RACHEL AND CHAD
MEYER
Married Lay Dominicans
When did you join the Dominican Lay Fraternity?
We looked into the Dominican Laity almost as soon as we were married, but there was no fraternity in South Bend, Indiana (yet). The nearest fraternity was in Chicago, and we would not have even considered driving 1.5 hours into Chicago every month for a meeting. When we found that we were moving from Indiana to Los Alamos, New Mexico, we happened to see on a parish website that there were lay Dominicans in Albuquerque. Albuquerque is 1.5 hours driving from Los Alamos, but in the Southwest, distance is perceived differently, so after being received in 2015 we made that drive every single month with one, then two, then three young children for about four years. Our formation was delayed a couple of times when we had new babies. We made our perpetual profession in August 2020. Beginning in 2019 we started a new fraternity in Los Alamos.
Why did you join the Dominican Lay Fraternity?
Rachel heard a Dominican sister speak on the Dominican Order when she was a freshman in college and was so inspired by the story of Saint Dominic and the mission of the Order, to preach Veritas, that she left Notre Dame to become a postulant with the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist the following year. The religious life was not her vocation, but she always felt called to join the Order in one way or another. Chad learned about the Dominican Order through Rachel and found it to be a perfect fit for his innate spirituality and personality as well.
We joined the Dominican Lay Fraternity because we felt the Order of Preachers was our true spiritual home, for the Dominican charism in general. When we set out to join, we really had no idea what was in the Rule, or what the meetings would entail, but the practicalities in some sense didn’t matter. We just wanted to wear the lay Dominican habit (a scapular worn under the clothing) and belong to the Dominican family. Everything that has happened since has been so much more than we expected to “get out of” this vocation.
How has your Dominican identity informed your vocation as a husband, as a wife? As a father, as a mother?
Our Dominican identity is fundamental to the way we see ourselves as individuals, as Christians, as a married couple and as a family. Our role as spouses and as brother and sister in the Order is intertwined – we pray together, study together, attend meetings together, cultivate friendships, work in ministries of different kinds and, above all, raise our children together both as spouses and as fellow Dominicans, inseparably. We had been married only two years when we attended our first meeting, so we were in a very impressionable stage of our lives and we’ve shaped our life around being Dominicans.
Dominicans are preachers. As a homeschool mother in particular, Rachel preaches all day long to our children. They consider themselves as much a part of the Order as we are. Their only question is whether they will be a Dominican friar, sister, nun or lay person when they grow up. They are all named after Dominican saints, and when people ask, “is that a family name?” We say, “yes, it is.” We celebrate all the Dominican feasts, we say a Dominican grace before meals, we have Dominican art in our house. My ten year old has his own breviary. We are a Dominican family.
How did you two meet?
Like any good Dominican vocation story, our relationship began with the Rosary. We met at a group that prayed the Rosary walking around St. Mary’s Lake every Sunday night. Chad was also a T.A. for Rachel’s Physics class.
How did you know you were called to marry each other?
We have a pretty simple view of vocational discernment. We had both already discerned that we were not called the priesthood or religious life by living with religious. We were friends for several months before we started dating. We shared the same values. We enjoyed spending time together. Our families and friends liked each other and thought we were a good couple. We fell in love and we wanted to be married. God seemed to have crossed our paths and to have blessed the relationship so far; we brought each other closer to Christ. “Love God, then do what you will.” Marriage seemed the natural next step, and as we don’t believe in vocational dilly-dallying, we were married during Christmas break of Rachel’s senior year in college and expecting a baby by graduation.
A vocation is a call to holiness and service to the Church. This might be more obvious in a vocation to the priesthood or consecrated life. In what ways have you served the Church through your vocation of marriage?
First, the family is the domestic church, so our home is the Church and everything we do to serve our own family is service to the Church. We hope to raise holy children who will not only remain in the Church but bless it in whatever vocation God calls them to in turn. That’s no easy feat these days, so we’ll see how it turns out.
When we had our first baby, we started what we called “the apostolate of holding babies.” We brought him to all of the student events and encouraged all of the young people to hold him. Many had never held a baby before and they were naturally infatuated. Just being an example of a joyful, loving family is exceptional in our culture and an important type of evangelization.
Having started a Dominican fraternity in Los Alamos, we have served by attracting others to this unique call to holiness and by the apostolate activities of our fraternity. We are also very involved in our parish individually – between us we teach NFP, co-direct a homeschooling co-op, teach religion class, help run the altar server program, and serve on the pastoral council. We’ve done our best to help create and foster community among families at our parish generally.
What has been an unexpected joy in your marriage? An unexpected difficulty?
Our marriage so far hasn’t had any major life surprises in its first twelve years, and we’re grateful for that. The joys and difficulties of our marriage have been ordinary things that you foresee when you imagine marriage, but they’re still surprising when you experience them. We didn’t really expect to have three children before our fourth anniversary, and that was difficult in many ways. Honestly, parenting is just harder than we expected, as foolish as that sounds! Our four children are all very different and none of them are particularly easy to parent, so it’s a constant challenge to find the best ways to meet each of their needs emotionally, intellectually, physically and spiritually. We have also found more joy than we could have imagined in just being with them and enjoying their companionship. Rachel did not expect to give up the prospect of a career in chemical engineering and spend her life as a full-time homeschooling mother, and it was a difficult transition in the early years, but she couldn’t have asked for a richer and more fulfilling daily life.