My faith history

So here's my story. It's not exactly pretty. I was born to a Catholic mother and a Methodist father who split while my mom was pregnant. My father was an abusive, alcoholic who is now also on drugs. Ugly already, huh? Well, I'm being honest. I grew up with my mom, grandparents, uncle, and cousins in one house. My other uncle and his family lived a few blocks away. My mom had me baptized at Holy Cross, where generations of our family had went. In fact, my mom and my uncle went to the school there (which shut down a long time ago). My mother had social phobia, so we didn't go to church. She had me baptized, gave me a children's Bible, and taught me all she thought I needed to know. I didn't go to Catholic school until middle school, and I left after two years. The adults told me I wasn't really Catholic because I had never taken first communion. Then they said since I wasn't Protestant either I must be nothing. Yes, I cried (a lot), but I also still believed I was Catholic (which I was, by virtue of my baptism-those woman had some bad theology). You think kids can be mean? Try bitter adults. I had a very strong faith that was my own by the time I was 3, so a few (well, several) remarks were not going to stela any part of my identity. I went up to get ashes on Ash Wednesday both years, despite the adults telling me I had no right to. (This isn't even true-someone who has not made first communion can get ashes.) Well, there I am, strong faith and all, but I was heading back to public school because I had been hurt too much at CCS. Then the unthinkable happened. Howard, my beloved cousin who had thought nothing of playing Barbies with me as a kid and taking me to the store even when his friends teased him, died less than a month before his 18th birthday. I was 13. I remembered my favorite part of the Bible-Jesus raising Lazarus-so while I grieved, I prayed for a miracle every night. I know how this sounds, but I really thought God was going to give Howard back to us, even after he had been cremated. God can do anything, so...I waited and waited. At some point, it dawned on me that Howard wasn't coming back. I felt betrayed. God wouldn't do that to me, would he? Well...it had happened...so...what if God just didn't care? I couldn't handle it. I was depressed-destroyed really. The questions were normal, the grief was normal, but it was more than I could bear. I lost my faith, and that was even more painful than losing Howard, which was painful enough to cause me to cry myself to sleep every night for the first year. For the next four years, I tried to borrow other people's faith. It only worked for a few days at a time, but everytime I met someone with strong faith I thought maybe it would reignite the ashes of my soul, though the embers had long since cooled. At some point, I told my grandmother that I must be either and atheistic or an agnostic because I felt nothing of God. I couldn't admit that I felt abandoned by God or that I feared that God just didn't care. It was killing me, but I couldn't tell anyone. I was like a zombie in a sense. I felt like an animated corpse. My soul felt like it had curled up in a corner inside of me and died. Somehow, a lot of people around me saw me as a normal Catholic teenager. This is how much people did not know. I dated a boy who had also had much pain in his life and who considered himself an atheist. He told me I wasn't a true atheist. I knew that, but I also knew that I had no sense of God anywhere ever after that summer of 93. So year after year, I walked around dead inside (though not emotionally-I mean spiritually dead). I had experienced so many bad things, and Howard's death was the staw that broke the camel's back. Finally, I was 17. I had learned to live without my faith. I was miserable, though. Then again the unthinkable happened. My Uncle Mike had terminal cancer. No. Not again. He was supposed to die in 6 months to a year (though he wound up living 2 and a half years). I saw life as one big chain of deaths. My uncle's unfailing faith confused me. Then one morning I woke up, hearing someone telling me to "Go see Uncle Mike." The air conditioner was on, so I couldn't hear the voices downstairs. Much to my surprise, my uncle was in the living room. I didn't say anything then about what had happened, but I thought about it all day, finally telling my mother that night. My world was in the process of being shattered again, and suddenly I knew I was taking the first step on a journey I feared embarking on again. Believing again would be risky and painful. I wasn't sure that I wanted to do it. But I also was aware that the voice had not said, "Go see your Uncle Mike." I knew then, but I didn't want to think about it. But again and again, I was drawn to think about it. My faith didn't come back overnight; in fact, it took me three more years to return to the Church. But little by little, I was believing again. When I was 18, I had a dream about Howard. He knocked at the apartment door in the dream, and I told him he couldn't be there because he was dead. He said, "Lisa, I never left." I said, "Of course you did. You died." He smiled and shook his head. I woke up, thinking about how strange it had been for my mind to try to say that death doesn't mean people really leave you. But some part of me wondered if it was only my mind. It didn't take long to have an answer. One night, I woke up. Standing in the hallway...was someone who couldn't be there. I made sure I was awake. I was. Yet there was Howard, only a few feet from me, happy and smiling, same brown eyes, same brown curls, same olive skin. How? I must admit I don't know, even now, except to say that God will go to any length when one of his children wander away, even going so far as to do the "impossible." Howard told me, "Remember that no matter what happens, everything will be ok." He told me other things and said he loved me and would always be there. Then he walked away, fading as he went. I stayed up until the sun rose, just to make sure I wouldn't think it had been a dream. I finally understood why God hadn't given Howard back to us. He was ok, he was happy, and he was loved. The funny thing was I felt as destroyed as I had a 13 but in a different way. I knew that I could never walk away from that moment. If there was life after death, then God had to exist, and if Howard had been allowed to come back to fix one destroyed little cousin, then God had to care. The days following were full somehow. It was like nothing I had ever experienced, yet it was painful. I call it spiritual scar revision. It wasn't that I never missed Howard after that; it was that I knew that I was crying for my own loss and not out of fear of what had happened to him. It felt like my soul had been ripped open, but I could handle it because I knew it meant healing. It snowed a few days later, the first white Christmas I had seen in a long time. I remember looking out my bedroom window, feeling a peace I hadn't felt since I was 13. I turned 19 the following April, and we made plans to return to Federal Hill. We finally did. My uncle died in October of 99. The next months were a blur, but I knew he was ok, that God would take care of him. In February of 2000, I began to want to go to church. Living within seeing distance of Holy Cross tugged on my heart, but I was afraid that I would be as unwelcome in Catholicism as I had been in middle school. So I looked elsewhere. But the tug wouldn't go away. I didn't wind up actually going to any Protestant church, though I was going to go to a local nondenominational one when I came across an interview with the pastor in the local paper. He boasted about how many Catholics he had got to abandon their church and their faith to join his church and practice his faith. I was furious. Why? Because my heart realized the wrong in what he had done. The Catholic Church...the true Church...the one started by Jesus Christ himself. Night after night, I couldn't sleep. I had images in my head of a priest raising the host. Then a voice spoke to me, "Return. You won't find what you need anywhere else." What did I need? I needed communion-real communion. Not a symbol. Not an attempt to have the real thing. I needed what I had never been given. So I knew that I either had to return to Catholicism or lose my mind from ignoring the yearning within my own soul. One day, my Uncle Wayne said that the doors of Holy Cross were open. It was a Saturday, shortly after the Saturday evening Mass. I entered seeing a priest head into the sacristy. I had just missed him heading out the back door (it's in the sacristy). I was desperate. It didn't occur to me to attend Mass, because I was still too afraid of being rejected again. Finally, the next day, the door was open when I knew a Mass wasn't scheduled. With my cousins Dwayne and Harley at my side, I walked in. There was a priest. He said that I wedding was taking place, but we could look around before the guests got there. I told him that I was Catholic, but I had never received first communion or been confirmed, though I wanted both. I was so afraid, but he pulled a card out, after introducing himself, with the name and number of the woman who ran the RCIA, which was also used to confirm adult Catholics. It couldn't be that easy, could it? But there was no rejection in his eyes or his voice. Then he placed one knee on the floor to answer a question that Harley asked. Harley was not yet 7. It didn't go unnoticed by me that the priest had went to her level to make eye contact with her and asnwer her in a way that would make her feel heard...and even equal-that would make her feel like a person. Fr Tom Malia...what an unusual priest! I didn't yet know how many extaordinary priests there are out there, though he'll always hold a special place in my heart. So I waited a month. Then I started attending Mass. I went through the RCIA, as did Dwayne, though he as a catechuman (he had not been baptized). I didn't see myself someday having been as I involved as I have. The following year, I was a sponsor. I also helped with the children's liturgy and was on the outreach committee. One day, Stafie, the young adult minister, grabbed me out of the pew when there was no one else to be the lector. I was terrified. Fr Tom had wanted me to be more involved for some time, encouraging me in various things, though I had refused to do anything that didn't involve children or being a behind the scenes person on a committee. Eventually, I would up being a lector regularly. Then I wound up on the young adult core team. Eventually, I joined the once a month choir, though not without asking my friend Jonathan if he and his girlfriend, Cindy, would join with me. Somewhere along the way, I wanted to be an EM, which had previously terrified me (sure I would spill the precious Blood-but I haven't). One day, years after Fr Tom had been transferred to Mercy Hospital as the chaplain, he walked in during choir practice. From my position in the sanctuary, I recognized his form at the doorway. I ran down the steps and dwon the aisle so fast that it seemed my feet barely hit the floor. Fr Tom spotted me running towards him and gave me a bear hug. He said that he thought that was me though I looked so grown up and was now finally singing in the choir! He had wanted me to do that before, though I had refused. We had a brief talk before he had to go, Jonathan joining us before Fr Tom left. I've known some amazing priests besides Fr Tom: Monsignor Reinsfelder (our beloved Monsignor, who is now in the presence of the Lord), Fr Ray Martin (who has been our beloved pastor since Fr Tom's departure), Fr Paul Mallet, and Fr Steve Hook (our beloved former associate pastor who was just transferred to Washington County). Our new associate pastor, Fr John Williams, seems very nice, though I've only seen him twice. He gives amazing homilies. We als have a great deacon-Deacon Rick Clemens. I miss Fr Tom and Fr Steve, though neither is that far away, and of course I miss Monsignor, who I like to refer to as "our" saint (not that he'll ever be likely to be recognized with the political aspects of sainthood), but Fr Ray is great and Deacon Rick is great, and I'm sure we'll all grow to like Fr John a lot before he leaves, though I suspect it will be like it was with Fr Paul-we only get so attached when they'll only be with us for a year. So that's my story. The picture, by the way, was taken while Fr Tom was still our pastor, so I was younger there. See the previous blog with the "me and the monkey" picture, which was taken last semester, to see how much older I am now.

Pax,

Lisa