Richard Cole - Catholic by Choice: Why I Embraced the Faith, Joined the Church, and Embarked on the Adventure of a Lifetime

Let me tell you a story about Eddie. We met in a recovery program years ago, and he would tell this story about himself. Once when he was trying to stop drinking, he found himself in a psychiatric hospital. He was broke. Hed lost his job. His wife had left him. He was at the end of his last rope. Every morning, he would talk to a psychiatrist. After several sessions the doctor said, Eddie, youre all over the map. You need to focus. I want you to go off by yourself and think about this question: What are the three things you need in order to live? The three things you absolutely have to have to keep living.

Eddie said okay, and he went off to think. A few days later, he came back with his answer.

First of all, Eddie said, I need to breathe. (He was taking the question seriously. He had no choice at that point.) Second, I need to drink water. I know I can go without food for weeks. Ive done it. But I need water all the time.

Last, he said, I need to be understood. If nobody understands me, I think Ill die.

I dont believe Eddie was being melodramatic about dying. Hed gone through too much for that. I think he was just being realistic. If were not understood, we can diefast or slow. Its a form of loneliness, and people all over the world die from loneliness every day. If were not understood, we might feel simply frustrated at first, but if it continues, this frustration can rise into an ocean of despair, pain, even panic. You see this need to communicate in toddlers before they learn to talk, a compulsion that cant be explained as mere convenience. You see it in the aged and the sick. If were not understood in some way that we truly need, it can make us older, make us ill. Our libraries are monuments of trying to be understood, with each book representing success in various degrees. This book, too, of course.

Catholic by Choice is a love story about conversion and the honeymoon of faith. It began when I visited a Benedictine monastery. I was there for only three days, to read for a while and relax. I didnt see visions or hear voices. But when I came back, I found myself on a path. I felt an invisible hand in the small of my back, gently pushing me forward. SomethingI didnt know whathad happened.

What happened, in fact, was an intense, painful, and utterly dazzling two-year period during which I fell in love with God, became a Christian, and finally entered the Catholic Church. Much of the book was written a year after I joined the church, when the experience was still fresh in my mind. That was almost fifteen years ago, however, so its natural, even appropriate, to politely ask at this point if Im still a practicing, fully functioning Catholic. That glorious, utterly dazzling conversion that I talk so much aboutdid it stick?

Yes, actually, I believe it did.

After all these years, I still have my Mass cavity, a feeling of emptiness in the center of my chest, just under the sternum, that gradually builds every week and can be filled only by going to Mass. Nothing else can fill that emptiness.

But what about your faith? a reader might ask. Have you ever been faced with doubts? A dark night of the soul? And hows your family? Are the kids all right? Are you still married? Still employed? Still sober? Have you ever regretted joining the church?

These are good questions. The Mass is the source and summit of our Christian life, but a Catholic life is always more than showing up in the pews. Life keeps happening. We come down from the pink cloud, the honeymoon is over, and then the relatives arrive, hungry, unannounced, and asking questions at the door.

So the biggest question might be this: After recovering from the flash and enthusiasm of a manic episode that lasted literally for years, have I reached a more authentic conversion that moves beyond a peak experience to a more-balanced faith?

Probably not. I am a serial enthusiast. I keep losing my balance and falling in love, and my new lifeyes, it still feels newis very much a work in progress. But God gave me faith years ago, and he keeps giving me faith. Certainly, I have days when I forget, when I can believe something in my mind but not really in my heart. Then I recollect myself and feel a presence. God is the unexpected. Its like living next to the ocean. I dont have to look at the water to know that Im always beside a large body, changeable but constant and scary when I think about how deep it is but calming for that very reason.

At the same time, Ive been given the grace to realize how self-involved I was when I first wrote this book. Truly, I was stoned on God. I had fallen deeply in love with God, but I was alsoand equallyin love with the pretty idea of myself in love with God. I wanted a life of spiritual beauty, as if I were making a work of art. Fortunately, that phase didnt last forever. These days I try to talk less and listen more.

Meanwhile, God is patient. My conversion put such a strain on my wife and kids that Im still grateful that they didnt walk out on me. They stayed, though, and everyone is in good shape. The boys are now twenty-two and eighteen. Harrison is in college, and Spencer is finishing his last year of homeschooling. They havent settled on any careers yet, and thats fine with their parents. As Lauren says, what they wind up doing for a living probably hasnt even been invented yet.

As for my business career, such as it is, I quit the job I talked about in the book, moved to my fourth hi-tech startup (a triumph of faith over reason), and finally got laid off when the dot-com bubble collapsed. I now have a modest business as a freelance writer, and Lauren works with me as chief financial officer, editor, and proofreader.

There have been bumps along the way. A few years ago I decided I could start drinking again. Big mistake. I figured that I could just drink wine, a bit of bourbon, have a civilized little party as a sensible adult. But certain guestssuch as anger, anxiety, exhaustion, and two kinds of depressionkept showing up. I didnt invite you guys, I said, and they all said, the hell you didnt. So I went back and forth, dithering as some of us do, gradually drinking more and slipping back to where I was twenty years before. I realized that I wasnt the empty vessel for God that Scripture talks about, if only because my own little vessel was always filled with a drink. So I finally asked God one morning in prayer, Do you want me to stop drinking? And God said yes. Period. He didnt say it twice. So now Im back to working my program, and this time, I sincerely pray, its for good.