My Journey from Catholicism to Protestantism and Back

People are often surprised when they find out I went to the Franciscan University (a very dynamically orthodox Catholic college), started a household devoted to the Eucharist, and then ended up leaving the Catholic Church. My conversion story is also very Eucharistic and I even experienced a Eucharistic miracle which you can read about here. I really do not have an easy explanation for why my husband and I left. It was really after a series of events.

Tom and I found amazing community at FUS  with like-minded students who were passionate about their faith. When we graduated, we moved just outside Washington, DC. Tom was a full-time youth minister at one parish and I was a part-time youth minister at another parish. Since we were also being open to life, I became pregnant right away (which was not received well by members of the parish he worked at) and it was a very complicated and hard pregnancy!!! I was very, very sick and when I wasn't working, I was bedridden. Finally when the sickness lifted, around 32 weeks, I went into preterm labor and was placed on bed rest. After that I was in the hospital every weekend because my contractions would get stronger and closer together. At one point I was admitted into the hospital for several days and maxed out on magnesium sulfate (the worst experience of my life). Tom at the time was trying to keep up with being the youth minister, as well as many other responsibilities the staff at the church was trying to place on him. He would still attend mass there even though I couldn't go with him and he would hear sermons from the associate pastor telling the congregation that there was no such thing as personal sin. One day however, while I was in the hospital, Tom was confronted by the pastor as to why he was not attending coffee and donuts after each weekend mass. That was pretty much the straw that caused Tom to decide not to renew his contract for the following year. It wasn't a huge leap of faith since the job only paid $20K a year and we were living in an apartment complex that was one step up from the projects. The lease on our apartment was about to end and we started packing all our belonging in boxes even though we did not know where we were going to go. Oh and our firstborn, Anna held out till I was 36 weeks along so she did quite well and came home with me the next day.

Well, God blessed us and we didn't end up living on the street. Right when our lease was about to run out on our apartment, Tom found out about a teaching position at a Catholic high school in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He applied and was offered the position. When Anna was just a couple months old we moved there and Tom started teaching that fall. At first everything was going well. Tom was hired because the prior religion teachers weren't "Catholic enough". Things started to get a little hairy however after some students were healed of some injuries when Tom said a prayer for healing at the start of class. He was called down to the chancery and given a talking to about how that shouldn't be happening in the classroom even though Tom explained that he just said a prayer, didn't lay hands and it was God who chose to heal.

We also ran into some conflict when we tried to help with youth ministry at a couple different parishes. Parents didn't like that we were trying to bring in a spiritual element. They felt youth ministry should just be social. Some of them even said, "the kids are going to leave the church and we need to give them good memories so they come back after they're married and have families of their own." All these conflicts were minimal however compared to the longing we had for real community like we had at college. God seemed to hear our prayer because within a short time, several of our friends from college (Tom's household brothers and their families) moved to Kalamazoo and we started meeting together regularly in an attempt to form intentional community. That dream however was short lived as one by one they all moved away. This left us longing again for community as well as a desire to do ministry.

We then decided to check out the local Vineyard church since we were familiar with the late John Wimber (leader of the Association of Vineyard Churches at the time) and his teachings.  We had also read all his books on "Power Healing" and "Power Evangelism" multiple times. Originally it was not our intention to leave the Catholic Church. We started out going to mass on Saturday evenings and attending the Vineyard on Sunday mornings. That however became too much, especially now that we had two little ones so we started just attending the Vineyard on Sunday mornings and going to a cell group meeting on Wednesday evenings.

There are a lot of things I could say about our experience at that Vineyard Church, both positive and negative. On the positive side, we did find community we were looking for. The people were very genuine and loved the Lord. I was also able to grow in the prophetic and Tom was taken on as a pastoral intern. I won't go into detail with the negative, but basically we were wronged and lied about.  I presume it was out of jealousy and feeling threatened by us. There was a lot of talk about grace at that church but in the end, there wasn't much grace available for us. God delivered us however and Tom was offered a pastoral internship at a Vineyard Church in Clearwater Florida. We sold our house in three weeks and moved across country with all our belongings in our minivan and a 12-foot tow behind U-Haul trailer.

We became very active at the Clearwater Vineyard Church and Tom was a pastoral intern in the hopes of planting another Vineyard in the area. We lived in the St. Petersburg area and did the internship from 1999 till 2003 at which time we were sent out to start a Vineyard in Lakeland, Florida. We started a pretty unconventional church in our living room and attracted young people who were burned out on church and were mostly pastor's kids. We were growing and even split up into two different house churches, getting together as a larger group once a month. Everything was going well but after the birth of our third daughter, we really started to question what we were doing. A lot of the things we were doing were actually very Catholic and liturgical. We had communion every week and baptized babies (not typical of most Vineyard Churches) but still something was missing and we really missed a sense of the sacred and the Sacraments. We also wanted our daughters to grow up with the rich heritage that we felt we had growing up in the Catholic Church. We ended up coming back to the Catholic Church in the fall of 2007.

Catholics often ask us if we felt restless or missed the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist. In all honesty, we had convinced ourselves that Jesus could be just as present in our communion if only we had the faith. But there was a difference. The Lord sort of made up for that in other ways however as we were able to experience intimate and dynamic worship, something that had been lacking in most of the Catholic parishes we had attended. We were also given a lot of opportunities to do ministry that I have yet to experience as a Catholic. My deepest desire is to speak, exhorting the body of Christ as well as evangelization . I was given  that opportunity when I went on a mission trip with a group from the Clearwater Vineyard to Venezuela. We got to speak at a couple different churches there and really saw God move and bring spiritual healing to people. Afterwards I told God, "That was awesome!" He told me, "You haven't seen anything yet!". That really is my heart and I can't wait to see how He is going to bring that about now that we are Catholic.

One thing I really liked to do when we were outside the Catholic Church (I don't like to say I was Protestant because I was not protesting anything and never disagreed with Catholic teaching) is try and dispel myths and misconceptions people would have concerning Catholics. Now that we are Catholic again, I like to dispel misconceptions Catholics have toward Protestants and often find myself bewildering Protestants. It is my heart to try to bridge the gap between the two. I do not believe it was ever God's will for the Church to become so fragmented but I do believe He still breathes life into other churches. There is a lot Catholics can learn from their Protestant brothers and sisters and vice versa.

I must also add that since we came back to the Catholic Church we have found an amazing community of Catholics who love Jesus, have surrendered their lives to him, know how to have dynamic worship and are open to hearing God speak. We have found this community both through our church and the BSCD. I am very grateful!

The grass isn't always greener

Some people might find it surprising to learn that Tom and I were away from the Catholic Church for 10 years. My own 16 year old daughter questions how we could have ever left the Eucharist, especially after I witnessed a Eucharistic miracle first hand and started a household devoted to the Eucharist. I don't have an easy explanation for that. The only thing I can think of is that we did not fully grasp the infinite level of intimacy available to us by receiving Jesus' body and blood. When I was in my early 20's, we were more about doing and being involved in ministry. We did not have an understanding about resting in the Lord and allowing him to transform us from the inside out. Since we were all about doing ministry, it was easy to become frustrated as we kept running into brick walls. The parishes we were involved in had much different views of ministry than we did.

One thing I always loved was Eucharistic adoration. I even tried to start up perpetual adoration at a parish we attended to no avail. I think for me, it was all about experiencing God's presence which I definitely experienced when I went to adoration. I think it takes a little more contemplation of the mystery when we receive Jesus at Mass and unless we are able to contemplate this mystery, we may not experience his presence. Since, for me it was all about experiencing his presence, well I could do that while worshiping with my Protestant brothers and sisters.

Tom and I were also longing for community and to be around other like minded young adults like we had at the Franciscan University. This was hard for us to find at the parishes we were involved in. We were able to find this however at a local Protestant church. Our original plan however was to get involved with the Protestant church but also attend Mass on Sunday. After a while it became too hard to keep doing both so we stopped going to Mass.

I ended up having a pretty profound dream after being away for about a year. I did not realize the full meaning of the dream however until nine years later when we were praying about going back.

The dream started with me walking down a hallway. I came to the end of the hallway and there was a door. I opened the door that led to the outdoors and a platform. I walked out on the platform. I saw Jesus sitting against the outside wall talking to a guy. I then proceeded to walk to the edge of the platform that was also surrounded by a 3 foot wall. I looked over the wall and there was a florescent green river in a valley and it had thousands of flamingos wading in it. I knew I needed to get to the land that was on the other side of the river and the only way I saw to be able to do that was to cross the river with all the flamingos. I proceeded to climb over the wall of the platform so I could cross the river and as I did many flamingos started coming up over the wall and attacking me. I realized that was not the way I should go and I climbed back over, onto the platform. I then walked back over to the door and tried to open it, however it was locked. Jesus then stood up and he had a key so he unlocked it for me. He then led me back through the hallway in which I had come. He also led me to another door and opened it for me. We walked through the door and there was a beautiful redwood forest. He said to me, "This is the way you should go."

Tom and I did a pastoral internship at two different non-denominational, evangelical churches. We also ended up starting a house church that we pastored for 4 years. Everything was going pretty well. Our church was growing and we were able to branch off and form a second house church. The local paper even did an article about us and it was on the front page of the paper on Easter Sunday.

We never had any doctrinal problems with the Catholic Church so a lot of what we did at our church was very "Catholic". We baptized babies and even had weekly communion. We thought if we had the faith, Jesus would be just as present in our communion but it was different. We began to really miss the Eucharist and a sense of the sacred. We began to pray about whether we should return back to the Catholic Church. When I was praying about it, the flamingo dream came to my mind and the interpretation hit me like a ton of bricks. It suddenly became very clear.

The first thing I did in the dream was walk through a hallway and walk through another door. I believe this represents walking away from the Catholic Church and going over to the Protestant side. It is interesting to note that Jesus was still there. In my dream, he was hanging out on the platform, I believe mentoring a guy. I looked over the platform and felt I needed to get to the land that was on the other side of the river. I think this represents our desire to do ministry and believing the way to be able to do that was to cross over to a particular denomination that we ended up joining. In the river were flamingos. Flamingos are pink which is a white-washed red. Red stands for the blood of Jesus, the passion, the cross. If it is watered down, white-washed, I believe it represents a cheapened form of the cross or what Dietrich Bonhoeffer described as "cheap grace" which is grace without the need for repentance and change.  In his book, "The Cost of Discipleship" he says, "Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." This pretty much sums up what we encountered at the churches we participated in. There seemed to be a lot of talk about grace and even grace extended to people involved in serious sin however, there wasn't a whole lot of grace extended to your average person in the pew. This explains how in my dream I was being attacked by the flamingos. Although we did have some good experiences and encounters with the Lord, being attacked by the flamingos sums up my experience at the evangelical churches we attended. It should be interesting to note however that Bonhoeffer was not Catholic and I do not believe that all Protestant churches give into cheap grace and being seeker sensitive.

Another fact about flamingos is they stand on one foot. I believe this stands for Protestants holding to Sola Scriptura (scripture alone) whereas Catholics are grounded in Scripture and Tradition. If you hold to Sola Scriptura, you only have one leg to stand on and it may not be as well balanced. Flamingos are pink because they eat shrimp. Shrimp eat the scraps off the bottom of the ocean. They were also wading in florescent green water. Green stands for life. The green the flamingos were standing in was a florescent green which I believe stands for it not being real. There is a better way, a more real way and that is to eat from the tree of life which is Jesus himself in the Eucharist. He is the bread of life, real food and real drink for our souls (John 6:35).

I then decided in my dream to go back through the door in which I came from but it was locked. Jesus had a key. It is only by his grace and mercy that we came back. He then led me to another door that led to a beautiful redwood forest. The redwoods are the most ancient of trees. They have stood the test of time.There are some very interesting facts about the redwoods. For instance, they have some unique survival tactics. Their bark is up to a foot thick in some places and when exposed to fire forms a heat shield that protects the main part of the tree. Redwoods  have a chemical composition that is distasteful to termites and ants. Redwoods are also very resistant to water rot. There are many more interesting facts that you can read about redwoods here.

When we were praying about whether we should return to the Catholic Church, suddenly it became obvious to me, the correlation between the  Catholic Church and redwoods. Like the redwoods, the Catholic Church has also stood the test of time. She is ancient, founded by Christ over 2,000 years ago. Despite many trials, tests and sinful people, the teaching and doctrine of the Church has survived and has been unwavering.

It feels very safe to me that the bar is set pretty high in the Catholic Church. There is still sin but the Church makes it clear that it is sin. When you lower the bar and allow anything to go, it does not feel very safe. Churches that are being "seeker sensitive" and watering down the gospel in order to win souls are not really doing anyone a favor. If people are coming to Jesus under a "gospel" that says, "Come to Jesus and all your needs will be met." or "Come to Jesus just as you are and you don't have to change" are really doing people a disservice. As soon as these people encounter trials or the storms of life, which they will, they could easily lose faith. 

I am very happy to be back in the Catholic Church. It is not perfect. There is still sin and I am still longing for more of a "sense of the sacred" but I know that Jesus is there and is present in the Sacraments and in the Eucharist. That gives me comfort and peace and I couldn't imagine ever leaving again.