Beth Daniels Bello
January 3, 1966 – April 23, 2009
by Sally Daniels
Beth was our introverted, highly talented middle child. (Steve is 2 years older, and Becca is 4 years younger.) We were alerted to her quick brain by her first grade teacher, who suggested that we should let her skip into second grade after Christmas break. We didn’t think how that might affect this shy girl socially – we wanted her to move as fast as her brain could take her.
She was very sensitive and open to my charismatic Roman Catholic turn that began in her junior high years. When she was about 13, I brought her to hear a mission talk by a charismatic Franciscan priest, Brennan Manning, at a neighboring parish. He was very dynamic and deeply moving about God’s love. Beth left our pew for the altar call and came back beside me, sobbing. I was stunned and scared. What had I done to my sensitive, socially insecure daughter? She truly did give her heart to Jesus/God that day. She no longer liked the Catholic approach to religion. It wasn’t teaching the Bible in the way she wanted. She wanted FACTS. She formed her own small Bible study group with a couple of Catholics and protestants, meeting at Trinity Methodist church.
In college at Northwestern, Beth’s best friends were from Campus Crusade. I was surprised to learn she carried Bible quotes on little cards so she could be memorizing at all times. She believed in the literal translation of the Bible, which didn’t exactly fit the Catholic approach to Bible exegesis that I appreciated and was immersed in. We had lots of “discussions” until about the last 4 months of her life. She was a good bridge person to her Evangelical Christian community, because she had been raised a Catholic.
However, I have to say that it was a strain on our family because she was trying to convert us. Once she was diagnosed with cancer she gave everyone in her immediate family a Bible in her translation, because she was afraid she wouldn’t see us in heaven for all eternity if we didn’t share her faith point of view. That was very hard on her brother and sister and mother and father. We judged her and she judged us.
There is a good ending to this story. In her last month of life as she lay in her home in St. Charles, in hospice care, she let go of us into God’s care. She had done all she could for us. She returned to the quirky, fun sister and daughter we all remembered from her childhood. Her last month offered us a resurrection of our family community.