Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber

Carolyn Weber arrives at Oxford a feminist from a loving but broken family, suspicious of men and intellectually hostile to all things religious. As she grapples with her God-shaped void alongside the friends, classmates, and professors she meets, she tackles big questions in search of truth, love, and a life that matters. Surprised by Oxford chronicles her conversion experience with wit, humor, and insight into how becoming a Christian changed her.

Halfway through I was already recommending it to every Christian I know. Having finished it I am still doing so.

I Was On Conversion Corner This Morning - on Seize the Day with Gus Lloyd

I have to say that Gus Lloyd was unlike other interviewers I've talked to because he slowed down to talk more about my parents' attitudes toward religion, whether I'd been exposed to religion or church in my youth, and went on past God's reaching out to me ... in spectacular fashion ... to explore my further conversion into Catholicism.

It was a real pleasure and lots of fun to talk with him. It looks as if they rerun Seize the Day for late night listening on the Catholic Channel so if you are listening then you may hear me!

Atheist Convert: Jeff Miller (a.k.a. The Curt Jester)

I was at the apogee of my conservatism based on Randian positivism. To me, radical selfishness was the highest virtue. The pinnacle of individualism and being a self-made man were my highest ideals. The natural virtues helped to modify this idealistic positivism toward how I related with others, but it was not enough. My nose had long before achieved orbit as I looked down at those poor superstitious mortals who still believed in hunter-gatherer myths such as God.

I love reading conversion stories and best of all are those of the people you know. Now, I've never met The Curt Jester in person but I've been reading him since before I began blogging and we have a certain amount of give and take in the Catholic blogging community. I'm quite fond of him.
I also thought I knew his story better than I did. It is a fascinating combination of slow percolation and 2-x-4 to the head from God. Read it all at Why I Am Catholic.

While you're there, browse around. There are many other good stories, each that show God's knowledge of us individually and that He never gives up.

Nightcrawler, one of God's cleverest tricks to interest comic lovers in the Church

Now this is a conversion story I understand and a convert whose taste I admire.

Unfortunately for my career as a Witch, I liked two things: horror novels and comic books. Both piqued my interest in the Roman Catholic Church. (Bear with me here!) Ever notice, when real evil threatens in classic horror, it's the Catholic Church that's called on to save the day? And my favorite character in the comics was Nightcrawler of the X-Men, a devout Roman Catholic. (So if you ever want proof that God can reach us through literally anything, there it is, right there. I owe the first steps of my conversion to The Exorcist, Dracula, and a fuzzy blue mutant with a German accent and a penchant for buckling swash.)

I fell in love with Nightcrawler in the X-Men movies. What Catholic wouldn't?

I'm so glad I saw Libby's name go by ... I forget where ... and then saw her new blog pop up in the stats. She doesn't have an actual first post up yet, but go by and read her conversion story!

A Doozy of a Conversion Story

For some reason my conversion story has been brought up to me a lot lately. The most vivid example is that I was in a meeting about something else entirely (well, ok it was at church, it was with Christians, but it was not about sharing those kinds of stories) when I was asked point blank to tell how I became Christian. Demurring, I looked down the table and saw so many eager, questioning faces that I was forced to believe they really wanted to hear it.

Retelling the story made me realize afresh how many "coincidences" there were and that this experience of "coincidences" happens more than we would think, if we are just paying attention. This was a point dwelt upon by everyone at that meeting also.

Therefore when I read Mary Karr's interview about her recent conversion to Catholicism what really resonated was her fellow recognition of those coincidences, as well as those moments of experiencing God that just cannot be adequately communicated to those who do not believe. Here's an excerpt and here's the whole thing.

I had a needle biopsy once during a very dark spiritual time. I went in as scheduled, and the guy who was supposed to do the biopsy was in surgery and couldn't do it, and they tried to reschedule it. Normally I would have been very upset, but I just said OK and rescheduled it. As I rounded the corner, I ran into someone in the hall. He said, "Do you remember me? You coached my daughter in Little League." It turned out he was an oncologist and he could do the biopsy.

That's the kind of experience I have now. If I had been yelling and screaming at the nurses, I wouldn't have run into him. Then, when I was lying on the table, I really just had such a sense of the presence of Christ. I was so peaceful. When I had come in for the biopsy, when the woman took my blood pressure, I started crying. I remember telling a girlfriend about it, who isn't Christian. She said, "Oh, you just had the feeling that you know you don't have cancer." I said, "No, I had the feeling that whether I had cancer or not, I wouldn't be alone."

Interview via Conversion Diary.

Ain't No Mountain High Enough to Keep Him from the Church

No Price Too High
A Pentecostal Preacher Becomes Catholic

Then I read 2 Thessalonians 2:15; Paul tells his followers to be careful to observe all the paradosis he had delivered to them. And the word paradosis means traditions. Whether written (as in the Bible) or oral.

Well, that knocked Sola Scriptura (the "Bible alone" theology) right out of the water. The Church has never ever adopted the position that the Bible is our only teaching authority. That's why we realize that Martin Luther didn't attempt to reform the Church; he reinterpreted it. He tried to make changes without authority and didn't go back to the beginning, to what was handed down from the apostles.

In the early days of the Church, Christians weren't running around with Bibles in their hands. All that were available were the Old Testament Scriptures and very few of those. Plus, most people couldn't read anyway. The teachings of the Old Testament had already been interpreted by Jesus and the apostles, and those teachings were handed down orally. The Christian faith was handed down through the traditions of the Church. This only made sense.

[...]

By the end of 1998, I had come to understand that the Catholic Church was, indeed, the Church of Jesus Christ. The traditions of the Church were authentic. This was how the Church had evolved, not the way we thought it had evolved. I decided we needed to identify with the Church, but I thought we could do that without becoming a part of the Catholic Church. I wanted to replicate it. I wanted to become like them, not be them. Heck, I didn't want to just throw my church away! Although this was authentic Christian worship, I decided I didn't need to be Catholic in order to worship that way.

All minister Alex Jones wanted to do was to take his Pentecostal flock closer to the authentic roots of Christianity, back to the time when Jesus walked among us. He turned to the Church Fathers’ writing and found himself being inexorably led to the Roman Catholic Church. Time after time he would admit that the Catholic Church got it right and see how he could adapt his own church’s services to serve the new truth he’d discovered. Eventually, he wound up converting, as did his wife, and 55 others of his congregation.

This is an impressive story that takes us inside the Pentecostal movement as we learn Jones’ history. I particularly enjoyed the story as he began researching Church history and was led to realize that conversion was inevitable if he was going to follow God’s will. We also hear what Jones’ wife, Donna, was going through during this time as she was an intelligent, faithful Christian who was anything but ready to become Catholic. In telling his story, Jones also speaks for other Catholic converts, including me, when he says:

I wanted to know why he would call me to his Church so late in life. Why? Why did this happen to me now? Why didn't I see the truth of the Catholic Church when I was in my twenties or thirties? I could have given my entire life to it. And why was I able to see this truth when other Protestant ministers, far more intelligent, far more gifted, far more educated, and far more holy than I am, didn't see it? How had I stumbled upon this -- a man who is very ordinary in every sense of the word? It was so plain to me -- as though it had just peeled back and was revealed to me. I saw the truth so clearly. Why couldn't these intelligent, gifted Protestant pastors see this?

[...]

I began to see the breadth and the dimension of those who are converts and those coming into the Church. I began to meet those -- hundreds of them -- who had come into the Church pretty much the same way I did. I began to realize that my conversion was not unique. It was a typical conversion, maybe a bit more public, but it was a typical conversion.

People become Catholic because they have discovered the authenticity of the Catholic faith, generally through three different avenues: they recognize the authority of the Church; they have discovered the Blessed Mother; or they have studied the Church Fathers. The more I traveled, the more people I met, the more I began to realize that God is at work renewing his Church. He is stirring the cradle Catholics, and he is bringing in converts who have a relationship with him, a profound love of God, to build up the faith of the Church, to strengthen it.

Most enjoyable and highly recommended.

Welcome home, Father Jeffrey Steele and family!

What I became aware of was that it was almost impossible to say 'the Church teaching is' within the Anglican church because there are so many various opinions on matters of sacraments, liturgy, morality, scripture etc. What I did not want to experience anymore was proclaiming the teaching of the Church only to end up defending myself rather than the Anglican church defending me. This has become an ever-increasing impossibility that is no secret to the entire Anglican world. My preaching would always be seen as a matter of personal opinion rather than having the authority of the Magisterium that backs up what I teach publicly. Of course there is dissent in the Catholic Church but it is always that, dissent towards what Mother Church proclaims as authoritatively true. It is the truth of Mother Church that I embrace as my own deep personal faith.

A wonderful post by Anglican priest Jeffrey Steele who is converting to Roman Catholicism with his wife and their six children. I've been reading about this at Father Dwight Longenecker's blog, who is full of fellow feeling as he, too, converted from Anglicanism.

Do go and bid the Steeles welcome home and pray for their smooth passage to the Church. Grab hold and keep on swimmin' Steeles ... we're cheering alongside of you!

What I mean is, sometimes crossing the Tiber looks like an easier swim than it really is. I told my Catholic bishop that I sometimes feel like the Tiber has stretched as wide as the Atlantic and I've been cast into the middle and told to swim. He said, 'yes, Jeffrey but there are devices out there to keep you above water, grab onto them and do not fear.'

"I'm so excited words fail me..."

So speaks a commenter at The Anchoress's place who will be entering the Church at Easter.

I started my journey to the church about 16 months ago. I had given up on secular life. I knew there was a God, but I just couldn’t find him no matter where I looked. I come in from the desert of 50 years of secular life. I feel I was I knew a lady real well that shined. You know what I mean? She just shone with the spirit. Everything about her life was in order. Eventually I learned the foundation; she was a devoted Catholic. Her daughter was in Catholic school, she sang at the Houston Co-Cathedral choir every Sunday.

That planted the seed. Why not try the Catholic church? Maybe God was there. ...

See how your life can be a beacon to those who are seeking? Without you even realizing it?

God is so good. Go read it all and I cannot help but echo the response a little later on in the comments...

As you receive the Sacraments for the first time, know that those looking on at the Easter Vigil will be smiling with the greatest joy for you in their hearts, just as the angels and saints in heaven are likewise cheering.

Amen.

Thanks to Maureen for the heads up on that!

A Convert's Story

... Before we begin, you should know I don’t believe in faith. I take nothing on faith. Nothing. Things must make sense in order for me to believe. Logical sense. My mind is stubborn that way and because of my stubbornly logical mind I was the oldest Catholic that Easter morning to have his head rubbed with oil. However, that same stubbornly logical mind makes it impossible for me to be an atheist. ...

Dirty Harry is taking us through his conversion in a multi-part story. I found this, as with so many good things, via The Anchoress.

I have to say that I didn't realize I'd already been reading Harry's writing over at Libertas where I enjoy their take on movies and Hollywood. (They say what I'm thinking a lot of the time.) I like that tough-minded take on faith and am really looking forward to the other parts of the story.

'Tis the Season for Conversion Stories ...

... or so it would seem to me. As we come closer to the Easter Vigil when the catachumens will be confirmed in the Catholic Church, after those long months of preparation in RCIA, we begin to see their stories popping up here and there.

Here is a bit of Heather's story, posted by Sarah. Go check out the whole post and then demand part 2 (not that it's all about what I want to read or anything ...)

When Sarah and Prince Charming invited us to their second daughter’s baptism, we were happy to attend, and with my camera in hand, I was seeing the Mass unfold in a whole new way. Maybe it was that camera being like another set of eyes with which to see the Mass, or maybe it was the sheer emotion of the baptism (babies…oooh how sweet), but something moved in me that day…The same “thing” that had been there when I went to Mass with Carrie and the same “thing” that I felt when I went to Mass with my Knight so early in our relationship. That “thing,” I came to discover was none other than the Holy Spirit.

An Amazing Conversion Story

Ok, all conversion stories are amazing merely by the virtue of their being ... conversion stories!

However, this one has Jesus in the Eucharist in such clear terms that you will be blown away. Here's a bit to whet your appetites and then you can go read it all at Historical Christian.

About this time the lady told me that "Jesus is very near" and so I was watching the alter very closely. She then put her arm around me and pointed to the alter and whispered "Jesus is here do you see Him"... Looking at the alter at first I saw no one except the priest but then a sudden awareness took hold and I knew that the Host held high in the priests hands was Jesus and with that realization I also became aware of His great love for me.

And then, with that realization, there came a wave much like a heat wave or a water wave but transparent up from the alter and over near the ceiling and I knew it was going to come crashing down on me. I was afraid so I ducked back into the pew to try and avoid it. But as I fled I felt a wave of love, that I now know was the Holy Spirit, pass over and thru me and I felt this Love completely envelope me.

Looking for Truth and Finding the Church: Two Conversion Stories

So as far as I can remember, I have always “known” that Catholics were in a false religion that was leading them straight to Hell as Catholics did not rely on Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

I wish I never had to repeat this because it is so painful and tragic, but it is true and indicative of how lost I thought the Church was. When both Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II died, I was saddened and I thought “Now they know they were wrong.” Forgive me Father.

You wouldn't believe that anyone could go from this to wearing a huge grin because she was confirmed in the Church last weekend. But people, and the way that God leads them, are endlessly surprising. This is a fascinating story about a family that converted from The Church of the Nazarene to Catholicism. It was especially interesting to me since I had a good friend in high school who was a member of The Church of the Nazarene and I went with her for about two years.

I found this fascinating in that they had anti-Catholicism drilled into them (if any Catholics were Christians it was in spite of being Catholic) and yet the woman had enough of a quest for truth to move beyond it and read herself into the church (and argue her husband there with her). I love someone who just won't quit looking until they have found the truthful answers to their questions. Her reading list is one that will be a good resource to anyone who wants to help Protestant friends who are looking into crossing the Tiber.

A few years later, a friend of mine became a Catholic. He’d grown up mostly Baptist, Reformed, or Reformed Baptist and had had his share of struggling with his faith. His family was mostly Baptist and his father worked at the school with me, so it was a pretty big shock. For many of his “Christian” friends, it meant that he’d abandoned his faith and was no better than a heretic or non-Christian. I wanted to give him, if not the benefit of the doubt, then at least some room to discuss why he’d chosen this spiritual route. Rather than just abandoning him because he’d “fallen away.”

That meant I needed to put away my anti-Catholic preconceptions and take a new look at what it was he said he believed. Which meant looking at what the Catholic Church says it teaches. Not what nominal Catholics believe or what I see in movies or hear antagonists say about it, but what the Catholic Church officially teaches. If you’re going to learn about a belief system, it’s a good idea to start with their own official teachings. THEN you can evaluate whether or not you think them credible or worthwhile. But you certainly can’t make an unbiased decision when your only information sources are biased against them.

I have never seen such a thorough, planned study as the one that Coffee Klatch outlines in this story. Just reading his list of items to research wore me out. Thank heavens I was into much more basic wrestling when I converted. I'd never have finished the reading. What makes this so interesting to me (besides the fact that any conversion story is an interesting story) is that one by one we are given the reasons why Scripture itself refutes anti-Catholic arguments. The author doesn't always specifically spell out all the Protestant beliefs that his studies refuted, however, to anyone who is used to the basic sort of arguments, it is very clear. Not only is this inspiring but it is a wonderful resource as well. (Note: apologies to Scott ... obviously I hadn't come across his name and so was writing "her" when it should have been "him.")

Conversion Stories Alert

HISTORICAL CHRISTIAN

At the end of the second day, in a Protestant store, I came across a book written by a Protestant pastor on the Holy Spirit, and how the Holy Spirit had worked in his life. As I read it, I got this eerie feeling. I recognized what he was saying, because I had already experienced it. What he was describing was the same thing that I had been experiencing all those years, beginning with my experience of the moon, which had led me on this journey to the very point where I was right then, reading that book.

My mind was in a jumble. He was talking about the Holy Spirit. The HOLY SPIRIT. Of GOD. Of the TRINITY, that thing I had heard about as a child in the Episcopalian church, the BIG Holy Spirit that was one of the three Persons of God, Father, Son, and HOLY SPIRIT.

Wait a minute. You mean, that thing, that “interior guidance system,” that little “spirit” that had been guiding me all those years, was no less than the real HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD, of which Jesus was also a part, that distant figure from my childhood that had meant so little to me before that I had abandoned and rejected it?

I felt like I was being electrified. I looked at my arm, and the hairs were standing straight out.

I bought the book, took it home, and read the whole thing cover-to-cover that night, my mind reeling the whole time: could it be true? Is this the real Holy Spirit that’s been guiding me all this time? Is Jesus the one I’ve been looking for all these years?

The short version of why Aimee became Catholic is good but for the really indepth stuff follow the links contained in that post, as I did, and read her dual series of "how I first came to encounter Christ" (where the excerpt above is found) and "how my experience of Christ has changed during my journey from Evangelicalism to Catholicism." Very good testimony and it personally touched me ... I wasn't exactly electrified as she describes but it definitely was being used by Jesus to get a specific point across to me.

JOHN C. WRIGHT
One of my favorite bloggers, whose books I am just beginning to explore, John C. Wright was interviewed by SCI FI Weekly. As fascinating as his thoughts from an author's perspective are, I was much more taken with his conversion story which is contained about halfway through the interview. For those who don't want to have to hunt down the story, I have taken the liberty of excerpting it in entirety below, although I encourage any sci-fi fans to read the whole interview. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

At some point after your first three epics were completed, you converted to Christianity, having been a resolute humanist before. How did this come about?

Wright: Now, this is a difficult question to answer, because to talk of these deep matters automatically provokes half the audience, and bores the other half. I will try to be as brief and delicate as I can.

Humanist is too weak a word. I was an atheist, zealous and absolute, one who held that the nonexistence of God was a fact as easily proved as the inequality of five and twice two.

However, my disbelief began to erode as fatherhood and war pressed upon me the realities of the world. I was a Stoic, a disciple of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, Cicero and Seneca, who say the ground of morality is duty; but I was also a liberal of the classical Enlightenment, which says toleration is the ground of morals. Both these strands in my philosophy were naïve: Humans cannot live by the strictness of the Stoics; humans ought not live by the laxness of the liberals, libertarians or libertines. The two strands did not match. Modern philosophy, which is based on self-interest or utilitarianism, is unsuited both for war and for fatherhood. Growing aware of the defects in my system, I sought something with more experience and wisdom.

Where is wisdom found? I read the deep thoughts of the most highly regarded thinkers of the modern age, and found them vain and shallow. The insights of Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, Marx, Wittgenstein and other luminaries of the modern world contained simple errors in logic a schoolboy can dismiss with a laugh. Each in his own way asserted that man was irrational, and the truth unknowable: But if so, how did they prove this unreason? Using reason, or otherwise? And how exactly did they come to know the truth that truth was unknowable?

In popular culture, the books influencing the morals and values of the current age, such as Stranger in a Strange Land or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, read like they were written by a Man from Mars, or a mental patient. They know nothing of real life.

The salient characteristic of modern philosophy is a speculative disconnection from reality. Michael the Martian and Karl Marx expect the super-humans to live together without jealousy or scarcity of resources. Money will simply overflow the collection plate, and anyone can take as much or as little as he likes. But what if someone is dishonest or selfish, comrade? Ah, but the theory does not allow for that.

In contrast, the writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, all read like things written by mature men. The ancients, Aristotle, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Cicero, Aquinas and even Augustine, solidly prepared the ground from which a sane, mighty and just civilization could be grown.

I reached a point in my life where on all divisive questions of morals and manners, I agreed with no one other than my hated enemies, the Christians. I knew in my cool atheist heart they must be wrong in theory; I could not explain how they were correct in practice.

I began to read history. The modernists are right to fear it. Once a man knows the context and origins of the ideas of modern times, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain faith in them. It becomes impossible to condemn Western civilization for shortcomings that fall short only of ideals unique to Western civilization. It becomes impossible not to notice Western civilization is nothing other than Christendom.

The conclusion pressed on me was that modern thought is a parasite on Christianity, and has no intellectual life outside her. The basic motif of the modern intellectual, one endlessly repeated, is of a man sawing off the branch on which he sits. The moderns delight in assertions that, if taken seriously, would disprove the axiom used to make the assertion.

The profoundly unserious nature of modern thought astonished me, and still does. I stump my secular friends by asking them to explain to me why cannibalism is wrong. Their humanist doctrines are insufficient to give a reason for humane humanity.

History told me that everything I admired about the noble and great-souled pagans still survived in Christianity: Aristotle was still alive in Aquinas, and nowhere else. The cool rationality of Athens had been preserved by Rome. Everything in paganism from which the civilized mind recoils, as slavery, infanticide, polygamy, sodomy, had been defeated by Christianity, and made a recurrence only when and where Christianity retreats.

I reached a point in my studies of history where I was forced to grit my teeth and conclude that the progress and enlightenment of Europe was due to Christianity, not despite it; and that when Europe departed from Christian roots, barbarism and darkness unique to the ideologies of the modern age descended. The crowning achievement of the rejection of Christian norms in modern times was communism: Its crowning achievement was death in such large numbers that only astronomers can grasp them.

I knew the Christians were evil in theory; I could not explain how so much unique good came from them.

Greatly daring, I attempted an experiment in prayer, addressing a Supreme Being I knew with deep certainty did not and could not exist. My prayer was quickly and awfully answered.

A miracle occurred. I suffered a supernatural experience and found all the foundations of my carefully examined and rigidly logical philosophy swept away as if by a tidal wave of blazing and supernal light. A great and powerful spirit visited me.

The whole thing was as simple and astonishing, as easy to explain and as hard to explain, as falling in love.

I am one of those rare creatures whose belief in the supernatural is due to empirical considerations. My mysticism is entirely scientific. Alas, the second step in the experiment, when the miracle occurs, cannot be reproduced before the eyes of skeptics.

Worse yet, the experiment was like toying with radium: I was mutated and changed by the exposure.

Being still a creature of pure logic, logic requires me to conclude either that I am mad as a March Hare or that my memory and perceptions were veridical.

There is insufficient evidence for the first theory, and Occam's razor cuts against it: Assuming everything was actually coincidence or an act of the subconscious mind, would be merely to assume that these things, coincidences and the subconscious, act with more power and foresight than empiricism can confirm. It is what Karl Popper called a non-disprovable assumption. Not science: an article of faith.

I am left with the second explanation, a simpler one, postulating fewer entities: I saw whom I saw and He is that He is. My integrity as a philosopher, not to mention my pride as a man, will not allow me the evasion of a return to my former beliefs, much as I might respect them. The world is far odder than I would have believed. The oddest thing of all is joy.

My Conversion Story

BECOMING CHRISTIAN
My parents are atheists so there was no religion in our home. They never tried to prejudice us against religion, they just never talked of it. It was kind of like talking about sex ... it was the unspoken rule that you just didn't mention religion. As issues came up, we were taught to be good people in the morality of popular culture … work hard and do your best, be honest, don’t steal, cheat or lie. We learned that a lot of other issues were all relative. As long as you didn't hurt other people or break the law what you did was your own business. Of course, even though they never talked about it, we all knew that those boring church-goers were weak because they needed a crutch like religion to get by.

During our early married life neither Tom or I gave God much thought. We were just living our lives. And then God used what we cared about most to get our attention.

Hannah had a terrible teacher in public school and nothing we tried solved the problem so halfway through kindergarten we switched her to St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic School. Her religion teacher asked all the kids who went to Mass every Sunday. Almost all the kids raised their hands. Hannah didn't. Mrs. McDaniel told those children that they needed to go home and tell their parents that they should be going to Mass every week. Dutifully Hannah passed the message. There is no one for knowing black from white and "yes" from "no" like a kindergartener. She didn't buy our feeble excuses and started quoting her religion lessons to us. Pretty soon we were attending weekly Mass at St. Thomas.

Tom is Catholic but he hadn't attended church in a long time. I wasn't even sure if there was a God. How are you ever really sure? Most of the “proof” anyone ever offered seemed an awful lot like coincidence to me. But, I couldn't sit there week after week listening to Father B. without starting to wonder … is there a God or not?

I was so clever, I figured out a sure fire way to find out. (I'll just say here that I am thankful God protects fools because looking back I can't believe I had such nerve!) About a year before, we had tried everything to sell our house. Even though the realtor said everything was just right and there should have been no problem, no one would even make an offer. So, kneeling at Mass one day, I made God a deal. All He had to do was to get a me a new house as a sign. Then I’d know He was there … and I’d have a new house.

Of course, nothing happened. Except, that because I had made that deal I found myself listening more carefully at Mass and thinking even more. After about a year had gone by, when we were kneeling at Mass one Sunday, I told God the deal was off. I didn't need proof. It wasn't because of any dramatic feeling or discovery. I just didn't have a reason not to believe anymore so I went ahead and took His existence on faith.

That week our new accountant found major errors in the past three years' taxes that gave us a huge refund ... $11,000 ... enough for a down payment on a new house, new furniture and some remodeling. In a time when houses were being bought within days of going on the market, we found a house that had been sitting on the market for months for no apparent reason … except it was perfect for us and the price just been lowered to exactly the amount we could afford. Two weeks after that our house was sold without ever going on the market ... to a girl who was determined to have a house with our exact specifications, only within a six block area that we were right in the middle of. All the realtors and the people at the title company individually marveled at how smooth and fast things went on the sale of our old house and the purchase of our new one. They all said they had never seen anything like it.

I don't believe in coincidence any more.

BECOMING CATHOLIC
Now I had faith but I didn't see any reason to become Catholic. Hannah and Rose had their First Communions and Tom went to confession and started taking communion again. I didn't mind sitting in the pew until they got back. But, over time, whenever everyone went for communion I developed a yearning for the Eucharist that became an actual physical ache. This went on for months. A few weeks before Easter I decided I’d better find out how to become Catholic because I couldn't stand it any more. I couldn't believe it when I found out I would have to wait about a year before completing RCIA and entering the Church the next Easter. That was the longest year of my life, although I found RCIA to be an interesting spiritual journey in itself ... which I did not expect. I think it is funny that I am such a reader (and have been my whole life) but God chose to reach me in a way that was totally outside books at all.

Finally it was the Easter Vigil of 2000, the wonderful day when I was Catholic and could have the Eucharist. I love it. I love the traditions, I love the saints, I love the Eucharist … I love being Catholic. (That was about 6 years after I told God I believed in Him.)

And God blessed me that day in a way that I will never forget.

When I was kneeling after Communion I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked up to see my father-in-law smiling at me as he walked toward the altar. He had not been to communion since the 1960s when Vatican II changes made him so mad that he turned his back on the Church altogether. Tom’s devout mother and his aunts had been praying for many, many years for his return to the faith so I was thrilled to see him take communion. His sister, Tom’s aunt, was my sponsor and she hissed in my ear, “Has he been to confession?” I was so happy I just said, “That’s between him and God. Let it go.”

Later Tom’s mother said that my father-in-law told her that if I had decided to become Catholic it was because I had thought about it thoroughly and knew it was the right thing to do. That was when he decided to come back to the Church. And, yes, he had been to confession. He had carefully planned to have his return to communion be at my confirmation. He had gone before they left Houston. For my father-in-law to show such total respect of my decision to become Catholic by rethinking his faith was overwhelming. Even more overwhelming was the realization that God had used my conversion not just for my good but to reach someone close to me ... and I had been totally unaware of it.

One of the things that made my conversion so powerful to me in retrospect is that it was done without any reading or influence from outsiders at all. This was all just between God and me. No one else's opinion was even solicited as I really didn't talk about that sort of thing. (I know a bunch of people probably wish I was still that way!) One of my confirmation gifts was a book by Scott Hahn that started me down a whole new path of reading. I had no idea anyone wrote books about this stuff! I devoured Scott Hahn, Peter Kreeft, Francis Sheed, books about the saints, everything I could get my hands on ... and so on to the CRHP retreat and so on to Happy Catholic ... and here I am today, waiting to see where He's gonna take me next on this wild, but very interesting ride.