Our story is a fairly long one, with many interesting God-incidences,
probably like a lot of your own stories. We will try to be as brief
as possible so that you can get a general idea of where our journey
has led us so far.
I am 40 years old and Chris is 50. I grew up in Connecticut in
the Christian Science ‘Church' and had a very strict up-bringing.
As a teen I rebelled against this.! I rejected the God I had been
taught about all my life and turned my back on Him.
Chris is from (very) northern New York and grew up in the Congregational
Church, although his father had been raised Catholic. He attended
church with his mother very sporadically and never read much scripture
or learned much about God. He too spent much of his early years
having a ‘good time', experimenting with drugs and drinking
heavily. After a number of years he ended up in Connecticut working
in the same department as I did in an electronics firm in 1982.
We met there and instantly recognized each other. We knew we belonged
together and we were married in September of 1983 and moved to New
Hampshire in search of a better job. Our first child arrived in
December of 1984 and we just went along for the next 3 years. We
did find a church and had our daughter baptized only because it
was the thing to do. We also attended a marriage encounter sponsored
by the UCC, but the impact of that did not really surface for many
years.
In September 1987, we packed up and moved to Chris' home town to
be near his family as his dad had been battling cancer for over
10 years and his health was really starting to go. Chris wanted
to spend some time with him and to allow our daughter to get to
know her grandfather before he died. We were blessed with a year
with dad before his death, the first 6 months of which he was still
quite active. He died in on Oct. 3 1988. The next few months were
a fast spiral down into severe depression for Chris, and in response
my days were not the best either. He was drinking heavily and our
marriage was a joke. I turned back to God, praying desperately for
Him to do something because I just couldn't go on like this for
the rest of my life. Chris also called out to God as his hope was
gone and he was even thinking of suicide. I don't know if either
one of us really thought He would answer, but we had reached bottom
and had no one else to turn to.
What we didn't realize is how God works and that He had really
begun to answer our prayers before Dad had even died! That summer
of 1988, I had enrolled our daughter, Kira, in Vacation Bible School
at a Methodist Church in the area. After that, and through the fall
and early winter, I attended fairly often and liked what I saw.
I couldn't get Chris to go more than once or twice, but he was impressed
by the preaching and the people he met there. After we had both
called out in prayer for help, the pastor of the church, a true
man of God, started coming around and talking to us. Both of us,
being hungry, decided that maybe we would join the church and asked
him for information about what being a Christian was about and what
the church was about. He gave us a book on John Wesley, The Little
Flowers of St. Francis, and another book on Francis. God spoke to
us through this man and we allowed him to lead us closer to Our
Lord.
We attended a Methodist Cursillo weekend in the spring of 1990.
For Chris this was a falling in love with Jesus. He went head over
heels and came back a whole new person. He stopped drinking, and
began to pray and study. He never read much, but began devouring
scripture and all the spiritual writings he could find. This man
who wouldn't talk to anyone much, suddenly started talking to everyone
about Jesus. He was 180 degrees from what he had been before. At
the time, it was wonderful, but we really didn't understand exactly
why he was so different! My own conversion was more of a gradual
thing, beginning before the weekend and stretching past it. We both
read voraciously and prayed and looked for a way to serve Jesus.
Our pastor had given us John Michael Talbot albums as gifts. We
listened to the music and it lead us further into prayer. We also
read John Michael's books and we were especially moved by his book
SIMPLICITY. At the time we were living in a giant farm house which
we had bought, and it now seemed to be a real drain and anchor that
kept us from being able to spend time with God and His people. We
sold our house (to the first buyer of course) and moved into a small
2 bedroom cottage within walking distance of our church and smack
in the middle of an extremely rural poor neighborhood, which just
happened to become empty just when we were looking to move. We became
like a mission in the neighborhood. We began doing advocacy work,
helping with practical problems and just being a presence in the
area.
Chris quickly became the pastor's right-hand man and we both got
very involved in a variety of ministries within the church. Our
church was very ecumenical and we did a lot of things in conjunction
with the local Catholic parish. One thing we did was bring a charismatic,
Franciscan priest who has a healing ministry, to our town. He spent
a week with us and many people were blessed, and we were propelled
into the charismatic movement, both within the Catholic Church and
in the various nondenominational congregations that have sprung
up. We even signed up and worked at the National Charismatic Conference
in Pittsburgh. We were involved in Life in the Spirit seminars,
intercessory prayer groups, and every type of spiritual growth opportunity
we could find. Chris began studying for the ministry and became
the pastors official assistant. At this time the pastor bought a
farm and the parsonage was empty, so we moved from our ‘mission
house' to the parsonage next-door to the church.
All during this time, we continued to study and learn about God
and Church history. We read Scripture and books of daily meditations;
we read the saints and their biographies including St. Therese,
St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Augustine, and
of course Francis. Our pastor gave me IMITATION OF CHRIST in response
to my asking him what would be the best way to become holy. We continued
to read John Michael, Fr. Groschel, and many of the people we saw
on EWTN. We were blessed that
we received the station where we were and we watched it constantly.
We were even praying the mercy chaplet, the rosary each evening
and sometimes praying the hours. We also read the desert fathers,
John Wesley, Charles Swindoll, Charles Colson etc. Do you notice
a lot of Catholics on this list???? Well, so did we. It seemed the
more we learned about God, the more we were drawn to the Catholic
Church. It seemed crazy to us, but we even started considering that
He might want us to become (gulp!!!!) Catholics! Believe me, we
not only studied harder, but spent large amounts of time in prayer
over this one! How could this be? Chris was on his way to becoming
a Methodist pastor, we had a very needed and comfortable ministry
where we were (this should have been our first clue!?!), we were
living in the parsonage, both of our surviving families were strongly
anti-Catholic. Nope, it just couldn't be.
Meanwhile, we had become involved with the Brothers and Sisters
of Charity, Domestic and had been praying with the local community
for a while. Eventually, we decided to become postulants and then
in 1993, novices. We spent a year as novices before realizing that
this was not where God wanted us, so we are no longer formally affiliated
with them. Maybe God put us there temporarily so that we would have
some support for our conversion because in the spring of that same
year, we began studying with a priest to join the church, which
we did on August 2, 1993 with our faith community present. It was
a coming home, and the happiest day of our lives, so far.
Now this causes a problem. The Methodist Church we were involved
in wasn't quite ecumenical enough to accept their assistant pastor
as a Catholic! 'Why
Catholic?' - answers We lost our home, our ‘friends', our
families for a while (my mother has never been at a loss for words,
except when I broke this news!), our income, and most upsetting
was the loss of our ability to minister in the church setting. We
have spent the last two-plus years searching for a way to do this.
Chris worked with Social Services for a while on a grant program,
and with Head Start for a while, but neither were long-lasting positions
and neither allowed him to minister a distinctly Christian message.
The past couple of years have been a time to sit back and wait on
God. Throughout this time, we have continued to pray and to study,
learning more about our Christian and distinctly Catholic faith
through the new catechism and various church documents and encyclicals.
We reached the end of our financial rope last spring. Everything
was gone, and then after searching all that time, a job of Director
of Family and Youth Ministry in a small town in Michigan was more
or less handed to him. God opened every door and led the way. We
thought we were finally going to get a cozy ministry in a nice place
where we could share our faith and grow with others of like mind.
We should have known better. Our Lord has blessed us so richly and
given us so much, more than we ever dreamed possible. We should
have remembered that ‘to whom much is given, much will be required'.
When we went to check things out there, we felt that something was
wrong. Every fiber of our human selves wanted to turn and run, but
we also discerned, through some agonizing hours of prayer, that
He did want us to serve him there. And after all, His will, not
ours.
We found ourselves in the midst of a diocese which, in their own
words, is very ‘progressive'. Unfortunately this does not just
mean open-minded and willing to grow, but that they do not agree
with the teachings of the church and are willing to disobey. I know
this may sound harsh, but what we have found here is no laughing
matter, and the truth is sometimes not very pretty. We are struggled
mightily with our own faith while there. We boldly spoke out , attempting
to counter the false teachings we found and you can imagine how
that went over. We confronted the priest and did not receive any
sufficient explanation. We were told that "this is the way
our bishop does things and we are not the ‘church of Rome',
but the ‘church of [diocese name]'". We joined the church
of Rome, if we wanted to be in any other church, we would have remained
where we were and spared ourselves a lot of pain.
We tried, with much prayer, to continue to be bold and to uphold
what we know to be the true teachings of the church, but it was
a very difficult struggle. We had some very wonderful people praying
for us. We are not sure why we were placed there, but we kept on
day by day loving God with all our minds, souls and hearts, and
love our neighbors there in His name. I think we were the only converts
there who joined the church because of what she is and not just
because they married in, so no one understood where we are coming
from. The people there have been taught this way for a long time
and don't know any better, as is the case in many parishes around
the country. Honestly, I think they found us a little off the wall.
Not only were we speaking up about many things in the church, but
we have been called to a life of radical simplicity and this was
extremely odd in a very upscale area. I do hope we caused people
to think and maybe question a little. I know we caused some talk!
The next development in this journey was that we ended up getting
laid off by the parish. There had been some very unwise decisions
made which put the church into a difficult financial position. We
believe that we accomplished what God had wanted us to while we
were there (although we still don't know exactly what that was,
and don't really need to) God graciously opened all the doors for
us to return to our home area of upstate NY in mid-April 1996. As
of June 9th we found a nice apartment to live in.. Janine found
employment in a dream job working for a Computer Consulting firm,
doing training, installations and anything else that needs doing.
After 3+ years, she has now moved into the position of Church Secretary/bookkeeper
in our parish. Chris, after searching for work and having a few
interesting short-term positions, was hired as the Assistant Director
of the Coming Home Network! His main duties included moderating
the email discussion group and running the 'Helpers Network' which
is hooking up folks on their way in to the Church with others who
have walked similar roads before them.
June 1999 was one of many changes. Janine started her new Job at
St Patrick's Church, we moved into the house Chris grew up in and
Chris took over Bibletech Christian
Resources! All within 2 weeks! Through it all God provided us
with what stability we had, as left to ourselves, that much stress
could wipe a person/family out! To God be the Glory!
We have been blessed by the opportunity to provide music ministry
and to be involved in the RCIA, Confirmation, Music and Youth Ministry
programs in our parish and the Ecumenical Council in our diocese.
We struggle on day by day to follow where God leads us. It has been
a difficult journey that is not over yet! One with many twists and
turns and there have been many fellow travelers who have helped
us along the way.
A couple of years ago, Marcus Grodi, the founder and still head
of the Coming Home Network, began a live show on EWTN
on Friday evenings called The Journey Home. (it has since moved
to Mondays at 8pm) He has many interesting people on who talk about
their journeys into or back to the Catholic Church and the challenges
they faced in the process. We were blessed to be on his show
September 17th, 1999.(Program #96) Marcus has also published
a book called 'Journeys Home'
which has many conversion stories (including a short letter we wrote
to him once) an explanation of the Coming Home Network and it's
mission, and a copy of the great apologetics work 'Pillar of Fire,
Pillar of Truth' in it.
One of the highlights of our year is attending the Defending The
Faith conference at Steubenville University each summer,this year
will be June 15-17. Great conference, great school, great people,
great weekend, great spirit-filled worship, great personal renewal.
Look for us there if you are attending and introduce yourselves!
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