Shayne’s rambling blog

Well in 20 minutes my family and I leave for the church to start Easter vigil.  The excitement is coursing through my veins powered by the joy I feel about my confirmation and first Holy Communion.  My wife and I are looking upon this as a new beginning for me and she says she feels a revitalization in her spirit, this is a path we will share for the rest of our lives and our family is now to be one in spirit as well.  All the time I spent before on my search for a home has led to this day, stepping across the threshold and committing to the Church.  I am probably one of the most unlikely Catholics as far as my former views on the Catholic faith, but this feels right in a way nothing else has.

   Well it has been a while since my last post but the time is almost upon me.  My first confession is tomorrow and I will be confirmed on Holy Saturday.  My first time participating in the Holy Eucharist is something I have been looking forward to with joyful anticipation.

   I have been attending the Catholic church with my wife for some time and as soon as I made the decision to convert my faith started to bear fruit.  I was blessed to be asked to participate in helping our youth with the performance of the Living Stations of the Cross and it was absolutely wonderful.  I am also fortunate to have been voted into our parish KC’s, and I will be initiated on the first available date after my confirmation.  The opportunities to be in the Lord’s service is what I have been searching for all these years.  Just the few things I have been able to help with so far are filling me up in a way I have never known before.

   My joy can’t be expressed in words in the short time I have tonight.  I can only hope that someday my story can be of service to someone else, so I will set some time aside sometime soon to get it on my blog.  Until then may the Lord bless you all.

I have already been receiving comments asking me to share my story.  I am not much of a story teller but I am happy to share the what and why of my conversion.  I was born into a “creaster” protestant family, that means we went to church on Christmas and Easter.  My grandmother made sure I got confirmed in our church but other than that I had little to do with Christian fellowship.  I drifted on like this until I was 23 years old when I started searching for something to fill the holes I felt in my soul.  I found Jesus Christ thanks to a friend of mine and after about a year and a half of internal reflection I accepted Jesus as my saviour.  Now that I had a saviour I needed a fellowship that I trusted to help me on my journey.  I bounced from church to church, mostly evangelical and protestant, I still had not found a home.  No one seemed to have what I was looking for.  I learned a lot of good things from the people I did choose to listen to, but there seemed to be too many differences, who was right?  Then I married my wife the “Super-Catholic”.  Things slowly started to change.  I still went from church to church looking for the “right” one, but I started attending mass with my wife more and more.  Then we moved from Chicago back to my hometown in North Dakota, in fact we moved to a house that was about 75 feet from where I was raised.  Growing up in this town in the 70’s and 80’s there were 2 religious groups in my neighborhood, the Catholics and the anti-Catholics.  I remember not belonging to either one when I was young but as a new Christian later in life I was mentored by one of the members of the latter.  Anyway, I was now married to a very devoutly Catholic woman from the Philippines and I was going to the mass at a church I had walked past a million times but never gone into.  My wife was willing to let me continue my search but she always let me know that she wanted me to find a true home some day.  After a short and scary excursion into a study of the mormon faith I pretty much figured I might as well give up and go to mass with my wife and children.  But I wasn’t going to enjoy it.  One day I heard about the priest’s wed. night bible study and I figured it couldn’t hurt to check it out.  After 3 weeks of having Father Dan speak directly to my soul I decided to search for the answers to my questions from Catholic resources.  I thought I would be able to find the answers eventually, but imagine my surprise when I was getting the answers faster than I could comprehend them.  Every time I looked at a website or looked something up in the catechism that Father Dan gave me I was nourishing my soul and mind with the exact information I needed.  The biggest roadblock I had when it came to actually being serious about the Catholic church could be summed up in one word, idolatry.  I had gotten all of my information about this issue from non catholics up to this point.  I was amazed at what I found when I turned to the church for my information, I found THE ANSWER.  Now that I had the information I needed there was no question about the next step.  On Monday Feb. 11, 2008 I made the decision to convert.  I will be taking my first Holy Communion on Holy Saturday, until then I am devoting myself to preparation with study and prayer.  My wife and children are helping me, our priest is educating me and everyone I have talked to at our church is supporting me.  I am home.

I participated in my first rosary with my family.  I must admit that it felt strange to be involved in prayer of this type with the whole family.  It was also very humbling because I was a bit lost and our children were rattling it off like old pros.  But this is a wonderful opportunity for my kids to teach me something.  I am finding that I am at peace once I overcome my initial tentativeness and I am able to meditate during the rosary.  I will get used to it and I am grateful for this tool.

I am excited about my new life in the catholic church.  I will be posting regularly on my blog with updates about my growing faith as well as my story and the journey I took to get here.  My choice to become a catholic did not come about quickly nor was it painless.  I have always been a skeptic and I was full of doubt.  I became a christian many years ago and I was attending bible based evangelical churches, but my search never ended, I even flirted with Mormonism.  Then I met my lovely wife the “super-catholic”.  I started attending mass with her and our children.  Later she encouraged me to attend a bible study with the priest of the church.  My doubts dissappeared as the answers to my many questions quickly came tumbling at me.  Now I am preparing for my first communion on Holy Saturday.  My journey is now beginning in earnest and I have found the path I have been searching for all these years.

Today I made the decision to convert to catholicism.  I had many obstacles in my way and the largest roadblock was removed in one fell swoop.  I always had the misconception that catholics worshiped Mary and the Saints.  The word worship was simply a common protestant misunderstanding of the intentions of the prayer and adoration that are given in honor of the Holy Mother and the Saints.  I was always of the mind that the catholics were practicing idolatry and this is certainly not the case.  The catechism teaches that there is only one who is worthy of worship and that one is God.  I thank the Lord for this veil being lifted and will now move forward with my spiritual journey.