Journey Home - 2017-12-18 - Lorelei Savaryn

[Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program and once a win once again EWTN gives me this great privilege to join you to hear a story of someone's conversion a deeper walk with Jesus Christ or a fulfillment of her walk with Jesus Christ as she discovered the Catholic Church our guest is Lorelei sovereign i Julie said we she just mentioned all the churches that she wasn't a part of but she has a long journey former Baptist's and was of God Nazarene and Lutheran but Lorelei welcome to the journey home from Wisconsin mm-hmm I'm so happy to be here well good let me get out of the way and invite you to start us on the journey okay well as an infant I was baptized into the Catholic Church oh yes which is a bit of a surprising beginning for me I was not raised Catholic though my parents my family is on both sides have been Catholic my parents had me baptized I have vague memories of my brother also being baptized but we didn't go to Mass we didn't practice the faith the first time that my family started really delving into Christianity was when I was about five years old and we started attending a Nazarene Church in Green Bay Wisconsin and they started taking their faith seriously we started going to church on a regular basis so I had that little gift far before I knew what was going to be coming you know when I think about that part of the world I think of a lot of Scandinavian immigrants German immigrants a lot of Catholic groups so as what would you say then your background work yeah the traditionally Catholic from their heritage German Irish so both sides of the family so they were Catholic and family but not in practice yeah I'm not sure and then I go to Nazareth oh yeah it was a huge jump I'm not sure how many generations back the most devout of my family were but I know that my grandma and my dad's side was Catholic and my grandpa still Catholic and that side so yes so Nazarene it was a very Nazarene I saw was about fundamentalist I mean to the neighbor bring your family over to the church it was my uncle my family was visiting his family and they attended a Nazarene Church and my mother really liked it and wanted to find one near us and there was so that's the earliest point that my family practice anything together it's also where I came to know Jesus as my savior from a very early age even in those years when my family didn't attend anywhere I was drawn to the idea of Jesus and to Jesus there was that Tom Petty song free falling and there's a line in there that says she loves Jesus in America too and I really enjoyed that song because something about Jesus was really appealing to me and was something I was drawn to so we went to the Nazarene Church and I remember I still have the little card that they have you fill out when you pray the sinner's prayer and invite Jesus into your heart I don't think necessarily that was the moment I became a Christian I believed I was a Christian from the moment I understood what it meant to be one but I do have the official card and it was very literal Bible interpretation there were years where I didn't even listen to secular music because Christian music was the thing that was morally okay it was a church with a lot of heart small but that is where my faith journey I think officially started when I understood what the gospel was and what Jesus did to me did you understand that day when you came forward to accept Christ be in that Nazarene environment as kind of a one once always saved or did you understand it as no now I'm to live my life in holiness so that's been a bit of a journey for me as well it was very much the once saved always saved it's a one-time decision you get all the grace at once and that was something that as I moved into my adulthood ended up becoming an issue for me and as part of what led me here it was that saved always saved didn't end up fitting with my life experience that I had later on okay but you got out of the out of the gates in in love with Christ and a sense of having arrived though with all the disciplines though of the Nazarene Church mm-hmm yes and then my parents got divorced when I was about 12 and so church became less of a family affair my father still attended my mom didn't for a while so I started in high school going to a friend of mine went to an assembly of God youth group and the church that I was at the Nazarene Church we had a youth program but it was very small and there weren't a large number of people at the same life stages me that I could spend time with there were a few but it was just small and I went to the Assembly of God youth group and it was a volleyball night and there were tons of young people and tons of adults volunteering and I really enjoyed it so I started going to the youth group at the Assembly of God Church at that time and that was a beautiful part of my faith journey as well the adults that volunteered and worked with us were amazing and my faith grew a lot I've I've been a singer since I could talk almost and I started leading worship at the Nazarene Church when I was 12 or 13 and then I joined the youth group worship team at the Assembly of God Church so that's sort of a thread as well that came through did you see your shift from Nazarene to Assembly of God as a theological shift at all or relieved with just Jesus and family did the community and and the support group there yeah it was I was at a point in my life where I thought the only difference between different churches in the Protestant Rome at least was worship style I didn't have any idea I knew Catholics are different but didn't really know exactly what I just knew I thought they were a little odd and I thought it was mostly worship style I knew the Assemblies of God focus more on talking in tongues and a bit more of the charismatic side of things but my Nazarene Church had a little bit of a charismatic bent to it in some ways too so and no one ever really pressured me to talk in tongues or anything that was never a gift I felt I had so other people did but it didn't faze me I knew it was something that people could have that gift but mostly I thought it was just worship style and then I started attending the Sunday church at Assembly of God as well on my own just because my family had sort of split and that led me to college and I went to college at a Lutheran College ELCA affiliated and that was really the first time that I started seeing that there were a lot of people who lived with different worldviews than me and different ideas I had a wonderful group of friends in high school we a lot of us went to church a couple Catholic friends who came to the youth group but they went to Mass with their families on Sunday and it was a very like-minded group of kids which was very encouraging I had a wonderful high school experience but then in college there are a lot of people living without any sort of a faith background and the Lutheran Church that was there as a pastor I went to the church service one time and he did the forgiveness he said I forgive you of your sins and that was one of the first times I was very confused because I thought God was the only one who could forgive you of your sins and why was this pastor saying that he was forgiving us of our sins and because the Luthor's are little they kept some of those some of those things so I met with him and I thought I would just be able to explain to him there's no reason that this was not something that we do and he pulled out the Bible and he showed me the passage about whatever you bind on earth will be bound and loose on earth will be loosed in heaven and he said he had the authority to do that and it was very upsetting to me and confusing to me because it was one of the first times I realized well we don't all think the same on most things and then I joined a Bible study there and I met some wonderful friends in that Bible study but the leader of the Bible study was another student at the college and she was talking about the feeding of the 5,000 and she said how it would still have been a miracle even if Jesus didn't actually multiplied the loaves and fishes but if people just started feeling generous and pulling out all the food they had hidden away and I was from a very literal interpretation of the Bible and it was shocking to me that someone would sink it wasn't literally that so those were just little Inklings and little hints of questions starting to pop up that didn't resurface fully until later on right right well and there's an example of meeting Christians not just whose understanding the Christian faith is so different but were their lives living not Christian were the obedience to Jesus as Lord or just a custom yeah and there was a lot of a lot of kids in college as many do dropping the faith entirely in experiencing life just as it was and trying to sort out what they thought having been just released from their homes of their parents and on their own so there was a lot of searching there our guest is Lorelai sovereign so I don't want it the name of the cat of the Lutheran College we don't want to say that was it how do I say this Lutheran a name only sort of I felt that it was very loosely Lutheran yeah so as my journey ended up going on later to the lcms Church I learned a lot more about Lutheranism in its core so through that Bible study I met a friend who I went to go visit that summer and her boyfriend who's now her husband brought his friend along with him to spend time with us for the evening and hang out in the Twin Cities and his name was JP which stands for John Paul and he was cute and he was nice and I really liked him and I came home from that trip and I told my mom I said mom I'm a really nice guy but he's Catholic and my mom thankfully thought nothing of it she's very Oh minded but that was a real concern to me and that I've still I still to this day try and figure out where I picked up anti-catholic tendencies and I can't pinpoint a specific thing someone said but I think it was little things over the course of the years that gave me pause with that Catholics and their relationship with Mary having something else other than the Bible on equal playing field with it Sola scriptura right confession why did they have to talk to anyone other than God to forgive their sins purgatory was very weird for me so I start dating John Paul and I didn't know what then what I was in for it but in the best way possible but he grew up in a very very strong huge Catholic family and they are lovely and most of them are very passionate about the faith and I met them shortly into our dating relationship and we didn't get too much into theology right away but I met his family we went on a ski trip with several of his cousins and there's all five or six kids and we go in this ski trip they're all so nice there's so many of them but then as the evening drew to a close they all gathered for prayer and they started praying into this day it could have been the Divine Mercy it could have been a novena it could have been something but it was very unfamiliar to me they all knew what to say all the words and I'm sure they wanted me to join them but I I'm also sure that they had no idea how weird that was for me for as a Protestant we didn't say recited prayers all at the same time we've definitely didn't invoke the Saints and there were a lot of things that they were praying that I was very nervous about so I went and I hid in the bathroom upstairs and I cried because I just thought they just assumed that the dinner had not gone with you very well I just figured they wouldn't notice of all their eyes are closed but and I laugh about that now because it's hilarious but they really didn't know having grown up in the Catholic faith they didn't know that that would be so weird to me at all so that was my introduction into the big Catholic family you really point out two interesting things on the one hand you're saying that the majority of those Catholics were kind of oblivious to how their practice of the faith would appear to non Catholics on the other hand you kind of wonder where did this anti-catholicism come from within you and it's a part of our culture that a vast majority of non Catholic Americans just just believe somewhere along the line that nobody in their right mind would be a Catholic and so we have two groups of people that really did not understand one another exactly and you were living it yes it was so intense and his aunts are some of the sweetest lady is but one ant in particular would talk to me at these family gatherings and she would try and be a witness to the faith for me and I loved it looking back her passion but it was also sort of the idea of I had no idea where they were coming from it also when she talked to me one time about why Mary had to be ever-virgin I had never heard of that I had no idea I just had no context for it and she was trying to explain it but I wasn't even I didn't even know that was an existing saying I didn't know there was a connection to the history of the Church of that it just seemed out of left field to me and when I was babysitting in high school I babysat for a Catholic family and the little boy came home one day from Catholic school and he told me that Mary she was born without sin and I looked at him and I said no she was born with sin she was born with sin and he said no we learned in school day she was born without sin and I honestly thought he had misheard his teacher I didn't know Catholics believed that until even later I thought it was a young boy I miss hearing his teacher and didn't know so so these things are coming the ants are talking to me and my father-in-law we were visiting the family and I heard him tell if he just hang in there she'll come around and I was so mad no I'm not coming around any and I think for me it was a little tricky because I wanted them to know that my faith was valid and sincere and they did we got there where I felt like they understood and respected my Christian faith and that was a nice place to be it but all the while they're secretly praying for me on the side and I'm going about my merry way and so Dave he didn't know you were thinking I'm gonna get JP to come around anyway sure was and so we got married at this time I wasn't very connected in my college years to any one particular church and my husband went to st. Norbert College in deep here Wisconsin so we actually had a Catholic wedding I went to our CIA prior to us getting married and I was having none of it I wasn't open to it I don't think I went in with the right attitude I don't know I wasn't committed to giving things a fair shot I thought I was but I really wasn't so we got married in the Catholic Church we just had a liturgy only wedding but I had another little gift I didn't even know I had and we actually looked back we've been married for 10 years now we looked back at our wedding video this year and the priest who did our wedding is my stepdads brother who is now a Monsignor but the whole homily for the wedding was theology of the body and it went right over my head it was about free fruitful you know all of those things and it went right over my head then but I sure didn't this time around when we watched it so so that was another just gift having that sacrament and not even knowing what a gift it was at the time we did the whole survey he'd take before you get married and talked about our issues and we knew that face was going to be a challenge for us in our marriage we knew that that was something that we hadn't yet figured out what that was going to look like for us so for the first two years of our marriage I prayed for unity and we sometimes went to two services JP would go to Mass sometimes I go with them sometimes I wouldn't and I would go to at that time it was kind of a nondenominational church and sometimes he would come with and we realized that that wasn't going to be sustainable long term because we were going to have children and what were they gonna think how are we gonna raise them telling them we worship the same God but that our churches we couldn't go to the same church together so that was very difficult for us we fought a lot about that and I was very aggressive looking back I pulled out the Bible and in my English NIV translation I said but don't you see it says that Mary didn't have union with Joseph until Jesus was born the word until means that she did she did at some point and I'm reading the NIV English translation without any understanding of historical context for that belief and he didn't even though he was raised in the church he didn't know enough to our argue back or two to at least give evidence back for things so I chipped away at him for a while and that's the sad part of our story for me to look back on because I didn't know what I was doing and he didn't know what he was about to leave he didn't understand the gift that he had so in that sense you have Catholics that are not really prepared to defend them their faith but in your sense your scriptural mm-hmm so you're using the tool that both sides uses if you probably know it a little better at least from your perspective yes I think throw that onto his plate he's not prepared for yeah he wasn't at that time he was sure would be now but he wasn't men so chipped away chipped away chipped away and I was looking at different denominations trying to figure out what we could do of this and I found the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and I found that I felt it had all the things or many of the things JP loved about the Catholic Church but did not have the things that I struggled with about the Catholic Church so in what was a very difficult separation from 4jp he stopped attending mass and we started attending Lutheran Missouri Synod Church together which for me was an answered prayer at the time and I still think obviously God's hand was in that whole thing but it was very difficult for a GPS family for him to leave his uncle so one of his uncle's who was a his confirmation sponsor became a deacon and he would talk to JP at the family get-togethers and he'd say what are you doing and day if you would try and explain himself but we did have some semblance some shadow of unity and it wasn't as complete as it needed to be at that point but we were at least closer than we were I felt like I suppose God could have been using that as kind of a Waystation you know plays a peacefulness to at least you're not battling about the issue than so you can in a more peaceful setting than come forward as you go good2talk yeah yeah JP his family his dad and stepmom were very distraught about this so they went to talk to their priest and the priest encouraged them and he said well for Lorelai this is a step towards the Catholic Church and again I thought no it's not and that reassured them though that gave them peace about that phase for us so I in the Lutheran Church it still I love the people that are there beautiful heart to the congregation and I grew to appreciate certain things I grew to appreciate the liturgy and the more structured service I were to appreciate consubstantiation which is closer I always had an appreciation for more you were believing this is truly the body and blood of Christ we had a little bit different understanding you again brought closer to the Catholic Church that wasn't an issue for me I could see why that would be the case and communion was always something that meant a lot to me I could be brought to tears at communion at different phases of my life even in the Protestant church when it was considered to be entire symbolic so we had that that gift as well of understanding some of those things we went to some holy week services one year and I loved they started on Thursday the Maundy Thursday of darkness and I appreciated the incorporation of the senses into understanding the truths of our faith so it was beautiful we joined the worship we had a contemporary service so husband played guitar and I sang there as well so that thread sort of continued and they they were lovely and still some very very dear friends of ours but then we moved well we actually had so we had a baby in there as well the baby has come into play obviously was that experience for 4jp and enriching of his faith hmmm going to the Lutheran yeah I think he was searching at that time for where he was going to land I think he had so maybe of the unhealthy tendencies and Catholicism that he developed in his youth a little bit of guilt and struggling to feel forgiven and so in some ways I think it was good for him to have sort of a reset time things that come at it from a fresh actually moving you have a baby yeah we had a baby and so it's felicity and she got baptized as an infant that was never an issue we went to the Lutheran Church that we had been to and brought her back and had her baptized and kind of swam around in Lutheranism for a little while but we moved to the area that we live now and there weren't very many young vibrant lcms congregations so once Tierra Protestants a little easier to slide a little further down the line so this enters into a relatively dark period 4jp and my faith life we had started living more as agnostics and going to church because it was what we did and this is a hard part for me to talk about too because I was still leading worship at we were at a First Christian Church then and I was leading worship and singing these songs and wondering if it was all a fairy tale I had some serious doubt come into play there and it wasn't necessarily because of that church I think it was because I had grown out of the faith of my childhood and I was an adult and I was hoping that there was something to this thing I had committed to that it wasn't just fluff that there was depth to it and meat to it and something that I could hold on to throughout my adult life but I wasn't sure that there was because I was at churches at that point whose statement of faith one or two pages long very short and there was the idea of in the essentials unity and the rest liberty and all things love it's a beautiful sentiment but how do we know what's essential essential how do we know that because I had known enough at that point in time to know that not every church defines essential the same way so we have baptism is it essential or is it not essential what what specifics of the gospel do you have to believe in to be saved and that once saved always saved or is it not and so all these things were very difficult and we were very much cultural Christians for a while and that's still very difficult it was an authentic of me to continue leading worship when I wasn't sure if I believed in the faith still or not TS Eliot once said that the way up and the way down are one and the same you know what he talks about that meaning that sometimes the dark time is not just you but it's our Lord back in a way a bit to see what what do you believe mm-hmm really giving you the opportunity to challenge what you've come to believe so it's a way of him drawing you upward by making you feel downward mhm yeah I felt like I was on the edge of a cliff and either I was gonna let go of this Christian faith and not pretend I believed it when I didn't or I was going to find out if this was real then I needed to live like it was real because I wasn't living like it was where you would have been able to tell me different from anyone I wasn't not a awful person but that was another thing with the church is that we were going to at the time they always have a little moment to think about your sins and ask God to forgive you but it was five ten seconds and usually during that time I was thinking oh well I think I'm doing okay I never there was no way to really examine your conscience and think about sin in my life and so I just kind of got brushed over so I'm on the edge of this cliff and I'm not sure which way especially those Christmas churches that if you kind of at least believe either really seriously or matter-of-factly that while I'm in Jesus so I'm okay that even if I sin well but I'm in Jesus and so pretty soon I know I'm here yeah yeah so why don't we take a break there there you are in the dark 90 or so yeah and we'll come back and I'm open and pick up on how the Holy Spirit wicked your heart to the fullness of a bit [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm your host Marcus Grodi and our guest is Lorelai sovereign I just wanted to mention that her conversion story all the details is printed in our December newsletter on the website WCH network.org and also mentioned that she's got a couple on-line presences herself a twitter is at Lorelai sovereign-debt spelled sa var yn and also she has of a blog site right WWH Affleck family dot-com ok I interrupted you in your journey there you are Missouri Synod Lutheran but oh no you're you're going to the first Christian Church but maybe the most significant step that happens for us all is when we start to realize wait what do I believe what I'm saying yeah do I believe what I'm singing do I believe what I'm telling everybody that's great divide between what's on the outside and what's going on in here yes and that was a very dark time of searching worried at times that maybe I even was a agnostic and my husband and I started we moved about a house and we started attending a Baptist affiliated church near us had a great children's program which was a big thing that we looked for at the time and we went to the membership class at that church and we were searching for all these questions we wanted depth were needing depth at this point and they drew that picture that they drove the cliffs the two cliffs and the cross fills the gap and when you convert you walk over over the cross to the other side and my husband stood up in the class and he said what about if you walk back over and you decide that you want to reject God later and they said you can't you don't do that it's the one it's one way and they said one Bible verse to give evidence to it out of context and that was it and we moved on it was very difficult for us and because again we're thinking is there anything more to this and at the same time I was starting to struggle with leading worship and feeling like at least in my heart that I was putting on more of a show than being reverent and were shipping god I didn't like that part of it I didn't like that side of things there was a big stage high-tech equipment and I'm all for beautiful worship and I love beautiful worship but my heart was in a bad spot and so we started getting those frustrations those questions I started wondering if the Church in America as we know it the Protestant churches that I'd been attending do we look anything like the first Christians that lived and who practiced our faith are we at all connected to the historical church it felt so divided for me they obviously have kept some things but do we look like the early church and I asked that at our small group one time I said what did the early church look like and no one knew and I thought what does no one know does anyone know what happened and shouldn't we know that and I started having this hunger for history and the unbeknownst to me at the time the year before my confirmation we didn't end up doing it but I had talked to my husband wanting to have a Seder meal for the Passover because I wanted this connection to history and I wasn't sure where to find it and also during that time we found out that the church that we were attending was very heavily Calvinist and we didn't know that through the membership class or anything that wasn't really brought up so that's a belief in predestination to the extent that some people are born predestined for heaven and some people are born predestined for Helen there's really nothing you can do about it and that really sat poorly with me as well because even in the other Protestant churches I was in God desired everyone so it was a more example of the differences for me and how people are coming to completely different conclusions so again I'm thinking well how do we know who's right how do I know that the pastor sitting in front of me is saying the right thing or interpreting things the right way how do I know and at the same time my husband I had dug in so I had read Tim Keller the reason for God and CS Lewis and my husband had been reading he was a postdoc at Northwestern they have a huge library they have a seminary there and they have tons of books and he was reading books and unbeknownst to me he started reading like books again and he was slowly feeling drawn back to the Catholic Church but he was very leery to tell me that because of how things had gone previously and so once we both did this intellectual search and we came to the conclusion that we believed Christianity we wanted to live our faith we were done playing pretend we were ready to go hit the ground running but in Calvinism there's a huge focus on the local church and an emphasis and I'm not sure if it's this way everywhere it was at least where we went on serving the local church it wasn't as much focused as other churches are even in Protestantism on serving the media in general the primary focus was to support your fellow Christians your fellow elect and we want it to be Jesus's hands and feet however it happened in silly small ways whatever it took we want to do that and we were met with a little bit of hesitation from that saying that well it's not a bad thing to do that but you don't have to do that and Jamie and I felt some dissonance with that yeah I think we have to do that I think we have to so all these things are building up inside of me and I'm thinking about how we live out our faith with what we do and that how that's evidence of our faith if it's a you know alive the fruit and I was sitting on my couch one winter night about two years ago from the taping of this and I thought oh dear I am thinking like a Catholic because I knew enough about the Catholic Church because of my husband's family and I had seen them enough to know that the Catholic Church has a huge heart for social justice and for reaching out to everyone who's in need and living out your faith in that way that your primary loyalty wasn't just to your Christian brothers and sisters that it was to the world that we are meant to be Jesus to the world and having having been a Calvinist I know one of the reasons is that there's a scripture passages that say come out from among them I don't want you know this idea of separating yourself from those that believe differently yeah how do you understand that who who helps you understand what that means to come out from that is I mean total rejection or does it mean to guard your faith but yet share it with them I mean it's yeah it was a very insular church community that we were part of it was very contained within itself so when we well I won't get there yet but when I told I told my husband we went on a date in December and I said JP would you like to go to Mass this weekend and he just about lost it he had no idea he had been praying he had been praying because he had wanted to go back because he realized too that his faith was real and that there was so much truth in the Catholic Church that he wanted to go home he was so scared to tell me he never thought those words would come out of my mouth so we found ourselves in Mass I messaged a friend of mine who was one of a couple Catholics that I knew I said where do you go to church so we showed up at st. Lucy's the next week and we told them we were interested in learning more and we got sent home with a pile of books about this high and it was it was amazing so we started going to RCA they let me join a little late especially given my background and then I had kind of been through it before and I was at the point where I thought okay I believe this is real but if this turns out to be nonsense if this turns out to be shallow and not logical then then I don't know I'm gonna be lost again I was also though going to go into RCA asking every single question about every single issue that I had because I had nothing to lose at that point I'd been almost everywhere I had seen almost everything and I hoped it would stand up and so I went in and I asked all the questions about all the things and one by one my misconceptions just started falling down well what would you see you at the looking back not just with hindsight but as looking back what was it that allowed you to hear the Catholic answer was it the authority of the church or was had you connected with the early church it was a whole combination of those things so the connection to history I knew that that was there more than anything else the connection to Judaism was there and the idea that you have to if you're Sola scriptura even if you're Sola scriptura you have interpret it correctly for it to be worth two bits you have to interpret it right so then I wasn't worried about the idea of the authority of the church because I started seeing the biblical evidence for establishing the church JP's Ouma used to always say to me on this rock I build my church and she was so cute and I didn't understand what that meant but we started listening to Scott Hahn had some tapes on the office of the Pope and how sanctification is applied and we are driving to Minnesota and I'm listening to these tapes as right after we started going to Mass and it just made so much sense it made so much sense and it was so deep and there was so much truth in that that your grace is it's a constant application throughout your whole life and your sanctification is a constant process throughout your whole life and that purgatory is an essence the completion of your sanctification we don't all die equally sanctified and there's no sin in heaven so it just made sense to me everything fit together and cross-checked with it itself and it was it was amazing so we fell in love quickly with on our on our way to becoming Catholic it was awesome very passionate about it because of my infant baptism my Catholic baptism in our Catholic marriage and everything I went to first confession and loved understanding that it's God who's forgiving me but he's using the hands and the free the feet of the priest to do it because the sacraments are these tangible visible ways for us to feel God's grace and love and we are a body and soul so we have these tangible things that help us connect to the spiritual reality and as a press and I never really spent a lot of time asking God for forgiveness but I don't know no one was talking back to me I don't know what's going on but going to confession was so beautiful and it was so healing and every time I've gone it's been so beautiful I love hearing that I'm forgiven audibly so it's just so much good happen so you and your husband he re-entered the church he went to RCA with me when he could because he wanted to get into it and know his stuff and after first confession we had permission to receive the Eucharist because of my baptism so it was a little before confirmation but we had it at our church brought up the gifts both just crying because I want from the first time I went to RCIA adoration was going on in a side room and I could see it and I felt drawn to it I want it in I want it in so bad and even though I still had tons of questions to ask I knew something big was going on in that room and it was something I wanted to part of and I had been so Restless and so frustrated and so unsure of where I was going to land that when I did land and started having these questions answered and these misconceptions taken care of and finding that there was the depth there there was no stopping me there was no stopping me at all I was so excited maybe a little too excited to some of my friends that we had to tell [Laughter] it was a very intense what would you say was the hardest barrier for you to get over I think the Sola scriptura was difficult initially until I started looking at it through the interpretive lens the idea of the sacrifice of the mass that wording is very difficult for a Protestant because we believe you don't hear it anywhere else right Jesus was sacrificed once for all it's finished end of story right but not really because we aren't Reese accra facing Jesus and the mass and when I started understanding Jewish history and how Jewish people when they're celebrating the Passover they believe that they are partaking again they're kind of leaving the bounds of time of partaking in that one-time passover event outside the bounds of time so when we are celebrating Mass we're not redoing what Jesus did but we believe like the Jewish traditions believe that we are separating from time and we are partaking in that single one-time event with Jesus and with the disciples with the Last Supper all of it's all separated from time because God's outside of time he's not bound by time it's always such a hard thing to describe to those outside but it's it's really why we call it the mystery yeah that's why we missed you the Trinity is a mystery the divinity of Christ fully God fully man is a mystery the body of Christ the church is a mystery you know one holy catholic apostolic yet it's got standards like you and me it's a mystery so was the the Eucharist yeah this wonderful mystery the idea of God being outside of time in us also joining with him and being outside of time in the mass to join in with that event you can't get more connected to the early church than the mass and the Eucharist because you're doing the same things you're participating in the same things so that I've I was home I was ready and we just had to tell our our church that we were leaving which was difficult to do this was a part of my story I've thought a lot about talking about but I think it's important because when I was converting and I read conversion stories that had a bit of a difficult time with the transition it was very encouraging to me during the times when it was lonely so we told people with excitement but we're not met with excitement and lost some friends and we were very connected socially to the church so our social network sort of dried up for a while and it takes a little while to get to know people in a Catholic parish it's not the same you don't stay after four Donuts all the time and you'll get plugged into a small group first Sunday you're there so we were in this bit of a waiting period where there was a lot of pain a lot of hurt and a lot of loneliness for the months leading up to in the months after confirmation but all that said it was still something we were so convicted of that even with those painful experiences and being told that we weren't Christian and that we never were that that was really difficult because if you're once saved always saved you if if you become not Christian then you never were genuinely Christian they're only answered to that you know it's a contradiction in itself yeah because then you can never really know for sure in their perspective explain it away so and the other thing I imagine was also frustration as it sometimes you go you tell Catholics and you're expecting them to do back flips because you're the church's sometimes it's no big deal but yeah and even some of my Pratt's in France I had some presidents who are totally fine with it but they were fine with it and at the same time I'm saying no this is a really really big deal this is a really big deal so yeah there it was a mixed bag and I think it was so acute to me at the time the difficult side of things because we were so close to it now looking back it's there's been a lot of healing and it's less painful because we aren't so tied in anymore and we've had some space and we've developed some friendships some great friendships in our local parish so it just took a little time but we got there well you were always one to be very active in yeah worship yeah was that also kind of an empty spot for you so I started cantering on occasion and I've sung in a couple of weddings so it's not as frequent right now because now we have three kids so it's a little tough to leave the husband with all three of them and mass or we could go to two masses but I took a little break but hopefully I'll we're gonna do the Christmas choir my daughter and I so that that's a nice thing that we can do together but so leading up to confirmation I got permission from the archbishop in my diocese and in the Twin Cities to be confirmed at the Cathedral in st. Paul Minnesota because my husband's family was all there and they had been praying for so long and they were so excited one of my husband's sisters texted me I'm shocked when she found out I was going to RCA because they never never would have seen it coming it was very surprising for them but happy surprising so my husband's uncle who was a deacon had passed away that the fall prior to us going back into the church in a car accident and I to this day believe his intercession had something to do with that because a couple months later we were at mass and I I am so confident that he interceded for us and helped us along our way so his wife the aunt who talked to me about Mary so early on I asked to be my confirmation sponsor because I just made so much sense to me to have her be a part of this completion of my journey so I got permission to be confirmed at the cathedral and the sovereign's turned out big numbers to come and be there and I had my head anointed with oil and I stood in front of all these people at the beautiful Easter Vigil Mass it was so beautiful and I looked out and I just I was connected to history and to depth and to truth and closer to Jesus then I could get anywhere else and I just knew my restlessness was done and my searching was done and I was home and this is where all of that had led to that early faith and then the doubting and then the search for truth and it led me somewhere I never would have thought letting me ever and I got a bunch of Catholic swag from my confirmation so that rosaries and crucifixes and I got a copy of journeys home the book and during those lonely months of transition I devoured those stories and they were a lifeline to me to hear many people who had gone before me I'd flip between the laity and the clergy and I just read through it you know kind of all over the place but I just devoured it and it gave me strength to know that it wasn't alone in the good things that I had found and the truth that I had found but I also wasn't alone in the sadness and the loneliness and the loss of friendship and things yeah well in many ways you've touched on the reason for the coming home network and the journey on program and all that is that it you're aren't alone there other people that you touched on also this this connection between JPS uncle passing mm-hmm and your awakening to the desire to come home and what you're talking about the communion of seats yeah which is really not a part of your past at all no I always knew there are people in heaven and I don't think I was ever against that they could hear me but it was weird to me to think to ask for their intercession for a long time but it doesn't make sense to me that that would be an issue because I can ask you to pray for me or my husband to pray for me and the Bible is clear in Revelation that they're praying up there and they don't need to pray for themselves there okay Erin Hammond so even that awakening yourself to to talk to your house about you know why don't we go to Mass but your awakening to the fact that that I'm being interceded by this great family is a movement of grace in your life yeah I've got an email Roger from Providence Rhode Island how would Lorelai suggest one respond to the claim that if you have accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior you need not have any worries about your salvation but you are saved goodness that that was what I grew up with No so I think there's a lot in the Bible that talks about what we do in this world is important and my own personal journey was I was genuinely converted as a child I believed it with every fiber of my being but then I also genuinely pretty much walked away from it at another point and the reality of many people's lives you have these opportunities where you can say yes to God every single day or you can say no to God even within your day every moment you're either saying yes to either you're saying no to God and I believe that we have free will and that God's not going to drag us into heaven if we say no we have that gift of free will where we can choose God and we can reject God and that gift doesn't go away just because we believe and so that's why I think it's important to not just think of salvation as a one-time event I believe my conversion is and is continuing and will continue on you give a good example on your story about that little chart of the the big chasm that separates a sinful man from God and in the cross the bridge but which at the core Catholics believe completely of course that is an aspect of explaining the gospel but whether that bridge is only there for a short time or whether you want to get over you can't go back there you have a private interpretation of the gospel the core of the gospel the the meaning of gospel is the proclamation that Jesus is Lord yep if that's the gospel Jesus is Lord then faith alone is a sufficient to describe a complete surrendering to Jesus as Lord which takes a lifetime of grace there's the Catholic understand the gospel it has a beginning when we respond to grace but it's the rest of our life living out the lordship of Jesus Christ that's the gospel it is and it's not this striving that I think I'm earning my way into heaven and all any good that I do is God in me none of it's me it's an all God in me it's that mystery of it's got complete grace but yet I have to respond but my body comes from Gracie yea I'm cooperating with it yeah excellent I've got another email Laura from Ottawa Canada can Lorelai reflect a little on how becoming Catholic has impacted her marriage in the way she raises her children was it hard to learn how to incorporate Catholic devotions and practice into family life when your kids weren't used to it that's a wonderful question so I actually was feeling like I was starving for concrete things to incorporate with my children's faith when I was Protestant because it was a lot of private prayer a lot of private Bible study but the Catholic Church has these tangibles so we have a holy water font in our home we have a crucifix they have little rosaries and so it's actually been amazing to me my daughter just told her babysitter the other week that were very Catholic and she's almost six but she gets it I loved having them in Mass with us so we can whisper to them and explain to them what's going on so that's been beautiful for me to have all those tools to this liturgical seasons all of it to share our faith with our children in such a real way and then my marriage with my husband talked about unity now we are so united in our faith and our marriage has grown partly because of theology of the body and understanding the Catholic ultimate teaching on the purpose of marriage and partly because of theology the body we have our third daughter because we became open to life again and we have little Mary Charlotte and she's just a joy and I can't imagine life without her it's such a beautiful reflection of the Trinity when you have kids and such a beautiful such a beautiful thing to fulfill our marriage one of the first barriers you mentioned to your journey was Mary being born without sin and all that I bought Our Lady in your journey I loved Mary I renamed our new baby after her my grandma's name was Mary and I've and so it's a combination of those two things and having her as a mother figure and someone who said yes to God from the moment she was born until she was in heaven that was such a beautiful example for me and such a comfort for me and I always identified with Mary in some way in Protestant and we only kind of take Mary out Christmastime nativity scenes and I was very pregnant twice during Advent and I identified a bit with her then so that softened me in some ways or prepared me in some ways to think of her more often thinking of her being so heavy laden and burdened and not knowing you know not having a place to have her baby and I'm sure she was probably very peaceful about it but it was so probably uncomfortable and so we she was a great comfort to me also during my pregnancy with Mary because I had a difficult pregnancy and was very sick and she comforted me in that and helped me through the challenges of that pregnancy you don't want people hear John Paul's theology of the body all they think about is sexuality and marriage and that's absolutely a part of that but it also emphasizes that we are and then as a person our body and soul and that the channels that God has given to us our senses are all channels of getting closer to our Lord and hearing them our eyes our ears everything is about that and our dignity our ultimate dignity as image bearers of God every single human from the smallest to the largest the youngest to the oldest has this dignity to them that deserves respect and honor so that's been foundational to its how you treat people how you view humanity how you look at other people's needs well as we close I want to remind the audience that this Catholic family dot-com is your website you say you do a blog I do I write a lot about these things about life as a convert and our family and our faith all right and particularly maybe of those coming from the backgrounds that you all mentioned helping them on each me that's a gift you were given you've been in those other traditions and now you can help them hear the fullness of the church and the way you didn't I speak both languages yes Lorelai thank you very much for sharing your journey on the on the journey home program and our blessings are with you you know and your work on the Internet as well as continuing as a as a mother and a wife to help your children discover the fullness of the Catholic Church thank you for that thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I do pray the Lorelei's journey is an encouragement to you god bless you see you next week [Music] you

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: JHT, JHT01597

Id: VnlZIHVLuoU

Length: 56min 11sec (3371 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 19 2017