain and cost involved.
Through the grace of God my wife and I were, within a few months, convinced that we’d like to reverse the vasectomy. Cost was a huge hurdle – a doctor we called quoted us a cost of $6,000 to $8,000, which simply wasn’t possible for us. Through an idea I heard on Catholic radio, I surfed the web looking for a way to get an affordable vasectomy. God’s grace again intervened, and I found One More Soul. I phoned and left a message. A couple of days later a gentleman named Vince called and spoke with Shelly. Vince spent a long time on the phone talking with Shelly, a great conversation on shared faith and details about vasectomy reversal. Vince supplied Shelly with the name of Dr. Franklin Smith, who provided us with a more affordable option.
Dr. Smith has been a godsend. He is located outside of Milwaukee, not too far from us. We shared our faith experiences. He recommended I read some of Christopher West’s books, and provided us with some tapes that we could share with others. It was great knowing that the surgery was being done by him for all the right reasons, since he no longer does vasectomies. In July, he performed the surgery, and I quickly recovered (it was nowhere near as painful as I thought it would be).
In September I wrote an email to Dr. Smith, thanking him for everything. Amazingly, the Christopher West book I bought continues to change our life and thinking about sex even today. I closed the email with the following paragraph:
>>Thanks again for everything you’ve done for me. I’m forever in your debt,
>>regardless of whether or not the reversal surgery was a success.
>>Without your generosity, it would never have happened.
The surgery meant a lot to me personally because it was my way of telling God that I was willing to heed his will. If that will was that we wouldn’t have any more children because of the choice we made, that was OK with me. So either way I felt that just having the surgery was a success.
Then yesterday Shelly got the happy confirmation to her suspicion that she was indeed pregnant! Thanks to NFP (we took a class around the time I got the reversal), we believe that the child was conceived on Christmas Day – what a great blessing on the birthday of our Savior!
I want to express my deepest thanks for your ministry, and for the time that Vince spent with Shelly. We are so grateful – I can’t begin to explain just how much. I have looked on your website and I don’t see anything about donations – we’d love to make a small financial gift (as this newest as yet unborn child is our 5th child, we can’t afford to be as generous as we’d like).