The Road to Carmel- a testimony.

In my Carmelite Community each month, a professed member stands up and tells us his or her "Road to Carmel," the testimony of their lives as Christians, Catholics and Carmelites. It is always amazing to listen to each person give witness to the life of the Holy Spirit within them, and I usually end up in tears.
Tonight, I'm going to end up in tears as I write my own, but for a different reason. I've got to leave the Carmelite order, and yet remain a Carmelite in my soul. Something which I've grown to live and breathe I've got to let go of because, as Christ said, "Even if your eye causes you to sin, you must pluck it out." For someone like me, who escapes into fantasy rather than face grim reality, the soul must constantly work towards discipline in the area of giving itself in love.
This, then, is my "Road to Carmel" in reverse-- how I came to the Holy mountain and why I must now climb it in disguise.


I was born into a family with multiple religious backgrounds the majority of whom were strong, faithful Catholics. I had early exposure to all sorts of religious experiences, which helped me to easily find the "common denominator" amongst the various world religions. Nevertheless, I consider myself a "cradle catholic" because I was born into a Catholic family and baptized Catholic at birth.

Culturally, my immediate family was absolutely Catholic: we went to mass each Sunday, fasted Fridays in lent, learned our basic prayers, and went to CCD. The interior lives of my parents, however, were very different: my mother was extremely private about her faith and rarely prayed "personal" prayers with us, rather communicating the faith to us via the ins and out of Catholic daily rhythm. My father, being a Baby Boomer, was certainly more inclined to discuss zen buddhist theories and ideas or to talk to us about greek mythology or the hindu pantheon. He cared very much that his children grow to be educated and informed about the "rest of the world" and that we be exposed to as much thinking material as humanly possible. We became great readers thanks to this ideology.

I grew up very influenced by the sixties and everything that it represented, by its music and feminism and drug culture ( which was rampant all around me) and by the idea of "me first" and "whatever floats your boat."

Because I was multi-cultural -- I lived in France and I lived in Santa Barbara, California, and I traveled often to various places around the world-- and because my parents were intellectuals, and college professors, and because I was surrounded by riches and "the elite," I developed a strong sense of self-importance and irresponsibility combined with an emotionalism and a spirit of adventure. Basically, I was a one-way road to complete destruction.
I was smart, so I bored easily in school, and I had been abused and molested as a young girl, so I looked for love in all the wrong places. I was surrounded by celebrity culture, and everywhere I looked people had every imaginable luxury and were bored beyond belief. Bored and very, very rich.

By the time I was twelve I smoked pot regularly and by the time I was fourteen I was doing Chrystal Meth lines between classes (and even IN class!!) and looking for trouble all day and night.
I thought what I needed, in order to be happy, was FREEDOM above all else. I valued my freedom: freedom to think how I pleased, to do what I wanted, and to be left alone with my thoughts. More importantly, I wanted absolute freedom from God.
At the same time, I longed for what was the only religious experience I believed in: love. Thought I had an endless parade of boyfriends (and even girlfriends!) I could find no one to fill the void in my heart and eventually I had to admit that I was in lack.
This obsession with finding the "perfect other" was so great that it drew me into endless bouts of depression and misery and caused me to lay aside the pursuit of other, nobler things such as actually completing my education, or investing in the pursuit of a career.

Nevertheless I had very good "luck." Looking back, I see that God protected me despite my disgusting behavior and outrageous sense of self-importance. Though many of my friends from that time have died, I am still alive. Though we saw every form of danger (legal danger, car accidents, and various deadly drug mixtures, unsafe sexual practices etc.) I managed to survive it all without lasting external consequences. I did very well in the classes I enjoyed, excelled in dance and journalism, my college major and minor, and had incredible jobs that others who had graduate degrees foamed at the mouth to get. I worked for publishers that English majors coveted, and several newspapers which made me look... well.... like I was going somewhere. But I was going nowhere, as my life was completely turned over to Satan and rebellion against God.

I occasionally called upon God for help, but more often than not I ignored him or flat out attempted to manipulate him through sorcery or other occult techniques. I thought I was very spiritual, but in reality my spirit was dead. I had respect for no one, especially not God.
I believed I was happy. I believed that I was on the right track... and as money, sex, drugs and rock and roll paraded through my life in one giant party, I discovered something new about myself that I didn't like much: I knew I was guilty.

In my quest for love, I often found "it" in the form of a short, passionate relationship with some young man who would have killed lions for me. Little by little, I offed these men after giving them a promise of forever with both my words and my body because THEY BORED ME. I was such a sick person, at that time, that I felt that if I wasn't experiencing the thrill of a new relationship with all of it's sexual and psychological promise for fulfillment, I grew weary of the day-to-day drudgery and quickly tossed them aside for a new and shinier thrill. My inclination to feminist thought and my total disrespect for life, authority, humanity, and myself made it easy to justify on my own end, and I told myself that these men (and occasionally, women) were simply not up to the task of taming me... that once I found the "right" person, he would know just how to do that. I was in one of these drug-addled, sex-crazed, irresponsible frames of mind the day of Christmas Eve, 1998.

On that day, I was "engaged" to be married to a man I lived with, Marc, who was a pseudo-intellectual overaged teenager who couldn't hold a job to save his life. Though he had absolutely no faith in God, once a month we would have to pretend to be a Spirit Filled, Evangelical couple when his die-hard Christian Truck Driving dad would plow through our hometown since he wrote the checks on which we lived. Marc would coach me through the "Christianese" lingo (seeing as how I had absolutely NO experience with evangelicals) and once the weekend and all it's formalities were over, it was back to the Wildcat Lounge for us. I was, however, intregued by the Bible.
As a young Catholic, I had been given a paperback copy to thumb in various retreats by the Franciscan Monks at the mission. These books were old and torn and held little value for me, so I didn't really pay attention to the life giving words they contained. At my confirmation, my sponsor, a sweet little mexican woman, gave me a very nice gift edition of the NAB. I held onto it, but never really opened it. Later on in my life, I had dated and eventually gotten very serious with a young man whose parents happened to be Jehova's Witnesses. When I got over the shock of discovering that such utterly wonderful and normal-seeming people could be members of what I'd always assumed was a seriously nutty cult, I grew fascinated with talking about religion with them. Years later, when he had moved to America with me and we lived in the guest bedroom of an evangelical Christian who prayed for us daily, and as a practicing wiccan, I often had the Jehova's Witnesses over to talk about the Bible to me. Thank God, He had given me a portion of His confirming Spirit to keep me from becoming a Jehova's Witness, but I thank God for their intervention in my life because they taught me to truly LOVE the Bible: to look at it as the source of Life and the Measuring Stick of Truth and virtue. Needless to say, I didn't know much about the Bible by the time I started doing these monthly encounters with Marc's dad, but I knew a little.

When he rolled through town, he liked to go to a Calvary Chapel down by the beach. I never went with them. But one Christmas Eve, by the Holy Spirit of God, I suddenly felt an urge to grab a bus down there and check it out, alone. What awaited me was an encounter with the Living, Risen Christ.

To minimize this event would be silly, and yet there is not very much to say aside from what I have said: the Pastor was preaching about surrender, and it was a topic I had never pondered before. It was my appointed time: every word that came out of his mouth seemed to be a personal word for me, and every spirit-filled person around me, though they didn't know me, did indeed have a personal word for me. I ended the night on my knees, welcoming the newborn Christ as he was birthed into the place I had just hurriedly prepared for him in my heart, and I knew I would never be the same again. I gave my life to Him, which seemed the only thing left to do, and told Him I was sorry for all the times I'd forgotten he existed.

After that, my life was different. I believed in God, and I wanted to get to know Him and know what to do about it. I also knew that I wasn't a protestant, and that there was a "Catholic" way to go about it. The "Catholic" way seemed full of mystery and difficult, the protestant way seemed light, cheery, optimistic and simple.
I began to go to daily mass, first at the mission I'd grown up at with the Franciscans, then later at a Jesuit Church in the center of town.
I saw only one other young person my age, a young man (I often pray he became a priest!) who seemed extraordinarily serious about his faith. He never paid the least bit of attention to me -- and at the time, most boys paid attention to me, so I found him very intreguing-- but rather remained wholly focused and intent on prayer.
It amazed me that he was a smoker. The protestants I met were all so "pure" and healthy-- they looked like abercrombie and fitch ads, tan and wholesome, never smoked or drank, and didn't curse. This young man, though, would step out of the church, and light up a smoke on his way down the street. And I would wonder-- will I find the path to "holiness" here? I was a smoker too, but I always waited til I was around the bend before I lit up so no one would see me. Even then, I had a terrible, deceitful heart.

I had a rosary that I brought with me everywhere. But I never once prayed it, only pulling it out in times of stress and fingering the beads. I cracked open that NAB and began to go crazy in it, making notations and copying out things I was learning from various sources (Catholic, protestant, jehova's witness.)
I also began to frequent a myspace forum for people interested in discussing religion. Very, very slowly, almost imperceptibly, I began to become a protestant... First going to mass some weeks and church services other days, then frequenting Calvary Chapel at basically every chance I could find. I went to bible seminars and bible studies and courses, and literally drooled all day long, craving the chance to learn more from God's word and a time I could either be alone to pour over it or with others who knew it well and could teach me. I could not get enough.

I met people who impressed me with their dedication to God. People who had answers to the questions I had, who had good reasons for me to change my life and who prayed with me and for me. Over time, I attended college groups and homegroups and discovered the sweetness of fellowship in the Holy Spirit with people of all generations who love God and are devoted to serving Him. I didn't think I was doing anything WRONG by attending these things-- I thought it was great. and it was. But little by little I lost all knowledge of the sacraments. The only things that mattered were the grace I received from repentance and seeking to live a life that was pleasing to God. At the time I was like a sponge, absorbing everything I was told as "Bible Truth," (because clearly,I reasoned, these people KNEW their Bibles, and therefore they KNEW the mind of God.)

Many of them were misguided, or uninformed, and had looked at the Catholic Church and seen what I often see looking around: rows of people going through the motions who don't have a stinking clue. These people encouraged me to renounce Catholicism, to step "out of religion" and "into the life of Faith." I embraced this idea because it was truly my experience-- I had not seen the fruits of the Holy Spirit much in my Catholic exposure, and the times I HAD seen it, I reasoned, it was via the Spirit of God trying to pull people out of dead religion.
It wasn't long before going to Christmas and Easter with my parents at the Mission became an affront to godliness, for me. I would proudly carry my bible in and ask anyone in earshot: "WHERE is that in the Bible?" No one ever knew.

One day, I sat through a sermon that basically asked me to choose between Catholicism and "life in the Spirit." People seemed to be in two camps: either believing that many Catholics could be/were saved based on their relationships with Jesus Christ, (these were the minority) or that no Catholics COULD be saved based on their participation in what scripture deemed "abominations." (idolatry, Mary worship, etc)

I could see a biblcal case for either, and since the label of Catholicism wasn't as important to me as following God, I found it safer to abstain. I wrote to Catholic priests, to family members who were clergy as a favor to my parents, who were outraged at my newfound zeal for religion. I asked all the questions protestants ask Catholics, demanding an answer from scripture. None was ever given me, rather, I got the answer: "God is a mystery," or "We have to take it on faith." This wasn't good enough for me, as I had learned to reason FROM the scriptures. I began to view the sacraments, especially the Mass, as an outrage, and abstained from the Eucharist for that reason. I asked to be rebaptized.

The day of my second baptism I went into the water in tears and came out deaf. For twenty or so straight minutes I felt as if my soul was trying to leave my body- dizzy and light headed, I felt near fainting and could make no sense of anything happening around me. It was powerful. A few months later, I was praying in my room and asked God to baptize me in His Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God moved and before I knew it, I realized I had been walking around my room with my bible open praying in tongues for over an hour! I had never prayed that long before.

During this time I was growing in my faith and learning to live a better, holier life, but it took YEARS for God to purge me completely of the sins of the body--- I persevered in sexual immorality and in drug use for quite some time, years, even continuing to work in the adult industry as a "born again Christian," convincing myself that I was able to help save souls by remaining in that environment. Worse yet, I lied about it to my Christian friends, who were always so wholesome and interested in purity. I didn't want to get into it with them, so I just convinced myself it was a good thing to stay where I was. How deluded I was.

At the same time I made some HUGE changes which demonstrated my commitment to this new calling: I left my "fiancee," (who subsequently tried to kill himself and did kill my cat, eventually going completely nuts.) and I moved back in with my father, with whom I had a very strained relationship, out of sheer obedience. I changed the way I dressed, the friends I had, and the places I hung out. I began to focus heavily on evangelism. The grace of being baptized in the Spirit meant that I was open to correction by the faithful, and I found myself more and more disgusted by my sin and capable of repenting...whereas before I had been trying too hard, not truly SORRY for my sins.

Bizarre situations abounded in those early days, and I thank God He gave me much discernment. One morning, at 6 am, I received a phone call out of nowhere from my ex. "You can't be a Christian," he whispered in a sneering, sinister voice. "It's too hard. You'll never be able to do it. Just forget about the whole thing." Amazed, I hung up, thinking it sounded like a phone call from Satan himself. A short time after, another ex boyfriend randomly appeared at my door, one who had always held an inexplicable power over me. "So," he began, pushing past me in the door and standing over me imposingly. "I hear you're trying to be a Christian now. Well guess what? You can't worship Jesus Christ. He's a ------. I demand that you worship me instead. Worship my -------. " I couldn't believe it. What a weird conversation! Clearly, something spiritual was happening. Still another time, I was walking to work when one of Santa Barbara's many homeless vets, stinky, ill-clothed, and stinking of vomit and urine, was walking towards me. He was quiet, but as SOON as he stepped within a few feet of me, he began to shout and yell and curse. He was furiously gesticulating at me, only he wasn't cursing ME, He was shouting: "F-you, Jesus! Who do you think you are? You are pathetic. Come off your cross if you are God!" When he had passed me, he simply stopped yelling and went back to walking silently. So strange! Gradually, I came to understand that there were forces at work that I could not see, but which were the REAL forces at work in the world. What I saw and touched, tasted and smelled-- it was real, but it wasn't ALL.

One year I went home to France on vacation, and found that it was nearly impossible to find a Bible there. When I finally found one, it has the most atrocious. progressive and liberal commentary I had ever seen. I could hardly believe it. There was hardly a single non-Catholic Christian community anywhere. My eyes were opened to the devastating situation of godlessness that had spread like the plague across Europe. My heart BURNED to somehow make these people aware of the Kingdom of God, but I had no idea how to do it except by offering bibles inside backpacks filled with clothes and food to the poor in the streets via an acquaintance. I knew Missions was becoming a call close to my heart.

In 2004, I joined the US ARMY. I wont go into my reasons for joining, but lets just say that I was motivated by patriotism and disgust for liberals. I headed off to Basic Training equipped for adventure and hyped up to see what God would do. It was in Basic Training that he taught me how to pray-- REALLY pray. Before basic, when groups of us would get together to pray for people, I would always feel very nervous and uncomfortable. Having grown up Culturally Catholic with parents who didn't really pray with us, I didn't know how to pray spontaneously or to pray God's word over a situation. But once I was in the army, that all changed. The girls in my bay were desperate for encouragement, and I found myself teaching Bible studies to them by flashlight. Many nights I was so miserable I would sing praise and worship songs in the bathroom, and the girls would line up for prayer. They asked me to sit and pray with them as we shared guard duty, or in particularly difficult moments of training. All of us came from very different backgrounds, and getting used to the rhythm of Army life was a very violent time where fights broke out often and horribly immoral things would happen between soldiers. For me, though, it was like basic training for life in the Spirit.

It was at that time, also, that I had my first visible encounter with the demonic realm.

A girl in my bay would have very strange experiences at night that the rest of us could visibly see, including scratches and claw marks that would appear on her skin and then disappear right before our eyes. At first I was terrified, but I prayed for her in faith, and her troubles seemed to stop. This was the beginning of a long period in my life where deliverance ministry was, over and over again, something that God put in my path.

While I was in the army, I met and married my husband.
This part alone is complex enough to stand alone as a book--many people who watched it unravel said we should write one! The scenario is comical and interesting to write about and it profoundly affected everything I am and everything I do. Before I left for the Army, in a prayer meeting, someone had prophesied over me that I would meet my husband there. Naturally, this was virtually ALL that occupied my mind as I encountered different men and wondered-- is HE the one? I quickly realized the unhealthiness of this attitude and concentrated instead on the task at hand: making it through BCT. As I did, my future husband took note of the girl who was working hard to learn to soldier and was obviously impressed. Via a complicated series of events in which we were forced to make fast, difficult choices, we took a weekend and got married, having spoken only a handful of times and having known each other less than five weeks! I had perfect peace about the decision but it certainly caused a lot of turmoil: we were subsequently kicked out of the army and my family stopped all communication with me. Both events were devastating, and made even more difficult by the fact that I found myself living in a poor "city" in the South, with a man who, as it turned out, I didn't like very much.

Needless to say, God's ways work. Though we spent most of our time fighting and arguing, struggling to "make it," and picking our way through minefields, somehow, amazingly, we managed to not only stay married, but to learn to really love each other. We are still learning, but six years later I am proud and overjoyed to say that I would say "I do" all over again if given the choice!

This whole time, we were practicing our mutual Christian faith, albeit very differently. My understanding of how to practice my faith had grown from a deep transformative experience when I had been baptized in the Holy Spirit, and his came from an upbringing around traditionally minded Southern Christians, and in particular, baptists and pentacostals (which-as it turns out-aren't exactly "relaxed" about things like dancing or wearing pants. Not that he was stiff or rigid in his walk but that he was formal with God and about his responsibilities, whereas I was on BFF terms with Jesus.)

The question of birth control, for us as a married couple was a non-issue-- I had been on The Pill since the age of twelve (initially for painful periods which I was told it would help with) and having never really heard a Bible teaching on abstaining from Birth Control, we had no problem with it. Slowly, though, our conscience began to be pricked as we opened up God's Word and began to see the picture He paints in it of our purpose as husband and wife. Nevertheless, I had been taking The Pill regularly when I became pregnant with our first-- much to our surprise and dismay, I'll be honest. Even scarier was the fact that we found out very early on that we were expecting twins, as we heard two very distinct heartbeats even at my first appointment! Sadly, I miscarried between the third and fourth month, losing one of the twins.

The birth of my eldest was a terrifying experience, lasting more than 76 hours of hard labor, but once she was here-- I embarked whole-heartedly on the adventure of motherhood with all of the strength and willpower I could muster. I loved her so much-- and having her blew my mind. I had never planned on having a child- I wanted to be a mother much later in life and felt I hadn't really "accomplished anything" yet. But, it was obvious that this was the will of God and so I embraced it. Her birth bridged some of the gap between myself and my family, who wanted to be part of their first grandchild's life. Mothering was a very difficult experience for me-- my husband and I were still barely getting along and the stress of not sleeping, not having my body back, and not being in familiar surroundings was taking it's toll. I was learning to give of myself, and it was hard.

Over the years my faith in God grew stronger still. He saw me through the tough lessons of learning to trust HIM that when I obeyed and submitted to my husband, unworthy as I thought he was, God worked. He saw me through supporting my husband as he grew into his manhood-- he was only 19 when we married, and had never had an example of fatherhood or a decent family life on which he could rely for inspiration. God saw me through as I adapted to life in the south, as unglamorous and simple and ordinary-- and even sometimes repulsive-- as it was compared to my life in California or in Europe. He saw me through crippling poverty in which He provided day by day in miraculous ways. He saw me through caring for a difficult baby, which I knew nothing about.
He built into my memory a repertoire of events in which He provided for my soul's needs one way or another time after time after time, even through total and utter despair, of which I have known plenty, whether it be through the unexpected death of a loved one or the sting of abuse that scars the soul. Most importantly, he taught me the value of speaking His Word and restraining my tongue from any words which were not His.

Meanwhile, my husband and I prepared to follow God wherever He would lead, and we hoped it would lead to missions as a pastoring family. We took classes to that end.
At one point, we even moved to California to pursue the vision. Over time, we grew disillusioned with the way Christianity had become, in particular with the way people "did Church." We were tired of pastors who lied or used selfish ambition or pride to get ahead, we were tired of our money being spent poorly. We were tired of Churches which taught "most" of the Bible Truth as we had come to understand it, but not ALL. We wanted to be in Church which taught the FULLNESS of the Truth, not just "most" of the Truth. My hunger for God had grown only stronger over the years, and I had an Elijah-like longing for fellowship in the Holy Spirit that was complete and full, for God to be worshipped by the people in Spirit and Truth.

We also became extensively involved in deliverance ministry. Having been delivered of demonic influence myself, it became clear that God was using our personal experiences to minister to others who were afraid or confused. We taught small groups and led bible studies and prayer groups. These were busy, happy days. BUT that longing for fullness of Truth persisted and we began to think we would never find it all in one place.

Quite unexpectedly, we eventually found what we were seeking in the one place we never thought we could go: The Catholic Church. I had long ago turned my back on the sacraments after a well-intentioned but ever so misguided sermon by a minister named Jacob Prasch in which he challenged listeners to choose between "Truth" and Catholicism. He made a convincing spiritual argument based on emphatic contradictions he declared between Scripture and what the Church teaches (and of course, I believed him, having no actual understanding of what the Church teaches and thus being shocked an awed alongside all the other ignoramuses who took him at his word instead of investigating for ourselves whether these things were so.)

In my great pride, I considered myself a knowledgeable ex-Catholic of course. After all, I had gone to CCD, had my first communion, been confirmed...I "knew" what the faith was about, I reasoned.
Never once, in all that time, had I met someone who prophetically inspired in me the same zeal for God and His Word and Truth and goodness as I did among protestants. Never, in all that time, did I meet people who made it their every day business to be about their Father's business who were not protestants. Sure, I met monks and nuns who had given their lives to Jesus... but when they had led me in prayer or Bible study, said mass, or blessed me, they had read the words monotonously, never taking a particular interest to showing me God's love and care for my personal situation. They seemed to be full of questions, with not many answers. And so I reasoned that what they said was true-- that Catholicism was all "dead traditions of man," while the Holy Spirit moved elsewhere. I wanted to follow the wind of the Spirit.

Which is why I was utterly amazed when, through a series of unusual events, I began to feel that God was calling me back to the Roman Church.
I was a part of a prayer group that prayed against Marian apparitions, which we firmly believed were demonic manifestations. One day, we heard about Medjugorje, and immediately began to pray. As always, before I prayed, I did research. What was the apparition asking of people? Scripture tells us to test the spirits, and I used the scriptures to test the messages. There were pages and pages of messages-- the apparition had been ongoing for over twenty-five years. To my amazement, all of the messages were about turning from sin, confessing it, and turning to Jesus. Nothing unbiblical about that! Sure, the message had a "Catholic" bent, but I reasoned that the apparition was just speaking to people in a language they understood-- in Catholic terms, since the people were Catholic. Why "couldn't" God use Mary, after all? He had used Moses, and Elijah, right? Instead of doing spiritual warfare against the Marian apparitions at Mejdugorje, I found that I began to believe that Mary really was appearing to help the people turn to Jesus. And this sparked the beginnings of a Marian devotion in me. My husband also, over time, became convinced that Mary really was appearing, and not a demonic spirit. And this alienated us further from our evangelical Church, which unquestioningly considered ALL Marian apparitions as demonic manifestations.

Meanwhile, Mary began to appear alongside the Church in little signs to us along the way. One day at the dinner table, my oldest, who had never really heard of Mary, went into a type of rapture at the dinner table. Out of no where, she tried and tried to reach the cieling over the center of our table, reaching with all her tiny might.
She told us she saw a beautiful lady, holding a baby, and that she wanted to hug the baby and love him.
I believed, but my husband was skeptical. "She saw it in a book or something," he said. The next night, she repeated the same thing, only this time my protestant Father in law was there. He turned to me and exclaimed: "She sees Mary, the mother of Jesus!"

A few days later, while re-arranging a bookshelf, a book fell out and onto my head. It was my brother's Roman Catholic Missal, which he had used throughout his first deployment to Afghanistan and throughout his subsequent near-death experience. I had hidden it away because of the references to Mary, but couldn't throw it away as it had spiritually sustained my brother through such a difficult time.

Then, a few days after that, I took my daughter for a walk through the park after a heavy rain. Her favorite sandbox was flooded, so we went to the one on the other side of the park. There, in the mud, she bent down and pulled out a book. It was an old antique copy of Fr. Lasance's "the Catholic Girls' guide," with holy cards inside... a book which contained marvelous counsels to young Catholic maidens on virtue and purity, alongside prayers and devotions. Incredible, and the last thing I expected to find in a sandbox in a park in the South. I felt certain that God was trying to tell me something. Even more so my husband began to develop a devotion to EACH of the saints pictured in the Holy Cards tucked away in the books' pages. St John Crysostohm, St Peter, St Maria Goretti, the blessed Mother, Saint Francis. One by one he began to share with me his interest in their lives, and he had never even seen the little book!

I began to desire to pray the rosary. My husband raised an eyebrow when I brought one home, but didn't say too much. I did, and this desire blossomed and grew into a longing for the rhythmic, reverent structure of my Catholic days gone past. I was given an edition of the NRSV that had the full Book of Common Prayer in it. Almost Catholic, but still protestant enough to keep me comfortable-- no Mary talk and not too much "extra stuff." Nonetheless, I began to order my life according to the rhythm of liturgical prayer.
At this point, my husband sat me down and had a serious talk with me.
"I want to be Catholic!" I lamented.
"You can go to a Catholic Church. You can fellowship with Catholic people," he tried to reason with me. "But why do you have to be CALLED a Catholic? WHY isn't being called a Christian good enough for you." On the eceumenical path, he had understood the Church as "a" church- a community of believers. This was a big step, but he certainly didn't see it as "The" Church.
Intellectually, I had to agree with him, though I felt certain that the Catholic Church did church "better" than most other Churches I knew.

And then, one day, it happened. I was reading my bible, as I did every day, and I came across the passage in John 6, the bread of life discourse. And it was as if my eyes were opened and I was reading it again for the first time. I deeply realized the "REALITY" of the Eucharist, and all I could think about was that I needed True Food for my soul. Where could I find that True Food but the local Catholic Church?? I wanted to run there.

I called a local parish and told them that I needed to speak to a priest. I told the priest I wanted to go to confession. That priest happened to be a former Evangelical Baptist protestant, freshly ordained. Through him, my husband also came to believe in the One, Holy, Catholic and apostolic Church. As his last few arguments melted slowly away into the folds of Scriptural responses this priest had for our tough questions, we both came to realize that we believed in the Roman Catholic Church and all that it taught.

Over that first lent, I fasted from reading anything but the Bible and the Catechism of the Church, just to see if I would catch that "last" thing that would have prevented me from becoming Catholic- a scent of unbiblicalism, a trace of falsehood. It was nowhere. Reading the Catechism was like reading a theological document that delineated exactly what I had come to believe the Bible taught...with the addition of brilliant notions I hadn't yet considered that were the natural result of the train of thought I had adopted.

Our homecoming was amazing: all of the strands of "Truth" I had grasped at throughout the realm of protestant nondenominationalism were solidly bound together in one sturdy rope of full, perfect Truth, which reached back 2000 + years to the time of Christ and which I could grasp firmly without looking back, confident it would lead only to the Kingdom of God. Every element was there: Holy Spirit power? Check. Authority to teach? Check. Eucharistic? Check. Proper placement of Jewish Traditions? Check. Reverence? Check. Sabbath keeping? Check. Family integrated-Church movement? Check. Church Fathers? Check. Biblical? Check. Operating in an orderly manner with the gifts of the Holy Spirit? Check. Teaching salvation? Check. Proper understanding of the birth control fiasco? Check. Pro-life? Check. Liturgical? Check. Prayerful? Check. Prophetic? Check. Sacramental? Check. Under sound authority? Check. Proper eschatological understanding? Check. Headcovering? Check. Modest? Check. Proper understanding of the importance of marriage? Check. Proper understanding of the relevance of Christian Art and Music? Check. NOT anti-intellectual? Check. NOT worldy? NOT concerned with growth, finances and numbers? Check. Room for individual vocations and movement of the Holy Spirit? Check. Unification in the faith? Check. I could have died of joy.

We promptly determined that we needed to have our children baptized (my mother, who had earnestly tried to have my kids secretly baptized, was obviously thrilled.) and to make our marriage sacramentally valid- a process called "Convalidation." This led to my husband being confirmed in the Church. All over the course of one grace-filled year. Buckets, and Buckets, and Buckets of grace, as our priest at that time likes to remind us.

During that time, we were either abandoned, outright shunned, or given a freezing cold shoulder by well-meaning protestant friends who were completely bewildered as to how two such Spirit-filled, Bible-loving, Jesus-freak people could go and not only join a Church which was clearly "unbiblical" but believe in it's Truth.
Most of our conversations at that time started with "Well, yes, Catholics can be saved and of course you have to go where God calls you, yes and amen. Oh wait, WHAT? You believe the Catholic Church is THE Church?? You're OK with this whole Mary thing??? Sister, I will pray for you to come back to the TRUTH. You are caught up in idolatry. What? You won't repent? I bind the evil spirit of religion in you in the name of Jesus!" Etc etc etc.

At playdates, our old, familiar friends would stare uncomfortably at our newly erected Family altar complete with a statue of the blessed mother. They would stare at the new Crucifixes in our home and say "those always made me sad. Don't people know Jesus isn't ON the Cross anymore? He is risen!" Little by little through awkward moments like these we became totally alienated from our wonderful family of friends in Christ. BUT we knew that this, like all things, would pass. As painful as it was, God used the opportunity to build us as a family and gave us a new Church family and a true season of bonds of love and unity with the Brethren. It was marvelous. At the same time, it was humiliating and painful- we owed apologies to many people who we had condemned with great zeal and gusto. We owed apologies to the Blessed Mother and to the Holy Trinity. We were humbled before our family, who we had self-righteously judged and found guilty.

It was during this time that I sought to "get involved" in the Church in ways I had served before. Never wanting to be only a taker, I tried to find simple ways to serve that fit with my spiritual gifts. I also looked at different third orders. Dominicans were teachers.. and though I was technically also a bible Teacher, I didn't feel that their spirituality fit with mine. Salesians left me indifferent. Opus Dei I found too rigid and a little strange. Works of charity weren't my "thing," so Franciscans were out of the question. My entire Christian service and all of my spiritual gifts centered around warfare prayer, intercession, and a deepening understanding of God's Word alive in my heart. I was strongly drawn to the spirituality of my aunt's order- The Little Sisters of Jesus. But since I couldn't be a nun, I didn't know how to live their type of love. It was in reading the blog of another brother who loved Blessed Charles de Foulcauld that I discovered Carmel- and when I realized that Carmel held the promise of a life lived inflamed by the Holy Spirit for me. It was reading a definition of Carmelite Spirituality by Edith Stein which solidified it for me, and shortly thereafter I sent a letter to the Raleigh OCDS community, asking for the requirements to be admitted. I already lived a life of prayer, zeal, and hunger for spiritual things. I desired, above all, perfect Union with God. I had a missionary spirit, but the only mission given me had always been: to pray.

The first meeting left me puzzled-- I found there a group of men and women, mostly much, much older, and what basically amounted to a book study group. Sure, I liked the books they were studying and I found the intellectual material discussed fascinating, but did I really want to make such a serious commitment to a group of older people who liked to read together? But at the end of the meeting we shared a half hour of mental prayer, and together prayed the liturgy of the hours in the church, and my heart melted. I had the strongest feeling that I was "home."
Over time, I came to understand that what happened at the monthly meeting was mostly for the purpose of fellowship and support and training, but that the walk of each Carmelite was a very solitary one, one in which God moved each soul as He pleased and in ways that, though we understood, we could never SHARE. Carmel is basic training for the soul who longs for God. It is the Spirit who moves us.... we need only cooperate.

My first steps into St Teresa's work and St John of the Cross' work left me intregued, but resistant- Teresa's writing style was so poor that I had a hard time taking her seriously and John's ideas seemed extreme and impractical. But then I discovered Mariam, the Little Arab, and through her I learned to love a life of sacrifice and detachment. While going through yet another tough time related to our search for sustaining work and our confusion and anxiety over our ever growing family, I began to see the pools of Divine wisdom in Mariam's echoes of her Holy Father and Mother: "I desire to suffer much, and not to die, I should add: this is not my will, it is my inclination. It is sweet to think of Jesus; but it is sweeter to do His will. " she said. "Always remember to love your neighbor; always prefer the one who tries your patience, who test your virtue, because with her you can always merit: suffering is Love; the Law is Love."
Suffering well was wisdom? I had found the sure path to the Cross!

Over time, Wayne and I again began to crave that "perfect" worship we were seeking. No longer satisfied just to be called Catholic, we wanted to see "Catholic" things in our everyday experience. We found so much progressive drivel in the Parishes around us it became hard to see if we had made the right choice-- the "True Faith" was indeed there before us, in the Eucharist, in God's people, in the Holy Father, in official Church statements... but where was it in the Parish? Watered down, meaningless mush was replacing the tradition we had "come home" to find. We practically had to teach Wayne's RCIA class for them. Every tradition was reduced to a cheesy, liberal sensory experience, and all the awe and reverence for the Eucharist had vanished.

Our priest was transferred and with him went the last shred of hope we had that our Parish would take a radical turn towards the practice of Earnest, no holds-barred Traditional Catholicism. Everywhere we looked, Parishes were trying to conform to some weird mold instead of remaining pure and undefiled. Many of them were attempting to draw in protestants or to be LIKE protestants in their appearance, in their "style" of worship. Instead of the gregorian chant and the latin we had expected, we were met with refrains of kumbaya and dorky guitar. Instead of the bells and insense, we found female lectors dressed as men and altered scripture readings to accomodate feminism. Instead of glorious buildings created to worship God, we found weird new age art with vaguely Christian themes and creepy decorations. Everything we had been told in the Catechism was true, but it seemed as if no one was interested in shouting that truth from the rooftops. Rather, priests and people acted as if that Truth were something to be embarrassed or quiet about, keeping it under wraps under the guise of "Charity" towards those who were without. We even began to meet priests who struggled with disbelief in what we considered the fundamentals of the faith. Something was very wrong.

We prayed. We searched for answers. We wondered why the Holy Father didn't act. We listened to the arguments of ultra traditionalists and schismatics and found them flawed-- nearly perfect, but always with the twist of a slightly protestant spirit. We believed that what we were seeing happen was a Satanic plan in action. We saw the satanic fruit in our parishes. But at the same time, we knew that these things "have to come to pass." We knew that the Bible, and Mary, had warned us many times of these very occurances, and told us how desperate these early End Times would become. We learned also that time for God is very different from time for us. While we suffered greatly at the 'changes' we were impatient with the responses, not recognizing that it can take hundreds of years to right a wrong.

In a very difficult moment, we simultaneously found ourselves alienated from the Catholic support system which we had built around us, and fully immersed in our love of the Church and faith in it.
Our ceaseless questioning and demonstrations of inconsistensies bothered our Catholic friends and family ecause they had grown up completely obedient to the Church, not discerning or thinking for themselves but rather accepting the teachings of the Magesterium at face value, because they were the magesterium. My husband especially has a prophetic gift and we were practically begging whoever would listen to repent and turn to God.
Over and over we were told that these men, that made up the Magesterium, could not err... they were "far more learned" than any of us and thus knew better than any of us how things should be done. Wayne and I could not accept this-- scripture is clear that it is the Holy Spirit who reveals truth to even the most unlearned of men, and that "good" theology is accessible to the lowest of the low.

This opinion wasn't shared by those of our friends and family who preferred either NOT to think about it, or who simply weren't preoccupied with coming to perfect Truth- who were satisfied in their daily walks. They complained about "the way things were" but not enough to make a ruckus in the Parish or to actually move and shake things up to the point of making a lasting change.

Thus they were intellectually upset by us, and we had to cease bringing these philosophical questions to them, as it was causing angst and annoyance. It wasn't that we felt the Church wouldn't stand up to our questioning. We knew she could.

Rather, we were practically BEGGING those we expected to have answers to stand up and announce them, lest others like us turn away from the Truth because of what they encountered in the flesh. We knew we would be Catholic all of our days, because it was true and right. But we couldn't find a way to explain what we were seeing around us that paraded as Catholicism. We knew our protestant brothers and sisters would never make it home until what they FOUND in the local Parishes was as consistent and untainted by the world as what they found in the pages of the catechism.

Our biggest marital struggle at this point been in the realm of family unplanning. Morally, we understand and agree with the Theology of the Body, and the teachings of the Church. Logistically, we can not afford even the children we already have. Practically, we have done all we can to avoid having children....not only abstaining during fertile periods but, out of sheer terror that we "might" get pregnant again anyways, abstaining virtually all the time. The few times we HAVE enjoyed the marital embrace, regardless of situation, cycle, etc, we have gotten pregnant. Which has caused us extensive grief and incredible difficulties. At the same time, we both absolutely love our children, children in general, and readily acknowledge that it is through the experience of having and raising children that our Faith has become "authentic" and tangible. We mourn the passing days in which our babies turn to "grown ups" and increasingly desire to have more babies. We lament the fact that we are "open to life" but prevented from creating life with purpose and wonder why God would give two people a love of large families but no ability to support even a small family. It is a mystery, but God knows what He is doing. Meanwhile, we continue to wrestle with each passing opportunity, knowing that it is true that children will simultaneously be our blessings and our cross. With that, we are satisfied--
It gives us a deeper understanding of the Glory of THE Cross.

Another struggle has been to understand our role as Christians in the realm of spiritual warfare. We had always understood our roles to be as pivotal and necessary in "proclaiming liberty to the captives" in Christ. I grew up around hauntings and bizarre paranormal occurances, and I later was delivered of several demons on two separate occasions through prayers of the faithful. As I grew in my Christianity, I shared what I knew with others around me and found that there was a whole hurting part of the world which needed Christ proclaimed to them-- people who were marginalized and alienated because of the very nature of what they were dealing with: Non Christians cast them aside because what they experience is so bizarre, and irrational. Often they are called liars or simply "crazy." Christians alienate them because they are afraid or because they assume that this person is only demonized because of some sin they will not let go of, and thus they are judged, tormented and eventually driven to the edges of sanity, to suicide, to shells of a normal life. I enjoy ministering to people like this because I understand them... many of them, like me, had no idea that there was a spiritual reality far greater than anything they could see or understand around them at work.
Most of them didn't ask for these terrifying experiences, they simply came. And their foundations were shaken.
I knew that God was calling me to help these people.

At first, I created an official sounding ministry name and set up a website. People came from all directions, and via phone, email or in person I prayed with people and walked them through steps of deliverance. When we returned to the Church, I submitted my ministry to the priests I knew and offered to be of assistance to them. This went on for some time.
As I grew increasingly busy with running a family, I found that to my dismay even though I was the "expert" in deliverance ministry and my husband- more often than not- learned from me, he was the one who was available to assist people in person and I was constrained to the house where "all I could do" was pray. Many a night I lamented and looked with great sadness at my children, who were "holding me back" from being there when he was engaged in battle at some poor tormented soul's home.

God, in fact, knew my weaknesses and helped me to overcome my own pride and desire to be recognized as a minister of the gospel, reminding me of what He wanted me to hold onto: the important work of Prayer and the necessity of humility. In deliverance work, we must depend on God alone and not on our strength... it is very dangerous. God didn't want me to think I knew what I was doing. He wanted me to turn to Him constantly for every step of the prayer journey.

Once I understood that my calling was to remain hidden and pray, all the grandiose ideas I had had about being a successful, famous couple with our own ministry went out the window. There would be no booksales, no speaking tours. No. We would be a family who prayed, and that was enough.

As pathetic as this sounds, the difficulty in this has been tremendous for me. In the protestant environment, fame is a sure demonstration of success. I do believe that God has given me particular spiritual gifts, namely the gift of discernment and the gift of exorcism, that cause me to be hyper-aware of whatever spiritual reality is around us. However, as a faithful Catholic, I must obey the magesterium, who at this time when Satan has been given practically free reign has also asked that priests AND laypersons refrain from directly addressing Satan and his demons, and thus have essentially tied our hands behind our back. However, when we are weak, then He is strong, and God has shown His might and his mercy for these people who suffer demonic torment. I continue to pray for them and for priest exorcists daily, and offer up small sacrifices for them throughout the day. Amazingly, this has proven to be far more effective and make much more of a difference than when I had a "team" and a platform and a business card. God knows what he's doing.

God has also been teaching us profound lessons about obedience...a subject rarely taught in protestant circles and thus not one we were familiar with. Through obedience, we discovered, it was easy to know what was the will of God in the moment. For instead of taking God's will to be whatever we desired, it became easy to see how He planned to sanctify us through obedience even unto suffering, even when it wasn't what our flesh desired, even unto death. Through this understanding of obedience and armed with a healthy Carmelite understanding of detachment, we were then plunged back into the darkness in which faith was our only light. My husband in his own darkness is trying to find his way into some type of career or way to provide for the family God keeps enlarging for him. Me? I had aspired to be a good wife, and a good mother, and a good Carmelite... a woman of prayer. I thought I had finally come to "the near-end" of this journey, that things would quiet down and I could get down to the business of being done with searching my soul.

However, among these lessons about obedience was the hardest one of all: Through a series of interactions with my confessor and with my husband, I came to see that I had been using Carmel as that last great stronghold and fortress for my pride, self-importance and as a shelter from the suffering and difficulty of my primary vocation as wife and mother. For it is no easy task to be a wife and homeschooling mother when your personality seeks nothing but quiet, silence, and personal time with God.

The two things my confessor has asked of me, and which I have taken the beginning steps to obey, are (1) To remove even the THOUGHT of Carmel from my head and heart. Though I very likely do have a vocation to Carmel, I am to act and think as though I had none. In this way,he hopes, my soul will be saved and I will grow in love as I submit to the Cross which God has sent me.... a cross which is as sweet as it is painful, which is to put my family before myself.

(2) I am to take the motto which many a saint have taken before me: Look like everyone else on the outside.... but be like no one else on the inside.
The first was like dying a small death. At the same time as I was called to leave Carmel my son was given a grim diagnosis which would make him quite a challenge to raise, and I discovered that I was pregnant, the fear and angst over which probably caused the miscarriage I subsequently suffered.

The second was another death for me...I also suffered great humiliation in that as vocal as I had been in public about veiling and being "different" for Christ, I was now being asked to, instead, "be all things for all people."

In other words, I was going to be a normal mother, hidden away with no distinctive features that made me interesting or particularly special (other than my ordinary traits that make me "me.") It was going to be tough, and I wasn't going to have any crutches-- God alone was going to be my strength because no one else could know what it was like to go through and I was to embrace this because through this and this alone would I find HIM.

And so, dear friends, as painful as it is to write this...here it is. And strangely, it fills me with perfect peace and even joy because I know it is for the good of my soul. I stand before you, now--naked, nameless, lost and identity-less, plain, ordinary and totally amazed. Many, many years ago, my then-pastor, a dear soul named Britt Merrick, told me that if I thought I was getting into a cruise ship by responding to grace with an act of my will, I was crazy.
"No way, sister," he laughed. "Christianity is no cruise ship. It's a rowboat!"

I thank God for this precious rowboat, for these perfect oars, and for the wind of His Holy Spirit by which He will lift me up and guide me along long after the oars are lost and the boat is smashed against a rock.
May John of the Cross, who has led me this far, lead me straight into the arms of my Lord Jesus.