There and Back Again – A Catholic Story

Part 1 - There

“My prayer is that when the morning breaks God will bless me with a new perspective on His Beautiful Bride and my heart can finally find some peace in a Christian Body”.

Just over four years ago I started writing a blog in the hope of sorting through my thoughts, concerns and struggles with the Church. The quote above comes from the last sentence of my first post. 

I had been lamenting my turbulent journey with the body of Christ. Complaining that I just couldn’t seem to find, in the plethora of religious options, a community in which I felt at home. But something inside me refused to let go. I would not give up the quest. Hope still dwelled within me. 

Inspiration, perhaps the Spirit, led me to the prayerful conclusion of that post. Help me Lord, to see your Church the way you see her. To find you in a Body, the way I find you in my heart. To feel the same peace and unity that I experience in private prayer, when I gather to pray and worship with others.

It had been ten long years of struggle and deepening disillusionment that had led me to start that blog. What had begun a decade earlier with the joy of sight had slowly degenerated into a plethora of questions without answers. Desires without fulfilment.

At the turn of the millennium Christ had found me, lost in a world of dreams and shadows. Confused and alone I searched for the divine, from Jamaica to India, Nepal to Atlantis…I wandered off the path. Pursuing the mystical east I had found a psychedelic nightmare that nearly cost me my mind. 

And then, as if out of nowhere, the Son of David passed by and offered sight to this blind Bartimaeus. In that moment I understood that the answers I sought, the life I desired, and the connection I craved, would only be found by following Jesus. Christ had called me back to my roots and offered me mercy. I responded with an unplanned, but undeniable, turnaround – pursuing Jesus on The Way. 

So struck by this vision of the Son of God, I registered to study theology and pursue a life of service to the Lord. I was happy, at peace, and at rest, but while I slept an enemy came and sowed weeds amongst the wheat. I awoke to find that all was not well in the household of God. 

In many ways it was the waking of a child when tragedy hits for the first time. The loss of innocence that marks the transition from infancy to adolescence. I felt like God had saved me; only to abandon me again in a sea of contradiction and contest. Unable to shake the feeling that all was not well I let the hope of ministry slip between my fingers. All I could do was simply hold onto the hand of Jesus as my feet slipped beneath the waves.