My Way Back Home To The Catholic Church part I

I'll go ahead and start when I was a teenager and life was just way too simple. No responsibilities, just freshly out of High School and no real aspirations to do well....anything. I was in all kinds of trouble(although for the most part rarely got caught...Whew! Thank Our Lord for that one!) Started drinking a lot. Going to parties, working in various jobs. Let's  just say this...My life was Full of Sin, as long as I didn't break the"Thou Shalt Not Kill Commandment" I was ok I thought. There is a lot to say about my way of life at that time, but for the sake of making this readable, and getting to the point all I'll say is this...By all accounts, I was on a very slippery slope. My life was drenched in an abyss of darkness. It was very real, and evil had gripped me to the core and at around 20 years old, it was growing darker by the day and I was losing total control of just about everything in my life. I remember driving to work one day marveling at the "Great Achievements" of man. Buildings, and cars, technology, and remember saying to God. "You must marvel at what we've done as human beings. Just look at all this! I bet if I become a very powerful man with very little effort, You'll be so proud of what I've achieved!" Boy looking back at that now and what I know to be true...How Stupid!

But that's what pride will do to a person. I was Baptized Catholic, attended Mass off and on throughout childhood, but that was definitely enough to know better than that. I even went so far as to say to my friends at the time, "Yeah I believe in God, I think the Old Testament is all made up, but I think a lot of the New Testament is true. You know with Jesus and stuff." OYE! That's hard to even fathom at this point, but that just gives you a little taste of where I was in my life. 

Now somehow I was beginning to notice something was very wrong in my life. I couldn't quite pinpoint it at the time, but life was beginning to mean nothing at all to me. One night after watching TV for a little while I started to feel very distressed. I was thinking about Hell and whether I would go there had I died. This shook me. I believe God at this point was finally starting to break through this wall that I had built around my heart, but it wasn't ready to come down yet. I said "Oh God! Am I going to Hell!" I said this over and over again. It was a terrible sorrow and weight on my soul. I couldn't bear it. I started to cry and just kept repeating it over and over, only now I was saying "God please don't let me go there! Help me!" I laid my head down on my pillow and closed my eyes...and all of a sudden I saw a huge crowd of people(internally) and they were all on their knees. As I hovered across this crowd I came upon a huge altar made of stone. I was on this altar repeating the same words as earlier on my knees, and before me was Jesus Christ.(I'm still blown away by this even now, and this was 10 years ago) All of a sudden everything went away, except for Jesus and me laying prostrate in front of him. He then began to speak to me in a very gentle and calm but authoritative voice and he said "Do not worry. You are going to be alright." I then opened my eyes and was at peace...and ofcourse being naive I thought alright cool, I must be fine. So I continued on the same path, but this time things began to happen, and nothing could've prepared me for what would happen a few months later....

I think this will be a good place to stop for this post. Look out for the rest of my story coming up shortly.