From “The Deacon That Almost Wasn’t” from the Seminarian Casual website (SemCasual.org) on Sept. 22 comes an inspiring vocations story.

“Deacon Ryan Allan Kaup should not be here right now,” the post stated, referencing his mother’s almost-abortion 26 years ago.

“Yet something inside of that frightened girl just wouldn’t let her go through with the abortion. So she made another appointment — this time with her doctor. She resolved to deliver her child and offer him up for adoption, hoping that he’d be given every chance she feared she couldn’t give him.”

He grew up in Lincoln, Neb., with his adoptive parents, Randy and Sherry Kaup, being raised Catholic and attending Catholic schools.

As a college student at the University of Nebraska, “Kaup got involved with the Newman Center on campus.”

“[Friends] began to show me the joy that comes from a life lived for God. The example of the priests on campus was instrumental in my vocation to the priesthood. They, too, helped me to deepen my own faith,” he explained.

Before college was over, he discerned to become a seminarian for the Diocese of Lincoln.

“My parents were so great. They always supported me in anything I wanted to do,” he said.

Kaup finished his college studies at St. Gregory the Great Seminary in Seward, Neb., before attending St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in the Philadelphia Archdiocese in 2011 for graduate studies.

“To be able to make God present for people in the Eucharist and to bring them his forgiveness in the sacrament of reconciliation is what I’m most looking forward to,” he said of the priesthood.

Next spring, Deacon Kaup will be ordained a priest.

Thank God for his mother’s choice for life.