My Testimony

Whenever I am asked to share my testimony, or anytime I think of typing up a blog post about it, I end up spending hours or days tossing it around in my head instead of typing it out. I am so uncertain how much to say and how to say it. It is very difficult for me to share because it is very personal and has not always been received by others in a positive light.  I am reminded once again of my need to share it, because of other testimonies shared on Facebook.  God is reminding me that it is not mine to keep, just like anyone else who Jesus saved; our stories are actually a part of his.  So, with reluctance I try to put fear and pride away and tell at least a portion of my story.  (Fear of judgment is one manifestation of the sin of pride.) I have told some things in earlier blog posts, specifically my posts on my experiences with unpopular Catholic truths around the topic of sex, birth control, marriage, and abortion. Those posts are under the 2011 tab and are among the earliest of my blog posts. That was a part of my story but I did not go into what events led me home to the Catholic Church. Of course this story actually covers my entire life, which I must greatly condense for practicality and readability. There are some things I must leave out for those and for other reasons. (Even in condensing it is still a very long story.)

My mom was baptized Catholic as an infant and attended Catholic grade schools in her childhood. She had a very rough childhood though with an abusive and alcoholic father. Her father committed suicide when she was a teenager. Her younger brother Steve, I hear, received the worst of the abuse. My mom was a hippie in her teen years and drifted away from the church. She was the first person to introduce me to Tarot cards when I was still very young. She took me along with her to metaphysical bookstores where she bought books on witchcraft and sometimes would tell me about things she would read in them.  She did tarot readings often. This was how it was for several years until I was about 11 years old. The household was a dysfunctional one. There were very little to no boundaries or supervision.  When I was 9 years old my mother’s brother Steve got divorced and came to stay with us for a short while. While he was there, one night in the middle of the night he came into my bedroom and molested me. I didn’t tell until I was 15, after my brother Rich did something sexually abusive to me as well. When I told a school counselor what my brother had done I also for the first time told what my uncle had done. (I mention this as part of my testimony for a reason that hopefully will be clearer by the end of this.)

My mom suddenly returned to the Catholic Church when I was about 11 and took my siblings and me along with her.  I am still unclear about what exactly made her return to the church but it had something to do with a sudden fear of the Tarot cards and of witchcraft. Something occurred to cause her to recognize the demonic evil around them.  She threw the cards away and enrolled us kids in RCIA.  I took the classes and though I was not a well behaved student and didn’t learn a whole lot in the class, I still did take to Jesus very well. I wanted to be baptized and to be a part of the Church.  I enjoyed wearing a “Warrior for Christ” t-shirt; it had a good but also rebellious feel to it.  I was never afraid to be different, heck I was always “different” in some ways, so letting my peers at school know that I was now Christian was easy for me.  I didn’t have any trouble with my peers over it, but then again, it didn’t change my behavior or personality at all at that time. I don’t recall for sure what order I received my first three sacraments. I was baptized By Fr. Nevans at St Therese Parish when I was 12.  I knew it was an extraordinarily special day, although I didn’t fully grasp it then. I think I received first communion then too, but at that time I had never even heard the word “Transubstantiation” and did not understand exactly what I was receiving. When I had my first confession, I didn’t go in with any expectations and not much understanding. However, when I completed the confession and Father Nevans absolved me of my sins, it was then that I did know something big just happened. I knew because of the feeling that shot through me and the enormous, heavy, weight that lifted right off of me. I didn’t notice that heaviness was there until it was lifted off.  I didn’t know how but I knew that my sins were forgiven and that Jesus was with me strongly in that moment.  I was beginning to prepare to receive confirmation at some point. I remember thinking briefly on what saint to choose and my mom wanting me to choose St Francis, I had no idea what saint to choose and was probably just going to go with my mom’s suggestion to make it easier.

Even so, sin was still prevalent in my life. My behaviors of sometimes acting out sexually or speaking loosely obviously came from my childhood experiences. So did my experimentation with witchcraft and fascination with divination and with trying to communicate with the dead through Ouija boards.  At some point I experimented with some drugs and smoked cigarettes a little bit.  My limited understanding of the severity of the sins lessens some of the culpability, which is what I have come to understand currently. However these sins still separated me from Christ and his Church. I was spiritually blinded by sin.  When the incident I mentioned earlier occurred, what my brother did when I was 15, I was hospitalized in a psychiatric unit for a while. When they determined I was not a threat to myself or others and could return home, I refused to go. I told them I could not return to that house, I would not go.  So, one of the hospital staff began to make arrangements for me to go live in a group home.  I spent my 16^th birthday in the group home. When I was 17 I got a job at McDonalds and got my own apartment. Throughout all of this I stopped attending mass. It wasn’t even a conscience decision I made to leave the Church, I just didn’t go.  Having my own apartment at 17, and being emotionally unwell at the time, I delved much deeper into all the previously mentioned sins.  When I was about to loose my apartment because someone had stolen my rent money while I was passed out drunk, I got very depressed.  I didn’t have enough for rent and was afraid I was going to end up back at my mom’s house where my brother whom I not only feared but hated very much, was still living.  What money I did have left I spent on drugs and alcohol.  I got very drunk and then cut my left wrist. I knew from a prior hospitalization experience, what someone had told me then, that if I wanted to kill myself it would have to be higher up above the wrist and deep across the veins. So I made sure that is how I cut. I didn’t succeed in that because I was taken to the emergency room and stitched up, but that is how and when I got an ugly scar on my arm.

I did loose that apartment. I didn’t end up going back to my moms for long, I was able to stay with a friend at her dads house for a while.  I was working at King Sooper’s instead by that time. It was a customer at the grocery store who got me a job at a psychic line. I tried to work both jobs for a while until one of the managers at King Soopers forced me to choose between the two jobs by purposely scheduling me to work days and hours he knew I was going to be working the psychic line. I had the seniority to keep the hours I previously had and could have fought it with the union, but I didn’t. He flat out said to me I had to choose which job I wanted and that I could not have both, so I quit King Soopers and went to work full time at the psychic hotline. We worked out of an office instead of home phone lines, so I got to know many people who shared more metaphysical information with me. I learned the basics of astrology, I learned Reiki, I learned about the “law of attraction” before “the Secret” ever came out.  I learned many different ideas of spiritualism. I read the “Conversations with God” series by Neal Donald Walsch and really bought into the heresies of those books.   I worked there about 3 years before it closed down around 1998.  Then I went to work for USBank in a customer service phone center.  I met my daughter’s dad around that time. More about that is in an earlier blog post.  My daughter was born in 2002. By then I had straightened out a lot with some counseling help of a friend that knew N.L.P that I met working at the psychic line.  I wasn’t drinking anymore, I wasn’t anywhere near the emotional wreck I had been. I was more confident by then and in general doing better.  Being pregnant with my daughter caused me to straighten out even more and get rid of other sin in my life and environment. I wanted a better life for her.  I was a long way from home in the Catholic Church still, but I was determined to have a good, moral, and safe environment for my daughter and tried my best to make that happen. 

I still had my tarot cards but I drifted away from new age spirituality gradually.  I did not consider myself to be Christian, Wiccan, Pagan, or anything really. I guess that would make me agnostic but I rejected that label too. I was somewhat obsessed with religious and philosophical information. I was always reading something or watching something about religion; it was most often things from a pagan or from a secular viewpoint.  Around 2000 I had watched a lecture talk about “The Bloodline of The Holy Grail”, which seemed logical in its heretical claims and false translations of scripture. I was more and more convinced that any Christians I met must either be uneducated or crazy. In 2008 I watched the “Zeitgeist” Christian conspiracy documentary. Watching it convinced me that Jesus didn’t even exist, because, well, it seemed logical to conclude that.  When I became convinced Jesus didn’t exist is when I started calling myself an atheist. Looking back that’s interesting since I didn’t claim to be a Christian and even called on false gods by name at various times. I didn’t worship Jesus; I didn’t pray to Jesus, I didn’t believe that Jesus was God. So how it is logical to conclude there is no God if Jesus never existed?  It’s clear to me now that some part of me did know that Jesus is God, and there is no other name by which we are saved.

In January of 2009 my Grandma Connie passed away. She was my grandma on my dad’s side of the family and so at the funeral there were many people from that side of the family.  I think it was just before the funeral that my “crazy Christian” Uncle Jim, asked my daughter if she knows who Jesus is. She replied simply, “God.” I was stunned! I had not ever raised her to believe in Jesus, as a matter of fact, I never talked to her about Jesus at all! My Uncle smiled big and told her she was right.  I asked her, “Who told you Jesus is God?” She replied, “No one, I just knew that.”  I didn’t know what to say.  During the funeral the “Our Father” prayer was said and my daughter didn’t know that prayer. She was upset that she didn’t know it and wanted to learn it. So I told her she could ask Uncle Jim to teach it to her. He was very happy to do that and she memorized the prayer within a day or two. 

Later that same year my dad wrote an article about the spiritual dangers of Ouija boards. In the article he blamed Ouija board use and demonic influence in my brother and I’s early years for my brothers current evil behaviors and problems.   My dad wrote of his suspicions that my brother could be demonically possessed. I read it thinking that my dad was making excuses for my brother or failing to see that my brother is mentally ill to a severe degree and he is just a scary and evil person.  I hated my brother; I fiercely rejected any suggestion of forgiveness. I had held onto this hardened unforgivness since I was 15 years old and at the time of reading that article I was 33 years old.  I had no idea how much that hate was separating me from the love of God. After all, I was justified in my anger and hate, how could anyone tell me otherwise? 

The night after reading my dad’s article I had a terrible nightmare.  In the nightmare I was standing face to face with my brother, in real life I hadn’t seem him in about 10 years.  In the nightmare, I could see the demon in him looking out at me.  I could see this horrible, evil, vile, and frightening demon (that I didn’t believe in), looking right at me.  It was going to kill me and I knew it. It was determined to take both my brother and I to hell and anyone else it could along the way.  In the dream, for the first time in about 15 years or so, I called out to Jesus for help. In the dream, for the first time EVER, I prayed for my brother.  I woke up while I was praying and my prayer spilled out into the waking world as well. I didn’t tell anyone about it but I kept praying that entire day.  My thoughts were preoccupied with the dream and with praying to Jesus that day and the next.  I never said a word to anyone about it at the time though.  I prayed, “Jesus, if this is real, if there is a demon or are demons, please expose them and cast them out!”  That was the main prayer I repeated several times. Then, just a day later, I got an email from my sister. The email said that my brother had been just been arrested in Seattle for firing tracer rounds from a rifle over a busy highway. THANK GOD no one was hurt and the police were able to safely take him into custody!  I knew as I read this email that this was an immediate response to my prayers. It is not even close to what I expected, I would never have thought this is how the prayers would be answered, but I knew that is exactly what it was. 

I then became obsessed with following the news articles about the incident and I spoke with two different Seattle reporters urging that my brother is mentally ill and needs help, saying I hope that they do not just give him a jail sentence and then release him because he needs much more than that.  This is the first time I ever advocated for my much hated brother, but God was starting to show me that not only did I need to let go of the hate and forgive him, I also needed forgiveness and healing in my life.  Instead of being uplifted by this though, I was becoming extremely depressed. Especially when I read an article where my mom was quoted in saying, “he didn’t do it.”  This caused me to flashback onto all the anger I have toward my mom for her constant denial in my teen years.  She didn’t believe me when I told her what my brother and Uncle had done and that caused a lasting rift between her and I.  I had to learn how to forgive her as well.  I spiraled more into depression and Adriana’s dad was no support to me. He didn’t want to hardly be around me, let alone talk to or support me in anyway. He withdrew emotionally from me which depressed me and angered me even more.  I sent an angry email to my mom about her quote in the article denying that my brother had been shooting a rifle over a highway. I yelled at her for being blind and being in denial.  I sent a copy to a few other family members including my Great Aunt Peg and Uncle Paul. My Aunt Peg replied to the email asking me if I would be willing to speak with their friend who had just received his counseling degree, who also happened to be a priest. I replied thanks but no thanks.  I didn’t want to talk to a priest, counseling degree or not.  I decided I should talk to a counselor though, so I started to look up which providers were covered by the insurance I had.  As I looked over the list my depression grew so heavy, I couldn’t even bear to look at the list anymore. It was too much, I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even choose a name from a list for counseling.  My daughter said to me one day that she was sad that I wasn’t playing with her or spending as much time with her.  I knew then that I must do something, it was an absolute requirement to do something to get past all of this, for my daughters sake.  So I called my Aunt Peg and asked her to set up an appointment with that priest for me after all. 

I walked into the church depressed and helpless. I waited in on a sofa near the coffee shop which was just outside the church sanctuary. The priest from India who just received his counseling degree, “Father Joy”, came over and introduced himself and showed me to his office down a hallway.  I told him I didn’t want to talk about religion and he said that was fine. I told him a lot of my story and why I was depressed and the problems I had with sleeping and with nightmares.  He listened; he made a comment now and then, but mostly just listened. At the end of the hour he asked if I wanted to set another appointment for next week. I hesitated, he set the appointment and said if I wanted to cancel I could but the appointment was open for me.  I walked out of the church, feeling different; I couldn’t put my finger on it yet. I wasn’t as depressed, I spent time with my daughter, I slept well that night. I hadn’t had good nights sleep in so long that waking up feeling rested was a strange and new sensation for me. I slept better all that week and I felt so strongly the need to go back to that church! There was no way I was cancelling that appointment. I also picked up a Bible and read some passages randomly. It may have been at the second appointment that I told him I wanted to start attending mass again. I knew I wouldn’t be able to receive communion, one of the Bible passages I read that week was about eating and drinking unworthily, causing judgment upon you.  I knew that meant that if I did go to mass, I could not receive communion and I told the priest this. He said that was correct, I couldn’t for now, but I could still attend mass and participate in every other way.  So that is exactly what I did. The more I attended Mass, the happier I was, the better I felt, and the more I was called back by the Holy Spirit. I started attending Father Greg’s Catholic Journey talks on Wednesday evenings and learned so much! I took a Bible study class and learned a whole lot there too. Jesus and his Church were my new obsession and I couldn’t be happier! Adriana took to the church like a duck to water; she loves the church as much as I do! Unfortunately her dad has not opened up to the church and thinks I have lost my mind.  I wrote more about the invalid marriage and end of it in a different blog post.    I took more studies and also started to listen to a protestant radio station, Grace FM, a lot too. That was because a Jeep I bought had the number one preset station there, I was going to change it but when I listened to the pastor talk, it was really speaking to me so I kept listening.  When Father Joy left, I still was not receiving communion and still hadn’t been to confession or started the annulment process. I was aching to do all of those things. It was so hard to sit in the pew while I longed for the Eucharist so much. I decided to go to confession. Poor Father Matt was the unfortunate one to hear my first confession after being away from the church for so many long and sinful years.  He was great though! He gave me the much desired absolution after telling me to set an appointment to talk to him about fixing the invalid marriage situation. He said I would have to remind him outside of confession because he can have no knowledge outside of confession as to what was said during confession.  I had a few appointments with Fr. Matt, who loaned me books and gave me advice and counseled me in coming back fully to the church. By the time he left I was able to receive communion again and it was like winning the lottery! I didn’t have the annulment yet but Mike and I were living as “brother and sister” for the time being, so I was okay to get communion. 

That is the start of my life. How I came home to the Catholic Church. It’s so hard to believe that was only 3 years ago?!!?  It feels like forever, in a good way, that I have been home.  I feel like I have known Father Matt and Father Greg, and my brothers and sisters in my Catholic family forever!  My life has transformed so completely in the last few years that those who knew me in my past life, really don’t know me anymore.  So much has happened in the last 3 years that it would take just as much time to tell you all about the last three years as it did for me to tell you about the 33 years prior to that. 

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