The Light Shines…

Invariably, after a period of much growth in my walk with the Lord, He points out to me again just how much work there is to be done in me.  Not only that, but it seems the closer I walk with Him, the MORE I realize there is wrong with me… The closer the walk, the brighter the Light shines on all that is objectionable, revealing it for what it is and making the need for cleansing even more clear.  This self-knowledge doesn’t get me down as much as it used to, it comes as regularly as the seasons and I’m learning to simply accept it and react accordingly – tackling those faults as God reveals them.  I will admit that I get a bit down though… I want so badly to leave these faults behind… and hate that I am still guilty of them…

Help me Lord, my claws don’t reach deep enough to remove the scales… Will you do it for me?

 

Mother Theresa

Would anyone in their RIGHT MIND, look at the life Mother Theresa lived and question her salvation? The fact that she experienced such a prolonged ‘dark night of the soul’ (as related in John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father by Peggy Noonan) and yet lived such a life of Christ-like excellence is awe-inspiring and encouraging to me… and yet knowing that some would say because she didn’t ‘feel’ His presence or because she was experiencing such prolonged ‘darkness’, she wasn’t ‘assured of her salvation’.

Following that stream of consciousness… Consider this… What if, when this ‘dark night’ hit, Mother Theresa had stopped dead in her tracks and begun to obsess over whether or not she was ‘assured of her salvation’… I, for one, think she never would’ve fulfilled the tremendous task which God sent her out of the convent for had she done so… Had she for one moment allowed her ‘lack of assurance’ stop her from living her life ‘beyond the door’. Consider also, that the incredible life she lived during those years may have been a direct result of her determination to keep serving God, regardless of whether or not she felt her salvation was assured… perhaps even more passionately than had she felt God’s presence because the possibility may have occurred to her that each act of those acts might be her only way of ever showing God just how much she loved Him, and appreciated what He had done for her. Not saying it was… saying what if… because I remember the thought processes one has in that ‘dark night’.

What is incredibly tragic is that many, knowing of her spiritual torment, would’ve been as bad, if not worse, than Job’s friends… and only added to her suffering as she daily lived Christ to the poor of India.

I have experienced a ‘dark night of the soul’ myself and it is unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. Excruciatingly difficult and more desolate than any ‘winter’ I had experienced in my faith before or since. I’m not surprised at the reaction your friend received… I didn’t tell but one or two of what I considered the strongest Christians I knew at the time, and none of them understood, and they all reacted just as you described. (They knew me so they couldn’t imagine how I could possibly be where I was since THEY had no doubt of my salvation and were sure that if I just went back over ‘the plan’ and hung onto that I would realize it for myself…. but that just doesn’t work when you are in that place.) Having been there, and knowing what that is like, when I read this book and heard of Mother Theresa suffering with such a long ‘dark night’ of her own, she instantly became one of my hero’s… and it is a very. short. list.

 

The Fullness of Faith…

Being Baptist, I learned that we were operating under grace, and had no need of all those ‘rules’ that the Jews had made up. Yet, living as a Baptist meant I was SURROUNDED by rules, oppressive rules. Everyone was so uptight about how they lived the Christian walk. It was VERY rules oriented in LIFE despite what they SAID. Make a mistake? You were more likely to be stoned than understood and encouraged. Don’t tell me that isn’t true… I bear the bruises. For all their teachings about how we are saved by faith and not by works, when I had faith, but my ‘works’ weren’t what the righteous thought they should be, I paid the price… and there was no grace to be had. That said, they were churches that LOVED God, that actively worked to preach and live the Truth… but … they had stripped away some things and were left with only a glimmer of what should have been. And, they were WAY too occupied with the ‘theology of the door’. Am I saved? How can I know for sure? Yada yada yada. It took an extreme amount of effort and self directed study to even realize that it wasn’t really even ABOUT the door, and once you got to THAT point… you realize that there isn’t much food left on the Baptist table that is going to do you much good.

When I became Catholic, it meant I had to accept those ‘obvious things’… and in the process of doing so, I began to see God add back in all those things which had been stripped away… layers of meaning and richness to the faith… and I realized that in the light of those new layers and those ‘obvious things’… there was MUCH more to be learned and understood, much more spiritual food, than I had ever known before…in fact, my table was in danger of breaking. I had been living on a Survivor diet spiritually… it was enough for me to survive… but it wasn’t enough for me to really GROW and mature.

Not only that, but the joy and the peace that I thought I was experiencing was NOTHING compared to what I had after, and the grace? Unbelievable. I am not so uptight anymore about failing… do I try hard not to? Yes, but now it is because I don’t want to grieve Him or the Body that is walking with me and supporting me in Him, instead of because that Body will condemn me for that failure… and I know that now, when I fail (because I am still human), there will be a hand to help me up, a commiserating smile to meet my sheepish grin, and a hug to send me on my way. The freedom that I always was told I would find in Christ, I had finally found…

Ultimately, the difference is that when you are operating with only the red or yellow or blue or green strand of the light spectrum… you can only understand and grow, and develop so far as that branch of the spectrum extends… When you integrate all those ‘obvious things’ you are integrating them with whichever color strand you were operating in for so long… and NOW you have not only the excruciatingly bright, white light of the Truth… you have all that encompasses, all the richness of all the other ‘colors’ and you are able to understand in a way that you couldn’t have done when looking through a red, or yellow, or blue, or green filter.

It is so hard to describe… I’ve used a hodgepodge of analogies here… but there is no way better that I can think of to explain how limited and discolored what was available to me was, and how much more there is, and how much clearer it is… I keep going back to the water analogy… it is as if I had lived all my life in a swimming pool thinking the deep end of that pool was really great and not understanding why somehow it wasn’t enough… only to have God come along and say well it isn’t enough because… and reintegrate my rainbow, strip off the floaties I was using to help navigate that swimming pool and plunge me into the ocean… with all the depth, and beauty, and majesty, and glory that I had been hungering for but couldn’t name. Having swum in the ocean, think scuba dive or something where you are seeing things and experiencing things you just CAN’T get in a pool… imagine trying to explain that difference to someone who has only ever known the swimming pool? How do you explain it? Can you really? Can they really understand without taking that step of faith, saying what if it is REALLY that different, that beautiful, and jumping in to experience it themselves?

 

A Succession of Rugs or My Journey Into the Catholic Church…

A succession of rugs (of various kinds) in response to a thread on a forum recently about God yanking the rug out from under you…

My journey into the Catholic Church began long ago and I only realized how far back after the journey was complete.

I was raised in a Southern Baptist Church in a very small town in West Texas.  My Dad was very involved in the church, teaching adult Sunday school classes, Bible studies, attending prayer meetings, and assisting with almost anything requested by the church. Not only that, it was not uncommon in his personal business and interactions with others for the conversation to turn to spiritual matters. Once, after my parents were divorced and while I was living with my Dad, someone came to talk to him about something and I went to get ice tea for the guests… it couldn’t have taken me five minutes and when I came back he had already managed to turn the conversation to Christ.

The only time I ever remember my mother attending church growing up was the night I was baptized, as she helped me clean up and fixed my hair afterwards. So it was my father who told me Bible stories, and who lived out the faith that he tried to impart. He also taught me to study the scriptures, to rightly divide the word of truth, and to always be obedient to God.

It was early, at least high school if not earlier, that I began to realize that the Baptist teachings did not line up with scripture. Rug #1 I would hear what they taught, and read the scriptures for myself, and think that is NOT what that says… and I would go to my Dad and he would say you’re right, it doesn’t. Despite the fact that Dad was a staunch Baptist, never attending another church… I was allowed to go to church with friends and neighbors, or attend various programs put on by other churches in town… so I experienced the Methodist church, the Church of Christ, the Pentecostal, the Charismatic… almost everything except Anglican which came during my senior year in high school… but not the Catholic church… Life got nasty… my parents divorced and my faith was tested over the next years to an incredible degree. Rug #2 God got me through it, was patient with my frustration and my anger over the failure and betrayal by ‘Christians’ in my life, including my father Rug #3 and taught me a great many things… College came, and I tried to make it a new beginning. I tried the Baptist church (after all, I was Baptist)… but it rang false in a more blatant and ostentatious way than the churches of my youth and was, at best, incapable of ministering to me or meeting my spiritual needs. I remembered my experiences visiting an Episcopalian church and how deeply it had resonated within me. There was no close Episcopalian church, but there was a Catholic church within walking distance of my dorm and so I went there. It was like a balm to my soul… and yet my belief was protestant in nature… My dad was remarried, busy with his wife and her kids and she, as well as his own failures as a father and mine as a daughter, negatively impacted our relationship. My mother lived two states away, visiting once a year, calling only slightly more frequently. My grandmother helped me move into the dorm, and occasionally sent care packages… but other than that, I was alone and I was desperately lonely, living a sinful lifestyle in reaction to the previous years of hell and betrayal…and God finally brought me to a moment of crisis where the rubber hit the road and I had to make a choice… Rug #4 but I realized that while I had not been living the way I should, I still believed and when a choice had to be made, I had already made my choice… a choice for God. As I began to live out that choice and all its ramifications, my walk with God finally went from all mental/emotional and got down into the real nitty gritty, impacting life choices in a new way. I stopped living in reaction to the events in my life, and began reacting based on my beliefs and what God would want from me. At long last, He went from being the God of my fathers, to being MY God… and I became fully and completely His. During this time, I met my husband, a cradle Catholic, and we married in that little church a few blocks from my dorm (which ironically we attended once Sunday for our second date). I was still staunchly protestant, but felt strongly led by God that we should worship together as a family and so I began attending the Catholic Church with dh… and did for the next six years, having our first three babies and baptizing them, and my relationship with God continued to grow.

Six years of attending the Catholic Church as a protestant means six years of staying in the pew watching your dh go forward and receive communion without you. Six years of fasting from the Eucharist. Six years of watching him leave to go to confession, and not understanding. Six years of increasing dissatisfaction at being unable to live my faith the way I had been raised to do, actively involved in my church home. At the end of those six years I was so frustrated, and when I felt led by God to go to RCIA classes, I rejoiced. At last I thought God was calling me into the Catholic church, He would explain it all, resolve the differences, and I would be able to worship alongside my husband and children.

I began to attend the classes and quickly discovered that these classes were not designed for the likes of me.The woman did not want to answer my questions, she didn’t want to take time to give me scripture references, and add that to her version of the Catholic faith which had some rather hair raising (and I know now shockingly inaccurate) teachings… and I quickly came to the bitter conclusion that contrary to my hopes, God did not intend for me to become Catholic, that there was no truth in the Church, no way that I could follow God and be Catholic so we needed to find a church where we could be fed and worship together as a family.

We began to look for a church. The one we found was a megachurch of sorts, Baptist by denomination. We met with the pastor, dh liked him, and we began to attend there. The girls and I loved the church, loved the real teaching from the pulpit, etc. However, before a year was out, some enthusiastic and well-meaning soul mentioned to dh’s parents that they had seen him at church the previous Sunday. Dh’s Sicilian Catholic parents took that completely wrong, as if it were being rubbed in their faces that their ds had turned his back on their faith, and were humiliated. (They were already reacting badly to our church choice… praying for those who had fallen away at Thanksgiving dinner, etc. They meant well, but they did some very serious damage during that time to our eldest dd that we later had to undo when God DID call us into the Church. As a result, dh stopped going to church altogether. He didn’t attend the Catholic church out of love and respect for me, and he didn’t attend the Baptist church with me out of love and respect for his parents. So began the next five years…

During those years, God taught me a great deal… He began to teach me a great deal about the Judaic roots of my faith. I learned so much about the feasts and festivals, about the Sabbath, about how God intended for things to be done, how He had set things in place, and I learned about the Passover Seder and how Christ is prophesied in it and fulfilled it. These things resonated in a very real way… Truth… and I said Lord, then we should be Messianic Jews and I met a man who God had called to become a Messianic Jew and yet as I tried to learn from him I began to have migraines and I questioned God about it. Lord, why can I not learn this, why am I struggling… and God told me that I should only learn what He had given me to learn, and not to go any further than that. So with relief that I continued to learn that which He had for ME…

Also during those years I began experiencing a growing feeling of discomfort, of not belonging, a feeling that things just weren’t right. I tried and tried to put my finger on it, to no avail. After all, I was happy in my marriage, I loved my children, homeschooling was my ministry and I could see how God had prepared me to do it. I liked my church, the pastor was an excellent teacher and I never tired of his sermons… yet something was not right and that ‘not rightness’ grated and its influence was pervasive and unavoidable.

Gradually as time passed, that feeling grew to the point where I was focusing on it more and more, desperate to figure out what the problem was… and more things were happening that only increased that feeling. It bothered me that dh and I were not attending church together. Due to the way Sunday school classes were broken down, I never felt I belonged… sure I was a ‘parent of young children’ but my dh didn’t attend with me… and I didn’t belong in the single parents class either… and that isn’t even touching the light fare of the lessons. It bothered me that children who were dedicated in their faith were in classes with children who hadn’t embraced their faith and that my children weren’t learning anything but crafts. It bothered me that AWANA’s taught snippets of scripture and half the time didn’t stress learning and internalizing it permanently. It bothered me that I was constantly being pressured to be involved in the various programs with my children when we were already very involved via our homeschooling and family life. Invariably those programs ate into family time, which I also resented. It bothered me that the church (and it’s members) didn’t respect the fact that I was a stay-at-home homeschooling mom… and that I was incredibly busy with that both as ministry and vocation. It bothered me that the focus of the church was on saving the unbeliever instead of ministering to the body and equipping them properly to go OUT and reach the unbeliever as scripture taught. It bothered me that I couldn’t serve in THIS church either… because in order to teach in the AWANA program or Sunday school or anything else, the church required you to sign a form committing not to use alcoholic beverages or to frequent establishments that sold such beverages.

Now this was a bigger deal than many of the others. For one thing, this was one of those Baptist doctrines that God had shown me via scripture was wrong at an early age. Then, when alcohol was involved in a major crisis in my life, I sought God’s will diligently for me specifically on this issue. I prayed and told God that while I realized that the scriptures didn’t teach that drinking was wrong, I would abstain from it due to the events in my life, if that was God’s will for me. However He was VERY specific in His answer, instructing me that BECAUSE of the events in my life I was to use alcoholic beverages, and use them according to scriptural guidelines, or it would damage my testimony. He had a purpose and in the years that followed, He DID use my willingness to have a glass of wine to open doors with unbelievers who thought I fit into their preconceived Christian box notions and I was able to share my faith with them as a result. So for me, this request to sign that document was a request to directly go against the leading of the Holy Spirit in my life and I simply could not do that.

One opportunity to serve arose in the MOPS program, and the leadership approached me to join them. I went home to pray about it, sure that it was God’s will… imagine my stunned surprise when despite my desire to serve, despite the obvious desire of the other members of the team for me to join them in leading this organization, God very clearly said No. Rug #5 Not only was I surprised, but so was the team when I told them. God didn’t want anything interfering with what He was doing in my life. Thus, unable to serve in the Catholic church, I found myself also unable to serve in the Baptist church… and they had communion so infrequently and at such odd times that I was hitting a decade or more of fasting from the Eucharist. Then one day something happened, some final straw that had me up in arms… I can’t even remember what it was but I was iming on the computer with my best friend, Tracy, who was a Catholic convert and kvetching over it a bit. Despite being Catholic (that IS what I thought at the time), she was one of the strongest Christians I knew and I very much valued her opinion. So I asked her, only half in jest, if I was rebelling against God, or man, or both. She ignored me and kept going with the other portion of the discussion… and after a bit it occurred to me that she had ignored the question and I asked it again and said rather pointedly that I wanted an answer thank you very much and not to try that evasive maneuver again. I was not prepared for her answer. And now we get to a rapid succession of layered rugs…

She said both. Rug #6 (Layered Rug 1) I, of course, demanded to know what she meant… I cared little about rebellion against man, but the idea that I was in rebellion against God had me shaken. She began backpedaling and repeating something stridently, “NOT MY BUSINESS…” and it took quite a bit of doing to get her to shut up and answer the questions. A short conversation later we said good-bye and I began some intense prayer.

I began to diligently seek God on this issue… was she right? Was I rebelling against Him? Was I rebelling against man? I wanted to know, because in NO way did I want to rebel against God… and so I began to seek His face, and His will on this issue. He obviously was ready and waiting, and had set in motion all of these events because the conversation with Tracy was in the afternoon, and by that evening God had answered. I was rebelling against both… God and man, in the form of my husband. Rug #7 (Layered Rug 2) God made it very clear that I was not allowing my husband to be the spiritual head of our house… I knew what that meant… I had to let Joe be head, and if Joe was head, we’d be attending a Catholic church. Rug #8 (Layered Rug 3) I was in agony. I had never intended to usurp dh’s authority, and I knew I had to confess the sin and ask his forgiveness… and I knew that meant a return to the Catholic church and that all this also meant that the Catholic Church was where God wanted me. Almost blinded by tears, knowing it had to be done and unwilling – now that I was aware of it – to put it off any longer, I went to my husband and confessed, asking his forgiveness which he quickly gave. I went back to our room and cried, screaming out to God in spiritual agony, until my eyes were swollen almost shut and I had a raging migraine that could tolerate neither light nor sound.

God has impeccable timing. This conviction came at such a time as to break me fully. My 2nd, 3rd, and 4th daughters had expressed a desire to follow God in their lives, and the middle two were actively seeking Baptism. (Yes, I know they were baptized in the Catholic church, but in my mind that was a dedication, not a full baptism.) I knew that I could never set foot in the Baptist church again without it being a sin against God, and that the girls could not be baptized. Immersion had always been incredibly important to me, and so here I lay sobbing to God, questioning how my girls would ever be saved if we were attending a Catholic Church. They wouldn’t be immersed, what about all that other stuff that the church was wrong about… how would they ever grow up to really love and serve God, what if they were lost? I fancy God lost His patience with me a bit, because this response was by far the most… impatient? Strident? Response I’ve ever gotten from God… if a still quiet voice can thunder I fancy this time it did. He said to me, Who saves them? YOU or ME? Do I save them or is it dependant on all the hoops and steps that you think they must complete? And I realized that I had in my head that if they did xyz they would be saved, and that I wasn’t trusting God for their salvation at all. Rug #9 (Layered Rug 4) I had only THOUGHT I was on my face before God, at this realization I was flooded with horror and did become spiritually prostrate before God, asking His forgiveness and receiving His assurance that I could trust Him with my children, and that it was through my obedience that they were covered by His mercy and His grace… that He would not call me to a path that would result in the sacrifice of my children’s salvation. It was with a understanding of my own arrogance and new humility that I finally cried myself to sleep that night. You can imagine Tracy’s surprise when I informed her of these events the next morning. She was literally stunned. She had seen this coming for years apparently, but had not realized that once God got my attention I would move so rapidly… Had she known me longer, she would’ve been better prepared… It has long been characteristic of my spiritual walk that when God says jump I do and ask how high while airborne. (This is not to be confused with being blown about by the wind, I do ‘test the spirits’ because I do not want to be shaken easily from the Truth and so unfortunately, and entirely without meaning to, at times I make it harder for God to move me than perhaps it should be but once He has me convinced it is Him, I MOVE.) So I began waiting on my husband… I’m not sure he realized that this was serious and for real and so three weeks went by with no church attendance at all. After all, God had said to let Joe lead and I wasn’t about to make the same mistake by taking the lead again. After three weeks, dh said let’s go to Mass tomorrow and so our regular attendance at Mass began again.

I realized this was a permanent move. That realization had in no way alleviated my distress over moving into the church… and I now began to seek understanding of the Church’s teaching again. I begged God for understanding… I was currently at around 12 years of fasting from the Eucharist and not by my own choosing (I had always believed in the Real Presence you see, even as a Protestant… and communion had always been special. This fast had made it even more so.) Furthermore, I needed to be in full union spiritually with my husband, I needed to be able to be involved in my church. Remembering the previous attempt at RCIA, I was horribly afraid that that first six years would be the format for the rest of my life and I simply couldn’t bear the thought of that type of spiritual isolation. All my study of the main issues were ending in brick walls, issues I simply couldn’t get around and Tracy’s patience in answering questions and not taking offense at the manner in which they were couched was invaluable but unable to bring resolution to the issues. Finally, she recommended that I look up The Coming Home Network and ask some questions there.

CHN was helpful, but so many areas… I felt the need to try to narrow things down a bit. After some thought, I realized that in reality, all the issues found their headwaters in the apostolic succession/papal authority issue… and so I asked about that. A gentleman kindly replied, quoting the verses in Matthew about the keys. I had long known of those verses and thought I had the interpretation down, but I opened the scriptures anyway and read them again. I read the first verse, yep, still believed that the church was built on a profession of faith… then I got to the second verse… and that verse just didn’t fit in any form or fashion unless more than one interpretation was allowed for in the first verse. There was simply no way to deny that Jesus was speaking both about an idea, and to a man specifically. That was something I had never allowed for before, and I asked God as I sat there if that was really possible… if it was really that simple… if He really had given Peter authority… and He answered. Rug #10 (Layered Rug 5) He began with a question (did you know God loves questions? It doesn’t matter who’s doing the asking, I’ve learned God loves questions…) He said, “What if I set up a new priesthood? What if the old priesthood was not recognizing the sacrifice made in Christ and so I had to set up a priesthood to care for those who did?” and so it began… For the next two days I had this intense learning experience in direct contact with the Lord, and it was an unbelievable experience. It was almost as if He was rewriting all my programming in light of the Truths He was sharing with me… At the end of those two days I found myself arguing for the Catholic side on spiritual issues and knowing it to be right without a shadow of a doubt, and yet it was paradoxical in that my emotions, my heart had not yet caught up with where He was moving me… That process of full reintegration took a couple of weeks… at the end of which I was not only Catholic in mind, but in heart as well. God had moved me, and it was only flames short of a burning bush. Rug #11 (Layered Rug 6) All of those years learning about Judaic roots had been preparation for bringing me into the Church, God used all of it during those days of instruction to show me how the RCC had authority, how it was fulfilling the roll of the OT priesthood in the light of the NT… it was incredible to see how He had orchestrated  years of my life, years of spiritual growth and study, all to bring me to this place.  He had given me the desires of my heart… the desires that could not be satisifed where I was, and then used the frustration of those unsatisfied desires to move me to where He could fulfill them… and lead me deeper spiritually than I ever could’ve gone where I was which was what I wanted anyway… a truly deep, intense, unlimited walk with God. Now that I was Catholic in all but the eyes of the Church… I began to work on rectifying that. RCIA was mid-season so I had to wait, and by the time I had approached the priest and was ready to start the process the next time, dh had been interviewing and it was apparent that a move was imminent… to Illinois.

So it happened that last summer, finally settled in Illinois, my daughters and I began the RCIA process together at last. We didn’t learn a LOT of new things, most we already knew, but God worked in that time of waiting and taught us a great deal outside of the actual RCIA classes. In the end, after fourteen years of marriage, a journey that had begun so many years ago in high school was completed in January of 2006 when I was received into the Catholic Church along with my four daughters and I realized that God had not made me Catholic because I married a Catholic man, God had given me a Catholic husband because He was making me Catholic.

I realize that this final paragraph seems to bring things to an abrupt end, and in order to read what SHOULD be written after or in it, I send you to a blog entry that details it in full and in truth, finishes the story much better than is done here.

As I also said in that entry, I am home at long last, and God has finally unleashed me in service (although I’m learning where He wants me isn’t always where I think He wants me), and the depth and length and breadth of spiritual nurture that I have always hungered for I have finally found… I am home, not fully as I will one day be Home, but home where God wants me to be and that home will help more fully prepare me for the one for which I already so desperately long.