Finding my next step
I've been a Christian most of my life. I love Jesus more than anything else in the world, but I'm not a great Christian. Too often I let my politics take over my religion, and I let my flesh takeover my faith. Neither my words nor my actions directly reflect the new creation in Christ I actually want to be.
For a long time, I thought I wanted to be a more worldly Christian. I saw so many other believers who had no way to actually interact with the rest of the world, at least in the midwestern united states, because they had their own language (including not swearing) and didn't drink or smoke or do anything else that normal midwestern Americans do.
I've struggled with sexual sin a lot, even if it rarely has been public. I've attended SA meetings and CR meetings and the like. I've never maintained my "sexual sobriety" for more than 9 months. My wife at one time asked me to stop going to meetings because my time in the fellowship was more damaging to our family than the few minutes I might run away to the basement to go act out. But my acting out has gotten worse since I stopped attending meetings, as have my responsibilities.
I keep looking for "the one big change" to make it better. Being raised evangelical I was always hearing others' testimonies about the one time that Jesus saved them. Usually from a non-believer to a believer, but occasionally a saving of an existing believer.
My parents were raised in traditional Christian homes (Lutheran/Catholic respectively) but by the time I had been born they had both more-or-less given up on organized religion in general and Jesus fairly specifically. Yet my mom still had me baptized at the local Lutheran church. I'm not sure if it was to make my grandma happy or what.
When I was four years old my dad had a "born again" experience at a charismatic revival meeting occurring at the campsite we were staying at while waiting to move into our new apartment. Eventually both of my parents received a "believers' baptism" in accordance with the traditions of the Christian churches and churches of Christ, closely associated with the Stone-Campbell movement, and we belonged to the so-called non-denominational "Christ's Church of the Valley" in Phoenix. At the time CCV was a store-front church, but I recently learned it is now one of the largest mega churches in the U.S. Prior to their growth we had moved to a small midwestern town, where "we accept both religions 'Lutheran and Catholic'" so we were on the outskirts of this conservative community by belonging to a "weird" evangelical church. I spend most of my childhood in an EFCA congregation. My friends from school teased me about being so poor I had to attend the "free church."
When I was choosing which college to attend during my Junior/Senior year of high school, I knew I wanted to go "somewhere new" someplace where no one knew me, and my past. One of the campus visits my dad and I went on was to Northern Michigan University. We spent the whole weekend in Marquette, incluing attending a football game and spending the evening at a coffee house. But we didn't find Emma Joes' we found "the Agape cafe" run by a local CRC congregation. That experience probably had more to do with me picking Northern than anything else.
When I was a freshman, I got involved in a campus minsitry known as "His House Christian Fellowship" which was closely aligned with the same movement at CCV, and I received my "believers' baptism" at age 18 in Lake Superior. 2 years later I felt the Holy Spirit drawing me to the Catholic Church. At the time I had thought it was to teach Catholics about Jesus, and I was pretty sure He wanted me to do that by becoming a priest. I was confirmed and received my first communion at the Easter Vigil at the age of 20.
Receiving my "believers' baptism" had been such a spiritual experience; I believe I felt the sins of my past roll off of me in the water. The Catholic teaching on infant baptism was the most difficult for me to accept during the RCIA process. All the other "new" teachings where so amazing and life affirming, that I eventually determined if the Catholics are right on everything, maybe they are right on this too, so I went ahead and confirmed my belief in everything the Church teaches to be true. But I still held so closely to my spiritual experience from a few years earlier that I didn't ever mention my infant baptism, and my confirmation certificate actually indicates I was baptized at Lake Superior Christian Church, a "non-denominational" church in Marquette that supports HHCF, but I honestly think that was a misunderstanding from the letter I got from the His House campus minister that indicated I had been baptized IN Lake Superior.
I kept looking toward the priesthood, but every time I did God would close another door. Eventually I reexamined my vocation and determined that even if I wanted to be a priest, God didn't want me to.
Years later and I'm now married, have 2 kids, live on the outskirts of metro Detroit am active in my parish, deputy grand knight of our local K of C council, and by all worldly means I'm doing quite well.
But I still struggle so much. I regularly attend confession, thought probably not as regularly as I should, but probably more regularly than even most practicing Catholics.
The last few years for some reason I keep being drawn to the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans. Part of me really thinks this is where God is calling me, and where I was a little off on the Priest thing before not realizing the difference [as a new Catholic I didn't even realize the difference between order (religious) and diocesan (secular) priests, assuming that all priests belonged to one order or another].
But is it really God calling me or is this just me again seeking another "born again" moment. Is it what Christ needs, or am I still looking for something that doesn't actually exist based on Protestant lies I had been told over and over, even sometimes in our parishes today?
Please pray for me to be open to the Calling of the Holy Sprirt, but continuning to take my sobirity one-day-at-time, and to work out my salvation with fear and trembling.