before<\/a>, but it\u2019s only one moment on a long time line.<\/p>\nHere you go Leila, just because you asked.<\/p>\n
********************************************************<\/p>\n
I was born and raised in a \u201cCatholic\u201d household.\u00a0 My father was a Naval officer whose faith was more obligatory than personal, and my mother was a girl who had been raised in poverty, but now had acquired a bit of social standing and always seemed slightly embarrassed to not be Protestant.<\/p>\n
We prayed at dinner because it was just what we did, but the words themselves were empty ritual.\u00a0 We went to Mass on Sunday mornings more for the social aspects than for anything to do with God.\u00a0 My mother sang in the choir because they were her friends, my father and I read at Mass every week because no one else was willing to do it, my brothers served every week for the same reason.\u00a0 Nobody sat in a pew in our family except my mother\u2019s purse.\u00a0 It was not Mass, it was us on parade.\u00a0 We must have been the very picture of the involved Catholic family.\u00a0 It was a facade.\u00a0 There was no substance to our faith.\u00a0 The Catholicism in which we were raised was more like good hygiene, an inoculation against becoming a fanatic \u201cBorn Again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which is not to say that there was no evidence of our Catholicity in our lives.\u00a0 We went to Catholic schools at the end of the era which still saw nuns teaching .\u00a0 These kind women introduced me to the idea of the Sacraments, saints, and personal sacrifice as a privilege and reflection of God.\u00a0 They took us to Mass twice a week, Confession every other week, and taught us our prayers, and our Catechism.\u00a0\u00a0 It was under their quiet guidance that I decided I wanted to be a Saint with a capital \u201cS.\u201d<\/p>\n
When we lost my mother to a traumatic brain injury when I was 14, no priest came to offer Last Rites (that I am aware of), no Masses were said, no prayers were offered.\u00a0 I can\u2019t even remember praying at all.\u00a0 The spark of faith I had had as a child had long since died out.\u00a0 The stranger who now lived in her body had a better relationship with God than anyone else in our house, and she would scream at Him in a string of expletives.<\/p>\n
My Father fell away completely at this time.\u00a0 He began to question everything he had ever heard or professed to believe.\u00a0 He brought home cassette tapes of dissident priests and made my older brother and I listen.\u00a0 Chief among his new beliefs was the heresy that although Hell may exist no one ever went there.\u00a0 These tapes of \u201ctheology\u201d became a regular part of our lives as did the New Age counseling meant to help us deal with the reality of life with a severely brain-damaged parent.<\/p>\n
It was during this time that I stopped going to Church altogether.\u00a0 If there was no Hell, no Truth, and a dispassionate God who abandoned us in our pain, then what was the point of worshiping Him?\u00a0 There was a half-hearted token protest from my father, but I got the impression that he was more impressed by my independent thought and spirit than worried about my immortal soul.<\/p>\n
I did not go to Church again until I became engaged to the Computer Guy.\u00a0\u00a0 He was a Lutheran boy, and wanted to be married in his family\u2019s church.\u00a0 I enjoyed going on Sunday mornings more for the approval I got from his family than from any spiritual benefit.\u00a0 My own family had completely disappeared, and though I wasn\u2019t an orphan I certainly felt like one.\u00a0 Where once was a large family of grandparents, aunt and uncles, cousins, parents and siblings, I now had 4 people who lived far away and one of those was still a child.\u00a0 I loved being a part of the Computer Guy\u2019s large loving family.\u00a0 Every Sunday at breakfast, I would fight back tears of gratitude for what I had found.\u00a0 I was ready to convert.<\/p>\n
One Sunday, when I was pregnant with #1 and horribly ill with morning sickness, my husband slept in (exhausted from 2 jobs and being a full time student) and I went to the local Catholic Church.\u00a0\u00a0 I sat in the pew and sobbed as the familiar rituals washed over me.\u00a0 This was home.\u00a0 The longings of my childhood peeked out from the dark recesses of my brain.\u00a0 I was certain that I could never become a Lutheran.<\/p>\n
I continued on upon the confusing path I was walking and #1 was Baptized in the Lutheran Church despite my longing to be Catholic.\u00a0 I thought it would be better for her to be raised in the faith of her family.\u00a0 The Baptism itself was a bitter disappointment to me. Lutheran baptisms are so short.\u00a0 I was unprepared for the lack of ceremony.\u00a0 Where was the blessing of the parents?\u00a0 Where was the candle representing the Light of Faith?\u00a0 Where was the chrism?\u00a0 The Tradition?\u00a0 She was a Christian person, but it just didn\u2019t seem to be enough.<\/i><\/p>\n
I told the Computer Guy that I couldn\u2019t raise a Lutheran.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know how, and I didn\u2019t want to learn.\u00a0 He was as lukewarm in his faith as I was in mine, and he shrugged and told me it wasn\u2019t that important.\u00a0 We started going to the Catholic Church.\u00a0 I returned to the facade faith of my youth, completely comfortable and completely unchallenged.<\/p>\n
Then #2 was born prematurely and I was awakened to my longing for God.\u00a0 The importance of our Creator was plain before me in the tiny, sick boy in the hospital.\u00a0 God had come looking for me.\u00a0 I was the lost sheep. I became a Catholic Christian in more than name and practice, but in reality.\u00a0 I was in love with my God and His Church.<\/p>\n
It took the conversion of my younger brother away from the Church to open my eyes to how much I still didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 He was in the army and stationed in Iraq when he started calling me with questions.\u00a0 He had been talking to a Protestant minister who was making him look at what he believed.\u00a0 His poor catechesis and weak faith foundation were no match for the pastor\u2019s knowledge.\u00a0 He called me on the weekends disturbed by all he was learning and its contradictions to what he knew.\u00a0 Could I defend it?\u00a0 Did I have the explanations?\u00a0 He was desperate for answers from me.\u00a0 I had none to give him.\u00a0 The watered down CCD of my childhood had left me ignorant.<\/p>\n
I began studying furiously in an effort to give him the help he needed.\u00a0 I could not.\u00a0 By the time I had the knowledge, he no longer wanted the answers.\u00a0 He had left the Church.\u00a0 I had found it.\u00a0 There was a beauty and a truth in the writings of long dead theologians which was wholly unexpected by me.\u00a0 There was certainty, beauty, and tradition.\u00a0 There was an entire family for me in the Communion of Saints.\u00a0 There was God here, in the faith and in the Eucharist.\u00a0 I was home again at last, and here I shall remain.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A few weeks ago, Leila at Little Catholic Bubble asked about people\u2019s personal faith stories.\u00a0 Cradle or convert?\u00a0 What got you to where you are?\u00a0 I\u2019ve written about my moment of reversion before, but it\u2019s only one moment on a long time line. Here you go Leila, just because you asked. ******************************************************** I was born […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
A Journey of Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A few weeks ago, Leila at Little Catholic Bubble asked about people's personal faith stories. Cradle or convert? What got you to where you\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2010\/07\/a-journey-of-faith.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Journey of Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A few weeks ago, Leila at Little Catholic Bubble asked about people's personal faith stories. Cradle or convert? 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