Here We Are

Well, well well.

In five days I'll be confirmed in the Catholic church. What a totally bizarre thing.

There's a part of me that feels like I'm sleepwalking through this, another part of me that feels swept along "inexorably", as author and Evangelical-turned-Catholic Thomas Howard writes, and yet another part of me is fully making the choice and ready for it all to be settled and done with.

I'm having such a rapid shift in my thinking right now; so many theological pieces are falling into place. It's a thought process that I never dreamed could happen, nor happen so fast.

In all this I am finding a need to protect my emotional and spiritual privacy... an uncharacteristic pattern for me. I write a lot more in my personal journal these days, and talk less. Train time every morning and evening is good time for reading Scripture and helpful books, and praying with my pen, as I am wont to do. I feel in many ways like I am alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, and I want it that way.

But I had a very happy divine coincidence this morning. A Catholic acquaintance, who used to attend the same church I did when I lived in San Francisco, reached out to me and told me her story. First she sent an email which nearly dropped my jaw - describing some of her last-minute anguish with theological integrity and public affirmations - hard stuff that nearly derailed her and nearly derailed me as well. It was wonderful to read her prayerful solution, which was nearly word-for-word what mine had been. It's a good God we serve. Anyway, she and I had coffee this afternoon, and discovered a whole slew of correlations... it was good encouragement for both of us, and a big confirmation for me, if you will, that I was on the right track.

Tonight I attended my first RCIA meeting... the usual Catholic program for people coming into the church. I don't have to go, since I was privately "prepared", but I want to attend for the sake of fellowship and learning bits and pieces that I wouldn't get otherwise. Now that the pressure's off!

It was very emotional for me. I used to lead a group like that... when I lived in Vancouver and attended an Anglican church. It was the strangest deja vu feeling... suddenly here I was in the seeker's chair, me, who has been a solid Christian all her life. What in the world... But I'm glad I had that feeling, because now I really know how it feels to be that seeker. It's not easy. And yet it felt very confident, because my decision had already been made.

I opened up the weekly church bulletin to see what holy days and saints' days are this week, and it hit me squarely between the eyes. Saint Michael and the other Archangels have their day today - I regularly call on the protection of St. Michael against spiritual warfare. Wednesday is the day for St. Therese of Lisieux, my confirmation namesake...and Saturday is my day: the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. It's hard to describe how surreal it was to see all that on paper and know that this is it - this is the time that was planned back in the summer and here we are. It's scary, good, nuts, you name it. What am I doing??? Help! It's worse than getting married. And the spiritual warfare has been terrible too - which several Catholics predicted and I was very unprepared for, because it truly struck where I was vulnerable, and in a way that had me cautious to even name it as warfare. Which of course only makes it worse.

Well, this morning my Scripture reading touched on several themes, one of which was boldness. Boldness is what I need:

The wicked flee when no one is pursuing,
But the righteous are as bold as lion. ~ Proverbs 28:1

On the day I called, You answered me;
You made me bold with strength in my soul. ~ Psalm 138:3

And another verse the Lord has been affirming for me since Friday:

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
O Lord, hear my voice! ~ Psalm 130:1

I prayed it out loud in a really frustrating morning, then sat down on the train and discovered that I'd read it in my devotions the morning prior. Then on Sunday evening I went to my Evangelical fellowship, and Christy was teaching on that exact verse. She told me later that she'd only chosen it on the fly that very morning, when she had to sub for her husband who was called away on an emergency. We decided the Lord was definitely speaking! As I told her, it made me think of the meaning of the name Samu-el:

"God hears."

Thanks be to God, who daily bears our burdens.