Faith Through Suffering

An intense story of conversion.  Excerpts:

...I've noticed that, from my childhood, when faced with frightening or worrying experiences I seek solace in books, and this was no exception. As Peter and I launched into this new experience of home schooling, I buried myself in the works of authors I have long loved, including C. S. Lewis, in my spare time. Though Peter was calmer, his symptoms continued unabated. I retreated even further into quiet despair.

An insight from Lewis' book The Problem of Pain had a profound impact on me: "Pain removes the veil. It plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul." As I sat one day at our dining room table, reading and absorbing those words with my twitching, barking son beside me working on his math lesson, it did indeed feel as if a veil was being ripped off my old perceptions of myself, of God and of the world. I knew I needed to go deeper, to find a new way to live with our reality, to cope with the hopelessness and bitterness I felt, to make sense of the suffering my son was enduring, and to find the strength of spirit to help him rise above his challenges.

C. S. Lewis led me to one of his favorite authors, G. K. Chesterton, whose books I ate up with an eagerness that alarmed my husband. Hugely intrigued by Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism, I started reading the works of other notable converts – Cardinal John Henry Newman, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Scott Hahn, Richard John Neuhaus and Thomas Howard. I joined in an experience common to almost all of these authors, a letting-go of my perception of how I thought God works. It became increasingly clear to me that I was in love with God's blessings, but not with God. I had long been worshipping a deity of my own construction that conveniently propped up my own ideas and plans. Needless to say, my life was now looking much different than I'd ever imagined...