Chronic Pain and Conversion

A few months ago, I was asked to share my journey from an Evangelical Protestant to Roman Catholic at an event in Geneva, Switzerland. There were a number of speakers talking about their different roads to Catholicism: conversion, reversion, and the need for daily, continual conversion.

I’m still working on writing down an overview of my journey with chronic back pain, but this talk gives a window into the many ways chronic pain has impacted my faith. 

I hope you enjoy it!

Called to Conversion

Someone asked me last night how I would describe my faith journey in one sentence. Without hesitation, I answered: one crazy trust exercise after another. 

In the short time I have, I'd like to share with you a few times God has asked me to take a leap of faith, and how, after each “yes” I've given, He's used that moment to show up in expected ways.

I grew up in a strong evangelical family in Los Angeles. I attended Sunday School every week, fun church camps every summer, and Bible studies during the week.

When I was 14, my youth pastor asked us if we wanted to get baptized. Most of my friends immediately said yes, but I hesitated. I couldn't put words to it, but I just didn't feel ready. Something was missing. I had decided not to get baptized and was trying to figure out how to tell my parents when, one Sunday, I felt an overwhelming conviction that I needed to go through with it. It didn't matter if I didn't "feel ready," I knew deep down that God wanted me to get baptized, and I needed to trust Him. So I did. This process would become a recurring theme in my life.

I know now that God was preparing me with the graces of baptism to be able to endure what was about to come. 

Just a few months later, I went in for a routine stomach surgery, and woke up in extreme back pain, a pain that has persisted to this day, over 17 years later. 

Over the next few months, and years, as countless doctors tried to diagnose the source of my extreme pain and attempt to reverse it through dozens of procedures, my world came crashing down around me. It was devastating, at 15 years old, to be told by doctors that I would probably live in chronic pain for the rest of my life, and they couldn't do anything about it.  

I hit rock bottom, losing the will to live. I couldn't sleep, I dropped out of school for a time, and I didn't think a life in so much pain life was worth living for much longer. 

During one of the few times I managed to make it to youth group, my pastor advertised an upcoming mission trip opportunity in South Africa. Again, I felt that overwhelming conviction to go, and without telling my parents, immediately signed up. By the time they found out, they were mortified. I was in so much pain, I couldn't sit through an hour of school, and yet I wanted to sit through 20 hours of flying from Los Angeles to Cape Town? I audatiously told them that God wanted me to do it, and that I wanted to trust him. And for some crazy reason, my parents let me go. 

By the grace of God, I was able to manage my pain moderately well on that trip, and it completely pulled me out of myself. Working with kids enduring situations a thousand times worse than my own, I slowly started to put my life into perspective. I didn't know how I would ensure my own pain and suffering, but during that trip, God showed me it was possible.

God asked me to trust him, and He showed up.

Daily life became a trust exercise for me. I would wake up not knowing if I had the strength to get to the end of the day, but God would provide, always. Relying on God to get through the day wasn't a metaphor for me, it was my reality. 

Flash forward to my final year of university, and I felt another overwhelming conviction to take bold action and trust God would take care of me. By this time, I had basically become dependent on painkillers to function. I wouldn't say I was addicted, but at just 22 years old, I was close to the edge of very dangerous territory. I knew it would be extremely difficult, but I was confident God would catch me. After all, He has so clearly shown himself every time I took a leap of faith, I assumed this time would be the same.

What followed was the most physically, emotionally, and spiritually difficult six months of my life.

I will spare you the most graphic details, but imagine the worst hangover you've ever had (or heard of) lasting for over six months: constant nausea, dizziness, sweating, and aching. All of this was miserable, but I had faced plenty of pain and sickness before. I was used to physical suffering. 

What made this so unbearable was the feeling of complete abandonment by God that overshadowed everything else. He was absent from me and removed any sense of peace or love from my spiritual life. I took a leap of faith, expecting Him to catch me, but instead, it felt like I landed flat on my face. I felt abandoned and rejected by God, and I was angry.

However, purely through grace from God, I couldn't walk away completely. I interpreted His silence as indifference, but deep in my heart, I knew He still existed. I couldn't deny how often God had been tangibly present in my life. Even at rock bottom, in the midst of feeling spiritually abandoned and physically spent, I simply couldn't deny the existence of God.

It was precisely at this moment, when my faith had crumpled down to the bedrock conviction of the existence of God and nothing else, that He placed the first Catholics into my life. 

Breaking out of my evangelical bubble, I was so intrigued by my new Catholic friends. Their devotions and practices simultaneously felt so foreign and yet so natural to me. For the first time in my life, I learned from Catholics what Catholics actually believe. I was intellectually fascinated but still spiritually unmoved. These friends occasionally invited me to Mass, but I politely refused. Learning about Catholicism was just a fun thought exercise.

Then, one weekend, I gave in, and before I realized what I was doing, I was headed to Mass for the first time in my life. 

To this day, it's difficult for me to describe what I experienced there, but I know it was the Holy Spirit moving in my heart. I had heard my Catholic friends talk about the Eucharist before, but I struggled to see its importance. At my church growing up, we would "take communion," too. How was this really any different?

But at the words of consecration and the elevation of the Eucharist during that Mass, something stirred inside of me. 

I wasn't converted at that moment. I couldn't tell you that I believed that what looked like bread and wine was truly the body and blood, soul and divinity of Christ. But I could tell there was something there. Something I had never experienced in any Protestant church service before. 

To all of the Catholics here today, take note. A simple invitation to Mass, casually yet persistently offered, can fundamentally change someone's life. I'm living proof of that.

That moment, sparked by a friend inviting me to Mass, led me down the road toward my conversion into the Catholic Church. 

The Eucharist was the hook of this conversation. I realized I couldn't be neutral. 

If Catholics were right and this really was the body and blood soul and divinity of Christ, then nothing else mattered besides receiving that incredible gift. 

However, if they were wrong, then it was the worst kind of idolatry imaginable, and I should run away as fast as possible. 

This process of discernment took years of prayer, education, and deep conversations with friends and mentors. I could stand up here all day talking about how I wrestled through the different teachings of the Church: the doctrines of the Virgin Mary, the papacy, confession, and all of the classic protestant objections. There were also non-theological barriers I had to work through: what about the horrific abuse crisis? Did I really want to join an institution that could cover that up? What would my friends and family say? Would my parents think I was rejecting the faith they raised me in? 

I was enormously fortunate to have incredible friends and world-class theologians to help me wrestle with all these things, but that could only get me so far. As hard as I tried, I couldn't think my way into Catholicism. 

For anyone considering becoming Catholic and wrestling through those same issues here today, I'm sorry to tell you this: no amount of Pints with Aquinas podcasts, Bishop Barron videos, or Fr. Mike Schmitz talks can 100% convince you to be Catholic. 

At the end of the day, it takes a leap of faith. It can be terrifying, I know, but I promise it will be the single best decision you ever make. 

Take the leap.

For me, that leap centered around the Eucharist. The more my heart softened to the reality of what the Church teaches, the more everything else faded into the background. Paradoxically, seen through that focused lens of the Eucharist, my theological objections surrounding the Virgin Mary, the papacy, and confession all fell away as I began to understand how interconnected it all is. 

By God's grace, in 2016, I was confirmed in the Catholic Church and received my first Holy Communion at the Easter Vigil at St. Peters on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. It was the single best day of my life. 

I still wrestle with so many aspects of my faith, but let me tell you, it's so much more beautiful to wrestle with it from the inside than from the outside looking in. 

Now, as a Catholic, my life continues to be one crazy trust exercise after another… and I wouldn't have it any other way