We had now decided to seriously consider the idea that we should all up and move to Malta. The decisions we had taken over the past six months were swinging one way and then the other. At first, when we had decided to take the plunge and go to Malta, I was excited and put my whole mind behind it, trusting that this is what God wanted of us. I did not allow myself to think of any of the ramifications but just set my face resolutely to that end.
Then we had a change of heart and thought maybe that we were meant to go somewhere else in England since, after all, England was where David’s Grandparents had come from. So, was that his father’s ‘fatherland’? We were also very keen to set up a lay community and a house of ‘Prayer and Healing’ which we were going to share with our friends Carl & Joanna Grigg and call ‘Gospa House’ after Our Lady in Medjugorge. We wrote to the community in Medjugorge and asked for their prayers. Eventually we were offered a large house by the diocese in Wenslydale. The house was in Middleham in a beautiful country setting. It seemed perfect, with its own chapel and plenty of room for the family and other guests. This place was interesting as it had a great history and held an important place in the history of the Catholic faith in those parts.
In the small graveyard close to the house, were headstones with the names of two family members of the Rutter family. David’s mother was a descendent of the first British Consul in Malta whose name was Rutter. His mother’s name was Violet Gatt-Rutter. Nevertheless, despite all the hopeful signs, there were many practical reasons that made it untenable and this whole idea never came about. We then went with Carl and Johanna and looked at some large houses in Malton, a town 15 or so miles away from Ampleforth.
This too had come to a dead end, and we were back again with the Malta idea. It was at this point that I had approached the Catholic evangelist at the day of Renewal and prayed with him and his group in our house. They now confirmed that the Lord had clearly told us to go to Malta. We agreed.
My steely reserve however had gone. Where there had been excitement and determination, there now was a confused vacuum that brought a mental and emotional paralysis. For one, I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about Malta. It had been 17 years since we made our one and only visit to meet David’s relatives. We kept in touch of course, his aunt lived in London and his sister came over on a regular basis. I needed to have another look.
His aunt had once given me a small holy picture of Our Lady of Miracles, a shrine in Malta. David had gone to sleep, and I did not have the heart to wake him up and tell him how scared I was feeling and that I needed to go and visit Malta before we made any other decision. We were not very well off and did not have that kind of money to throw away. I got out the picture of Our Lady of Miracles and propped it up against something on the dressing table. I knelt down in front of it and said simply. “Our Lady, you are in Malta, you know what it is like and if you want me to come and see it, you arrange it. If you do, I promise I will go to your shrine there and thank you personally.”
The next morning David and I talked about the Malta idea again and I gently tried to explain that I was a bit worried about going there without knowing enough facts. He immediately suggested that I go there by myself for a week and find out about schools, banks, apartments etc. and, most importantly, see if I thought I would like to live there. I was so relieved and so happy we were in agreement on this.
The next week I was off to Malta and booked to stay at the house of a family friend. My mind was now open, and we agreed that there would be no pressure whatsoever - I would do my investigation and then we would simply talk and make our decision after I returned.
It was night when I arrived, and I went to bed without seeing much. In the morning, I decided to go for a walk by myself, to get a ‘feel’ of things. I left the house, walked to the main seafront road and gulped. It seemed to me that the buildings were crowding in on me, suffocating my thoughts with their heavy stone terracing, not one space between them, just stone on stone on stone! I tried to shake it off, but it stayed with me when I went back to the house for breakfast.
The next two days were pretty hard. I went to the bank, talked with an estate agent and tried to keep calm. By the end of the second day, I was beginning to wilt. I was successfully hiding my feelings from David’s family and the friend I was staying with, but I needed to talk to someone!
That evening, I went to Mass in St. Patrick’s Church in Sliema run by the Salesians. After mass I could not bear to go back to the house and pretend that nothing was wrong. In desperation I moved over to the side chapel where there was a statue of Our Lady ‘Help of Christians’. I started praying, my head in my hands to hide the few tears that were beginning to drop. I suddenly felt that the whole idea was crazy. Why were we uprooting our lives, our children’s lives, our home, furniture, leaving our friends and the life we knew? Were we fanatics? Were we mad to believe all these things? Were we taking things too far? Why would God want to do this to us? Was there a really good reason? So, I prayed “Our Lady, please tell me why?”
I must have stayed there for over an hour or an hour and a half. I could not move. The tears were flowing like a fountain, and I was mopping them constantly. They dimmed the lights and quietly left me to pray. My prayer simplified. I was just saying over and over again, “Why, why?” I felt totally inconsolable.
At last, I managed to collect myself, got up, left the church and went round the corner to the house. I called goodnight to my host and told her I was very tired and going straight to bed. She cheerily waved goodnight and I went upstairs. I fully intended to go straight to bed but once again the dilemma his me and I sank to my knees at the bottom end of the bed. Again, the tears flowed and, with no need to hide them I let the desperate prayer wash over me. The words were the same, “Why, why?”
This carried on for about another hour and then, quite suddenly, I felt as though a tap had been turned off. My tears stopped, I felt calm and, without a single care I got into bed and fell fast asleep in seconds.
The next morning it was as though I had woken up in an entirely different place. I was full of love for everything. I could not stop dashing about from place to place and it was as though someone had turned on the sunshine in my mind. David’s aunt took me to visit the shrine of Our Lady of Miracles and I heartily thanked her for her help.
When the plane took off from the airport, I looked lovingly at the land, wishing that I would see it again very soon.
It may be a good time to mention that David had expressed his own reserves about his returning to Malta. As agreed, I tried to be factual so that we could make our carefully considered decision in the next few days. Not a chance! I talked and talked and enthused the entire night. By the morning, David realized that the Lord had spoken once again, and we cheerfully agreed to go ahead with the move.
The next day we got a phone call from our friend Ann Benn. Ann, as well as being President of the Third Order Franciscans, is a very special lady. Her walk with the Lord had taken her through some very hard times but she shone with a grace that lifted those who came to know her. She was also gifted with some rare intimacy with the Blessed Mother. She spoke carefully and in a serious tone as she asked me to listen to what she had to tell me. “Before I tell you this,” she said, “I want you to know, that this account has been written down and also told to a friend on the night it happened. I did that so that you will know that it really happened.” She then continued to tell me that, on a particular night, which happened to be the same night as my tearful prayer session, she was getting ready to go to bed and felt that she had to stop and kneel down and pray. She did so and was graced with the presence of Our Lady who prayed with her. She then found herself transported to another place, a bedroom which she described to me in detail - the position of the bed, window etc. She saw me kneeling at the bottom of the bed and I was weeping and saying over and over again “Why, why?” Our Lady then told her to say over me three times, the words “The answer is in the little chapel by the quay side.” She did so. Then she told her to say, again three times, “Be calm, be still, go to sleep and in the morning all will be well.” With that, she found herself back in her own room and Our Lady was gone. Dear Ann, she will never know what consolation this testimony gave both me and David!
Our house was already sold so, two weeks later, we arranged for all our furniture to go on a container which would take 8 weeks to arrive in Malta. Arranged for Lady, our dog to be transported to quarantine kennels in Malta and bought six tickets to Malta on a ‘Mystery basis’. That meant you didn’t know which town or which hotel you were going to be booked into. They were incredibly cheap and included two weeks accommodation. It turned out that we were booked into 115 The Strand, a self-catering sea-front apartment in Sliema. From there we had time to get a rented apartment for six months and put a deposit on a place to buy. That was on the 4th of March 1990 (we still have the return tickets) and David then went back to Ampleforth to finish the Spring Term and returned again in July with Fr. Alex.
We bought our house in the area of the Chapel built in St. Paul’s Bay to honour the shipwreck of the apostle on the island. We went there to look and see what the answer might be but never actually saw anything. It is interesting now that we are involved in a Meditation/prayer group in another little chapel. This one is in St. Julians, and it was just built in the year 2000. Behind it is a very beautiful quay side for expensive yachts. This also was only built around the year 2000!