Testimony: Journeys of Peace
By Cheryl Ann Wills
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I grew up in a Philadelphia suburb. My family was Presbyterian and lived godly values. We were also involved in our church. Every day of any given week, some or all of us were busy in the life of the church. For each of us, this was our choice.
Even so, after high school, I found a gazillion reasons not to go to church. The further I moved away from a regular connection to that life, the deeper I sank into the deception of the world. As I heard in a homily once, if you live your faith fast and loose, someone will surely come along and kill it. And by age twenty-eight, I was knocking on death’s door with my worldly lifestyle of alcohol and recreational drugs. Being a flower child wasn’t about roses. In fact, it led to a dramatic suicide attempt. grew up in a Philadelphia suburb.
My first true realization of God’s grace was at that time. Deep inside, I desired life—not death. I knew where to turn because of how my parents raised me. I ran back to church, back to Jesus. God’s grace renewed me through a charismatic ministry my parents were a part of, called Jesus Focus. I have since made—or at least desire to make—a regular conscious effort to allow God to work through me and to change me, be it ever so slowly, into the image of his Son.
When I was eighteen, I had no intention of marriage before age twenty-five. But out of the blue one day, I told my mother, “I think I’m going to marry a minister.” When I met Ed eleven years later, he told me about his call to ministry at age eighteen. He and I are like night and day in so many ways, but our hearts’ desire to love and serve the Lord is a common bond that has seen us through every kind of weather. That connection of our hearts is how I immediately knew his call was real and true.
Since Ed was an Episcopalian, I began attending the Episcopal Church. After several years of attending the church of his choice, I came to love the liturgy and its history. The ancient prayers, the secure boundaries of the liturgy in worship spoke to my heart. And I chose to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church, and it became the church of my choice.
A short time after my Confirmation, we moved our family of five from Virginia to Texas. And, though we both loved the liturgy and Sacraments, we joined an independent charismatic church. I loved that little church and its people, but it was there that emptiness and longing began to grow in my heart.
Two years later my husband answered the call that he had heard at age eighteen and was ordained as a Protestant minister. After Ed’s ordination, we moved to northwest New Jersey, which is rural and mountainous. He pastored a nondenominational Protestant congregation as small as the 1908 building in the woods that housed it, white clapboard with a tall steeple.
During that year, Ed and I spent countless hours in prayer together. We walked and prayed. We sat and prayed. We drove and prayed. We prayed first thing in the morning, at midday, and the last thing at night. We became more and more aware of God’s presence. We reviewed the day, regardless of how difficult, with gratitude. We paid attention to our emotions and did not let them overtake us. We read and prayed through Scripture. We never lost hope. We continually sought and found God’s presence in this extremely hard time of our lives. Satan intended to destroy our marriage and family because he likes best to destroy the foundation of humanity. But Ed and I were discipled through prayer. We grew tremendously closer to each other and to Jesus.
Still, even though my relationship with our Lord grew closer than ever, that strange emptiness and longing expanded. Hateful people who called themselves Christians wore me out, and I felt disillusioned with what I thought to be Christ’s church. I very nearly walked away from church—even with a pastor husband.
God uses every twist and turn on our journey to his glory and for our good—if we will seek him in those times. He heard my cries, and his grace proved evident once more in my life in 1993. Our little church joined a Protestant denomination, and my husband was ordained an Episcopal priest.
Decades later, God’s faithfulness led us into the Catholic Church. Our eyes opened to the reality that Ed’s ordination as a Protestant minister had been only a partial fulfillment of his call. Through the prophetic insight of Pope Benedict XVI, it appears that the way to that fulfillment is through the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter for Anglican clergy, called into existence by this great pope. To support Ed in his call fills me with deep contentment.
This particular Episcopal denomination practiced a liturgical, sacramental, and charismatic style of worship. Inside of me—and even outside—I sang and danced with thanksgiving. Because this new church was founded on the teachings of the Apostolic Fathers, I discovered that what I had considered leaving was what man had done to the church, not the church as God established it. That deep emptiness and longing that had begun years earlier began to fill up.
And here began my journey to the Church that Jesus assigned to Peter. By God’s grace, my eyes were opened to see what had existed all along. I voraciously read the Church Fathers and other ancient and twentieth-century authors. I listened to lectures, in person and on tape, and spent endless hours in discussion with friends who were on the Catholic journey with us.
A few years after finding this denomination, we moved to Kansas City. Once more we were tested as though by fire. To begin with, we felt coerced to move a year before we were comfortable leaving our growing parish in the woods. It was a year before my new home-based business could support us financially. Our oldest daughter was still a missionary, far from home, and we wanted to wait for her return. We tried to convince ourselves and our family and friends that it was important to go. Since the denomination told us to do it, God must surely be in it.
During the first three years, we experienced incredible pain and calamity. My business depended on long-distance communication. In an era of faxes, high phone fees, infant Internet, and no cell phones, it bottomed out. Ed’s salary, which we were led to believe was part of the move, did not come to fruition. He could take only a low-paying, part-time job because he needed so much time for his priestly duties. I’ll never forget the sinking shock when we looked into our driveway one morning and didn’t see our car. It had been repossessed, just four months before it would have been paid off. Friends paid our rent more than once. We had to use food stamps for a few months. Other friends supplied our girls’ Christmas gifts for two years.
Because of the emotional pressure of this church with its many unrealistic rules, our oldest daughter, engaged to a fellow missionary, eloped in the middle of their wedding plans. All of us were devastated, especially her sisters who were to be her bridesmaids. One of our daughters had an out-of-body experience in a near-death horse accident. And this mother’s heart will always feel pain when I recall the time our daughters,about thirteen and fifteen at the time, said, “Mom, do you think we could buy clothes from a store just once, instead of having only hand-me-downs?” It seemed like every waking moment brought varying levels of sadness, trauma, and uncertainty for our future.
On top of it all, because we now lived closer to the denomination’s center of governing politics and their ever-changing rules, we began to see that the people in charge had taken the reins from God. This Protestant denomination—the catalyst for my journey—was no longer consistent with their early teachings. They liked the Catholic look but wanted no part of Catholic authority. Once more, I witnessed the faithfulness of our God as these realities led me to intense study of the Faith and the Catechism.
Eventually, I started skipping church with my family and instead would sit in the back of various Catholic churches during Mass. I wept. And wept. And wept. A gradual awakening began within my head and my heart. Finally, my eyes were opened to how the Holy Spirit has protected and kept pure the deposit of faith given to the early church, regardless of the good or bad people in leadership. Having grown up in denominations that either had a sandy foundation built on protest and rebellion or, worse, made up the rules as they went, I suddenly realized that I longed for stability. A church that preserves its central beliefs for 2000 years is a very solid foundation, a safe place for any believer, a safe place for me.
And then, like a flash of light to a soul agonizing in darkness, I realized that the See of Peter was truly the authority given by God to govern his Church. My soul burst with joy that I could not contain! And this life-changing revelation made my future path clear: if I honestly desired the fullness of my faith, then I had to submit to the authority of the Catholic Church.
But how could I go alone? I had a family. Another example of his grace in our midst: God brought my husband, our younger daughters who still lived at home, and myself, individually, to the same desire. By Easter of 2000, we had all entered the Church.
A sigh of relief? Not quite. In fact, our conversion caused others pain. The people in the old church were ninety-nine percent of our friend base, since we had lived in the Midwest only a short time. They abandoned us. Hateful things were said about us. Our daughters ached that their youth leaders, whom they had confided in, and all the kids in the youth group were instructed not to contact them. God’s faithful grace abounds. I give him thanks for the healing salve of forgiveness. It healed my wounds and set me free. And because of his gift of forgiveness, I am fully reconciled to all who were involved.
There are only two decisions I’ve made in my life that I can say this about: the peace that I knew in my heart at the point of each of those conscious decisions has continued to grow deeper the further I am from that point. Those two decisions were to marry my wonderful husband and to submit to the authority of the Catholic Church. It is the peace that passes all understanding.
Nothing is more important in all of life than our relationship with God, through his only Son. I firmly believe there is nothing we should put more energy into than that relationship. For this reason, as a relatively new convert to the Church, I would give this admonition to people who are young in the faith:
Learn your faith inside and out. Guard and protect your faith. Commit to living it fully. If you “live your faith fast and loose,” you will meet those who will attempt to kill it. You may even kill it yourself. Your place in the Church is unique and planned. Continually seek the plan that God has for you here. Some in the Church are converts, like me. Some were baptized into the faith in infancy. For each of us, this church is an inestimable gift. For 2000 years, God’s children have been given the privilege of taking refuge in the wounds of Jesus in his Church. Let that refuge be your peace. His children are honored to receive his grace to carry on, beginning with their baptism and continuing through the Body and Blood of his only begotten Son. As the deep knowledge of that honor permeates your soul, and as you participate in the Sacraments, you will be changed into the image of his Son.
When I receive our Lord in the Eucharist, I shed tears of gratefulness that he brought me to this place, and for his Real Presence. They are also tears accompanied by an internal shudder when I think of how close I was to missing the gift of the Catholic Church.
How did I almost miss it? I was busy striving to build the church, a sadly misguided Protestant notion. The reality is that the Church is built and the blood of the martyrs has paved the way for her work. They have paved the way for us to be the Church—to be the hands and feet of Jesus on the earth. We, the Church, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, shelter the homeless, visit the prisoner, care for the widow and the orphan. And through the Sacraments, we know the power of his grace to work in and through us to those ends.
Has life been sugar sweet and easy since we entered the Church? Absolutely not. But because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the blood of the martyrs, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the gift of the Sacraments, my spiritual journey will continue in that safe place which God has made for his children, the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. And my life on earth can face every trial with strength and confidence.
I am home, at last, with my fellow sisters and brothers in Christ. My heart rejoices—moment by moment.
Cheryl Ann Wills is an author and entrepreneur. She writes non-fiction, children’s stories, and inspirational works such as Who is Jesus? First Century Eyewitnesses Tell Their Stories. You can visit her at CherylAnnWills.com. Cheryl and her husband Ed live in Kansas City, MO.
