Running to Catch up

It is now almost 11 years since I became a Christian and from the beginning I have always felt that I was running to catch up!

Because I had no church background when I did start going to church it took a long time to get used to the services.

I also had a bit of a false idea of what other Christians got up to. I thought that everyone had read the bible all the way through several times and spent lots of time in prayer every day.

I am glad that I did have this false impression as it encouraged me to dive into the bible and prayer in a big way because I thought it was “normal”.

I am not claiming that I have always been perfect in spending time in the word and in prayer but it gave me a high standard to strive for.

Over time I gradually realised that what I was trying to achieve was not necessarily “normal”, but it was still what I wanted to aim for.

However, here I am back at the beginning again, on the path to being received into the Catholic church.

Many things are different, services, prayer practices, the way people have fellowship and generally the way things are done, as well as the additional things such as devotion to Mary.

It’s a good job that I have a good coach in Jesus….

Maybe At Heart I've Always Been Catholic

In one of my bibles there is a Divine Mercy Prayer Card. I have had it for over 10 years. I bought it on a little market stall not long after I became a Christian.

It has been everywhere with me as I kept that little bible in my hand bag right up until I bought a new “hand bag bible” quite recently, along with 2 new Divine Mercy Prayer Cards to go in it!

I knew as soon as I saw it that this was “My Jesus”! I had no idea what the story behind the Divine Mercy picture was, or what to do with it, but I knew I was looking at Jesus and My Jesus was looking back at me.

Soon after that I also bought a rosary. I had no idea what to do with it and no one to ask, but I would just hold it sometimes while thinking about God, or while I prayed. I loved to hold the crucifix and feel the beads run through my fingers.

I would put them away for a spell and then every now and then I would get them out again.

When I started to investigate the Catholic faith one of the first things I did was to do an internet search on what to do with the beads I had held so often in prayer.

Not only did I find out how to pray the rosary, but all about the Divine Mercy chaplet as well.

Having now learned that Catholics often have "Special Devotion" to certain things I find it funny now to realise that even from my baby Christian days I have always had a Special Devotion to the Rosary, the Divine Mercy and a craving for the Real Presence in the Eucharist. So maybe I've always been a Catholic at heart!

Nesting Here....

Above is St Herberts the wonderful church where I will be making my nest.......
It is light airy and very beautiful, as well as being full of friendly people.
Here is St Peters it is warm cosy and very traditional. I will be visiting here too as it is actually closer to my home and has different mass times. There is also a sense of awe and reverance here which is tangable.

Where Oh Where Does My Heart Lie?

Well I carried on reading the Catechism until I finished it, along the way I marked a couple of points of disagreement that I needed to come back to, but by the time I came to the end and went back to them they were no longer a problem for me.

In the mean time I attended a Latin Mass, at the church of the Holy name.

The building was very beautiful, but the service was not what I expected. It was suposed to be a sung service and audibly very beautiful, but it wasn't.

In fact it was very hard to follow, drafty, there was plenty of changing position - up, down, kneel, sit, but when I walked out something had changed.

I went in a wonderer and came out a Catholic.

Unfortunately, although I now had the heart of a Catholic, I still did not know how to find my way home!

St Valentine - Patron Saint of Marriages - Especially Mine!

Valentine would have done what all priest do: minister to their congregation. Valentine became a patron saint of lovers (and marriage) when the Roman Emperor Claudius II made it illegal for couples to get married.

He needed men for his army and could not draft married men. Valentine continued to marry couples in secret.

When the emperor found out, he had valentine thrown into prison. While in jail he became a close friend of the jailer's young daughter. Just before he was executed for his crime, he sent her a letter in which he told her to remain faithful to God. He signed it, "From your Valentine."

He is a saint because he died for doing what was correct, he was martyred in 269 in Rome.

Valentine really existed because archaeologists have unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to Saint Valentine. In 496 AD Pope Gelasius marked February 14th as a celebration in honor of his martyrdom.

He is the patron saint of marriages, but especially mine because we married many years before I became a Christian on 14th February, St Valantine's Day!

My Jouney So Far...

Just wanted to introduce myself ....

I am 48 and became a Christian 10 years ago. I am married with children
although only one is still at home. I am also a foster carer.

I had no real religous background and started off in the Church of England
although I did not really consider myself to be a specific denomination only a
"Christian".

I stayed there for four and a half years and then left and went to other churches, an independant church for a year and a Baptist church for two years.

I returned to the church I had started at just before the vicar retired and
stayed there for a year until the new vicar was appointed.

Once again I felt that I had to leave because the new vicat wanted to be addressed as Father and I did not feel that I could do this (I have now studied and addressed this issue with the help of a wonderful Catholic forum and some informative websites).

I then started to go to a house church which had some wonderful qualities but the leadership was so condemning of other Christians who have different
practices and the Catholic Church in particular.

In the end I could no longer continue to attend there because of this lack of
love to other Christians.

For about 3 months I did not go anywhere being very confused and wrestling with what to do and where to go. This happened at the same time as I was wrestling with some other personal family issues as well.

In the end I felt lead to return once again to the place I had started.

Having to deal with the "Call no man Father issue" lead me to other look at
other aspects of the Catholic Church. The first of these being the difference
in the bible used. So I read the "Extra" books.

The only way I can describe this is traumatic because I felt I had been
previously "robbed" of these.

I had a conversation with the vicar about how I had stopped seeing him as "too Catholic" and started seeing his as possibly "not Catholic enough".

He thought that my interest in all things Catholic had been inspired by the
Popes offer to take certain Forward in Faith traditional groups from Anglican churches under the authority of Rome in a new thing called the Ordinariate, but this was the first I had heard about it.

The question this raised to me was why we did not then just become "regular"
Catholics and what would be the difference.

Wanting to get information "from the horses mouth" as it were I did speak to a priest at the local Catholic church, he lent me a book about Mary.

I asked him about classes - he said the only classes they did were for people
who basically wanted to marry a Catholic and had to join the church in order to do so.

I did manage to persuade him to let my son and I come to one of the classes, but that was it. He was right no-one who was there seemed to have any real interest in learning anything, they just wanted to tick the boxes so they could have their weddings in the church.

I also went to a mass there to see what happened, it was beautiful, but everyone disappeared straight way afterwards and I could not talk to them.

I did ring the priest again and ask him if there was a better time to come in
order to get to know the people and find out about Catholic practices and how to actually live the faith that way, but he told me that I was better off not talking to the congregation about these things as "There is nothing as ignorant as a baptised Catholic!" Please forgive me these are his words not mine. His only other advice was to read the Catechism and talk to the Anglican vicar who he said could tell me anything I needed to know.

Although the vicar is very helpful I dont necessarily think that the best
information about the Catholic Church can be obtained from someone who left it (although he does want our church to be brought back under the authority of Rome).

I have started reading the catechism which is much easier reading than I thought as I expected it to be very dry and it is infact a picture of love.

I am also reading a wonderful book that I got at the Catholic Truth Society book shop on friday called The Biblical Basis for the Catholic Faith by John Salza.

It is probably the most difficult thing I have read EVER not because the
concepts are hard to grasp or understand, but just the opposite!

There have been so many forehead slapping moments (oh how dumb am I), moments of disbelief about how I have managed to miss something which has been under my nose all this time and also many tears - some of which I am crying as I write.

I was also told by the man who runs the bookshop to ring round other parishes nearby to see if I can get a better reception and see if any are starting RCIA classes in September.

It may well be that I still stay in the Church of England church that I am
currently in as I believe that the whole congregation may well "move over" and come under the authority of Rome, but I do not know how long that might take and I do not want to trust my own soul to a process which might take years, so I want to take responsibility for my own journey.

The Assumption of Mary

I made a desert to celebrate the Assumption of Mary:-

Tiramisu - which means "lift me up" topped with whipped cream which I turned blue and some individual meringues on top to represent clouds. I then put the see through dishes on blue and white plates.

Why I Stopped Blogging...

This is a hard post to write....

I stopped blogging because I had a broken heart....

On the day of my birthday the 4th of July 2009 I suffered a double bereavement. Then on 21st of that month the little man who lived in my house (my grandson) when to live with his mummy. This was unplanned and unexpected. He had lived with us since he was 5 weeks old and we though he would be with us until he was grown.

At that point I could not write beause I could not think, I could only trust and pray.

At this time my eldest child also went through major surgery.

I also found it impossible to carry on attending the church we had been so happy in because certain things there had changed and I knew it was no longer the place for us, but leaving was so hard because so many of my needs were being met there and it had been a big part of our lives.

A few months later I started a new gardening blog - the posts from that are now on this blog on there own page.

Hopefully I will now be blogging regularly again and have started this blog in order to pull everything together

Monica and Augustine

There was a change of plans yesterday and I did not get to have lunch alone with my son but with my grandson instead. Last night I made a desert to celebrate St Monica and St Augustine - I called it Monica's Tears.
I made some pancakes and trimmed them into tear shapes. Then topped then with orange flavoured chocolate and whipped cream.
I told the 2 boys (son, grandson and fosterson) about these saints before we eat them.

A Heart for God

Our Father God is a God of order and not of Chaos and when we truly seek after Him with all our hearts it will bring us to a place of balance. This is very good news especially for someone like me who is in "the natural" very unbalanced. Yes, I am the first to admit that I have an obsessive personality - what a relief that I met Jesus Christ and became obsessed with Him!

But even in our Christian walk it is easy to become unbalanced leaning too far in one direction and I am not referring to denominational differences here. I myself do not belong to a particular denomination - I belong to Christ bought and paid for.

Although I have only been a Christian for just short of nine years I have been a member a several churches (Church of England, Baptist and independant). I have never picked a church because of its denomination (usually God picks them for me), but I do look for an immense love of God, sound biblical teaching and encouragement to love Christ and look at His word for myself so that I can grow and become more like Him. I am truly blessed to say that I have found all this and more at Middleton Puritan Fellowship where I now attend with my boys (and if it pleases God one day with my husband too!).

Funnily my pastor and his wife started off at the same church as I did when we were all new to church (I am not saying new Christians because that is another story).

I think of myself as a kind of patchwork Christian being in agreement in part with many Christians, but often disagreeing on some point. I also think that I am wrong on some points (although obviously I don't know which ones lol).
There are some points where I can agree to differ, but other points are more significant - which is why I left my previous church (again another story for another time).

No, I am talking about being balanced in the things of God such as Testimony and the Word.

Psalm 118:17

I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.

I truly believe in the power of testimony and the above scripture is indeed true for me as shortly after I got saved I was diagnosed with an "incurable" disease which was to cut a long story short killing me. Funny thing is that I never went for healing prayer to get rid of this disease because I was too busy dealing with the sin in my life!!!

I came to Christ from a very dark place and there were things in my life that I knew in my own strength I could not even recognise as ungodly - so I knelt at the alter rail and cried out to the Lord to take out everything that was in my life that should not be there and just put in what he wanted!

Ephesians 3:20

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us,

Well that is what He did - exceeding abundantly above all that I asked or thought - next time I went to the hospital my disease had gone!!! It must have been very confusing for the hospital staff because what I had does not go and it does not get better. God let me live and because I live I will declare the works of the Lord.

As I have already said I have an obsessive personality and it makes me greedy for the things of God! As wonderful as what God did for me is I am not satisfied with it (told you greedy, greedy, greedy)!

That sounds awful doesn't it! But not to God I can feel Him smiling at me as I write it. He loves me, He loved me before I turned to Him, He loved me before I cried out to Him to remove what should not be there and He loves me now. Nothing I do or don't do changes how much He loves me and He loves me enough not to leave me as I was or even as I am.

When I cried out to Him he did not make me perfect, but He started a process
and God does not start what He will not finish!

Hebrews 12:2

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

I gave Him permission to prune me and change me and I carry on giving Him that permission every day.

Not only am I greedy, but I am fussy too and I will not content myself with stale bread. If I spend all my time looking back at what He has already done then I am living on stale bread and I am sure that this would not make my Father smile, it would make Him weep!

You see He is God Almighty who can and will meet all my needs, He wants me to have fresh bread every day, just as He provided fresh manna for His people in the wilderness. But if I only ever look over my shoulder at what He has already done then I will never see the fresh bread He has put in front of me!

I need to turn to Him and His word every day........

Psalm 119:11

Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.

...........and ask Him in prayer what He has for me (things of eternal value not "stuff") then I will wait in excitement and expectation to see the wonderful works He is yet to do in my life!