My Love For The Catholic Church

I can't say enough about my love for The Catholic Church, it is my life, I feel so much peace when I am there. And living in such a anti-Catholic area I feel like I am safe at home when I spend time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. In the short time that I have been there I have felt more love and acceptance than I ever have in any other church that I have been to, Catholics truly love one another and they are always there for one another and that is something you don't find everywhere.I was adopted when I was 3 and I was given to such a wonderful family my father and my mother (may she rest in peace) love me so very much and there is no way that I could love them anymore than if they were my natural parents. After my mother passed away I felt so very alone, even though I had my father, husband and children I still felt so alone. Even though I loved everyone in the Baptist church that I went to at that time, I still always felt so out of place, like I did not belong, and after my mother died that feeling seemed to intensify greatly. There was something that I could not figure out that was wrong in my life and it was at that time that I knew that I needed to search out what it was, and God finally lead me home to the Catholic church.From day one I have been accepted and loved in the Catholic Church, the members there are my family (my church family) and I love each and everyone of them so very much. I wish that others could experience that love like I have but they won't open their hearts to receive it, rather than seeking out the truth about the Catholic church they choose to keep believing the lies that they have been told all of their lives, and to a degree I feel like I have been cheated all of these years because for the longest time I believed those untruths about the Catholic church, oh how wrong I was. But I am so thankful that God has opened my eyes to the truth about this wonderful Church. It is my prayer that others will soon discover the beauty and truth in the One True Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Amazed How Wrong People Are About The Catholic Church

I went to an RCIA class last night and there was a new person there that had started class, and I was very interested in what he had to say about his Religious background because he had came from a Baptist church just like I had and his experience with that kind of denomination was the same as mine. He to had been brought up with teaching's that the Catholic church was wrong, and that he should stay away from them and he like I just could not understand where they were getting all this misinformation from that they were teaching everyone.
I know that preachers and teachers from other denominations that think ill of the Catholic church mean well when they are telling their congregations this stuff but I find it sad because they are just teaching and preaching the misinformation that they themselves have been taught, rather than seeking out the truth by talking with a Catholic or visiting a Catholic church they just rely on what they have been taught, even though it is wrong. For example I was raised up being taught that Catholics worship Mary which is so not true, they teach that we worhsip the statues in our Parish which is not true, they are there to help us remember all the wonderful Saint's that have went on before us, we see them and we learn about their faithful lives ot Jesus and it helps us to want to be more like them. They teach that the Eucharist is not the real body and blood of Christ when it is clear in the Bible that Jesus said take this and eat for this is My Body and take this and drink for this is My Blood, if God had meant it as a symbol He would have said this is a symbol of My body and blood but he didn't so it is clear what He is saying.
There are many other things that Protestant churches teach saying that the Catholic church is wrong which can be dismissed if people would just read their Bible but rather than search out the answers for themselves they choose to accept the misconceptions that their preachers and teachers tell them as the truth. I have never hear my Parish Priest refer to Protestants as being wrong or unchristian they refer to them as sisters and brothers in Christ how sad it is when Protestant churches can't do the same just because they choose to believe untruths about the Catholic Church.

How I Came Home To The Catholic Church

I guess that my interest in the Catholic Church started when my son had to spend 3 months in Children's Hospital several years ago. The hospital was about 3 hours from my home and I stayed there with him so I had to be separated from my home church, and seeing as how the hospital was located in a bad part of town, you just did not get out and wonder around so I could not get out and find a Freewill Baptist church to go to.
My son liked to walk the halls of the hospital so we spent almost all our time up and down the halls. About a week after we got there we were on one of our usual walks when I came to a Catholic Priest who resided over the Hospital Chapel there. We got to talking and he invited me to come to Mass, well I told him I appreciated the invite but that I was a Freewill Baptist not a Catholic. He laughed and said I don't think that God will strike you dead for attending Mass, and he also said I have never been to heaven but I don't think that there is a gate for Baptists, and a gate for Catholics, I laughed and said ok why not I can try anything once.
That next evening my son and I went to the Chapel for Mass, I must admit that I was nervous but excited at the same time. I don't know why I thought that it was going to be so different from the Baptist church, when in essence it wasn't. The message that the Father gave was a very good one, and just watching the people partake in the Eucharist was awesome. After Mass I thanked the Father for inviting us and I ask him if it would be ok if we came back and he was like sure, we shook his hand and then we went back to my son's room.
All that night and the next day, I was constantly thinking about the Catholic church so I decided to go to the hospital library and do some research about the church on the Internet. The more I studied the more fascinated I was by it and the more I wanted to learn about it. We would attend Mass each and everyday and in the meantime the Father and I would have long discussion's about the church, he answered alot of my questions and gave me alot of literature on the church which I would take be to my son's room and soak in.
Well after 3 months my son was able to come home from the hospital, and I found myself having to go back to my little Freewill Baptist church. Every time I would go I longed to be able to go to a Catholic church, but was not aware that there was a Catholic church close enough to me to be able to attend. I called the Father at the hospital and told him my deli ma and he researched and discovered that there was a Catholic church within 20 minutes of where I lived, and when he gave me the news I was so excited. I got in touch with the Parish Priest and he invited me to come to Mass there which I was more than happy to do.
The first time I entered the church I felt like I was walking into home, it just felt so right, I was so very happy yet sad at the same time at the thought of hurting all the people that I loved at my home church. At the same time the church I had went to all my life was in the middle of transitioning from a Freewill Baptist church to a regular Baptist church, they had dropped out of the conference that they had belonged to for years and decided to go about things on their own. I did not agree with this, I thought that if they did not have someone over them that things would start to turn ugly, and to a degree it did at least that is what it seemed like to me. Even though I was still attending my local church I would also visit the Catholic church very regularly, and my desire was to be able to join the Catholic church, and seeing as how I live in a very anti-Catholic area I was I guess afraid to take the leap, I was afraid of all the talk that I know would start if I left the Baptist church, so I tried for several months to ignore my desire to attend the Catholic church and I stayed in my Baptist church miserable. I loved everyone there, I considered them my family but I still felt so out of place and as I said I just could not come to except them changing as much as they were.
After much prayer I decided to go to the proper people in the church and tell them how I felt about some of the things that were going on in the church thinking that maybe they were not aware of what was going on, but my comments were not taken well, I instead made the very people that I loved very angry at me, so much so that I felt that it was time for me to leave and so I did. My heart was broken because I in essence felt like an orphan, I had no church to call home, and the very people that had once thrown their arms around me and told me that they loved me now ignored me. I got very angry and hurt and so for awhile I just quit, I did not attend any church, I was afraid that they were all going to be like the one I had just left and I could not take getting close to people and having my heart broken again. But our wonderful God had different things in mind for me, He helped me to see that He really wanted me in the Catholic church so I went back on my knee's explaining to the Priest what had happened and he welcomed me back to the Catholic church with open arms, I was finally home and I will never leave it again.
The Catholic church is a wonderful church, full of love and devotion to our loving Jesus and to our Wonderful Mother Mary. And I feel that in the area I live in especially it is given a bad name because rather than people checking out the church for themselves they rely on the words of other's who themselves have never checked the church out or someone who has a grudge against the church and that is so sad. I have often heard our Parish Priest talk about other denominations, and rather than talking bad about them, he always refers to them as our Christian brothers and sisters, how sad I find it that other's can't share his Christian love.
I truly believe that God means for me to be in the Catholic church and I will do all I can for it. It is a church of love, support and encouragement and it is a place that I am proud to call home.

Forgiveness

I am not sure why I am being lead to write about forgiveness but I always do what God wants me to do and so here it goes:
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I am not a perfect person by no means, I fail God each and everyday and one of my biggest human faults is forgiveness. I am not one that likes to hold a grudge but it does happen, and when it does it makes my heart hurt. I don't care who you are or what your situation is at one point or another in your life you are going to be faced with having to forgive someone for something that they have done to you that has really hurt you. And trust me it is one of the hardest things that you have to do. Why? you may ask, well because the human side of us lives in a world that is wicked and a place where hate seems to rule over love in so many cases.
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But we have Jesus on our side and so even though it may not be the easiest thing to do we can still bare it because He helps us.
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Let me give you an example from one of my personal experiences. I recently left a church that I was raised, married and had raised my kids the first part of their lives in. There were some problems in the church and when I brought those problems up to the proper people I got my feelings hurt. Now mind you I probably could have done it in a different way or better way, but I didn't and I know that it had to hurt the people that I brought it to's feelings. But the reaction I got from these people shocked me, it was much different then what I had imagined it would be, rather than them being understanding they bit my head off. I ended up leaving the church and to this day I am still shunned by some of the members there. Now I got bitter over this, and I know that having the feelings of anger that I had for these people was wrong, but I thought that it was justified LOL well I was wrong.
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God started dealing with my heart and showing me that the feelings that I was having were not Christian. I know that I had to have hurt these people by bringing up their faults but I felt that I was doing the right thing, I guess they felt that their reaction was the right thing, I think if we were all honest about it, then we would all have to say that we were wrong and very unchristian like, and I include myself in a big way there.
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I stopped and thought about how Jesus must been treated, He was perfect no faults what so ever but human people saw Him differently, they made up faults about Him and treated Him so badly. But rather than Him getting angry He forgave, and forgave and forgave some more, I stopped and thought about that and it amazed me, how wrong I was to have the feelings of anger that I had for these people. I prayed, oh how I prayed and I begged God to give me forgiveness in my heart, because I knew as long as I had this bitter anger in my heart then I could never truly serve Him in a way that He wants me to.
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Now mind you this is not something that happened over night it took allot of time for me to come to terms and deal with my anger. But PRAISE GOD it did finally happen, God helped me to be able to forgive them. OH WHAT A WONDERFUL GOD WE SERVE!!! Now I am not going to lie to you, there are still days when I see some of the people that hurt me so badly and my mind wants so much to say something bad about them, or it wants me to get angry again, but my heart steps in and says no, you are a child of God, a representative of Christ and He would not react like this, and after I pray about it, God gives me back that peace in my heart.
Now I am not saying that your situation will turn out the way mine did, only God knows that but I will say that until you give it all to God and ask Him to help you deal with it, then you will not be able to get rid of it on your own. I fall on my knees daily and ask God to get me through all the trials in my life and He has never let me down. I praise Him when I am happy, I praise Him when I am sad, and I praise Him when I am angry, and you know when I forget myself and focus on His love for me, it makes all the bad things go away.

Alittle About Me

Since this is my first blog I guess it would be good to tell you alittle about me and my family.

My husband and I took our wedding vows on October 30, 1993 what a wonderful day that is was, a day that I will never forget because I was finally able to marry this man that I loved so much and we were going to be a family. I was 3 months pregnant with my son when we got married and I was so excited, I thought now I am married and in a few months I am going to have this beautiful baby and then I can start being the homemaker and mother that I had dreamed of being. My husband worked in the coal mines here in West Virginia and he made really good money so we thought that we were right on track and that there was nothing going to stop us from being this perfect family, well little did we know God had different plans in mind for us and it was going to be a very rough road that we were going to have to travel....

Well all I can say is that our honeymoon was very short lived, 3 weeks after we were married my husband was laid off of the mines and so there we were no job and a baby on the way, we had just moved into our apartment our wonderful, beautiful apartment that I had worked so hard to make the way I liked it and now there was no money coming in and bills and rent were do, so we had to make a very hard decision which was to leave my little apartment that we loved so much and move in with my parents while my husband looked for another job and we got back up on our feet.

Well I can't speak for anyone else that has ever had to live with their parent's after marriage but I can tell you for me and my husband it was not easy, and I am sure my parent's felt the same way, even though they tried so hard to make the best of the situation. Well my husband found work in construction and so we thought ok here we go, God has provided us a job, now all we have to do is save up enough money to get us another place to live and get our finances straightened back up and we were sure we would be back in our own home before the baby was due, well no that is not what happened.

On Feb. 22, 1994 I went into premature labor 3 months early and was rushed to the hospital. They were able to stop the contractions for 3 days, but on the 25th my beautiful tiny son Andy was born weighing 2 lbs and 2 oz and he was 14 1/2 inches long. I won't go into details of his hospital stay because it consisted of 14 months in the hospital with many many ups and downs before he was well enough to come home to us. He developed Cerebral Palsy and became deaf due to his prolonged illness but he is such a wonderful blessing to us and we are greatful everyday that God gave him to us.

As I am sure that you have probably figured out with Andy being in the hospital so long we did not have the time to look for a place of our own and with the expense of staying at the hosptial that long it always seemed to eat up any extra money that my husband made. SO after Andy came home we were back in the same situation as we were before, having to live with my mom and dad.

Well me being firm in the belief of not using birth control It was no sooner than we got home and things calmed down that I got pregnant with my soon to be daughter. (Might I add by this point my husband is so stressed that he starts to loose his hair LOL) We were determined however to be in our own home before she was born, and with the help of my loving parents we were able to move into our new single wide trailer 3 weeks before she was born. On Feb. 17, 1996 Olivia came into the world a healthy and on time 6 lbs. and 11 oz. and was 21 1/2 inches long, with beautiful red hair.

Well to wrap this up let just say that it has not been easy, we still have faced so many challanges in our family, and even though things turned out very differently in real life my dream is still the same, I long to be the best Christian homemaker, wife and mother that I can be, and that is what this blog site is going to be about. I will share my experiences, trails, failures, and my victories with you, along with anything that I think my help you if your desire is to also be a Christian Homemaker.