An answered prayer leads single mum into the Church

By Catherine Sheehan

At the lowest point of her life Elle Daley cried out to God for help and he answered her in a way she’ll never forget.

A recent convert to the Catholic faith, Elle says the turning point for her was hitting rock bottom after the breakdown of her marriage. Even though she didn’t believe in God, in her moment of despair she prayed to him and three days later he responded.

“Upon reflection, I think it was just God,” the single mother of three said. “He placed that need on my heart and allowed that door to open.”

Elle grew up in Launceston in a dysfunctional family with a violent father, who himself had a traumatic childhood. Despite being baptised in the Church of England, God and religion played no role in her life. As a teenager, Elle says she “went off the rails”, running away from home, staying in shelters, and even attempting suicide several times.

She married and had her first child at age 20, however her marriage was volatile and her husband was unfaithful. The relationship was on-again-off-again until it reached breaking point after an argument one night.

“I just remember we had this huge argument and it was raining,” she said. “It sounds all very dramatic, but that’s how it was.”

Her husband walked out that night telling her, “We’re finally done”.

“I was just crying my eyes out,” Elle said. “I was just shattered and I just remember dropping to my knees and just saying, ‘You know what God? If you’re really there, I need you now’.

Elle knew that in order to find healing and move forward she needed some space from her husband. She prayed to God that he would find work in Hobart where his parents lived.

“I need him to move back to his parents,” she said to God. “I need you to help move him back to his parents. We can’t do it otherwise.”

Elle says she immediately felt relieved after praying to God.

“All of a sudden, I had given the burden of my problems to somebody else. Then a few days later the exact thing I asked for came into fruition.”

“Three days later he got a phone call from his dad saying that there was a job down there for him.”

It was this answered prayer that began Elle’s journey toward the Catholic Church. She began a relationship with God which she describes as an on-going “conversation” with him.

It wasn’t until a few years later however that she worked up the courage to approach the Church after being inspired by a work colleague who was a devout Catholic.

“The way in which he spoke about the Catholic Church, it just all made sense. It was like the answer to all of my questions.”

“I’m covered in tattoos. At the time I had pink hair. I was divorced. I was scared to approach the Church because I was so scared of rejection.”

After making contact with the Archdiocese of Hobart, Elle had a chat with Dr Christine Wood who runs the RCIA program.

“She really reassured me. I sat in her office, and I told her my story, and I bawled my eyes out. She just said, ‘God loves you, and you don’t have to be afraid of rejection’.”

Elle joined the RCIA program and was initiated into the Church in 2021. She is now a parishioner of St Mary’s Cathedral in Hobart.

Attending the sacrament of Reconciliation for the first time was a major step towards finding healing from the past, Elle said.

“Before I had a relationship with God I was angry all the time. I just carried around so much resentment and pain.”

“After my first Reconciliation I actually cried for hours nonstop. It was just this incredible feeling, like God forgave me. He knew I was doing the best I could with what I had at the time. It just freed me.”

“Now I have this confidence in who I am as a person because I know I’m made in the image and likeness of God.”

Elle says the best lesson she has learnt through her relationship with God is to surrender control to him.

“God really taught me to surrender completely. In my prayer life I surrender to God every single day. It was the overthinking and the obsessing of trying to control everything and trying to control the outcome. Now I actually just let it be, and that’s a huge, huge thing for me.”

“I know Christianity isn’t always all sunshine and roses, and believe me, over the past 12 months I have gone through some really, really hard things, but because of my relationship with God, I found peace and learned patience, trust and surrender.”

“That peace, you can’t get that anywhere else. I’ve tried. It only comes through him.”

Photo by Mark Franklin