While still in college, Cheryl Ann
Masaitis-Spychaj was proposed to by a man she loved. But feeling conflicted
about her future, she left Marvin, and gradually her Catholic faith, behind.
She later became a teacher, an FBI agent, a wife and mother of four, and a
missionary in China. But eventually, she fell in love with the Catholic Church
and Marvin, all over again.
Masaitis-Spychaj was born in Buffalo,
N.Y., in 1953 where she was raised in a
Catholic family. From the age of 12, she felt a strong desire to be an overseas
missionary and to get married and have and adopt children. But in those days,
only priests and nuns were missionaries, she said. “I remember thinking I would
have to give up my dreams of being a mom. I believed a lie of Satan who
convinced me that God wanted to rob me of my dreams,” she said.
The tension between her two dreams also
led to her breakup with Marvin. The two met at her college’s midnight Mass,
where he sang and played guitar. After two years of dating, Marvin proposed. “I
was so torn inside because I felt our lives were going in very different
directions,” she said.
Masaitis-Spychaj attended a Catholic
university, Cansius College in Buffalo, but it was a difficult time in her
faith life, she said. “I recall leaving college disillusioned, confused, empty
and very distrusting of people because everyone decided what truth was for
themselves,” she said. Many professors and priests preached relativism and
dabbled in Eastern religions. Gradually, she drifted toward Protestantism.
Through her experience at those churches, “Jesus was truly becoming my
personal, intimate friend,” she said.
After college, Masaitis-Spychaj found
work as a teacher. But when her little sister applied for a job with the FBI,
Masaitis-Spychaj decided to apply too. More than a year later, she got the call
that she was accepted, and she reported to Quantico. The rigorous physical,
academic and firearms training almost proved too much for her, but her father
convinced her to stay the course.
Many details of the work she did while
at the FBI remain confidential, she said, but a few providential moments stand
out among the rest. One time, Masaitis-Spychaj was involved in a large drug
bust with police and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The night before, she
broke out in a cold sweat, and began to pray that no one would be hurt.
Early that morning, she and other law
enforcement agents arrived at a cabin in the woods. When they stormed the
house, they realized the man wasn’t there. A while later, the suspect drove up
to his house, assuming he had been robbed and that the police were responding
to his home alarm system. Instead, he walked right into his own arrest. Many
more arrests were made that morning without incident, she said.
Eventually, Masaitis-Spychaj was
transferred to New York City. There she met her husband, first on the subway,
and later at church. Greg, a divorced father of two, was Catholic, but the two
were married in a Protestant ceremony in Buffalo on a snowy December day. A year later, they left both their jobs to
attend Bible school in the hopes of devoting their lives to full-time ministry.
While at school, Masaitis-Spychaj had her
first child, a girl. They also were able to adopt a child with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
“We called our precious little one our miracle baby because she was born
weighing a little over 3 pounds,” she said. They later had two more children, a
boy and a girl.
Soon, the couple began to apply to
missionary organizations. But first they had to pass physical exams. When the
results came back, they learned Greg had prostate cancer, and they couldn’t afford
surgery. Stomach problems and depression began to plague Masaitis-Spychaj, and
they both struggled to find work. “All within a very short time our whole life seemed
to fall apart,” she said.
Eventually the family found stability
and a loving Christian community at a home in rural Missouri for emotionally
disturbed children, who helped them care for their special needs daughter. They
sold their property in New York, and Greg traveled back and forth to receive experimental
cancer treatment in New York.
One day at church, they heard a
presentation from missionaries in China, and Masaitis-Spychaj once again felt
the call to go overseas. Providentially, at a check-up Greg learned his cancer
was in remission. The couple got jobs teaching English, packed up their family
and moved to China. The two years they spent teaching and hosting Bible studies
were incredible, said Masaitis-Spychaj. “There, the people are hungry to know
God,” she said.
Gradually, Greg’s health worsened.
“(His) pain got so bad that he could hardly get out of bed to walk across
campus to teach his classes,” she said. When the family returned to their
community in Missouri, they learned that Greg’s cancer had spread to his bones.
As he died, the couple relied on friends to care for their children, and often,
their material needs. Every day, their pastor would come early in the morning
and silently pray in their living room. On Thanksgiving Day, Greg went into a
coma and died several hours later.
The whole family was devastated and
struggled to cope. Masaitis-Spychaj found some healing while on a pilgrimage to
the Holy Land with her church. At the Garden Tomb, she prayed for another man
to come into her life and felt a call to return to the Catholic Church. She
continued to manage her pain, and continued to pray, eventually picking up the
rosary again. She called a Catholic church, and began to receive counseling
from an older priest. “I sobbed as I made my very long confession and he
lovingly embraced me,” she said.
As her parents’ health began to
deteriorate, Masaitis-Spychaj decided to move back to New York with her
daughter. Her father died on Christmas Eve. At the wake, a man came up and
introduced himself. “Cheryl, do you know who I am? I’m Marvin,” he said. “He
looked so different from when I dated him some 37 years prior,” she said.
The two began to correspond again, and
talked about getting married. The weekend after Easter, Cheryl visited him in
Virginia. After Mass, Marvin walked her over to an empty tomb that had been set
up at the church. “Cheryl, two years ago you stood outside an empty tomb in
Israel and asked the Lord to come into your heart, and he answered by bringing
you back to the Catholic Church. Today I want to answer the second part of your
prayer. Will you marry me?”Today the retired couple lives in Alexandria, and
attends St. Louis Church.
Throughout her life, Masaitis-Spychaj tackled
intimating challenges — raising four children, serving in the FBI, sharing the
Good News under the nose of an oppressive government, leaving a community of faith
she loved to return to the church. But fear shouldn’t stop someone from doing
what they want, or what they believe God is calling them to, she said.
“Just do it afraid.”
Learn more
Masaitis-Spychaj published her autobiography, I Did It Afraid. To learn more or order a copy,
email caspychaj@outlook.com.