Photo Caption: Nikki Chandler of St. Patrick’s Parish, Washington, chats with speaker Johnnette Benkovic after the inaugural Mother-Daughter Tea hosted by the diocesan Office of Evangelization on June 15.

By: By Jennifer Willems

No matter what they might have been feeling when they came to the Spalding Pastoral Center in Peoria to have tea with Johnnette Benkovic last Friday, each of the 100 mothers and daughters left knowing that they were a “chosen daughter of the most high God.”

“He was planning for you. He couldn’t wait to give you life,” said Benkovic, host of “The Abundant Life” and “Women of Grace” on EWTN. “Your mom and dad waited nine months, but God had been waiting for all of eternity for you to have life and he loves you.”

The Mother-Daughter Tea, sponsored by the diocesan Office of Evangelization, was the first of three events featuring Benkovic last weekend. She also spoke that evening about “The New Evangelization in a Secular Culture” and would offer two reflections the next day at the 2012 Conference for the Widowed and Divorced.

In welcoming the mothers and their daughters to the tea, office director Craig Dyke said it was the first time such an event had been held and he gave credit to his wife, Amy, for the idea and its execution. Her committee not only arranged for the women of all ages to share hot tea and iced tea, cookies and cupcakes around festively decorated tables, but to have keepsake photos taken by Daryl Wilson of Daryl Wilson Photography.

Carmen Mullowney of St. Bernard’s Parish in Peoria took time off from her job at Hampton’s Kitchens and Appliances so that she and her daughters Julia, 4, and Sophia, 12, could make a day of it. They spent the morning shopping and then did their hair and nails before arriving at the pastoral center.

“I thought we wouldn’t have a chance to do this again,” Mullowney told The Catholic Post. “When I saw this I didn’t want to miss the opportunity for a mother-daughter day.”

Kristen Heaton and her daughters Rachel, 12, and Kaitlyn, 9, drove in from Springfield to hear Benkovic, decked out in tea hats they had made the night before. Her sister, Debbi Davis of St. Philomena’s Parish in Peoria, also came with her daughters, Amanda Davis and Jade Lowder, and Jade’s daughter, Jalynn, 5.

“We lost our mom two years ago and we made the tea hats in her memory,” Debbi said. “She loved tea parties. She’s here right now.”

GOD HAS A PLAN
Benkovic, who is also the founder and president of a Catholic evangelization apostolate called Living His Life Abundantly International, added to those memories and memories in the making by reminding the women that God has a plan for each of them.

“This plan is one that is going to bring you absolute happiness and joy,” she said. Even in the tough times “we can be assured of the fact that God is in the midst of it and that somewhere in there is a joy that we will experience and that joy will bring us happiness and hope and it will bring us new life.”

The first step in cooperating with that plan is to know who you are, Benkovic said.

“In all things you are his chosen daughter and he will always be there for you,” she told them. “Nothing you can do can take his love away from you.”

God also wants his children to believe the truth about themselves and “to let that knowledge of who you are begin to change you, begin to help you to see that you are so beautiful in the eyes of God,” Benkovic said. “He couldn’t have created anyone more beautiful than you. He couldn’t have.”

In order to see ourselves as God does we have to shut out those negative voices that tell us we’re too tall or too short, too fat or too thin, she explained. “He wants you to see everything good about you and forget all that other stuff.”

The third step is to “live who you are.”

“He wants that truth of who you are to inform all the decisions that you make, to form the very path that your life begins to take,” Benkovic said. “He wants you to remember that you are his daughter and to come to him and say, ‘What would you have me do, Lord?'”

The only thing left to do is be true to yourself, she said, because there are all kinds of ways we will be tempted into forgetting our dignity as daughters of the most high God.

She urged the women to hang on to that knowledge of who they are, to believe it and live it, and then remain true to it.

“If you do that, you wait and see what God does,” Benkovic told them.