Christianity can be rather complex to the irreligious. Indeed, heathenism, atheism, agnosticism, skepticism, pessimism and antiauthoritarianism can creep in and become comfortable and easy. But if a Creator exists and if He truly did promise an ever-lasting afterlife of bliss and absolute euphoria, then why wouldn't one want to go after that? Can we really reason our own way into self-attained ecstasy without Divine intervention? I used to have these sorts of questions. Back then though, perhaps they weren't so complex. Evil has a way of making things feel easy.
Below is my story of coming to God.
Looking back, life could have been easier. Dad died when I was elven, a couple years later my cousin was killed in a car wreck, and over the next ten years or so I would go to one funeral after the next for either a relative or friends. I cannot complain though, nor would I have ever complained when I was younger, about not having enough family around. Love was something us kids stood by through and through, even without a solid understanding of what love truly is. My mom did everything within her power to look after us, discipline us and provide for us. She worked more than most people should have to work, especially mothers. Now, as a father of three with a phenomenal wife, I can easily say, looking back, that I could not accomplish what my mother accomplished. Needless to say, she did a great job.
Christianity was something that was hardly taught to my siblings and I growing up. There was a bit of it however. I can remember attending Awana’s at the First Baptist Church and every now and again going to the Nazarene church with good friends of our family. Awana’s, I recall, was great. I developed friendships, went on fun trips and learned about a Man who lived long ago. He walked on water, they said, and fed the starving, cured the sick and suffered a brutal death on a cross so I could go to Heaven some day. Looking back now, I can see how this all semi-stuck, but I can also see the lack of sense it made. I see now, actually, how bits and pieces of heavenly realities would come to me and help me along the way. All I cared about then was skateboarding, smoking cigarettes, being better than my little brother at everything, running around all over and counting down the minutes until church was over on Sundays so I could embark on the doings that afternoon. As I got older, I can remember going to a service at the First Assembly of God church and watching a play about Heaven and Hell. I remember being rather terrified as the guy acting as Jesus allowed the guy acting as satan to carry the father off, screaming, into everlasting darkness as Jesus welcomed the mother and children into eternal joy. Talk about being bamboozled.
My teenage years would prove to be rebellious, anti-authoritarian and just skimming by, dodging one legal penalty after the next. Somehow I managed to graduate high school. This allowed me to go off to the United States Marine Corps and embark into a world of intensity and belligerent excellence. I am thankful to Uncle Sam for force-feeding manhood down my throat, in a secular sense, and also for camaraderie. Nothing screams manhood like four well trained drill instructors screaming at you, in what seems to be a foreign language, and informing you that your self-worth amounts to pencil shavings and your anatomy isn’t good enough for farm animals - as you march around the shower room in sub-zero temperatures professing the Marine Corps hymn with staunch enthusiasm, naked. Nothing screams manhood like entering into ancient Mesopotamia at 22 years old with incoming RPG fire and Super Cobras humming overhead. I can remember arriving to the town of Tekrit in Iraq, having some down time and taking out my little Gideon Bible one day and trying out the painful process of reading it. Something about a Bible always seemed to attract me. I hated reading though and the Bible was a lot of reading, so it seemed. Not to mention is was around 120 degrees out and each one of those little pages were saturated in sweat. I always had a reason to give into concentration, or a lack there of.
Throughout my life, I never doubted the existence of God or His heavenly Kingdom. I knew absolutely nothing about it though, or how to get there. Something always told me believing wasn’t enough. Also, pixy dust, fairies and humans miraculously transforming into angels upon death never seemed to be true. Everyone all around me seemed to write off Christianity as some institution, or fabricated lie to embezzle people and brainwash them. Christianity, to the teenagers and most adults around me, seemed ridiculous, scandalous and a waste of thought, time and energy. I would just nod and agree, not really knowing inside how I felt. I cannot ever remember a time of incredulity about God however.
Later on down the road, the night before we crossed over into Iraq, I remember being so nervous and trying to pray to God, being frustrated because of the mixed emotions about it all, wondering if anyone was listening and wondering if I was going to die. We embarked on a fast-pace race to Baghdad where we would encounter all sorts of destruction, death, exhilaration, and restlessness. Most of it is a blur to me now, almost twelve years after the fact.
In 2008 I uncoincidentally met my wife. I say uncoincidentally, which isn't even a real word, because I believe there was truly a Divine intervention in our meeting. I was never one to enjoy bars. Yes, I would go to bars now and again, but the crowds always kept me in a nervous state. I enjoyed socializing around a fire with a few choice friends much more than bars. So, early in September, after a long day of setting chokers in the woods, I was ready for bed. A buddy coaxed me into going down to the bar instead. It turned out there were a few more of my buddies down there, so things weren't that bad. As the night went on, a good friend introduced me to a very pretty girl. Girls at bars always seemed less than desirable to me as life-long partners, but there was something about this one that I couldn't shake. After multiple failed relationships in my life, I was in a place where I was rather burnt out on the opposite sex. In the back on my mind I knew I wanted to get married and settle down however.
Katie and I started dating a few weeks after the unbeknownst bar-rendezvous. One similarity after the next seemed to pop up between the two of us. I fell in love fast and it felt right. Things became serious eventually and I panicked with my career; I did not think, at the time, that the life of a logger was good enough for the family I was beginning. I say panic because at this time in my life there were only two things I felt I was good at; logging and being a Marine. By now I had been out of the Marine Corps for almost five years and I knew the chances of my getting back on active duty were improbable. I knew the president was in the process of down-sizing the military, as custom towards the end of any war, and it was not only me the government would have to account for if let back in. I had dependents. But I went to the recruiter anyways. He made promises only the devil could keep and I was no neophyte to recruiter propaganda. I agreed, though, to joining the Marine Corps Reserves with the aspirations of somehow getting back on active duty via that route. Needless to say it never happened, but I was glorified with the opportunity to travel abroad; I was slated as a Squad Leader and involuntarily on my way to Afghanistan. Katie was pregnant and we were expecting our first son.
By this time in our relationship, religion was never a long conversation. We both believed in God. I knew Katie was a cradle-Catholic, but it never earned enough thought within my mind to worry about it. Catholicism was very foreign to me. I didnt know enough about it to sway one way or another with it. I categorized it in my mind in the same location as every other church or denomination; they were all bad. However, anxiety was resonating within me more and more as the day grew closer where I would have to say good by for eight months, not knowing it I would make it home to my family. The very thought of my children not having a father growing up anguished me more than anything. I would rather exchange heavy machine-gun fire with the enemy than think about that. If post-traumatic stress syndrome can be pin-pointed to one, sole root - other than satan - I would say it was that very thought. It killed me.
Katie and her mother, who was also a devout Catholic, had started hinting to me that I should be received into the Catholic Church. Actually, they started suggesting that a little while before I knew I was going back to the desert. At the time, I could not have explained to you why this hit me with such disgust, but it did. Out of knowhere, it seemed, Catholicism became a hideous, rancid, plagiarized "version" of Gods Word. At this same time I all of sudden had an overwhelming desire to learn more about God and His ways. I immaturely felt as if God was warning me to resist Catholicism at all cost. I had several friends in my life that were of a rather anti-Catholic nature and I would be delusional to insinuate they didnt have an influence over me. They are great, Bible-only Christians however. Looking back, and knowing what I know now, satan can work through other people even without them knowing it. I was being fed full of hate and the one feeding me, was me.
I left for Afghanistan May of 2010. This time war was going to be different. It had been over seven years since I was last in the Middle East and now I was returning with twelve lives under my charge and a family back home. To boot, we weren't fighting the semi-organized Iraqi military, we were up against the cowardice of terrorism; the Taliban. I didnt know it then, but I was embarking an a mission of pure evil designed by the devil.
I had left Katie with the promise that I would "think" about conversion to the Catholic Church. What did this mean? I had never read the Bible. I had no prayer life. I had no clue what salvation meant. As far as converting to the Church, I had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Every time I would think of it when I was overseas, it stressed me out with confusion. Why did I need to become Catholic? Couldn't she just not be Catholic? This thought process was the basis for what would become an all-out marital assault when I got home. One month prior to re-deploying back home, the readjustment classes started. I sat through everyone one of them and each time I remember being bored out of my mind because none of it was relevant to me. I knew things were going to be fine. Katie and I wouldn't suffer from all these marriage struggles everyone else goes through. I had begun, with staunch enthusiasm, to set out to know God and establish within my household, a new set of Christian values. As I right this, it it easy for me to recall this. The train of thought I have now was not my train of thought back then though; it was all a smorgasbord of well-meaning antics.
I could not wait to see my beautiful wife, my daughter and the son I had yet to get to know. There is no word to describe how much I missed them combined with the idea of dying any day. It didnt take long when I got home to feel overwhelmed. Readjustment was more complicated than I gave it credit for. I acted on this premise by going straight back to work in the woods logging. I thought if I can suppress this amounting stress by pretending it didnt exist, all would be well. I didnt want to fight with my wife, my best friend. I didnt understand why we fought. But eventually, our fights were squared directly around religion. Katie had coped with the surmounting stress from me being gone by getting back in Church, thank God. Looking back, I can see that all the stress that was invisibly built up within me came out when we argued about religion. The devil is sly. What better way to get back at God than for two of His children to fight about Him? Katie didnt know much about her faith, but she owned it. She was a product of generations of Catholic catechetical redundancy, or the lack there of. Her mom raised her as a good Catholic, but no one had ever challenged her on it as I was. She would not back down when I accused her or worshipping saints, necromancing, the Virgin Mary, cannibalism, the angles, neo-paganism, etc. She would not back down when I questioned her about the priesthood, the very priesthood I assumed was responsible for child molestation just a few short years ago. I drilled her about the papacy, the Inquisition, the Crusades, Purgatory, Catholic traditions, the Rosary, and everything Catholic I could think of. I had began to study the Catholic Church with the mindset to coax my wife into leaving it. She is smart, she would get it. I knew Katie would be ok with my not converting and her leaving Catholicism, if I could just figure out how to explain it all to her. I knew raising my kids by "what the Bible taught" was the best "option." This developed into what would be harder than fighting wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This evolved into the fight of my life, so it seemed, and martial rupture was haunting us. In the midst of all this fighting, by His grace, I managed to ask God what He wanted for Katie and I.
I came to a cross road and after some intense prayer, God turned my heart towards the Catholic Church. For the first time I was discovering things on my own and not from another persons fallible opinion. I began listening to and reading conversion stories of everyday people, preachers, ministers, and pastors from the Assembly of God churches, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Seventh Day Adventist, church planting affiliations, Evangelical, Methodist, Mennonite, Lutheran, Fundamentalists, Baptist, Millennialists, Reconstructionist's, Jews, and all Protestant denominations. I read stories of atheists, agnostics, occultists, criminals, etc who all shared life-changing, unexplainable testimonies of peace and love upon reception into the Catholic Church. Women and men who were solid, devout Christians and anti-Christians, who were at one time in their life, grounded in their own beliefs. One key theme every story had was humbleness. Every person from every differentiating walk of life had attested to eventually letting God guide them. Hmmm. Sounded outlandishly familiar to me.
Gods salvation history began to make sense to me - like nothing or anything had ever made sense before in my life. I asked God to help me unravel the mystery that is the Bible and it began to explode every time I read it. What finally pushed me over the threshold to Catholicism was not any theological argument, but a longing for the grace found in the Eucharist. February 2013 I gave my heart to Jesus Christ, truly and fully to the best of my abilities and May 10th, 2013 I was received into full Communion with Gods Church. Several years prior to this, I thought that I had already done this. But for the first time in my life I cautiously concluded that indeed, my opinion very well could be completely wrong; I discovered that being unpretentious was ok. For a hardened US Marine, indeed, it was ok to give into Christ and let Him heal me. Shortly after that, with a ridiculous amount of reading and sincere praying, I felt saved.
After some serious searching, a lot of confusion and dead-end roads, I found God within the walls of the Catholic Church. I believe with all of my heart this is exactly where He wanted me. What a blessing this was not just for me, but for Katie and her mother as well. As I set out to learn my new-found faith, they experienced a rather awakening renewal in their own faith.
Below is my story of coming to God.
Looking back, life could have been easier. Dad died when I was elven, a couple years later my cousin was killed in a car wreck, and over the next ten years or so I would go to one funeral after the next for either a relative or friends. I cannot complain though, nor would I have ever complained when I was younger, about not having enough family around. Love was something us kids stood by through and through, even without a solid understanding of what love truly is. My mom did everything within her power to look after us, discipline us and provide for us. She worked more than most people should have to work, especially mothers. Now, as a father of three with a phenomenal wife, I can easily say, looking back, that I could not accomplish what my mother accomplished. Needless to say, she did a great job.
Christianity was something that was hardly taught to my siblings and I growing up. There was a bit of it however. I can remember attending Awana’s at the First Baptist Church and every now and again going to the Nazarene church with good friends of our family. Awana’s, I recall, was great. I developed friendships, went on fun trips and learned about a Man who lived long ago. He walked on water, they said, and fed the starving, cured the sick and suffered a brutal death on a cross so I could go to Heaven some day. Looking back now, I can see how this all semi-stuck, but I can also see the lack of sense it made. I see now, actually, how bits and pieces of heavenly realities would come to me and help me along the way. All I cared about then was skateboarding, smoking cigarettes, being better than my little brother at everything, running around all over and counting down the minutes until church was over on Sundays so I could embark on the doings that afternoon. As I got older, I can remember going to a service at the First Assembly of God church and watching a play about Heaven and Hell. I remember being rather terrified as the guy acting as Jesus allowed the guy acting as satan to carry the father off, screaming, into everlasting darkness as Jesus welcomed the mother and children into eternal joy. Talk about being bamboozled.
My teenage years would prove to be rebellious, anti-authoritarian and just skimming by, dodging one legal penalty after the next. Somehow I managed to graduate high school. This allowed me to go off to the United States Marine Corps and embark into a world of intensity and belligerent excellence. I am thankful to Uncle Sam for force-feeding manhood down my throat, in a secular sense, and also for camaraderie. Nothing screams manhood like four well trained drill instructors screaming at you, in what seems to be a foreign language, and informing you that your self-worth amounts to pencil shavings and your anatomy isn’t good enough for farm animals - as you march around the shower room in sub-zero temperatures professing the Marine Corps hymn with staunch enthusiasm, naked. Nothing screams manhood like entering into ancient Mesopotamia at 22 years old with incoming RPG fire and Super Cobras humming overhead. I can remember arriving to the town of Tekrit in Iraq, having some down time and taking out my little Gideon Bible one day and trying out the painful process of reading it. Something about a Bible always seemed to attract me. I hated reading though and the Bible was a lot of reading, so it seemed. Not to mention is was around 120 degrees out and each one of those little pages were saturated in sweat. I always had a reason to give into concentration, or a lack there of.
Throughout my life, I never doubted the existence of God or His heavenly Kingdom. I knew absolutely nothing about it though, or how to get there. Something always told me believing wasn’t enough. Also, pixy dust, fairies and humans miraculously transforming into angels upon death never seemed to be true. Everyone all around me seemed to write off Christianity as some institution, or fabricated lie to embezzle people and brainwash them. Christianity, to the teenagers and most adults around me, seemed ridiculous, scandalous and a waste of thought, time and energy. I would just nod and agree, not really knowing inside how I felt. I cannot ever remember a time of incredulity about God however.
Later on down the road, the night before we crossed over into Iraq, I remember being so nervous and trying to pray to God, being frustrated because of the mixed emotions about it all, wondering if anyone was listening and wondering if I was going to die. We embarked on a fast-pace race to Baghdad where we would encounter all sorts of destruction, death, exhilaration, and restlessness. Most of it is a blur to me now, almost twelve years after the fact.
In 2008 I uncoincidentally met my wife. I say uncoincidentally, which isn't even a real word, because I believe there was truly a Divine intervention in our meeting. I was never one to enjoy bars. Yes, I would go to bars now and again, but the crowds always kept me in a nervous state. I enjoyed socializing around a fire with a few choice friends much more than bars. So, early in September, after a long day of setting chokers in the woods, I was ready for bed. A buddy coaxed me into going down to the bar instead. It turned out there were a few more of my buddies down there, so things weren't that bad. As the night went on, a good friend introduced me to a very pretty girl. Girls at bars always seemed less than desirable to me as life-long partners, but there was something about this one that I couldn't shake. After multiple failed relationships in my life, I was in a place where I was rather burnt out on the opposite sex. In the back on my mind I knew I wanted to get married and settle down however.
Katie and I started dating a few weeks after the unbeknownst bar-rendezvous. One similarity after the next seemed to pop up between the two of us. I fell in love fast and it felt right. Things became serious eventually and I panicked with my career; I did not think, at the time, that the life of a logger was good enough for the family I was beginning. I say panic because at this time in my life there were only two things I felt I was good at; logging and being a Marine. By now I had been out of the Marine Corps for almost five years and I knew the chances of my getting back on active duty were improbable. I knew the president was in the process of down-sizing the military, as custom towards the end of any war, and it was not only me the government would have to account for if let back in. I had dependents. But I went to the recruiter anyways. He made promises only the devil could keep and I was no neophyte to recruiter propaganda. I agreed, though, to joining the Marine Corps Reserves with the aspirations of somehow getting back on active duty via that route. Needless to say it never happened, but I was glorified with the opportunity to travel abroad; I was slated as a Squad Leader and involuntarily on my way to Afghanistan. Katie was pregnant and we were expecting our first son.
By this time in our relationship, religion was never a long conversation. We both believed in God. I knew Katie was a cradle-Catholic, but it never earned enough thought within my mind to worry about it. Catholicism was very foreign to me. I didnt know enough about it to sway one way or another with it. I categorized it in my mind in the same location as every other church or denomination; they were all bad. However, anxiety was resonating within me more and more as the day grew closer where I would have to say good by for eight months, not knowing it I would make it home to my family. The very thought of my children not having a father growing up anguished me more than anything. I would rather exchange heavy machine-gun fire with the enemy than think about that. If post-traumatic stress syndrome can be pin-pointed to one, sole root - other than satan - I would say it was that very thought. It killed me.
Katie and her mother, who was also a devout Catholic, had started hinting to me that I should be received into the Catholic Church. Actually, they started suggesting that a little while before I knew I was going back to the desert. At the time, I could not have explained to you why this hit me with such disgust, but it did. Out of knowhere, it seemed, Catholicism became a hideous, rancid, plagiarized "version" of Gods Word. At this same time I all of sudden had an overwhelming desire to learn more about God and His ways. I immaturely felt as if God was warning me to resist Catholicism at all cost. I had several friends in my life that were of a rather anti-Catholic nature and I would be delusional to insinuate they didnt have an influence over me. They are great, Bible-only Christians however. Looking back, and knowing what I know now, satan can work through other people even without them knowing it. I was being fed full of hate and the one feeding me, was me.
I left for Afghanistan May of 2010. This time war was going to be different. It had been over seven years since I was last in the Middle East and now I was returning with twelve lives under my charge and a family back home. To boot, we weren't fighting the semi-organized Iraqi military, we were up against the cowardice of terrorism; the Taliban. I didnt know it then, but I was embarking an a mission of pure evil designed by the devil.
I had left Katie with the promise that I would "think" about conversion to the Catholic Church. What did this mean? I had never read the Bible. I had no prayer life. I had no clue what salvation meant. As far as converting to the Church, I had no intention of doing anything of the sort. Every time I would think of it when I was overseas, it stressed me out with confusion. Why did I need to become Catholic? Couldn't she just not be Catholic? This thought process was the basis for what would become an all-out marital assault when I got home. One month prior to re-deploying back home, the readjustment classes started. I sat through everyone one of them and each time I remember being bored out of my mind because none of it was relevant to me. I knew things were going to be fine. Katie and I wouldn't suffer from all these marriage struggles everyone else goes through. I had begun, with staunch enthusiasm, to set out to know God and establish within my household, a new set of Christian values. As I right this, it it easy for me to recall this. The train of thought I have now was not my train of thought back then though; it was all a smorgasbord of well-meaning antics.
I could not wait to see my beautiful wife, my daughter and the son I had yet to get to know. There is no word to describe how much I missed them combined with the idea of dying any day. It didnt take long when I got home to feel overwhelmed. Readjustment was more complicated than I gave it credit for. I acted on this premise by going straight back to work in the woods logging. I thought if I can suppress this amounting stress by pretending it didnt exist, all would be well. I didnt want to fight with my wife, my best friend. I didnt understand why we fought. But eventually, our fights were squared directly around religion. Katie had coped with the surmounting stress from me being gone by getting back in Church, thank God. Looking back, I can see that all the stress that was invisibly built up within me came out when we argued about religion. The devil is sly. What better way to get back at God than for two of His children to fight about Him? Katie didnt know much about her faith, but she owned it. She was a product of generations of Catholic catechetical redundancy, or the lack there of. Her mom raised her as a good Catholic, but no one had ever challenged her on it as I was. She would not back down when I accused her or worshipping saints, necromancing, the Virgin Mary, cannibalism, the angles, neo-paganism, etc. She would not back down when I questioned her about the priesthood, the very priesthood I assumed was responsible for child molestation just a few short years ago. I drilled her about the papacy, the Inquisition, the Crusades, Purgatory, Catholic traditions, the Rosary, and everything Catholic I could think of. I had began to study the Catholic Church with the mindset to coax my wife into leaving it. She is smart, she would get it. I knew Katie would be ok with my not converting and her leaving Catholicism, if I could just figure out how to explain it all to her. I knew raising my kids by "what the Bible taught" was the best "option." This developed into what would be harder than fighting wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This evolved into the fight of my life, so it seemed, and martial rupture was haunting us. In the midst of all this fighting, by His grace, I managed to ask God what He wanted for Katie and I.
I came to a cross road and after some intense prayer, God turned my heart towards the Catholic Church. For the first time I was discovering things on my own and not from another persons fallible opinion. I began listening to and reading conversion stories of everyday people, preachers, ministers, and pastors from the Assembly of God churches, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Seventh Day Adventist, church planting affiliations, Evangelical, Methodist, Mennonite, Lutheran, Fundamentalists, Baptist, Millennialists, Reconstructionist's, Jews, and all Protestant denominations. I read stories of atheists, agnostics, occultists, criminals, etc who all shared life-changing, unexplainable testimonies of peace and love upon reception into the Catholic Church. Women and men who were solid, devout Christians and anti-Christians, who were at one time in their life, grounded in their own beliefs. One key theme every story had was humbleness. Every person from every differentiating walk of life had attested to eventually letting God guide them. Hmmm. Sounded outlandishly familiar to me.
Gods salvation history began to make sense to me - like nothing or anything had ever made sense before in my life. I asked God to help me unravel the mystery that is the Bible and it began to explode every time I read it. What finally pushed me over the threshold to Catholicism was not any theological argument, but a longing for the grace found in the Eucharist. February 2013 I gave my heart to Jesus Christ, truly and fully to the best of my abilities and May 10th, 2013 I was received into full Communion with Gods Church. Several years prior to this, I thought that I had already done this. But for the first time in my life I cautiously concluded that indeed, my opinion very well could be completely wrong; I discovered that being unpretentious was ok. For a hardened US Marine, indeed, it was ok to give into Christ and let Him heal me. Shortly after that, with a ridiculous amount of reading and sincere praying, I felt saved.
After some serious searching, a lot of confusion and dead-end roads, I found God within the walls of the Catholic Church. I believe with all of my heart this is exactly where He wanted me. What a blessing this was not just for me, but for Katie and her mother as well. As I set out to learn my new-found faith, they experienced a rather awakening renewal in their own faith.