Lent 2026
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As a young girl, Michele Armbrust’s grandmother was her greatest example of faith. Her mom was suffering a mental health challenge after an abusive first marriage and while she did her best, she needed help. Thankfully Michele's large family had a generous grandma as a stable parenting presence.
Grandma was the one who would take her grandchildren to Mass, treat them to hot chicken sandwiches afterwards, and then on to St. Camillus Hospital in Milwaukee where their father worked the late shift. These visits were a chance for the kids to visit with their dad during a work break; it also exposed them to further Catholic influences through the priests ministering to the sick.
Living nearby the Catholic church and school, Michele recalls spending a lot of time with the nuns, too — other female influences who left a positive and lasting mark. It was these early relationships with men and women who’d given their lives to Jesus that inspired her to desire deepening her own faith in college.
Challenges
As a nursing student at Viterbo University in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, Michele enrolled in theology classes, was introduced to the Legion of Mary, and got involved with campus ministry. She also seriously discerned whether or not God was calling her to a religious vocation. Then she met her future husband, Jeff, who had himself been open to a call to the priesthood.
Nursing was in Michele’s blood, but God had a different idea for how he would ask her to serve as a Catholic, a nurse, and a wife.
Jeff finished a degree in religious education and the couple moved back to their small hometown of Medford in rural northern Wisconsin. They had three children, started a marriage preparation program at their parish, and relished working together in church ministry — until one hot summer day in July 2011.
While Michele was at work, her husband had an accident at home, the details of which were never fully known. He suffered a severe brain injury.
Michele had no idea when she left home that morning that she and her husband would never again share the same house. Through ups and downs, advances and setbacks, the remaining 11 years of their marriage were what she described as a long wait between two losses.
“The worst grieving,” she said, “is grieving the loss of someone who’s still alive. I was still his wife.” But the role of wife and partner had changed to that of wife and caregiver.
With support from their three children, her local priest and parish community, and leaning heavily on her faith, Michele was able to live those years with prayer, acceptance, humility, and a lot of good humor. She relied on healthy pastimes and self-care to “fill the tank you pour out from.”
Taking each day one at a time, Michele continued to work full time and make ends meet. Work also provided a broad support system for the social and spunky woman, and helped her continue honing skills to handle the challenges God was gifting her.
“You have to be willing to accept help when you need it,” Michele shared. “You have to lose your pride and humble yourself to say yes when help is offered.”
The self-described “giver by nature” realized that in her time of need, others were experiencing the familiar gift of joy in giving.
“It’s okay to not always be strong, and to fall apart every once in a while," she added.
Day by day
She admitted looking back now and wondering how she made it through some days.
“You don’t know how strong you are until being strong is the only thing you can be,” she quoted an adage she’d heard.
She admitted asking God “why” countless times, but then embracing the reality of the present moment, rooting herself in the experiential understanding that “God was still worthy of my trust."
“You have to live day by day, sometimes moment by moment.”
Michele acknowledged that when Jeff died in April 2022, she felt a certain sense of relief. By that time, she had learned to quit asking “why” because it wasn’t helpful for her or her relationship with God. She said she believed God could hold both her anger and faith together; she found renewed serenity depending solely on Christ for her joy.
“You put intentional time in to work on a marriage relationship … but our only joy is going to be in Christ — it is not dependent on another person.”
In recent years she has gotten even more committed at her parish, become involved with her community’s disability board, and an organization her husband worked with for years before his tragic accident. She is grateful for her priest-spiritual director and continues discerning where God is leading her. The answer she consistently receives is to share the “good news” by how she lives -- to be grateful and joyful.
She doesn’t deny feeling tempted to dwell on all she’s lost but works to continue choosing a focus on the blessings over the burdens. “You can’t go around the difficulties,” she shared in our interview. “You have to go through them.”
Writer’s note: This story first appeared in the Diocese of Superior’s Catholic Herald in 2022 when Michele Armbrust was awarded the annual Pax Christi Award from the diocesan Council of Catholic Women. It has been adapted with permission for Aleteia.
