Imagine if you will, you’ve just walked in to a fancy restaurant. You are meeting friends and are looking forward to a long awaited reunion over dinner. Just as you see them and are walking to the table you realize your shoes are on the wrong feet. You falter, but you are committed now – maybe they won’t notice and you can change them under the table? You press on. Smile, hug, sit down and begin to look over the menu.

Then you smell something. It’s body odor and it is coming from YOU.

As you shift in your seat, wondering how to keep the smell from wafting about your beloved friends nasal cavities, you then realize you have been so distracted by the shoes and the BO that you’ve been perusing the menu UPSIDE DOWN.

Heat rushes to your face, you decide to just make a joke because obviously they’ve all noticed the menu faux pas (if not the nose and the BO – yet).

This is what it felt like the first time I walked into a Catholic Mass. And the second, and the third, and honestly almost every time STILL (going on 9 years into my conversion story).

I totally get that this is a ME issue, so I want to go on record as saying no one ever has made me feel uncomfortable or judged, or like I was messing up at any Mass I have ever attended. On the contrary, I have always felt very respected and found help for anything I needed. Still, this is how it has felt.

When I say to people, “I have found my home in the catholic church.” I do not mean I feel at home every time I attend the Mass, or that it is comfortable in the least. It isn’t. What I mean by that is that my mind is finally at rest, my search is over, I have found the promised land and I will have to travel no more.

I’m still finding my feet here, let alone my shoes.

If I heard my Grandma Jewell say that once, I heard her say it a thousand times. Her voice thick with sarcasm and disgust. Us kids always chuckled because frankly it was the ONLY time we saw her angry! Truly, spendings days and nights throughout the year with her, I feel like I knew her well for that time period of her life. She just didn’t ever seem angry. No outbursts unless there was a finger wagging in place, then she could speak with the tongues of men and angels. Still, not anger.

So when she would say this she would reluctantly tell the story of how her younger sister often told her that she was “known for having a big mouth”.

I’m going to pause the story here just long enough to to explain what this phrase means in case it is, as I fear, only something our family says. To be called a “big mouth” was to say, “you talk too much, you talk out of turn, you gossip, you are loud, you are unladylike”. Ok, back to regular programing. >

kelly

Then she would sometimes trail off under her breath about how “SHE was the oldest and who did she think she was to be bossing her around and at their age too…she always did think alot of herself. and greedy?! Why you never met a greedier child as Francy.” I was always shocked and a little frightened of these things she was saying, yet intensely curious about the stories that lay behind her words.

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You’ve just read an excerpt from my first novel, Layne Herschel: These are the days of her lives, available May 10, my Dad’s birthday. The book is dedicated to him and so the timing was just perfect. My writing for the past year has intensified to the point of exhausting me, but I believe I’ve been shown a system that is making sense of it all so that it can be shared! On my own, neither this book or any other would have ever seen the light of day. Learning to catalog my thoughts has opened up the world to me again and I feel the weight of life lifting from my shoulders. Though I haven’t let anyone read any of it yet, it’s only because I’ve been working so hard behind the scenes to figure out how to complete all of these projects without losing my mind or my family in the process. Yes, I am being dramatic. But truly it’s been alot to hold.

In a way this blog also, silent for nearly a year now, has been waiting as I figured out a few things about myself. My intention was to use it as a tool to do that very thing, yet… as usual, His ways are higher than my ways. I’ve been stuck in a silent ditch of sludge for the past year. So many things have happened in and to our family it was hard to keep my thoughts clear let alone ask for help or reach out. There simply wasn’t mental space or clarity for me to do that at the time. So I retreated more, spoke less, prayed more, and took an honest inventory of my life and what there is left of it.

9 years have passed since I knew, in one pit-of-the-stomach-feeling moment, that this was the church very near to what the early Christians grew into. After they became more than could fit in one home, then one courtyard, their numbers continued to multiply and grow as did their customs and traditions. Feeding the twelve at the Last Supper was very different, from the human perspective, than feeding the 5000 with the five loaves and three fishes.

All of the inconsistencies I couldn’t help but see in the religion of my childhood were corrected. All of the questions I had while surrounded by fundamentalists: answered in a single body of text. Historical ambiguity was gone while the hard lines of right and wrong stayed strictly on the straight and narrow. For example, we cannot say with certainty the age of our universe, but adultery is a mortal sin every single time, no matter the circumstances. I never found that kind of clarity in the protestant religions. And to me, that was always the elephant in the room.

Nine years ago I played Just As I Am on the piano this communion Sunday except this time… This time I passed the communion plate on by without partaking because I knew I could never do so again. I wasn’t sure what that meant exactly or even why it was my first of several “hills to die on”. I certainly didn’t know what havoc it would wreak in my life, that one little act of defiance – defiance against consuming something that had never tasted like honey to me, and that’s what I was after.

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Psalms 119:103

I didn’t know where that act of obedience to God and defiance of man would lead me. I still don’t. But today, I am buoyed up by confidence in knowing our Holy Mother is always interceding for me. She takes what scraps I have and turns them into jewels to lay at the Savior’s feet for me. I believe I’ve been asked to share these lessons with whomever else they are intended for or I would happily take them to my grave unread.

God willing, I will be publishing each Thursday at 12:00pm CST. If you just signup for updates you’ll receive them via email (that’s the way it’s supposed to work <smile>).

It feels like I’m coming to a place of completion. I don’t know exactly what that means, but that’s the only word that describes this part of my journey, and I so very much want to share it all with you. Thank you for journeying through this life with me, even if it’s just for this one blog post. I thank my God upon every remembrance of thee. -Philippians 1:3.

I am 7/8ths of the way through a long and harrowing journey that I’ve questioned over and over again. I’m so close to the finish line I can see the gathering crowds and people have already started to pat me on the back… almost… there…

This isn’t about my journey home, by the way, it’s something else I’ve come to believe God has called me to. Anyway, back to miracles.

Miracles, in the theological realm, speak to big flashes of light. The changing of molecules. The reversal of tides. The separations of crashing rivers. The splitting of mountains. I have experienced many miracles in my life, thanks be to God, but never any of those kind. It’s tempting to think “I believe in miracles, but they are rare and I’m probably not truly in need of one.” Let’s unpack that.

If I believe in miracles, and God’s Word and all of human history tells me I can, where did I get the idea that they are “rare”? In the Catholic tradition, miracles are part of how the church cannonizes someone (makes them officially a Saint). It’s a lengthy and somewhat complicated process and I don’t need to worry about it because it’s never going to happen to me. LOL Anyhoo… the kind of miracles one typically thinks of are the kind the Church refers to for the most part. Big ones. But even those… rare? No. Let’s do some very rudimentary math:

There are more than 10,000 saints officially recognized by the Catholic Church (Encyclopedia Brittanica). Two miracles are required for canonization*, only one if you are a martyr. So that’s roughly 20,000 miracles occurred and verified since this tradition began about 1500 years ago – and remember these are the BIG KIND of miracle.

20,000 divided by 1500 = 13.333 miracles per year.
That’s one a month every month for the past 1500+ years?!

Rare = FALSE

Next up “I’m not truly in need of one, I just need to trust God and work harder.”

That’s a doozy. First, the very idea that we don’t need a miracle is an oxymoron. We ARE a miracle, from our conception to death, the fact that we are living breathing, sentient beings here at this time is a miracle. Two – have you seriously never come across something you truly needed in your life that NO HUMAN could provide? NO? Oh ok. Salvation is all on you then, correct? I thought not. We need miracles. Every day we need a miracle.

“I just need to trust God more and work harder”. Yes. and emphatically NO. Yes of course, the very nature of coming up against something we can’t do for ourselves requires faith and trust in God, and we should trust Him more and do all we can for ourselves. Agreed. But I find it curious that we are more prone to ask ourselves to trust him more instead of trusting Him to come through in a big way. Let me say that again: We are more prone to ask ourselves to do something than we are to ask HIM to do something. Truly, that is completely illogical.

Those are the BIG miracles. But the other things I’m calling miracles, happen as a sort of “hey girl, I’ve gotcha”. For example, on this weekend of this big thing I’m trying to do, I experienced several of these “miracles”.

• I had a very stressful time getting to the airport and in the days leading up to my flight. EVERYTHING was going wrong and I was tempted to say “God doesn’t want me to go.” But it’s been my experience that the devil is more likely that Jesus is to do that kind of nonsense so I pressed on. My second flight was upgraded to First class. Free.
• My hotel messed up my charges so I was without funds for about 24 hours – I walked up to 2 separate vending machines for breakfast and again for lunch, went to put in my paltry pocket change and there was a $4.00 credit on both machines. Different locations, different times of day. Mana from heaven from a vending machine? Yep.
• I have several physical challenges that make long hours of work on my feet virtually impossible. These challenges also mean I have brain fog, especially when I am under stress, and let-me-tell-you-i-had-it-bad. I sustained 2, 12 hour shifts with only one lunch break (I was literally on my feet the entire time otherwise). I was in alot of pain but I endured. That was a miracle.
• My hotel didn’t offer shuttle service so I was going to have to walk instead of Ubering the 1.1 miles to my destination. Twice a day. On the first day I had a similar-aged woman invite me into her Uber and she insisted on providing me with an Uber for all 5 remaining trips. She absolutely refused to accept payment from me. Entertaining angels unawares? Yep.
  

Now, you might not be surprised I experienced so many small miracles, because after all I am basically a saint already <snort> and totally deserve a miracle <snort> or at the very least I fasted and prayed for these miracles <cough of embarrassment>. No, my friends. No to all of that. Instead I cried. I stomped and threw a real hissy fit at one point. There was lots of snot and everything else at the unfairness of my trials <insert rolling eyes>. But here is the take away.

God does what He does because He loves us.

Miracles happen every day. I think we’ve bought into the worlds new-age vocabulary and instead call them “coincidences” and “synchronicities” or even “manifestations”. No. NO. They are miracles, because that is the nature of God: to give immeasurably to those He loves without bounds.

That, my friends, is the nature of miracles.

POP QUIZ: comment below here and tell me something that (in hindsight) was a miracle you experienced. I would truly love to hear about it.

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*I am finding different spellings for this word. Can someone comment with a reference to the correct spelling?
And if you are a fence-sitter with this whole deal, check out the very Christian and historical context for miracles and venerating saints HERE.

Christmas – when all protestants become idol worshipers.

If I hear one more person say, or read one more blogger claim, that Catholics are idol worshipers I just might scream.

No, really. Come on people. Let me say it real loud for the people in the back:

I DO NOT WORSHIP MARY OR THE SAINTS. NO CATHOLIC DOES.

Crumbs, I was shouting there. Sorry, I guess.

But this is important. If we claim that to have a “graven image” of a person we think of often, mention in prayer and love equates to idolatry, then we must go the way of the Amish faith and not allow any photographs of anyone. Ever. End of story.

And we sure as heck shouldn’t allow Nativity scene figurines to be set up at Christmastime… come on now. Get with the program here!

Seriously. It boggles my mind. And to be clear, I have always thought this – waaaaay before I even entertained the idea of Catholicism being a valid faith. YEARS before. It’s not logical and it’s embarrassing to assert such if you are thinking person of even average intelligence.

Let’s knock it off, shall we? If we are going to argue about something, let’s debate actual, meaty, theological points.

M’kay?

On my top ten list of “reasons this Mary thing can’t be right” sat Mary.

It’s Mary. Mary is the elephant in the room.

I thought at first I would appeal to ignorance if she was truly a critical piece of this faith journey I was on, and so I simply ignored her. Or at least I tried to. The trouble was, there was no place I could go that she wasn’t there. As I studied church history more, she was there. In fact many women of God were there and they played HUGE roles in furthering the kingdom. What the actual heck?! Why had I never heard of this? Why wasn’t it deemed important enough to be a point of teaching (if not doctrine) within my protestant upbringing? I mean, I’d learned about:

• Eve (who was blamed for original sin)
• Deborah (gotta love a women who’ll put a tent spike into the skull of her enemy)
• Rebekah and Sarah (vehicles for the fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant)
• Abigail (poor thing had a dolt for a husband)

But Mary? Except for Christmastime (when all protestants become idolaters) she just wasn’t a major player. Never had a VBS lesson on honoring Mary. Never heard a sermon focusing on her except how she was given to Saint John when Jesus was being crucified. I’ve come to understand that she was given to John figuratively, and was in fact given to all of us as our Mother.

In the end she loved me too much to leave me to fumble about in the dark without her. Again and again she showed herself to me. She loved me when I felt unlovable. And it was SO WEIRD. Mary herself wasn’t weird, but the experience was and continues to be if I’m honest with myself.

I don’t have a lovey-dovey relationship with my mother, and I’m not what one would consider the warm and fuzzy type of mom myself. So I really didn’t get it. After all, I’d lived my life so far without that mom-thing, why worry about it now?

The short answer is because she loves us, and is with us to lead us to her Son. Isn’t that what we all want? Isn’t that what we all need? More of Jesus?

Yes, please.

I could really go on and on about Mary. I could wax eloquent on the realities of her divinity from a theological perspective. I can share personal accounts of her presence in my life. I could even make the bold claim that to know Mary is to know Jesus, and I can say that with absolute confidence that I’m not speaking heresy against the divinity of Christ.

Today, Mary isn’t the elephant in the room for me any longer. She is my consolation.

Not holy enough of a title for you? I agree. I’m working on it.

I decided when I purposed to write about my journey home I wouldn’t sugar-coat it. This is freaking hard. Everything in my world is screaming at me (literally and figuratively) to STOP. Let go. Go back. It doesn’t really matter. Does it really matter?

I hear my dad’s voice saying, “Of course it matters, dummy.” He’d call us kids “dummy” when we did or said or asked something that we already knew the answer to. It was his way of calling out a weak mind. He was definitely NOT catholic, but I think we could have talked about it. He was a very open minded person, though opiniatated, and I know he struggled mightily with his faith. He struggled in particular with the juxtaposition of what the religion he was raised in taught and what he saw from himself and the people in it. They were at odds with one another, and because of that, so was he.

We went to church often without dad. Mom and he would fight about going, her begging and crying/screaming/slamming things around and him silently sitting in his recliner or still in bed, non-responsive until she pushed it too far. Then he would yell, we’d all kiss him goodbye, get in the car and go to church. Sometimes Mom would have an “unspoken request” which really wasn’t unspoken at all… we were the only family there without a dad. Sometimes she would go up during the altar call and everyone would lay hands on us for Dad to come to church. Then sometimes he’d go, we’d joke and sing all the way there (we drove 40+ miles one way to church for my entire childhood).

The thing is, I wanted to please God, even at an early age. I listened to my mother and am glad for her teaching me the Scriptures and for her faithfulness in a hard situation to get us to service almost every week. She loved God and wanted to be there, and so did I. But… I think the seeds of doubt were planted then, too. If this is the way, then why are people so miserable? Why won’t Dad go? Why wouldn’t his dad attend with my grandma? If it was the best way, the only real way, the “fullness of the gospel” only we had a grip on, then why didn’t everyone in the family buy-in?

When I got older I started asking these questions. Mom would never directly answer me. Grandma Jewell would say, “Well honey, your Grandpa Carl saw the other side of people too often and just said he knew too much to attend church with them.” She, the daughter of a third generation Methodist preacher, attended church her entire marriage with her children alone. She said there were years she didn’t go at all, in obedience to her husband. She also told me she regretted that decision and could see it playing out in her youngest children’s (my dad and my uncle) lack of faith. Yet, she never wavered in her trust of God for her children’s souls. She’d wipe her eyes and quote one of her favorite verses:

Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

She held out that when dad was old, and even if it took that long, God would have his way with him because she had done her best to obey this directive.

I’m sitting here with tears and snot running down my face at this point because… I have not been faithful at the daily discipling of my children. I was at first, then the years happened, and sin got a foothold in my life, and my life turned upside down… There was a point in my faith life where I lost all hope or belief in the validity of all modern religions. There were years of this. I know Jesus understood that, and there was so much grace for me during that point in my life. But Mom did her job well enough that it couldn’t last forever. My faith is as much a part of me as my smart mouth and size 10 feet.

So here I am today, having solidly and prayerfully placed my feet on the path home, and everything has gone to crap. LOL My husband has asked for a divorce should I continue my conversion. He demands one if I influence our remaining two children at home in the faith. I’m sitting here thinking, “This was not the way it was supposed to go.”

If you do right by God He does right by you. Right?!

Right. But I’m pretty sureI’m in that phase of working out my faith with fear and trembling. This cross is digging splinters into my back. I’m trying to drag it uphill and I keep tripping and falling. It is heavy, and painful and I don’t want to carry it any more. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t HOURLY think of laying it down, and why lie to you when God Almighty already knows my heart?

So yeah. This shit is hard.