I Was at Rock Bottom, But God Found Me Where I Was

And that’s when I converted to Catholicism. The year was 1994.

“Father Peter,” I said. “You don’t know me, and I’m not a Catholic, but I need help.”
“How soon can you get here?” he said.

I arrived in the United States to a marriage in tatters.  My husband and I had been separated for two long years. He lived in Belgium, finally returning to the United States. I was in Spain. Our daughter at school in Switzerland. Not really a picture of family unity, I know.

“Was I prepared to try again?” he asked. “Come to the States?”

Everything in me screamed, no! I was hurt, humiliated, and resentful. Why should I? I wasn’t the one who’d left this marriage for someone else?

Friends told me to think of it as a holiday. I could always come back to Spain if I wished. My house would be there, my dogs (super-important) the life I’d created for myself.

I took that leap and agreed. I left out of Barcelona and still remember sitting on that plane as it made a scheduled stop in Madrid, wishing I could get off.

Quietly, inexorably, God was working behind the scenes. Which I only realized many years later.

Arriving in the United States

The scenario I stepped into on arrival in the States was as bad as I’d expected. The other woman had lived in this house. Neighbors and friends all knew what had happened.

My self-confidence was in tatters, and I started having panic attacks and nightmares. I’d wake up and see someone with a knife standing over my husband. Or my bedside lamp would change shape and become a threatening bent-over figure wearing a coolie hat to obscure its features.  Night after night, strange wraith-like phenomena would come floating through the window.

The final touch was waking and finding myself hovering above the bed, looking down on my husband and me. In front of us was a peaceful beach scene.

It had to stop!

It would be difficult, but I decided to return to Spain. My family was in South Africa, and I drove my poor brother crazy with incessant tearful calls.

But God was at work.

I got a call from a mutual friend who lived in a distant state and had watched the circus unfold.  I had a major meltdown on the phone about how I hated being in the States. How unfamiliar everything was. How I missed Europe. On and on and on I went.

She listened to me, then said, “There’s a Catholic priest in your town that spent fifteen years in Belgium. He will understand how you feel. Why don’t you go and talk to him?”

Father Peter

I was so desperate, I picked up the phone the minute our call ended. “Father Peter,” I said. “You don’t know me, and I’m not a Catholic, but I need help.”

“How soon can you get here?” he said.

He listened to me. I cried. I raged. I vented. He walked over and placed one hand on my forehead and the other behind my head. His hands were warm, comforting, and healing. A great calm came over me, and my whole body relaxed and settled.

Years later, I learned he’d done healing but stopped as he aged. It took too much out of him. But that day, for me, he once again used his gift.

We are roughly the same age. We talked and talked. We spoke of our times in Belgium. Of tiny cups of coffee and a dainty Speculoos biscuit served at a table on the sidewalk. Of concerts and walks in the woods. Of history. Culture. The European lifestyle and outlook.

He understood because he’d lived there. He knew what I missed and how terribly difficult it was adapting to life in the States.

This man touched something in me. I wanted to know more about his coping mechanisms. I wanted what he had. I asked.

RCIA

“Why don’t you attend RCIA and see how you like it?” he said.

I did. I learned as much as I could. My sponsor, Sister Barbara, was a nun who had spent a goodly time in Belgium as well. She was as “un” nun-like as it was possible. And the stories she told about her life as a novice had me in stitches.

My daughter returned to the States and enrolled in the local Catholic school. She was having a hard time as well. She looked different, spoke differently, and dressed differently. Thanks, Heaven, for the great equalizer- Catholic School uniforms! And for a warm and loving principal, Sister Kathleen.

Some incidents from those early years are stuck in my memory bank.

Sister Barbara: “Who do you pick as your patron saint?”
Me: “Uh–huh. Uh, Saint Anthony?”

I said that as the brother I most closely related to was called Anthon. It took years before I discovered there were two Saint Anthonys! So be it. Mine is the latter one, although I’m fascinated by the Desert Saints.

Learning to be a Catholic

I once timidly approached Father Peter to ask if Catholics weren’t allowed to sing. I came from Protestant congregations where we belted it out along with the organ. Even the men who couldn’t hold a tune to save their lives would grunt along!

After he’d stopped laughing, he said, “If you want to sing in this congregation, you’d better join the choir.”

Which I did.

Then there was the question of praying to the saints. To my Protestant mindset, this praying to statues was wrong.

“Father Peter,” I humbly began, not wanting to show my ignorance too much but trusting him implicitly, “can you explain this praying to the saints’ thing to me? Isn’t that like idolatry?”

“Do you sometimes ask a friend to pray for you? Or look at a picture of your mother, and ask her, even though she has passed away, to pray for you?” he asked.

“Of course, I do!”

“Well, this is no different.”

Another great mystery cleared up.

Confession

The third bridge to cross was Confession. As a former Protestant, this was as alien as men from Mars. I still have a hard time, but I laughed when some time ago, having mentioned my reservations, this wonderful young Philippine priest cocked his head, looked at me, and said, “I’m just the Front Desk. The real One listening is upstairs.”

I was introduced to Holy Water and sprinkled it liberally all over the house. I now owned a Catholic Bible but already had a collection of Bibles. In my mother tongue as well as in English. Every evening I’d pack those Bibles on the windowsill in our bedroom. That was the last of those nightmarish shapes coming through the window.

A year later, I took communion and, with my daughter, was accepted into the Catholic Church. Sister Barbara had given me a tiny silver medallion of St Anthony. I attached it to the antique Rosary my husband and daughter had found in a small thrift shop.

My husband sometimes teases me and says I followed the man, not the faith. So be it.

Who am I to query how God works?

Did life become miraculously trouble-free after that? Did all my problems in my marriage disappear?

Absolutely not. Throughout RCIA and beyond it was still an uphill battle. But I had new weapons.

My Catholic Faith. And I must single out, The Eucharist. Before, it had been a token, a symbol. Now it was everything.

But I was not happy. I still had to make some hard decisions.

Decisions, Decisions

Option One.  I could leave. I could pack my bags, dogs, and daughter, face the uproar, and return to the life I loved in Europe.

Option Two. I could stay. And work at this marriage. I would not look back. There would be no recriminations, no blame. The past would remain just that, the past. Never to be brought up, never to be mentioned.

I picked Number Two.

It’s twenty-nine years since my arrival in the States and subsequent conversion to Catholicism. Our marriage is as healthy as a marriage can be. I know he loves me. He will do whatever is in his power to make me happy and give me what I want. Luckily, my wants are simple! We will celebrate forty-three years of marriage in November.

Do I love him? Yes.

Do I like him? Not always.

I’m sure it’s mutual.

As I look back, I see God’s Hand in my life, leading me to this point.

I joke and say it took nearly four hundred years for my family to spit out a Catholic.

Really God, couldn’t you have taken a shortcut?

Growing Up

I grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church. A bastion of Christianity with deep roots in Calvinism. Those early Dutch Calvinist settlers need pastors to lead them and supply the nourishment and encouragement so desperately needed in this new and often savage land, South Africa.

Their eyes turned to their mother country, The Netherlands. Answering their call, stern, upright men, steeped and trained in the Calvinist tradition originating in Switzerland, were dispatched to care for the new young flock.

From the early Dutch settlers descended the Afrikaners. The “boere.” Not to be confused with the English “boor.”  The term “boer” in Afrikaans refers to farmers.

I am descended from these proud people. And cut my teeth and was fed, along with my first baby food, the basics of Christianity.

But Catholicism? I remember my dad fuming when we started reciting the Our Father out loud as a congregation. It simply was not done. He referred to the Roman Danger. I had no clue what he was talking about.

My first real encounter with Catholicism came during those lonely days when I’d moved to Spain, and my husband had stayed in Belgium. With no English or French-speaking Protestant church around, I started going to the Basilica de Santa Maria de Castello d’Empuries.

The priest was a lovely old Catalan who spoke no English but spoke some French, and we bumbled our way through. I did not realize that as a non-Catholic, I was not allowed to take communion, and he never stopped me. Thus, I was humiliated one day when I took communion from a visiting German priest. He realized I had no clue and berated me publicly.

Stumbling outside in tears, my lovely Catalan priest came up quietly and told me that as long as he was in his church, I was welcome along with my daughter. He’d come to check on me at home, riding his bike, cassock flapping in the breeze.

I went back to Castello d’Empuries a couple of years ago. The old priest is long gone. There’s an entrance fee to the church. The candles all burnt to stubs – tourists wandering around. I went to kneel near the altar and closed my eyes. Thirty years fell away, and I recalled the love and warmth from a man I barely understood at a time in my life when I was so sad and lonely.

I’d experienced two sides of Catholicism from two different priests. Tolerance and intolerance.

While Back in the States

When I can, I go back and meet with Father Peter. He’s retired now. Doesn’t do social media but will take a phone call. The last time I visited, he was substituting for a priest on holiday. Once again, I could take communion from Father Peter, feel his hand on my head, and the tears flowed.

I am so envious of Cradle Catholics. I will never catch up, regardless of how much time I spend reading and studying. The reasons given and stories told me by lapsed Catholics make for good reading. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad.

Yes, we have issues. Yes, we have problems. But leaving the Church doesn’t help. Problems and issues are man-made.

Our faith is the same. Now and forever. Unaltered.

I stopped going to church about two weeks before Covid-19 hit. I had a bad cold and didn’t want to spread the joy. When things returned to normal, with impaired lungs, I was wary of going back. Eventually, I did.

I had no idea how much I’d missed mass. And we won’t even talk about the Eucharist. I was adrift. I’d read The Act of Spiritual Communion, but it’s not the same.

Life is back to normal now. We can mix and mingle and join in the Liturgy without being smothered by a mask.

I’m in that lovely twilight part of my life. As I look back, I reflect on a life well lived, maybe not always wise.

I walk and talk with God, and I asked, “What do you want from me, Lord? I’m old, and we’re running out of time here.”

“Walk in my Ways,” He said.