Laurie O'Driscoll | 29th September 2022 | My Conversion Story, Blogging

I had just woken up from what had been the worst dream.  I reached for my smartphone to see what time it was and was not surprised to see my phone screen read, three a.m. on the dot.  Not two fifty seven, not three oh eight, but exactly three a.m.  Nightmares and three in the morning 'wake up calls' were not uncommon for me.  It was simply a part of life and to some extent I just assumed these things happened to everyone.   When I'd decided to become Catholic and began purging all of my witchy objects and books, there had been a pause in these occurrences.  This is something I wasn't really thinking about in those early weeks and only began to think about again when they started back up a little.   I didn't yet correlate these things with the evil one but did begin to recall the many times I'd had these experiences.  Especially when they could be at their worst and that was when I was a psychic reader.   Back then, my days would look a little like the following:   I sat in my living room, watching television and waiting for one of two types of notification sounds to ring out from my computer. These alerts would let me know that someone was requesting a live chat reading from one of two psychic reading websites I worked on.   Generally, a person would go to these sites, look through hundreds of profiles for different types of psychic readers until they found someone they liked. They would click a little button to begin a chat with the psychic in question. Somewhere in another part of the world another person who offered any one of a variety of psychic readings or specialized in one specific type of divination only, would be alerted by a notification sound as to the request of this other human somewhere else on the planet.   I was this other human. As much as I considered psychic work and energy healing a vocation and a very sacred duty at that, there were times when I really rather dreaded being summoned to do a reading.   Sometimes, I would ...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 23rd February 2022 | My Conversion Story, Blogging

“For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.” -John 3:17   As the weeks went on, I eagerly attended every RCIA class and looked forward to every Mass I attended.  I was totally and utterly intoxicated with the Church.  The Mass held my attention in a way that nothing ever has.  I had butterflies in my stomach when I would walk into the Church.  I just loved all of it!  Everything! From the first, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," to the Priests and Deacons genuflecting in unison at the end of the Mass, I was hooked.    The High Altar was of particular fascination to me.  It had gotten to the point where when the Mass was over, I would wander around just taking everything in.  I would find myself transfixed on the image of Christ on the cross.  After a lifetime of thinking of this as just another myth, I was finally in full belief of the reality and in awe of the enormity of what I was viewing: Love.    Thoughts that I couldn't understand were constantly in my head now.  Why did God love us so much to sacrifice his son?  Why did Jesus let this happen to him?  I would reflect on the horrors of the human race and wonder how in the world we could be worth loving and more to the point, worth the trouble of saving.  Even more critical were my thoughts toward myself and all the awful things I had put out into the world in my forty-four years.   The only bible verse I knew by heart was the King James Version of John 3:16 and it kept playing in my head:  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." When this verse came to mind the automatic response from deep within my soul was simply, "Even me?"    We were already into February and the days and weeks were being weird to me.  Sometimes it felt like I had never been anything else but Catholic...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 15th September 2021 | My Conversion Story, Blogging

For the next couple of weeks, I continued to devour anything I could about Catholicism. I was studying on my own as well as attending the RCIA classes at my new spiritual home.  Honestly, learning as many aspects as possible about this Faith, getting closer to God, was all I wanted to do.  I would find myself falling asleep while reading or listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos.  The RCIA classes had a rotation of speakers who were Clergy.  Each class had most of the same people in attendance as the first day I started going to them.     One of the classes was about the Eucharist.  As a child, some of the Churches my maternal Grandmother took me to had something kind of like it. I don't recall what denomination any of these churches were. One of the ones we went to, passed around a platter with bread and tiny cups of red liquid.  Whether it was actually wine or grape juice or whatever, I have no idea.  The people in the Church took turns passing this around as each took a piece of the bread, and the 'wine' and consumed them.  Adults did this and some children did too. It is because of seeing what they were doing that when the tray had been passed to my grandmother, I sought to imitate what I thought was the correct thing to do:  I reached up to take the bread and red liquid for myself.  My Grandmother pushed my hand away.  She wasn't being mean or anything, but she had made it clear that for whatever reason, I was one of few here who could not participate in this ritual.    Many years later, I would find myself sitting at a coffeehouse in Monterey, California.  It is highly possible that I happened to be there because I was skipping school that day, but we'll save that for another discussion.  In any case I sat at a table with a deck of Tarot Cards and was trying to teach myself how to use them.  As a teen, the Cartomancy my mother's family practiced, with its plain red or black cards of four suits was getting boring to me.  Tarot ...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 30th June 2021 | My Conversion Story, Blogging

As I walked into the classroom where the RCIA class was held, I reminded myself to breathe.  Considering the state, I had worked myself into, just coming up the stairs, I was preparing for another onslaught from my awkwardness. Oddly, for me anyway, as I walked into this room, I was at ease.  I felt at peace.  I felt safe.  There was a Priest sitting at the front of the classroom and a lady sitting behind a desk.  The priest put his mask on and walked over to greet me.  I walked up and noticed that this was the same Priest who led the Midnight Mass.  The lady at the desk, was one of the people I recognized from that Mass too.   We all exchanged greetings.  The Priest told me not to be afraid to ask questions if they said something I needed clarification on or used a specific term that I wasn't familiar with.  I nodded and thanked him.   The lady gave me a Bible, a Catechism and a notebook to write in.  A bit of my awkwardness popped in as I wondered if I was supposed to pay for these or not.  I nervously accepted the books and asked, "For free?"  She nodded and said, "Yes."  I thanked her and happily took the books to a nearby table.  She also directed me to a sign in sheet and told me where the bathrooms were and that there was coffee or juice, I could help myself to if I wanted.     I was looking at the bible I had just been given, the first Catholic Bible I'd ever owned in fact.  I told them both that I had found out a few days earlier that there are more books in the Catholic Bible than the protestant one.  The Priest acknowledged this and explained how that all came about. Apparently in the sixteenth century, after translating the Bible into German, Martin Luther removed Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, I & II Maccabees and Esther from the Old Testament.  He thought these seven books were not equal to the others. I had stumbled upon that information just a couple days earlier. I never knew that before and that fact seeme...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 08th May 2021 | My Conversion Story, Blogging

  After about a week of searching through all kinds of Catholic information online, I finally started looking into how adults become catholic.  Most of what I knew about becoming Catholic is that most people were simply born into it, like my husband and his ginormous family.  Surely, there was a way for heathens like me who weren't even baptized to do it.  I went looking at the website for the Cathedral where we had gone to that Midnight Mass.  It didn't take me long to find out how to become catholic as an adult.  I learned of the adult process of coming into the church.  It was known as, the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, or RCIA for short.  In fact, the class itself was called, "Becoming Catholic."  As I read further, I discovered that this class had started in September and went through May.  So, if I could go to this current session, I would be entering it right in the middle.  My heart sank.  I wanted to be Catholic yesterday and this class took like eight months, and I would be beginning in the middle.  I wondered if that meant I would have to wait till next year.  There was an email address to write to for more information, so on the 30th of December, I did:   Hello, I hope this email finds you well. I really want to find out about becoming Catholic. I don't know what else to put in this email except to tell you a little about myself. My name is Laurie O'Driscoll. I'm 44, happily married since 2002. We have two children who are fifteen and eighteen. I work as a bus driver and lunch lady. I'm originally from California and my husband is originally from Ireland. We've lived in Oklahoma for the past seventeen years. Also, my husband is Catholic, but he doesn't really practice. As far as religions go, I wasn't raised in one and rarely went to church services when I was growing up. I've never been baptized either. I've always prayed though, I've always believed in God and have looked into all kinds of spiritual practices in m...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 18th April 2021 | My Conversion Story, Blogging

”…in what I have done and in what I have failed to do…” -The Confiteor "YOU are?"   This was my eighteen year old sons response to me saying I was becoming Christian.  As we sat around the table on this Christmas Day, eating our Christmas Dinner, I had cautiously declared that I was changing everything my family had always known about me.     While I had not specifically raised my children as little witches or pagans, I did raise them to have 'open minds' and be tolerant of all religions.  *Or at least, I thought I had. (As I write about my conversion, I have a feeling you are going to be seeing a lot of those, 'I thought I had' statements.) * I did however expose them to all that;  New age ideas, pagan and wiccan practices, divination.  On this Christmas Day, as joyous as it was for me to have had the epiphany I had been gifted with, just a few hours earlier, I also had another thought.  This thought concerned my children and it was in regards to what I had exposed them to over their lives and that thought was simply: "Oh my God what have I done?"   The usual activity of the day continued.  We exchanged gifts, had our dinner, watched Wonder Woman 1984, and ate WAY too much dessert.  Soon the day would settle into a lazy quiet night.  Which was exactly what my mind both needed and didn't want.  I had gone over to my little office area in our house and took in all the trimmings of my former faith.  I had chakra related things everywhere, I had books about witchcraft and paganism on my bookshelf. On top of the bookshelf I had a small altar set up for prayer and magickal working.(no that is not a typo.  Wiccans and witches add the extra k to differentiate from what they do from stage magic.)    Now, remember, I had thought of myself as a pantheist so it had been years since I kept god and goddess statues around.  Saying that, I did have traditional wiccan tools such as an athame (sharp double edged knife meant for directing ...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 07th April 2021 | My Conversion Story, Blogging

We had wanted to go to a midnight mass.  My husband was usually working on Christmas eve and Christmas day, so we never went.  Actually, we tried once when my youngest child was still a baby. She started to cry, as babies do, and we left, so as not to disturb anyone.  That was about fifteen years ago.     Did I mention that I married into a Catholic family?  Yes, my husband is a "cradle Catholic," as they say.  Early on, after we met, we went to a few Masses.  Then we lived around his family, who were all cradle Catholics.  For a time, we lived with his grandmother, who taught me a lot about Catholicism.    Soon, my husband and I were married and began a family of our own. Things happened that challenged my husbands faith and between that and my husbands crazy work schedule, we just never had the time to go to Midnight Mass.   In December 2020 everything fell into place and we found ourselves outside our local Cathedral, just before midnight.  As we neared the entrance of the Cathedral, my husband asked, "Are you sure this is a Catholic Church?"  I nodded to the affirmative and added, "This is the place I took your mother to when she visited and wanted to light a candle on your brothers death anniversary."  He seemed reassured and we entered the Cathedral.     As we walked in, there was the sound of harp music playing.  There were many people, including lots of families.  Some were already knelt down and praying at their pews.  We took in the space around us and found a place to sit.  As we sat, my husband was pointing to different things in the Church and explaining to our daughter what they were.  I was half listening as I took in this gorgeous atmosphere and noticed a warm comforting feeling coming over me.  A feeling of comfort is something I had not had in a very long time.   I hadn't felt connected to God, in a very long time.    While I believed in a general sense of 'divinity,' I also felt unsure of who or what that mi...

Laurie O'Driscoll | 08th March 2021 | My Conversion Story, Blogging

"The time is sure to come when people will not accept sound teaching, but their ears will be itching for anything new, and they will collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes; and then they will shut their ears to the truth and will turn to myths."  -2 Timothy 4: 3-4   I am an awkward human, with limited social skills.  I spend a large amount of time worrying if I say or do the right things when around others.  I never want to hurt anyone or make them feel uncomfortable, nor do I want to offend anyone.  Also, there is fear that I will make a fool of myself, that humiliation will be easily won by my awkwardness.  Depending on the day, it is a toss-up as to which of those fears and worries is the one most present in my mind.  It is often a mix of all of them.   The one thing I never felt awkward doing, was praying. I am an only child who was alone a lot.  I read books, I wrote in diaries, I listened to music, and I talked to God.  I have been on a very diverse spiritual journey. Most of the time, whatever spiritual thing I was pursuing could be placed under the very broad umbrella of, 'earth centered spirituality.'  Within that label are sub-groupings such as paganism, wicca, shamanism, druidism and similar paths.  Those each have their own sub-groupings too.  So, I learned over the years how to connect with the divine through many different kinds of ways.* At least, I thought I did.* I was not raised in a particular faith, so I had freedom to seek and find God where I could.     Over the years I have done just that.  Or at least, I thought I had.  I have called God by many names. I have sought divinity through the lenses of a sort of vague monotheism, then hard polytheism, then soft, then that turned into pantheism.  Pantheism is where I have been over the last several years, probably since about 2011. At a certain point I wouldn't name divinity at all. I would just pray. Other times I gave 'it' a diff...