The third bridge to cross was Confession. “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.Īnother great mystery cleared up. “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?” To my Protestant mindset, this praying to statues was wrong.
Then there was the question of praying to the saints. Even the men who couldn’t hold a tune to save their lives would grunt along!Īfter he’d stopped laughing, he said, “If you want to sing in this congregation, you’d better join the choir.” I came from Protestant congregations where we belted it out along with the organ. I once timidly approached Father Peter to ask if Catholics weren’t allowed to sing. Mine is the latter one, although I’m fascinated by the Desert Saints.
It took years before I discovered there were two Saint Anthonys! So be it. I said that as the brother I most closely related to was called Anthon. Sister Barbara: “Who do you pick as your patron saint?” Some incidents from those early years are stuck in my memory bank. Thanks, Heaven, for the great equalizer- Catholic School uniforms! And for a warm and loving principal, Sister Kathleen. She looked different, spoke differently, and dressed differently. My daughter returned to the States and enrolled in the local Catholic school. And the stories she told about her life as a novice had me in stitches. She was as “un” nun-like as it was possible. My sponsor, Sister Barbara, was a nun who had spent a goodly time in Belgium as well. “Why don’t you attend RCIA and see how you like it?” he said. I wanted to know more about his coping mechanisms. He knew what I missed and how terribly difficult it was adapting to life in the States. Of tiny cups of coffee and a dainty Speculoos biscuit served at a table on the sidewalk. But that day, for me, he once again used his gift. Years later, I learned he’d done healing but stopped as he aged. A great calm came over me, and my whole body relaxed and settled. His hands were warm, comforting, and healing. He walked over and placed one hand on my forehead and the other behind my head. “You don’t know me, and I’m not a Catholic, but I need help.” I was so desperate, I picked up the phone the minute our call ended. Why don’t you go and talk to him?” Father Peter She listened to me, then said, “There’s a Catholic priest in your town that spent fifteen years in Belgium. I had a major meltdown on the phone about how I hated being in the States. I got a call from a mutual friend who lived in a distant state and had watched the circus unfold. My family was in South Africa, and I drove my poor brother crazy with incessant tearful calls.
It would be difficult, but I decided to return to Spain. In front of us was a peaceful beach scene. The final touch was waking and finding myself hovering above the bed, looking down on my husband and me. Night after night, strange wraith-like phenomena would come floating through the window. Or my bedside lamp would change shape and become a threatening bent-over figure wearing a coolie hat to obscure its features. I’d wake up and see someone with a knife standing over my husband. My self-confidence was in tatters, and I started having panic attacks and nightmares. Neighbors and friends all knew what had happened. The scenario I stepped into on arrival in the States was as bad as I’d expected. Quietly, inexorably, God was working behind the scenes. 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. My house would be there, my dogs (super-important) the life I’d created for myself. I could always come back to Spain if I wished. Why should I? I wasn’t the one who’d left this marriage for someone else?įriends told me to think of it as a holiday. “Come to the States?”Įverything in me screamed, no! I was hurt, humiliated, and resentful. Not really a picture of family unity, I know. He lived in Belgium, finally returning to the United States. My husband and I had been separated for two long years. I arrived in the United States to a marriage in tatters. And that’s when I converted to Catholicism.
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