One week

It’s been one week since I converted to the Byzantine Catholic faith. I’ve have been lost in my own thoughts much of the week. Going through the profession of faith, and being chrismated the following day, has changed me, forever.

I never thought that I would see Jim baptized. He was an atheist when I met him, and I was Christian. We’ve been together for over 27 years now, and finally are at the same place spiritually. It’s been an amazing journey. But that’s another story.

So what happened to me last Sunday? I have been mulling this over all week. I knew that I would be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit. I knew what was being done, but I couldn’t tell you a word that Father Miron said. I expected to be happy, and I was. But I wasn’t expecting the feeling that came over me later that afternoon.

I had been at a friend’s house, helping her with some computer things later that afternoon. I came home, sat down, and started thinking about what had transpired earlier in the day. And I was hit with the most incredible feeling. I felt the love of God. It was overwhelming, euphoric…and yet those words aren’t enough to describe it. It caught me totally off guard. Here, what I had been searching for for many years, to connect with the divine, shows up without warning. I wanted to talk with someone so much about it; I didn’t fully understand what was happening. And then, I wondered if it was normal to feel this way. I started looking up chrismation on the Internet to see if there was anyone who had wrote about their own experience with the same thing, and I was finding nothing. This statement may not make sense, but I felt lonely in the mist of being euphoric. I had to be to work the following morning, and I wanted to hide away from the world to have time to ponder everything. Work, and the world, weren’t going anywhere just because I was having a religious experience.

I didn’t get much sleep that night. Morning came way too soon, and I was off to work.

I wondered if I looked any different to my coworkers, because I definitely wasn’t the same person who left at 5:00 p.m. the previous Friday. Did my happiness show? No one said anything.

How can you explain to someone how your life once was, and how it is now, after God has touched you? Nothing is the same anymore. All I want is to live for God, and have him work through me whatever way He sees fit to use me. I surrender all to Him.