The Maiden Warrior

Tried and Found Wanting

Quietly, matter-of-factly, we started worshipping at Mass. As we assembled with worshipping believers every Sunday at the Cathedral of St. Joseph, the answers to our most urgent questions began flooding into our hearts and minds. Our nowhere was progressively turning into “now- here.” The Good Shepherd was leading, and we were on a path that would take us home to the ancient Church. The peace of mind that poured over us was so refreshing and life-restoring. There were men and a woman of God who were the vessels of grace placed in Salvation History for many reasons that will never be fully comprehended in this life. Still, we are sure that we are among the recipients of God’s divine favor and mercy flowing from their lives. The Spirit drew us deeper into consideration of the Catholic Church as we learned from our priests and observed the intellectual and theological integrity with which they served God. Worship embodied the integrity and authenticity that we hungered for–every word, action, and moment of the Mass bore the full solemnity of the Christian faith, which profoundly impacted us.

As strange as it may sound, desperation is a good thing in the spiritual life. Desperation causes us to be open to radical solutions and willing to take all manner of risks to find what we are looking for. Desperate ones seek with an all-consuming intensity, for they know their life depends on it. Like the cancer patient who travels to a foreign country in the quest for cures that can’t be found in familiar territory, spiritual seekers embark on a quest for that which cannot be found within the borders of life as we know it. We search for healing not found in all the other cures we have tried. We have run all the way to the edges of our own answers; we have exhausted the possibilities and are now finally ready to admit our powerlessness in the face of the tremendous unfixableness of life. 

—Ruth Haley Barton

Tired and Hungry

As the months passed and our perspective clarified as we worshipped at Mass, the season of waiting gave way to understanding. We hadn’t fully comprehended how distorted our vision had become during our service to Protestant ministry. We knew there had to be more depth to the Christian faith than our Protestant denomination’s churchiness. When we were still searching for a Protestant church to worship after we departed from that denomination, one thing became crystal clear: our denomination was not unique in its floundering. And we knew we were tired of all the man-centered maneuvering all done in “the name of God!”

Mary’s magnificent response to God’s grace and mercy on humanity, as recorded in Luke 1, prophetically describes the fallout of rebellion: “He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts…”  As pride has taken root, entangling every facet of life, humanity has scattered and diffused into all manner of imaginations. We had witnessed how tiring the Protestant movement had become with its preoccupation with what people wanted. We found it increasingly tiring to be associated with all the innovations in the Protestant movement that had scattered over different “imaginations” about what it means to worship the Triune God and live as His Church in the world. We were tired of all the imaginative splitting of hairs. We were tired of motivations centered around attracting people through the consumerism familiar to the current generation rather than the true worship of God. We were tired of topic-driven preaching, performer-driven music, soapbox-driven teaching, and entertainment-driven programming. We tired of all the church splits, division, and multiplication, not to mention all the “affiliations” or movements replacing denominations–new wine in old wineskins!

Our spirits wearied from the futility attachments to the benefits of serving God. We had looked through the neatly packaged boxes God had been put into by customized movements and found them wanting. We had read the formulas and noted the steps laid out by well-meaning evangelical leaders, broadcasters, and writers who relegated faith to methodology and found so many of them self-serving. We had dedicated our time and effort to doing and believing all the right things according to our denomination’s perspective; we still had doubts about its continuity with the historic Church.

We were tired, and we were hungry. Our hunger manifested in what St. Anselm wrote thousands of years ago, “Faith seeks understanding.” Our questions about God and faith had made us uneasy, leading to new questions we could never have anticipated. Our questions were changing, and we found the answers we had previously accepted did not satisfy our desire for security, rest, and peace. We fed our spirits by reading from the Church’s early Church Fathers and Saints. We found satisfaction in their devotion to Christ and their desire to understand what they believed. We were more comfortable with the transcendent Mystery (“to shut the mouth”) of the Triune God than with the domesticated certainties that had fossilized so much of the Protestant movement. We fed our spirits by seeking more understanding and discovered the Mystery of Faith that transcends humanity’s diminutive attempts at definitions of The Faith. The gravitas that accompanied these realizations had led us in the “long obedience in the same direction” toward the threshold of the Catholic Church. The hungering darkness of our past gave way to light!

Swimming to Shore

During the “quiet gift of grace” we found in the solitude, where our vision cleared, we began a search for a church home. The painful discovery for us was that we could no longer abide by the Protestant notions of worship. What were those disturbing notions that had set the tide of our lives toward the Catholic Church? There is an unspoken, sometimes unintentional, motivation in the evangelical Protestant movement. Beneath the decision to start new churches, known as a church plant, a systemic infirmity pervades the Protestant movement, regardless of denominational affiliation. Authority is fluid. Older established churches are declining in numbers or reclining in entrenchment and apathy. It is a given fact that most established churches struggle with leadership succession. When a new generation desires change that will equal the allure of its age, the old guard often fights to keep their authority over what they believe is suitable for their generation. Because church authority is local and based on a short history of denominational organizations, many churches tend toward solving their perceived problems with man-centered solutions. Solutions that appear to be democratic but are often myopic. Solutions that may appear on the surface as prudent are simply another attempt at plugging the dike of a 500-year-old reservoir of the turbulent waters of rebellion. Rather than pastors and their superiors knocking their heads against the fixed positions of the biggest donors or the loudest detractors in the church, the solution often is to start another church. At other times, the solution is to find new pastoral leadership who can either “lead” or placate the dissenting voices and imagine new ways and means to attract the culture. The decision to start a new church or find a new pastor may have started because of division in the church. Or the decision is made to prevent parishioners from leaving the local church. Either way, the undercurrent of protest is never treated; the leak in the dike is beyond repair.           

The present cultural fascination with mega-entertainment churches that attract a consumer-driven society earns the evangelical church’s idiom, “a mile wide and an inch deep.” The innovation seems to incline well to the culture, yet upon closer examination, it reveals that pastors have incredible pressure to balance intriguing sermons and experiences that cater to the culture’s frantic want for distraction from the realities of their lives. Behind some of the motivations in ministry, programming is a desire to engage the congregation in following Christ in a relevant way within the culture. At first glance, this appears commendable. But another motivation lurks around decisions that are made. A pastor and his staff know that the people they serve can find another place to attend on Sunday mornings if they are bored with the smorgasbord of choices their church serves every Sunday. We have even heard pastors referred to as coaches by church leadership. When the coach and his team cease to have “wins” that meet the approval of the “fans,” then it’s time for a new coaching team. A myriad of notions has filled the vacuum of the Protestant movement. Any pastor who pulls back from the busyness he is driven to pursue eventually recognizes he is just one more sincere little boy trying his best to keep the reservoir from giving way around him.

The environment of these rising-star churches can best be described by what one young person told us about a church she had decided to attend. When we queried her why she had chosen that particular church, her answer echoed the culture. “I always have a good time and come away feeling good. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”  Is it? Is worship of the Triune God about inclining to the wants of the culture to attract people to attend church to feel good? Is worship something we manage, or is it something we give? Is it something we experience? Or something we do? We knew that the evangelical Protestant answer is touted every Sunday in varying ways. Some are more unsettling than others.                  

Bagels and designer coffee are often available for purchase before entering the “worship center.” Some churches even have a breakfast bar at the back of the worship center so you can get up and help yourself during the “worship” hour. It is not unusual to observe people bringing a fast-food breakfast they had grabbed on the way to church. If the church has multiple venues for their Sunday morning worship experience, then the pastor’s 30-45 minute sermon is simulcast. Most often, at least in the “contemporary” services, the lights are low to set the mood for the performance on the stage. The dressed-down experience attracts the entertainment-driven culture, and it works! Full bands and sound and light shows are not uncommon, and the talent on the stage is most often polished and professional.            

We had observed another unsettling normal in most of the up-and-coming Protestant churches. We shouldn’t have been surprised because it is a trend that has grown out of the “Church Growth” movement we had witnessed in the ’80s: the separation of generations and the very purposeful catering to children, or should we say the parents of children. When our “church shopping” began, we realized the denomination we had served was no different in its wants and demands than other Protestant denominations. One glaring example is a conspicuous demonstration of how far the church has strayed from the biblical purpose of worship. A summer “sermon” series at a local church was advertised as a fantastic way to unite the generations in “worship.” Each Sunday, popcorn and soda would be available while the congregation would watch a section from a popular movie series broadcast through the church’s multi-media system. The music and sermon would be developed around a theme in the movie that the church staff felt was relevant. It is no wonder that the younger generation has difficulty distinguishing Truth from fiction when it’s concluded that to be a “good Christian” is like being a heroic Jedi!

It wasn’t long into our search for a new church home before it was apparent that finding an evangelical Protestant church was not the problem. We had plenty of opt-out churches to choose from, plenty! But we quickly discovered we weren’t interested in shopping until we found an evangelical church that fit us, for we realized that we didn’t fit the evangelical Protestant movement anymore. We were not interested in finding a style of worship that suited our preferences. That understanding came with relief, yet we didn’t know where to turn. We knew many were beginning to opt out of church, formulating their own “worship” of God to meet their needs. That was not an option for us; we still longed to find a solid ground of biblical and moral authority that held fast to the tenets of The Faith. We still longed for worship that held fast to the Word of God. And so we perused the liturgical Protestant menu to see what we might try.

The liberal stream of the Protestant movement has erupted in a devolving of its own. But we held out hope some denominations still had not wavered about the supremacy of the Scriptures and biblical moral standards. We located a mainline church where worship was somewhat liturgical, and the preaching seemed Christ-centered. We had been attending for a few months when our son encouraged us to look closely at the denomination’s theological statements. We could locate the most recent revisions the denomination had made to their constitution on the basic tenets of The Faith and biblical morality and found they directly contradict Sacred Scripture and the teaching of the historical Church. Though the local congregation seemed to hold to the authority of Scripture, the denomination’s foundation was crumbling beneath the weight of modernity. That denomination’s recent compromises added to the long list of concessions on the authority of the Scripture that other spiritually sterile mainline denominations had made. We could not participate in the evisceration of The Faith, which was emptying the mainline denominations of life. We were not surprised that we did not fit mainline Protestantism, but the foray into that side of the Protestant movement did oblige us to continue to ask the hard questions about what we believed and why we believed it.

“Seek in reading, and you will find in meditating; knock in mental prayer, and it will be opened to you by contemplation.”

-Guigo II

“Shop ’til you drop”  took on a new meaning. We came to a very abrupt decision that we wouldn’t shop for a church home anymore. We needed to answer some of the questions that had preoccupied our minds; the only way that would happen was through examination. We returned to one question again and again: Why does division in the Protestant movement still prevail after 500 years? And why does the Catholic Church remain intact after 2,000 years?    

The very oldest Protestant denominations date back to the 16th century Reformation. Those denominations have fractured many times in the 500 years since the Reformation. Many have ceased to have a strong identity with the founders of their denomination’s tenets. It became apparent that denominationalism continued to do to the Protestant movement what the Protestant Reformers tried to do to the Catholic Church. Understanding this helped explain the disrespect of pastoral leadership and even rebellion against biblical authority in the local churches of many denominations. Protest and division are part of the genetic code of the movement. Because there is no secure center of Authority or Tradition, the Movement is more like a mutant cell dividing at will. To date, there are some 33,000 Protestant denominations. Yet only one Church has not given way to the culture of rebellion and division. There is still one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.         

Our questions increased: Why have billions of believers worldwide remained faithful to the Catholic Church? Why has the Catholic Church’s worship remained unaltered throughout history? What is the reason behind the Papacy and the Church’s authority, and how does the Church stand as a paragon of biblical authority?

We needed answers to the doubts about the condition of the Protestant church that had preoccupied our minds during the unfortunate experiences in our last pastorate and then in our church shopping; that was going to happen through examination. We knew if we were to be faithful to God, we must be loyal to His Bride–His Church. We hungered and thirsted for biblically-ordained worship and the stability of a Church that held firm the teachings of Christ and the Traditions of The Faith. Where would we find that integrity? We were now at the threshold of the Catholic Church, and it was time to consider it together.

Die to the world by renouncing the madness of its stir and bustle.
–Tatian

To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story,
the light side and the dark side.
In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am
and what God’s grace means.
–Brennan Manning

True freedom consists in not being
attached to anything. It is in this detachment that
God seeks your soul in order to work His great marvels.
–Juan de Bonilla

After nearly eighteen years of serving our last congregation, Jeff felt like he was about to crack. He decided we needed to get away for some quiet reflection and spiritual counsel. Thanks to the generosity of some dear friends, we could go to a retreat center specifically designed to intervene with ministry couples in crisis. They are legion! (We learned during that retreat that 1,500 Protestant pastors annually resign from ministry. The casualties of The Protestant Reformation fill history.) We couldn’t wait to get to the retreat. The journey into the Rocky Mountains couldn’t have been more appropriate. We felt much like the prophet Elijah fleeing to Mt. Horeb, hoping to hear an answer to our deepening doubt. And we also needed to receive divine food to restore our failing spirits. Our prayer leading up to the retreat was for one thing–clarity. Our retreat was led by a godly couple that had served many years in an evangelical denomination. During that week-long retreat, which included spiritual guidance and counseling, something gave way deep into Jeff’s person. There was a growing fissure in his spirit that he could no longer ignore. He became more willing to accept the lack of health in the evangelical Protestant position. Steps had to be taken. Neither of us knew what each of those steps was, but we knew in time, God, in his grace, would make them apparent.

On a warm September day, we walked on a path that led into the woods surrounding the retreat center. We were mostly silent, pondering the counseling session we had just finished with our counselors. As we walked it was as if God was whispering from the aspens that lined the path, “This is the way, walk in it, trust Me.” We climbed on top of a boulder to take in the beauty of God’s creation. Sitting on that boulder that day, we made decisions that would unfold in ways we could never imagine.

I made a quiet decision one afternoon while meditating and praying at one of the several prayer stations nestled here and there in the woods around the retreat center. The station was named “Grace,” and a simple prayer rose in me as I wept and grieved, “God of Grace, this does not belong to me. It belongs to you.” I began to pray for three things that day, two of which I share with you: I would abide with a quiet spirit alongside my husband and that his eyes and ears would receive what God desired to reveal to him. I remembered the words of Moses to the Israelites, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today…” Exodus 14:13. If I was to trust the grace of God, I was to be still and wait before Him.

Anyone looking at our lives from the outside during the events of the next few months after our decision to leave the Protestant ministry would describe our actions as drastic.  In fact, some did!  The spectators of our lives were befuddled and bemused. Seizing life in a rush and hurry to make something happen is considered a normal and commendable thing to do.  Excessive busyness, control, and self-advancement are the coinage of the culture, and unfortunately, they can be the same in the church’s culture. To do life any other way is a curious thing indeed. We felt like curiosities.  But we had a peace that passes all human understanding and an unshakable, yes, even desperate belief that it was the hand of our loving Shepherd leading us down a path to only God knew where.  Our resignation from the church we served dramatically changed our life circumstances and our financial position. We sold our home and moved into a small apartment near the hospital, where Jeff secured an entry-level job in patient access. Our income decreased by 2/3rds, and our peace of mind increased a hundredfold! We often remarked to others and ourselves that “our exterior world has shrunk significantly, but our interior world has expanded exponentially.”            

A line from a favorite song ran through our minds, “Meet me at the edge of the world…you and me love and no one near…walk me to the edge of the world.. I’m waiting at the edge of the world.” For the most part, we walked to the edge of our world alone and had nothing left to lose. Our three children, all married with their own families, lived in different parts of the country. As we took deliberate steps away from what we had known for 34 years, there was indeed some necessary isolation and waiting that we needed to embrace before we could turn toward the future.

Most people will not go forward until the pain of staying where they are is unbearable.

–Peter Scazzero

Don’t stumble on something behind you.

–Anonymous

An immediate sense of freedom from the disillusionment that had barnacled onto our lives was liberating. We were exhausted emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Our souls cried out for attention and rest. The joy that had withered began to be restored to life, and we were often told there was a visual difference between us.  We were now living where the margins of grace were wide, and the goodness of God that we put our hope in filling our hearts and minds as we made room for quietness. The rest and peace of God returned.  Peace had been pushed to the margins of our lives for so long as we tried to keep our heads above the tide of discontent, doubt, and despair. Now, the waters of our life calmed as our struggle to remain where we had been ended.           

But it was in the waiting, in the doldrums in God’s great ocean of grace, where God also had some work to do in our spirits and emotions. Some of the bewilderment over how life had unfolded was as easy to toss from our lives as weeds after a hard rain.  On the other hand, the roots of misunderstanding about ourselves ran deep.  Reconciling what life had come to was extremely difficult at times; we each had some spiritual climbing to do. We needed to unfetter ourselves from some internal enemies that we had dragged with us to the edge of our world. Now, we were living the prelude of another transformation and the unknown that stretched before we challenged us to remain fearless. There were pitfalls and pratfalls along the way; however, the spiritual reading, prayer, fasting, and contemplation that had long been a part of the fabric of our lives became the rope that secured our lives in this new ascent of obedience.  Though we were making this journey together, the struggles of the climb affected us in different ways.

God comes like the sun in the morning- when it is time.
We must assume an attitude of waiting, accepting that we are creatures and not the Creator. We must do this because it is not our right to do anything else; the initiative is God’s, not ours. We can initiate nothing; we are only able to accept. 

–Carlo Carretto

Because we do not rest, we lose our way…Poisoned by the hypnotic belief that good things come only through unceasing determination and tireless effort, we can never truly rest. And for want of rest, our lives are in danger.

–Wayne Muller

Lord Jesus, let me know myself and know Thee, And desire nothing save only Thee…Let me distrust myself and put my trust in Thee. Let me be willing to obey for the sake of Thee. Let me cling to nothing save only to Thee…Look upon me, that I may love Thee. –St. Augustine

I had some inner space to navigate to receive the grace of restoration I needed in the place between what had been and what would be. My prayer from our retreat in the mountains, “God of Grace, this does not belong to me; it belongs to You,” became a mantra that enfolded and calmed me to the core as I stood by my man with a still and trusting heart. That in itself was a lesson that took me a lifetime to learn.

Many writers have paralleled the journey of faith with climbing a mountain.  My maturing as a Christian sometimes meant that I ascended to Christ with some difficulty; my willful nature made for hard climbing lessons.  Most of those lessons were not overly wearisome because deep within me, I longed to live as a person of integrity.  And when the ascent did become worrisome, the weather of adversity most often did not erode my faith, rather it increased my hope. I had been taught from an early age that we grow in holiness as we obey the Spirit’s leadership as we walk by faith;  to trust was to obey, and to obey was to trust.  

I believe St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that pride is disordered self-trust.  It seemed to me that there was a redemptive moment when I realized that disordered self-trust had me in its grip in every upheaval that had accompanied my eventual obedience.  If I was going to be transformed into the image of Christ through the circumstances, I had to loosen my grip on my pride.  I had long fought this rearguard of delusion in my soul that grew out of the seeds of the insecurities surrounding my own mother’s chronic disease that shadowed my life. I could have never restored my mother’s health through my own efforts, yet somehow, in my emotional formation, I came to believe that it was up to me to shield people from suffering. That delusion led to a prideful determination to protect anyone I loved from suffering. The great tests of my faith had always been through circumstances around what I held most dear in my life–my family.  It was one thing to say, “Yes, I want to ascend the heights of grace; yes, I want to seek understanding by learning to trust.”  It was quite another thing to say, “Yes, I will choose to allow my husband or child or loved one to suffer through circumstances while God teaches me to trust, and I learn obedience.”           

I read somewhere that suffering and death are the specters that brood and hover around the edges of fallen humanity.  Sometimes they stand just outside the boundaries of living in the present moment, other times they possess us.  The last 15 years of our pastoral ministry seemed possessed by personal and vocational suffering and death.  Looking back now, I see how our loving Father allowed the losses in life to draw our spirits into deeper consideration of the journey into The Catholic Church. My daily journal entries expanded as I attempted to reconcile what was happening outside of me with what was happening inside me.  What I had begun to notice about myself was as my husband’s vocational suffering increased, I, true to the delusion at work in me, allowed my pride to run interference for him.  It was as if I believed I could shield and protect him by carrying the burden of his own life up the incomprehensible ascent we seemed to be on.  When I finally came to the place where I could pray with my whole heart, “God of Grace, this does not belong to me; it belongs to you,” on the mountain that day, I didn’t just loosen my grip on fear and pride about our immediate circumstance.  I threw my hands wide open, releasing years of disordered self-trust. The lightness of being that flowed over my spirit was liberating. My vision had finally cleared, and what I saw about myself was not beautiful to behold.  I had imperceptibly turned into a safety director for Jeff and our service in ministry. I realized that I had been doing much of the busyness of churchiness removed from sincere motivation or desire! The subconscious motivator was to make Jeff appear more valuable in the eyes of decision-makers and denominational leaders in a denomination I no longer had confidence in and a movement I had serious doubts about.           

I had learned from reading St. Ignatius’ counsel on desolation and consolation that when the way becomes mired with confusion and frustration, I need to discern where the feeling or circumstance is leading me.  When offered up to God, doubt and despair could become moments of conversion and intimacy with God. We both desired conversion to the likeness of Christ more than anything else.  As we were trying to find solid ground to stand on, I was keenly aware that Jeff was grieving the loss of his identity in his vocation. My gut reaction was to make something happen to ease his own suffering, but  I had finally realized that I was helpless to protect Jeff, nor was it my job! The consoling would only come through living with the desolating. The God of Grace that I put my hope in would act despite my efforts, and in the end, I knew it was up to Jeff to offer up his own despair. I needed to remain still and put my trust in God. I soon learned that Jeff, true to his nature, was quietly making peace with the circuitous journey of his years in pastoral ministry.  What appeared to me as his languid reckoning with our present circumstances in the land between nowhere and now here was, in actuality, another clarifying point of his life’s conversion.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a gentle Father and the God of all consolation, who comforts us in all our sorrows so that we can offer others, in their sorrows, the consolation that we have received from God ourselves.  Indeed, as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so, through Christ, does our consolation overflow.  When we are made to suffer, it is for your consolation and salvation…And our hope for you is confident since we know that, sharing our sufferings, you will also share our consolations. –St. Paul to the Corinthians

Amid life’s gladness, the betrayal of others and our own infidelity at times force us by their pain to question whether there is anything or anyone worthy of trust or finally true in the world. –Catherine of Siena

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My Husband’s Journey through the Land Between

The early days of living in the “land between” were filled with bewildering emotions. Jeff often felt like he was treading water, caught in an unknown tide. Yet he knew in his gut that if he fought against whatever God was up to, he would short shrift God’s purpose. A question dogged his thoughts, “Has my life come to this?” From childhood, he had been an obedient and loyal person.  He learned well that loyalty is a fine strength and pursued his calling into pastoral ministry with the same sense of loyalty. He did everything he was tasked with over the years in ministry thoroughly and obediently.           

Jeff found that in the later years of ministry, his loyalty was constantly challenged by a series of dilemmas that caused him to seriously question what had happened to himself, me, and our family in varying degrees.  He had a gnawing realization that the more he had tried to retrofit his loyalty to please the people we served, the more misdirected he felt.  Something now had to give way, and that something was inside of him. Someone has said that it can take years to discover how to fit into our souls. We both agree.  At least, for Jeff, it wasn’t until he allowed God to take the blinders off, through extreme circumstances, that he saw how ill in soul he was.             

It was not until we stepped away from the ministry that he began to ascertain that his character strength of loyalty had been driven to its extreme and had become the very thing that threatened his emotional and spiritual health.  The way he thought, the beliefs he once had, the people he admired, and the things he had valued were all up for review. He had convinced himself that what he was doing in his calling and service was enough for him, yet he hungered for something more; he had no idea where that hunger would be satisfied. There was some waiting, rethinking, and reassessing he knew had to be done.  And the time had come for him to face life’s hard questions.  The hardest one to answer was about himself, his loyalty, and his desire to please others.           

We came across a gravestone of a fallen veteran one day on a walk through a cemetery.  Its simple inscription echoed what Jeff had lived his life by, “Loyalty is my honor.”  In many ways, he felt he had turned into dust because of that loyalty.  Unlike the soldier, he had survived the battle skirmishes and discovered that his loyalty had been misdirected.  That was hard enough to admit. But the startling revelation was that had it not been for the previous fifteen years of battles, he would never have given up fighting. And God knew it! The question for him then was, “If what I have worked so hard to remain loyal to was God’s way of leading me toward further conversion, then what is He turning me toward?” What is conversion? It is allowing ourselves to be transformed. What he believed about his call and gifts were true, but now they had to be reordered. He was determined to please God and God alone. In leaving the Protestant movement he had not retreated from God’s call, he had outgrown where he had served Him in that call. That realization led to other questions that led him into uncharted waters, and the current in those waters eventually led him to peace and joy.  God had a chartered course that demanded his full attention. Now He had it!