There are 300,000 Catholics in the Diocese of Madison. 300,000 souls. 300,000 stories.
These are the people in the pews.
An Englishman named G.K. Chesterton once said, “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”
I recently shared the quote with a friend, because it reminds me of him and his family.
He responded with a chuckle, “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or an insult.”
‘Extraordinary’ family
Nathan Heit is a classic Wisconsinite. A man of few words until there’s a beer in his hand, the Cottage Grove native is hard working, a loyal Packers fan, and he will happily grill you a brat or a burger, even if it’s 10 degrees outside.
He joined the Army in 2004, mostly motivated by the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11.
He would have joined the next day, except that in 2001 he was only a freshman in high school.
He served in the Army as a combat engineer. A roadside bomb in Iraq earned him a Purple Heart, and then, upon his return, he couldn’t stop serving.
He began volunteering with the Lake Delton Fire Department while he was working on the maintenance crew at Camp Gray in Reedsburg.
His service to the fire department continues, but he left his role at Camp Gray a little more than a year ago to better provide for a growing family.
Today, he works as the director for business development for OnTrack Tech Solutions, a telecommunications broker.
Nathan’s wife, Katie, hails from Stoughton.
Growing up, she dreamed of being a mom and a teacher.
Raised in a patriotic family, she always wanted to get married on the Fourth of July.
Her childhood was filled with summers at Camp Gray and hours and hours of time practicing Norwegian dance so she could impress at Stoughton’s annual Syttende Mai Festival.
She graduated from Loras College in Dubuque a few years back with a degree in elementary education.
While studying at Loras, she served on the Camp Gray staff during the summers, and there she met a nice maintenance employee named Nathan.
She served as a school teacher for a bit after graduating, but after she married Nathan, she took a job serving as the middle school youth minister at St. Joseph Parish in Baraboo.
She has the great ability to connect with young people, and she delights in leading them to Jesus Christ.
After Nathan and Katie got married — on the Fourth of July in 2018 — they bought a house outside of town.
It was close enough for Nathan to get to the Lake Delton firehouse at the drop of a hat, but the house is far enough away that there’s a sizable piece of land surrounding the home.
There’s plenty of room to hunt deer, to play pick-up football in the front yard, and to soak up the beauty of Wisconsin.
The house needed a good deal of repairs, which Nathan happily did over the course of the first year they lived there.
Their first child was born in June of 2019. The baby’s due date conflicted with their plans to travel to Normandy to celebrate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, so they named him Norman.
A little more than a year later, their daughter Marie was born.
Parishioners of St. Cecilia Parish in Wisconsin Dells, Nathan is an ordinary man and Katie’s an ordinary woman, and they have perfectly ordinary children.
And they are, as Chesterton put it, the most extraordinary thing in the world.
Serving as a witness
Chesterton died in the 1930s, but perhaps he saw the writing on the wall; there was a time to come in which there would be great attacks against the family.
It seems that the time is now, as there are some in our culture who are actively striving to dissolve the nuclear family.
It’s been said that politics is downstream from culture. Regardless of your political beliefs, most would probably agree that the political landscape of this great nation is a mess.
If politics are truly downstream from culture, then perhaps we have the politicians and the politics that we deserve, because our culture is also a mess.
St. Teresa of Calcutta is credited with the quote, “If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.”
This summer, Katie is leaving her job at St. Joseph Parish to do just that.
“From the beginning, it’s been our goal to get Katie home with the kids,” Nathan told me, “and then when they get older, we’re pretty sure we’ll be homeschooling.”
“We want to combat this crazy culture as much as we can while they’re growing up,” Katie shared.
She continued, “We’re educating them for now, and for eternity.”
When asked their favorite thing about being parents, they’re quick to share both the joys and the difficulty of parenting.
Nathan responded with sincerity, “It’s really hard to be a dad.”
Katie chimed in, “You always talk about how excited you are when they do something new.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I love being a dad,” he replied. “I have a lot of fun with them. And when they do something new, it is a wonderful feeling.”
He continued with a smile, “You just always know that within 15 minutes, one of them will be screaming.”
“I have to assume that the best part will be when they’re adults, and I see what I have raised. I look to that. Being a dad is harder than any job that I’ve ever done, but it’s the most important job I’ll ever have. I guess I just look to the future and hope that I make humans that contribute to society and that make it to Heaven.”
Another Chesterton quote reads, “Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.”
A lot of people in our civilization, in our culture, are forgetting obvious things. Nathan and Katie are just ordinary people with ordinary children doing obvious things.
And this is what makes them so extraordinary.
The stories of ordinary families aren’t told very often, but it’s these stories that will save the Church, that will help us to retake the culture, and that will help to save the world.