Welcome to Catholic Senior Spirit.

We have been writing for Catholic Seniors since 1997.  Our work is dedicated to finding faith, hope, love and laughter in the second half of life.  We were once anxious to reach these years when, at long last, we might have the freedom to pursue some of the dreams we postponed while the kids were growing up.  Instead of dreading our empty nest, we looked forward to dusting off unfinished projects and studying travel brochures.  At least, that is what we thought waited for us.  Now, we are well past fifty and we have discovered a multitude of things we never expected.  We have cared for elderly parents who often needed more help than our teenagers.  We also have had adult children who needed our emotional (and sometimes financial) support.  We had assumed everything would be paid for by now, but the bills still keep coming.  There are necessities that require money on a regular basis and the cost of those things continues to rise.  In addition to our own family, we often worry about friends.  We have seen many friends terminated from their jobs after many years of faithful service, and without even a note of thanks.

The one thing that does seem to work harder and get better with age is our faith, which we have honed through nights of our teenagers’ trials and more than 40 years of marriage.  It seems the worse things get; the easier it is to pray.  The more complicated life becomes, the simpler it is to trust.  This in itself is both a comfort and a dilemma.  After struggling through life to gather a small store of wisdom, we finally have our priorities in order.  We most desperately want to share the strength and joy of our faith with others.  Many friends and family in the younger generation are too busy or too far away to be interested.  We sometimes fear the most valuable thing we have to offer is being overlooked by the people we love the most, and that is painful. 

Initially, we asked ourselves, why isn’t someone writing about all of this?  That’s how we began writing, sometimes together and sometimes separately.  If you find yourself in this exciting, yet bewildering place in life, we invite you to join us.  Together we will explore a world of possibilities for growth in faith, hope, love and laughter in the second half of our lives.

Jim and Ann Cavera

Jim and I began dating as Peace Corps volunteers in Liberia, West Africa in 1965 and we were married at Our Lady of Lebanon Catholic Church in Monrovia, Liberia in 1966.  After returning to the states, we moved to Evansville, Indiana where our family grew to include four children.  Jim was ordained to the permanent diaconate in 1983.  We lived in Evansville from 1970 -2005. 

Professionally, Jim was a social worker at St. Mary Medical Center in Evansville for almost 30 years.  After retirement last year, we became Pastoral Associates at Immaculate Conception Church in Bellevue, Ohio.  As an added benefit, Bellevue is close to one of our sons, his wife and our twin granddaughters. 

Nine years ago we found ourselves struggling to maintain heavy work loads.  In addition to his work at St. Mary Medical Center, Jim also taught college courses at a nearby university and he had a third job completing home studies for an adoption agency. 

At the same time, I taught more than a hundred middle school students a day at our parish school.  We still had one of our sons in college and a daughter at home.  My parents lived just up the street from us and had reached a point in life where they needed our care.  We knew we were going under and began trying to find some way to make sense of what we were going through.