A mother's veggie tale: it's hard enough to feed your children well, especially when they feel called to fast.

I HANDED THE MAGAZINE AD TO MY HUSBAND WITH A grin as we sat in the dentist's office waiting for our 12-year-old daughter. The page featured six luscious slices of roast beef, perfectly cooked. The slogan read, "We love vegetarians. More for us." My husband smiled and said, "Don't show that to Mary Kate."

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You see, my daughter has been a vegetarian since the age of 4, when I took her to see the clay-animated movie Chicken Run, a Great Escape parody about chickens trying to break out of a farm where they were doomed to become potpies. She exited the movie and decided that since she didn't really need to eat chickens or any of their animal cousins, she wouldn't.

For eight years she has been steadfast in the face of schoolmates' taunts, brotherly teasing, and social difficulties.

It's hard to be a vegetarian if you don't like vegetables.

And try being a vegetarian at a major league ballpark.

"Don't try to change her mind," advised our pediatrician.

So we didn't.

Where did she get this? The Irish are not vegetarians unless you count our devotion to the potato, which came from stark poverty, not ideology. Given the choice, we'd much prefer "meat 'n' potatoes" to spuds alone. So our girl came to this pretty much on her own. It sprang, I'd say, from a deep well of compassion for not only her human brothers and sisters, but "anything that has a mother," as she phrases it. It has everything to do with her relationship to God, which makes her a force to be reckoned with.

"I could never kill an animal," said a school friend one day. "But you're killing them just the same because you eat them," said Mary Kate. "You just don't see it happening."

Our kids often end up in places we can't foresee, following the God who is leading them. The lives of the saints are full of tales of men and women who followed Christ despite fierce parental disapproval. Often women evaded being married and became contemplatives or lovers of the poor. Legend says that St. Clare's father chased her down after she left in the wee hours to join up with St. Francis of Assisi, only to turn away in anger when she refused to return home. She had even cut off her hair to show her commitment.

HAVE THINGS CHANGED THAT MUCH? Sociologist Sister Katarina Schuth says that parents of today's smaller families with only one son are often very reluctant to let that child go into the priesthood. We don't want to lose the chance for grandkids, for one thing.

I have a friend whose son ended up working for peace in Rwanda during the genocide in the 1990s because she and her husband had taught him so well. I'm sure she didn't rest easy during those years. Perhaps our child loves art when we think she ought to be a nurse, or he wants to join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps instead of going to law school. Let's remember that they are God's children as well as ours.

And now let us return to our ongoing cooking show, "What to make for dinner with a vegetarian in the house." Stay tuned.

By CATHERINE O'CONNELL-CAHILL, senior editor at U.S. CATHOLIC and managing editor of AT HOME WITH OUR FAITH, a monthly newsletter for families from Claretian Publications.