Her Story to Tell…

Hello my husband’s dear readers. I’m here to share my side of the coming home story as well as my coming home story and why this past Easter was different than so many others before. Let me first say that I love the phrase “coming home”. Most Catholics view Protestants as Christians so they do not consider a Protestant joining the Church as a “conversion” but a coming home to the roots of where Christianity all began. So where should I start? How about the beginning?

So on January 14, 1988 I was born to a loving Mom and Dad and became the baby of four… Ok so maybe not quite that far back, but I was born and raised in the Baptist church and had been at the same church for over 20 years. So how did this Southern Baptist Bible belt girl find her way to the Catholic Church? God, that’s how. God led me here.

When I first heard about William from my sister-in-law, he was still Catholic but I was told he was considering leaving the Catholic faith. We first met in February of 2011 and began dating that April. We were engaged that October and married the next year in June of 2012 and then found ourselves pregnant with our first child just two months later in August. During the time that we dated, William had begun to go with me to my home church. As we became more serious within our relationship, we discussed moving to a church closer to the area that we would be living. While I didn’t like the idea of leaving the church which I had grown up in, was an active member or the choir and where my parents still attended… I agreed it would be a good idea.

However, one Sunday after the service ended, I got a text from William saying he “would be out in a few” because he was speaking to one of the ministers about joining the church! WooHoo! All was well and right in the world because I no longer had to think about leaving my church and the people I knew and loved. We attended this church happily for the next few years. We had our older two girls dedicated there and William even joined the choir for a time. Things were going great! Or at least that’s what I thought…

While I was pregnant with our second child William began to question his faith and beliefs and began searching for answers which lead him back to the Catholic Church (If you have not read his beginning blogs I suggest you go there to get his side of the story regarding the beginnings of his search for the truth https://williamscatholicjourney.wordpress.com/2018/07/31/the-journey-begins/). To say the least, I was NOT happy! I honestly knew very little about the Catholic faith other than they did things like the sign of the cross, said Hail Marys and believed in infant baptism. Coming from an all Baptist background that last one was a big NO.

“Faith is to believe what you do not see. The reward of faith is to see what you believe.”

St. Augustine

My dear husband was reading and researching everything he could get his hands on… He was so excited and he wanted to share with me what he was learning and I wanted no part in it. We had many what we like to refer to as “discussions” that did not end well. Thankfully we never got to the point of yelling at each other and neither of us “slept on the couch” (which is actually against our rules of marriage). It was a very rough time for us to say the least.

He began to meet with many different ministers, priest and spiritual leaders. All the while I was heavily praying that God would put a stop to this, give him the answers he needed and we stay where we were. I had no desire to leave my church.

One weekend I even offered up for him and me to go to mass together. It did not go well to say the least. I was so very lost during The Mass and had not a clue what was going on. I was uncomfortable to the point of tears. We did not say much to each other afterwards during the ride home that evening…

During his time of researching William listened to many videos and talks about Catholic beliefs and why they believe what they do. He was REPEATEDLY listening to the same ones over and over and over again and I was hearing them in the background. While I didn’t want to admit it at the time, what I was hearing made sense and I didn’t like it. I still just wanted him move past all of this, but at the same time God the Holy Spirit was beginning to work in me. God and I began battling!

His still small voice kept telling me to let my husband lead me. Scripture kept coming to mind reminding me that my husband is to be the spiritual leader of the house. “But surely God you aren’t leading us to the Catholic Church?” “That’s well and good for him, but I don’t agree, it’s not for me.” “God why would you lead us to two different places?” “I’m happy where I’m at… Why would you have me leave?”

Our marriage was struggling and we were drifting further and further apart and my heart was aching. I was telling myself: “We hadn’t been married that long, we shouldn’t be falling apart.” I didn’t understand why we were having to go through this. Honestly at times I wanted to leave and for us to “have some space” while we figured this out. God however stayed on my heart and wouldn’t let me go through with leaving no matter how much I was aching. This period of time was so hard but I wouldn’t trade it for anything because it is our journey and it is part of how we got to where we are now. God never promised that being a Christian meant everything in life would be easy.

God kept working on me. My husband started to love me and stopped trying to push me into the Catholic beliefs. He decided to let God do His thing in His timing. I began making compromises, still trying to stay in control of where we went to church. We went to Mass for Father’s day, then his birthday, and then every first Sunday of every month… I think you can see the trend that started to develop at this point…

By this time our second child was born and was old enough that I was ready for another one. William, however, was not ready. So in addition to my strong prayers against us becoming Catholic I added prayers for another baby. I desperately wanted to have another baby and was doing everything in my power for that to happen. Then that day came in August of 2017 that I got the coveted positive pregnancy test! I was so excited, not only about this development, but that William was excited as well! I was also terribly, terribly sick though… Pregnancy is not something I do well but this was 10x worse than the previous two pregnancies had been. Maybe we were having a boy, we thought? But you know sometimes when we aren’t wanting to listen, God finds a way to get our attention.

“Prayer is the best armor we have, it is the key which opens the heart of God.”

— St. Padre Pio

We went to our first appointment and 8 week ultrasound. This was not our first rodeo. We had two healthy girls at home, what did we have to worry about? Usually the tech gets right to it, pops the ultrasound up on the screen where you can see and shows you the heartbeat. They might even let you hear it for the first time at this appointment too! But this time the tech was quiet and really not saying much… Panic began to creep over me and then I asked the question to which I got the answer I feared. There was no heartbeat…

There was a chromosomal defect and the baby had quit growing at about 6 weeks. Needless to say… I. WAS. DEVESTATED. We made the choice to let my body handle things on its own. I was miserably sick and it took my body 3 more weeks to realize that the baby was no longer living and to begin the miscarriage. We had been told to just flush whatever comes out. Let me tell you though when what I knew to be my baby came out I lost it. Absolutely lost it. I was broken. I could not just “flush it”. You know a beautiful thing about the Catholic Church though? They value life from the moment, and I mean THE moment of conception…

So William called the priest of the parish we had just started attending and asked him about what might be done to honor this life. This priest who barely knew us did a beautiful thing for us and helped us heal. He performed a burial and naming service for us and for our Emerson Reese on an EXTREMELY frigidly cold Saturday morning in November 2017. Thus began the turning point in my spiritual journey…

Some may say that God taking the life of my child seems a bit harsh but have you read the Bible? God did some pretty harsh things to get His people’s attention. God showed me that despite my best efforts that I am not in control. I began to listen to what He was whispering to me. I began to slowly loosen my grip and let Him lead me. I began talking with my husband to learn instead of to argue. The things that initially made me uncomfortable in the Mass began to make me feel at home and began to be the things I yearned for when we attended the Baptist church because those things weren’t there. The church I had grown up in had begun to feel foreign to me. Lent came around and we joined in the festivities and I felt loved and welcomed even though I was this Baptist girl married to a Catholic with unbaptized children.

Our girls were loved on as if they had been there since birth. It felt like home. Around this time we became pregnant again with our rainbow. The same priest who barely knew me but knew our struggle came to our house and gave us a blessing for our pregnancy and our home. How special this was and once again God showing me this was where he wanted me to be.

Being as stubborn as I am though, I still didn’t want to fully admit “defeat” so I mentioned wanting to at least do the beginning portion of RCIA and see what it was all about. However as the time drew nearer it became more and more clear to me that God was leading me to join the Catholic Church. He placed a strong desire in my heart to be in full communion with my husband and for our family to be united under one church.

Do you remember that big NO I mentioned in the beginning? Well this past winter we had all 3 of our girls baptized into the Catholic Church. This was not an easy decision to come by as my parents were already not thrilled about my joining the Catholic faith and they certainly weren’t supportive of the girls being baptized and so they did not attend. It was becoming very hard… But then God did His work yet again and gave an opening for honest conversation with my parents and a sort of blessing from my Dad. God knew I needed that.

Satan did not stop when the conflict with my parents was healing. He began to place doubts in my mind about participating in the vigil mass with a fussy infant who won’t take a bottle. Well, that “fussy” baby did beautifully during the vigil and the mass was a wonderful experience.

So what made this Easter different from all the others? This Easter I came home and I was welcomed with big open arms by my new church family. The support they showed me further confirmed for me that this is where I am supposed to be. This Easter my family became joined under one church. This Easter I came into full communion with my husband. This Easter I received the true body and blood of my Savior! Do I look different? Probably not… Do I feel different? Actually I do. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I feel whole…

There is nothing so great as the Eucharist. If God had something more precious He would have given it to us.

Saint John Vianney