How Pain Fuels the Epic (Faith in Reverse Part 12)
Transformative turmoil fuels every migration, even religious ones.
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A Migration
I left Faith in Reverse in a bit of a lurch. As a bit of a recap, in the last installment chronicling the family journey toward the Catholic Church, I’d made my way through the initiating Catholic classes and was on the threshold of entering the church when the priest asked me to pause. Wait on your wife, he said. I’d shared how Amber was in ministry—on her path to ordination no less—and how I couldn’t see her leaving her vocation, much less her position as curate for our tiny Anglican Church. But then, the shifting relationship between her and her priest. A winter of abuse. A winter of heartache. A winter that ultimate led to her jumping ship and swimming toward Rome.
To read more about Amber’s winter, pre-order our upcoming book, The Deep Down Things.
If my Catholic origin story is rooted in sobriety, Amber’s is rooted in abuse. I know no other way to say this, and so, it might be easy to assume (some have) that her decision to join the folks in funny hats and robes was reactionary (at best) or capitulatory (at worst). And before you shake fists in my direction, hear me: it is not lost on us that Amber’s journey from abuse led her to a church that’s abused so many people over the past decades. But here’s what we learned in our Anglican experience: There are wolves everywhere.
God, that it were not so.
In the early days of her Catholic migration, still swimming in grief, she watched as the priest raised the host, then the wine, as he pronounced them the body and blood of Christ. Healing for the world was there on the altar, and she sat as an outsider, her hunger for healing, redemption, and justice remained unsatisfied. Then came the questions.
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