Reassurance

I sometimes have to laugh at how things work out. The day after making a post about reluctance and reservations on joining the church and feeling like I may not be ready, two things happened that helped reassure me.

One was a random conversation with a teacher that led to finding out she was also a Catholic convert (rare in my area), and then into talking about our religious backgrounds and her own conversion experience. This isn't exactly a normal topic of conversational topic for teacher in my secular, public, college, so it was surprising but was also just what I needed to hear at the time. The really striking part is that she described some of the same reservations I have been having, without me even mentioning them, and went on to say how confession and the sacraments were the very things that helped her to overcome them.

Then, in case I didn't get the message, the same things came up again during RCIA that night. Apparently, most of my worries are pretty common and my priest is used to helping people work through them. Just being back at RCIA (I had missed 2 weeks due to family/work conflicts) and hearing people talk and share helped me a lot. We have a mix of new coverts, long-time Catholics, and reverts, and the honesty about our own faults and fears, combined with welcoming and encouragement also did a lot to remind me that we all come from different pasts and are at different places, but all are still welcomed.

Long story short, I feel a lot better about things now.

I also had a long discussion with my husband over the previous weekend and into this week that has put my more at ease with the effect my conversion may have on my marriage and family.

Cold Feet?

It's been a while since I posted, but I wanted to say that I'm still here.

I've been wrestling with a few things over the past couple months and spending a lot of time reading, studying, and praying. During this time, I thought it was best to take a break from blogging so that I could just listen and not worry about what to post or how it might be viewed.

Without getting too much into detail, there are some things in my personal life that are going to make converting challenging and might cause issues with my husband if they are not approached the right way. I knew this from the start, but he has been more open in the past few months about why he rejected Christianity and how he was hurt by "church people" in the past. It feels like he might be opening up a little more, but I need to be careful so he doesn't feel like I'm rejecting him in favor f the church.

I also want to make sure I'm not rushing into things. At first, it seemed like a year of waiting, RCIA, etc., etc was going to take forever.  Now, I'm wondering if it might not be prudent to wait another year before being confirmed. This might just be a case of "cold feet", but I have been a little flaky in the past and want to be sure I am not going to change my mind in the future. I guess I have seen to many quick conversions in the Protestant world where people join a church, are uber-zealous for a few months or even years, and then disappear or move on to another church or denomination. I don't want to do that. It was a big deal to me to leave my former Baptist church, in part because of the membership vows we made.

This seems much more important and binding somehow, so I want to be sure I am able to follow through  and do plan on being Catholic for the rest of my life and raising my son in the faith. Maybe I'm just over-thinking things. I do believe that this is the Church Christ founded and where the fullness of truth is found, and I am in agreement with the church, so there's no real reason for me to hesitate other than wanting to know that I am sure.

Of course, part of that is because of certain recurring sins in my life as well. I'm not talking about something that would be acceptable in most Protestant churches either, but there are things I am frequently tempted to return to, including at least one serious sin. Part of me is scared that I might gave into it after converting and I almost feel like I need to know it's conquered beforehand, even though the more rational part of my mind says that the means of grace that come through the Church would probably be the best thing to help me keep resisting temptation.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one to have these same thoughts, and I am going to talk with my priest about it and see what he thinks, but I am wondering if anyone else out there went through a similar thing and how they got over it.