This is the
part of my life’s story where I seek to reclaim my life. This was where the
healing for me truly started to take place. This is what I have been doing with my life, with my ministry for the past ten years. It is elementary knowledge,
actually it is common sense that the way a child is raised will dictate the
course of their lives. Merited, the will of the human being is a source of
light, in of itself, which reflects, if it will, the light – the true light –
of God. Foundation is as important as faith. A boxer can have as much faith as
they want about how their future boxing match will go. If they do not train
heavily for that match, they are not going to be successful. That said, all
have pasts. Not every past is the same. Not all endure similar traumas. Some
endure far more. Some endure far worse. Still, it is the responsibility and the
light of all to make the best of what has been given to us. I have always used
the example of Israel when I consider the grace of a creature to not only
survive but thrive. Culturally or individually, what sets people apart, what
makes them great – what makes them victors is their resilience, their trust in
God. We all suffer. Some more than others. It’s not that we suffer but how we
suffer that makes us great. I have suffered. You have suffered. We all have
suffered. I am writing this little account to show a different perspective of
my life. A side that few have seen because, even when I wanted to, I wasn’t
able to express it. A side that I have been too scared to show to people. In a
way, I was also afraid of the light. I was afraid of the light because I was
afraid of the potential God has given to me. I was afraid of my desires,
passion, of love. My heart was hurt a lot in my life. Even up until a couple of
weeks ago, I honestly believed that I had no place in this world. I felt as
though I had no grounding. In a lot of ways, because of trauma, this was based
in truth. But, what I want to say with this, is that regardless of the
circumstance, God uses it for the good. God has been so incredibly good to me
in my life. You may ask, if the content of some of my past literature were true,
how could I possibly claim God’s goodness? Well, I suppose I could say that my
perspective has been changed. God has given me new eyes. And, by His grace, a
new heart. This is my story over the past decade. A story of reclaiming my life
for myself. If what I am claiming is true, well… This is the part of my life I
want to remember. This is and has always been what I meant when I referred to
processing our traumas and emotions. It is essential to work through our
repressed memories and emotions (we all have them – even if we think we don’t).
Because if we don’t work through them, our bodies are led by them. Even if and
when we are not aware of them consciously, they will have a great influence on
our actions, our words – even our consciences. We need work through our
emotions. But we need not remain in them. We need rise up after our healing and
begin to live. For me, this was so delayed because without physical and human
love, we cannot know truly the love of God. Without real love in our
foundational years, we will not be able to comprehend the love of God. In my
life, I suppose that I have been silent on these rising up aspects. I was
always afraid. Afraid that if I didn’t remind people of my trauma, I would be
hurt. My identity was focused up in what people thought of me and said of me.
God has revealed to me, through the faith that my wife has put in me, through
healing experiences in religious life that life is a lot brighter than I used
to think it was. Truly, and truly, suffering is all about perspective. What I
endured in childhood was not endured in God. I didn’t know God. Still, it was
for God’s glory. God chose me before my birth to do this. I believe in order to
show people the importance of having a solid Christian foundation. Also to
increase mercy in showing how sin is caused and perpetuated. It was always
God’s will that I should find this pearl. This pearl of great price and value.
I was wounded. Physically, I am still wounded. Repressed trauma restricts my
soul’s joy. Thanks God, because of a number of graces I have received and
blessings to my life, God has healed me. Spiritually. Where it counts. God has
changed my heart. This is where I reclaim my life. It’s not necessarily happy
but, it is my story. My ministry. I thank God for giving me the life I have,
the breath in my lungs. I thank God for giving me my beautiful wife and the chance
to glorify Him and honor Him in the way He deserves. I thank God even for the
people who have caused me such pain over the years. Because through these
people, God has worked magically. I pray to see them in the Kingdom of Heaven
where we will rejoice over what had been done and love one another as God
originally intended. Still, I pray for the justice He has promised. I only have
learned – am learning – to trust in His justice and not my own. The purpose for
this little book is to show what God has been doing in my life since my
conversion. To Him be the glory. Now and forever. For He is good. Very good.
Oh, friends, He is so good. If only you could see His mercy. Truly, God is
good. And He is risen!
I was
baptized in 2007 when I was 23 years old. I was baptized into the Baptist
Church. Because of some traumatic things that were happening still, my faith
weakened after this and I stopped going to church. Actually, in university I
started taking an upper year course in Historical Christianity and started to
refute some aspects of Christianity (particularly the teachings of Paul) as the
truth. The course analyzed the historical Jesus and placed emphasis on his
Semitic origins. It was an incredible course. I can see, in hindsight, how it
actually really strengthened my faith. But there was a bit of time during which
I adopted kosher diet and actually started to observe the Laws of Torah. I was
not a Jew. I never went through a conversion. If anything I would have
considered myself Messianic. Through this all, I never doubted or lost faith in
the truth that Jesus was the Messiah. In 2012, I experienced a lot of
realizations regarding the life that I had lived, stuff I had endured, stuff I
had done. I began to reach out by going to Christian, evangelical concerts and
prayer groups on campus. I was quite distraught because of a lot of these
realizations I was experiencing were very traumatic and so started reading the
Bible a lot more. I would go to stairwells in the school and just read. Around
this time, some friends invited me to a non-denominational church across the
city. I had a car at the time and so went. My heart was set aflame going there.
Every day, I would bus to school and on the bus would read the Bible. I was
reading the Book of Acts. That night, I laid down in my bed and was reading,
when I started to experience waves of brightest light passing over my vision. I
turned the lamp off, closed my eyes and the lights were still there. Moments
later, I started to feel the warmest, softest energy pass through me from head
to toe, like electricity. I was having visions then. I saw an image of a way I
had been terribly hurt as a very small child. It lasted five or more minutes. After
this, another image came to mind. It displayed a way in which I had reacted and
misbehaved as a child. After this, my mouth began to sputter words. It was
unintentional but it was not against my will. My mouth was speaking and it was
as though at the same time, my heart was translating what was being said. I got
the impression that through the images and through the tongues that God was
trying to show something to me. He wanted me to see a connection between how I
was treated as a child myself in relation to the way I was acting, growing up. In
2012, I began to experience spiritual warfare for the first time. I didn’t know
what to do with it. I was alone in my faith. This was when God told me to write
a little bit about what I had experienced in my life. I wrote a little booklet.
I fully expected God to take me immediately after I wrote this. I remember
having an anxiety attack. I thought it was a heart attack. I was upset that I didn’t
accomplish God’s will this day. After this, I have been trying to open my
heart. To trust. I feel such resistance. It is terrifying to trust.
It was also
around this time that I met someone very special to me. She had gotten in touch
with me following the movie that was made about me. And for almost a decade after,
we had kept in touch. With my studies finally completed, I began a solitary
journey towards the Rocky Mountains. The reason for the trip was personal.
Months earlier, I had disclosed who I believed myself to be through what I
endured. I had written a little novella of a book, documenting my experiences
and realizations. I still remember the looks as if something were finally
beginning to make sense for people about me. Anyways, I found my final destination
in a Western, Canadian city. This was the city in which she lived. I stayed
only a couple of days in the city but we arranged to see each other. There, she
laid out how she felt about me. She told me that she had feelings for me ever
since she had seen the movie. Because of past traumas and feelings, I wasn’t
able to open my heart that day. Learning to be kind and considerate towards
myself has always been a goal I have struggled with. I regret not being able to
open my heart there because of the fact that it meant I wouldn’t be able to
open my heart to others. Still, years passed and we kept in touch. It was a
beautiful thing to observe and to accept. Here, I am talking about her
patience. For ultimately it was her patience that caught my heart.
When I
returned home, some unfortunate things happened, which increased my stress.
This was after I graduated from university. I kind of fell into a depression
then. If it had not been for a great friend, I would have struggled a lot more.
While God’s grace and favor was upon me strongly, my faith was still very young.
I am quite proud of myself, looking back with how I dealt with the depression
then. I started going to the gym. Sometimes, I went to the gym two or three
times a day. I still remember the punching bag and how I went postal on it for
as long as I was able. It was a great vent. I also started to paint. I was an
experimental artist. I did not take it entirely seriously. But I was good at
it. I appreciated the talent so much that I asked my landlord at the time, if
he would rent me his units under construction. I rented these and used them for
about a year as studio space. I produced a lot of paintings over that period of
time. Still, I was a little depressed at this time. I had a couple friends and
with them, I would take drives. We would go to the casino. This one great
friend was a great support for me. He was always so incredibly encouraging. He
would get me to drive him places. I was happy to do it. He always had his cell
phone on his lap for some reason during these drives. We would go to the
driving range because he knew my passion for golf. One day, he encouraged me to
try to become a professional golfer. While it was impractical, because after
the injury, my skill had decreased, he said it sincerely to encourage me to
break through the fear. I had been playing chess ever since about 2012 online.
I taught myself. I played quite a bit against the computer when I was a kid. In
about 2013, I was using the game as a way to deal with stress. I was still
drinking when I was playing then and so often joined the two. My stats
plummeted. I went down to about 400 elo rating for a while. I was a little
unfriendly at times with some opponents online and quite competitive in these
days.
A year
passed. During which, I would make a couple more journeys. In 2013, I drove to
Florida. At a point, I was so stressed that I was smoking three packs of
cigarettes daily. I had tried absolutely everything to quit smoking. Had tried
acupuncture at my gym, had tried the patch, gum. I tried reading books about
smoking propaganda deprogramming. Nothing worked! One day, when I was in my
room, on my bed, I heard a voice tell me to go to Florida. Well, I packed up
and left within the next couple of days. Driving down, I had the conviction in
my heart that I was going to quit smoking on this journey. Remember in
Pennsylvania, hearing another voice. I was on the balcony of a hotel, smoking
and drinking beer. I believed this was normal behavior. Worse, I believed it
was healthy stress relief. The voice there told me to investigate monasteries.
I went in the room, plugged in my laptop and searched monasteries along my
route into Florida. I found a Catholic monastery in Georgia and called and
arranged to stay a week or two with them a week from then. That next week, I
was stressing so much. I was going to casinos along this trip, which helped
with the stress. Or so I thought. I finally arrived in Atlanta, which was near
the monastery. When I was there, I wrote a list. I wrote a list weighing the
pros and cons of quitting smoking. I was convicted that this time I would quit.
The morning of my journey to the monastery, I crumpled up my pack of cigarettes
and threw them away. Then I drove to the monastery and sat in the parking lot a
bit. I had some time to spare but was anxious and so drove back to town. I went
into a gas station and bought cigarettes. I smoked three of them, crumpled up
the pack and threw it away. Feeling bad about myself, I drove back and checked
in with the receptionist. I left my computer and phone in the car that time. In
these ten days, I quit smoking and never looked back. I filled this time with
prayer, in the Word, in silence. It was incredibly healing. Regardless of how
stressful it must have been physically, due to withdrawal, it was the most
peaceful time of my life. I said I never looked back. My first visit to a gas
station was filled with grace. I was not even tempted to smoke or buy
cigarettes. However, in Jekyll Island, I bought a cigar, which I inhaled part
of. It was mildly pleasant, I will admit. I felt no desire to continue. I broke
it and threw it away half finished. This was a great trip. Along the way, I
shot a 9mm pistol at a gun range in Key Largo, drove a seadoo for half an hour
there too. I swam in the Gulf of Mexico at Fort Meyers. At Tampa, I found my
way to the casino, where I played Hold ‘Em a while. I won a bad beat jackpot
when I was there. This is how it happened: In my hand, I held a straight flush.
My opponent was raising me vigorously. It was clear he thought that he’d the
nuts, with A high flush. I had in my hand 3 and 6 of hearts. The flop came 2 of
hearts, 5 of hearts and some other random card. After some heavy betting, the
river came 4 of hearts. He surely didn’t think I’d the straight flush. He went
all in and I called. Because, at the time, the bad beat was based on certain
card combinations, I won in that hour period. I won a ticket to a WSOP
Tournament the next week. Because it was in Lauderdale and my trip was
uncertain, I ended up selling the ticket to somebody. What a great trip! After
returning from the trip, I started playing chess again. Slowly, over the next
couple of years, my ELO rating rose to 800. After this trip, I made a point of
being exceptionally nice to opponents, going out of my way to tell people,
‘well played’ after games if they won and ‘thanks for the game. You played
well’, if they lost.
The year
after, the friend who I was speaking about – the encouraging one – invited me
to come with him to Iceland. He had been speaking about it for a while. I had a
lot of fear about buying the ticket. But thanks God, he was patient and
encouraged me. I wrote a book about this trip so I will not mention much here.
Suffice to say that there were a couple of conversations had between this
friend and I, which served to change people’s perceptions toward me. I had a
suspicion that this friend was recording his conversations with me from before
we left for this trip. It was not a bad thing. I can see it now. I see what he
was doing. Anyways, prior to this, I really only shared my beliefs when I
disagreed with something. I remember once, driving in Iceland, my friend saying
to me, ‘we know what you disagree with. Don’t you want people to know what you
believe?’ I started telling him what was in my heart. I told him that people had
been through a lot. They needed to heal their inner children. After this,
people seemed very pleased with me. I remember returning from Iceland to
Toronto where people were making amazing expressions at seeing me and stepping
out of the way for me intentionally. Some were raising their cameras on their
phones. Lord have mercy. Yes, give honor where due. But, to Jesus be the glory.
The night I returned home, I prayed until 3AM. I was so tired I fell asleep in
my clothes. I was woken by a disturbance soon after. I fell back asleep and
woke in the morning. My pants were folded neatly and placed on the chair next
to my bed. My little Christian Cross around my neck was taken off and placed on
my bedside table. I did not do these things. They happened in my sleep. It was
clear that I had resisted death again during this time of opportunity.
I spent
much of my time alone. I drove to parks along Lake Ontario and would bring bird
seed and bread to feed the birds. It was a tranquil and quiet time in my life.
Even in spite of everything that was happening around me then. I would visit
the park and sit in my car, reading the Bible. I would sit with the geese,
ducks and swans, on their level. One time, which I remember vividly because of
the threat and contrarily, the trust that was involved, sitting on a stone,
gesturing to the birds with handfuls of seed when two or three large swans
rushed towards me. I simply sat still and undisturbed. The swans stopped almost
head to head with me. One of them lowered its head and began to lap up seed
from my hand. The other birds followed and when they discovered no more seed in
my hand, they kind of nudged me with their necks. Quite intimidating and very
beautiful to be so close to these creatures. After a while, after spending some
time with them, they let me pet their feathers. I remember another time, after
a week of going to this park daily, I was driving into the parking lot when I
noticed a bunch of ducks waddling quickly up the hill from the water. These
ducks were running to my car! They ran right up to my driver’s door. I got to
know the ducks well as well. I was feeding the young birds for a while but
stopped because I realized that it would hinder their development. I was in
this parking lot one day when a woman stopped her car next to me when I was
walking to my own car. She rolled down her window and handed me a twenty dollar
bill. “For your mission,” she said. She looked familiar but to this day I can’t
be certain. Around this time, I began to notice reactions in people, en masse,
every time I recorded my thoughts in my cell phone. It was unmistakable. It was
very good at first; the reactions. Perhaps this was because of the sorts of
thoughts I was recording. I was very encouraging in my early ministry,
revealing heavenly secrets, which have been forgotten and sharing my wisdom
surrounding psychology and my faith. I think I have an idea as to why my device
was fitted with this sort of broadcasting capability. I don’t think I have to
say that I never consented or agreed to it. Still, it has worked to my success
in some ways. I was going to the same beautiful non-denominational church at
the time. I was helping with collection and as a greeter for a while. I’ll
never forget my pastor’s expression when I returned to the church after my trip
to Florida. It was as though, in a way, my claims had been confirmed because of
the time I spent at the monastery. People did not understand still my message
but it was nice. After some time, because the hypervigilance of my PTSD
returned, people began to view me in not so well a light. I don’t blame them.
When people see a guy walking around with a Bible, yelling at people, it’s hard
to take him seriously. I can imagine how conflicting it must have been to be
reading these encouraging messages I was writing on my devices, making such
vast claims while simultaneously lashing out so much. I also gained a lot of
weight along my trip down to Florida. Actually, I gained about a hundred
pounds. I carried it for that year. Within a couple of years of returning from
Florida, I was reading the Book of Daniel. I felt a conviction in my heart to
try the Daniel fast. I struggled a lot with it at first. But after
experimenting with it, I ended up successfully going ninety days on the Daniel
fast. This is how I did it: I had to be chaste while I was doing it. I ate only
a big bowl of fruit in the evening. In mornings, I drank a protein drink, which
had zero fat and zero sugar. I also was going to the gym daily during this
time. After these ninety days, I lost over one hundred pounds. I played golf a
lot in those days. As much as my poor body was able at least. A couple of
weekends a month, I would drive to the course with a new friend, to whom I was
introduced by the friend who came with me to Iceland. I did a lot of charity in
these days. Financially, I was blessed and so made use of it to win friends for
myself. I was never instructed about money. I went to the casinos a lot in this
time. I ate out quite a bit. The small amount of money I had was used up in
about four years. I have no regrets. I gave about a third of it to help people
who were struggling. I made a number of monetary donations, some to friends,
others to Christian organizations. I remember sending about $10000 to a friend
who needed the help in going to school. One day, I went to a supermarket, where
I bought a bunch of backpacks, filled them to the brim with blankets, gloves,
hand sanitizer, granola bars. And last of all, I put in each one, a Bible, in
which I wrote an encouraging message. ‘Let not your left hand know what your
right hand is doing’. Remember the nature of my mission. As with my Daniel
fast, I desired to glorify God with these acts. ‘Do not place a light under a
bushel. Instead, place it high.’ After some time, I had to sell my car because I
could not afford to maintain it. No regrets. It got me many, many places and I
am overjoyed to have the memories. Around this time, I was encouraged by a
couple of detectives to seek help at a support group for child sexual abuse
survivors. Here, I met many beautiful people with whom we shared this history.
It was very, very difficult for me at times, to get down there. Mostly, it was
difficult to open up. For me, I was not even fully aware of the severity of
what I had endured. I took the full course and then took an art therapy course
offered by the same place. It was a great integration of my healing. A lot of
which was trapped in my body as a result of the opening parts of the course.
These parts encouraged you to share your story and open up regarding your
feelings. Anyways, after doing these courses, my feelings were quite ripe and
raw. I struggled quite a bit at this time, emotionally. I was very hurt. The
art therapy course seemed to be a gentler and easier way for me to express
emotions that I was not ready to feel consciously. Around this time, I went to
a week retreat for child sexual abuse survivors. It was entirely beautiful and
I encountered such profound healing during this time. It was a beautiful group,
which encouraged us to open up and let go of fear. Exercises like being
blindfolded and led by other members, climbing a ladder and jumping off a
ledge, suspended, were examples of the program. The end of the course, we were
encouraged to write a letter to our abusers to release them and all feelings
associated with them and their abuse back upon them. We were each given a rose
and after the week, myself and another released the note and the rose into the
lake. It was incredibly healing. Again, I wasn’t aware of the severity of what
I endured. Still, it was incredibly healing. I am thankful for going. Here, I
put away my cell phone for the full week. This was hard for me. For a time, I
was submitting applications to support charity and volunteer. I submitted a
volunteer application to the Library, for a learning to read program. I also
tried to volunteer with a couple other places. I had to do a police background
check and when I received it, I opened it and it simply had the large, stamped
letters ‘CLEAR’ written at the top. I had no memory of how I had reacted as a
result of what happened to me. I simply wanted to help people. If you believe
the Gospel, you know that we are every one of us, sinners. Also, when we
discover how common this crime is, it will be hard to punish – because to punish
at that point, we will have to punish everyone. Don’t forget that the bulk of
my message prior to people discovering my politics was simply that children
need love for their childhoods and that love is discipline as well. Even at
this point, I had a changed heart. I had completely quit using porn, cigarettes
and alcohol. When I realized why I had developed these coping mechanisms, I
quit immediately. This reason was because I was masking the chaotic emotions,
which arose from my being abused as well. Afterwards, I began an investigation
into what I was alleging. A couple of weeks into the investigation, my memory
was sparked for me to recognize these ways in which I had also reacted as a
child. Because I was wanting to be completely honest – also because I had faith
that my truth would come to light, I brought forward this information of how I
had reacted to the investigators after being given some poor advice. I wasn’t
able to anticipate that not one of my witnesses would support me. At the end of
the investigation, I left quite discouraged. The investigators even tried to
encourage me to retract my statement of how I had been abused. Keep note that I
never said the investigators were police. Anyways, years passed. I started
going to an employment agency. I tried the employment agency because I had
applied to a number of jobs and had no luck even with interviews. The agency
was very solid. I loved it. I went to a number of workshops with them. After receiving
counseling for polishing my resume and applying to many, many jobs, I finally
got a couple of interviews. The first one, I did a spot on job in the interview
but after speaking to my reference, I heard back they had gone with someone
else. The other interview, one of the guys at the employment agency came with
me to help on the interview. The interview went swimmingly with his help and
all looked like I had secured the job. After a couple of days, I got word they
had gone with someone else. I decided to part way with the agency but still did
not give up. I felt motivated and applied after I had left the agency, to about
fifty jobs. I got one interview. I went to this interview prepared and dressed
well. The interviewer did not even ask any questions. She had me sign something
and faxed it off and told me to have a good day. It is what it is. I suppose
it’s not entirely fair that I have a record. As with the underhanded method
used to give me a record. I suppose I knew what I got myself into when I
started the investigation. All this time, I had been nurturing my faith in the
Word and by going to weekly service at my old church. As I said, I had become a
full member and helped out as much as I was able. I was helping out with
collections at service. I will say this: I am and have always been
exceptionally honest with my dealings with money in the church. And everywhere
else, at that, since realizing why I was doing what I was doing; since healing.
I also helped out as a greeter at the service and held doors for people as they
came. I had a steady and great group of friends all this time. They were mostly
guys I played poker with earlier in my school days. Solid crew. Some of them
were atheist but you know what I feel – most atheists are simply people who
have not encountered the love of God. I also went on a couple of dates. I spent
a bit of money on dating sites. I was serious about looking but terrified to
pursue because of past experiences. The few dates I went on, I was so nervous
that I could barely speak. After a while, I arranged a coffee date with a woman
who was very, very important to me. While I did not know her well, it felt like
I knew her heart. I was madly in love with her for quite a few years. With our
coffee date scheduled that afternoon, I went to a local flower shop and bought
a rose. I went to the coffee shop early and when she came, I presented the rose
to her. Everybody clapped. It was nice for her. But then, when we sat and had
coffee, I was so nervous that I could not speak. I left feeling a little
discouraged but with full faith that one day I would find the one for me. To be
honest, I dwelt on this woman for a long time. I couldn’t forgive myself that
my body prevented me from speaking to her. Still, we kept in touch and are
friendly. One day, on the bus, a man started to yell and become agitated. I was
inspired by someone really close in the past when I approached him, placed my
hand on his shoulder and asked him what was wrong. He spoke to me for an hour,
the rest of that bus ride. He only needed someone to listen to him. I noticed that
he had a wallet full of cash and he was waving it around. I encouraged him
nicely to keep it concealed. After, at his stop, he thanked me and hugged me.
After a
little while, I got a message from my friend from the Western Canadian city. We
had kept in touch ever since our meeting in 2012. She asked me if I wanted to
spend New Year’s Eve with her in Niagara Falls. I experienced terrible fear but
decided to go. On my way to the bus station, she texted me saying she had
fallen and gotten a mighty gash on her knee. She said she did not want to go to
the emergency room so I went to a store near the bus stop and bought a little
first aid kit. When I got there, I helped bandage her knee. It looked terribly
serious and I think I remember saying she should go to the hospital. We ended
up going to the hospital where they gave her stitches. She had a motel room and
I got my own motel room in the same complex. We had a nice dinner at an Italian
restaurant and went down to the Falls where we strolled along the pier for a
while. We were getting soaking wet and it was cold so we returned. The day
after, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant (I think). She said I made her laugh.
We kissed a couple of times but I was not ready for anything further. Toward
the end of the weekend, she was returning to the airport. I helped her clean
out her room. We had gotten to know the housecleaning lady. I remember seeing a
lighthearted prank online where when you leave your hotel room, to crumple the blankets
and sheets into the form of a human body and leave it there. I have never seen
someone laugh so hard as when the housekeeper entered the room. We went our
ways. Around this time, I felt a conviction in my heart to join the Catholic
Church. I remember clearly the place and time where I received this Word. So,
next day, I went to a local parish and signed up for RCIA. I had a little
familiarity with the Church prior to this. In 2012, I went there a couple weeks
before my own will led me away from it. I will say that it was not entirely necessary
for my mission, I always felt a bit of a void, as though something were missing
from my other church. My old church was great. It was a good teaching and good
people. My own heart simply craved something more. What I learned I was craving
were the Sacraments. I found something so fulfilling and nurturing in the
physical and tangible reality of the Catholic Church. After becoming Catholic,
I sought the Sacraments as often as I could. I attended Mass two, sometimes
three times a day. It was as though I had a hole in my soul, which needed
healing. Every time I received the Eucharist, my soul leapt. Every time I
received absolution following confession, my soul leapt. I found my way home.
My grandmother would have been proud. The week of my Confirmation was glorious.
I had organized a bachelor party for a great friend of mine. He was getting
married on Easter Saturday. His wedding was during the day, thanks God.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to go. For his bachelor party, I arranged
a trip to Niagara Falls. What a great night. We went to the casino and to a
nice restaurant.
In the
summer, my friend from the Western Canadian city had asked me if I wanted to
see a concert in Niagara Falls. I agreed. A week before I left, I heard a
voice, echoed thrice, telling me that if I were to remain chaste until my
departure, I would be able to open my heart. I was eager and listened to the
voice. I went to Niagara. I got a motel room for Canada Day and we shared it.
It was a great weekend. We went to the concert, went to the butterfly pavilion.
We also went on the Ferris wheel. We went to an aviary museum too. We had a
great time! After this weekend, we were much closer. After the weekend, she
returned to her home and I spent a little more time in Niagara. Around this
time, I met a great friend. We had met randomly as we were moving into the same
house. Even years after we had gone separate ways, we kept in touch. Around
this time, I met another great friend. Her name was Smudgey. She was the
sweetest cat. She lived in the complex where I had moved into. I sat with her
one day and pet her. After this, every single time I came up the alley of the
complex, she would come running to greet me. Man, I loved that cat. My
girlfriend and I saw each other quite a bit after this. I flew to her city a
number of times. She had gotten sick around this time. This was the reason I
visited her so often. When I was there, we would go for movies and out to
dinner and breakfast. We went to an Atlantic style pub and a great park. We also
went to a concert. We had a great time together. I was going to daily Mass
pretty much while I was there. When she became quite sick, I would go grocery
shopping for her and cook her meals of vegetables and fruits.
Years
passed. I moved a couple of times. I wrote quite a few books. Did quite a few
paintings. There was a point in the past ten years where I was lost. I mean I
did not have a clear understanding as to what God wanted of me or of my
vocation. Around this time, God asked me to open my heart. He told me that the
purpose of my mission was evident in the Book of Ezra. I opened the Bible and
started reading Ezra. It became clear that He was referring to a return of
exiles. I still did not understand. After a little while, it became clear that
the exiles I was called to were sinners and non-believers. Around the time, I
started to learn the Hebrew language. I used an app to learn it and
simultaneously was trying to converse with native speakers. I studied it in
order to read the Torah in its original language and because one day, I am
planning to visit Israel. I spent sometimes four hours a day learning for the
first couple of years. In 2019, I was completely broke. I was on social
assistance. Still, I had no regrets regarding the ways in which I spent my
money. I actually had to seek help to get out of debt. As with every other
aspect of life, a child needs training in terms of its relationship with money
as well. I was ignorant about credit. After seeking help with my debt, I
simultaneously began a credit rebuild program. In spring 2019, I claimed a
disability tax credit and by the fall, I received a substantial return on my
taxes from the past decade. I decided that I was going to use my money a little
more efficiently this time. I was going to use it to make good, joyful
memories. I went to the CN Tower where I had a 45 minute experience where we
walked around up top the very height of the tower. As a Guinness record, it is
the highest free walk in the world. I had a blast and got to hang off over the
edge of the platform. Considering I was scared of heights, I was glad I did it.
Next, I went to the Aquarium where I had an experience where I swam with the
stingrays. What a beautiful and wonderful experience it was! One memory in
particular stands out in my mind: after the swim experience, I was walking
through the aquarium. I came up to a little lowered ledge in the wall where,
after looking over it, I noticed a bunch of stingrays bobbing up and down at
the wall. Curious, I offered them some bread. They took the bread. The way they
just bobbed up and down, up the wall, to get food was delightful! It was a
memory I will have with me always! I also went to the zoo. Actually, I think it
was one of the first things I did. It was a little rushed. I did not know how
to appreciate life yet. But, I remember the giraffe and the rhino. The panda
bears were there at the time, which was unique because they were on tour. I
discovered Tuesday discounts at the movie theaters. I went for a while, almost
every Tuesday! It was such a blessing. Truly, a movie watched while
multitasking like being on the computer, is not a movie fully enjoyed. Movies
are best enjoyed fully immersed. I also started a couple of introductory
lessons in Krav Maga. My instructor said I was a natural and quite excellent at
the martial art. In spite of my limitations, he thought I was doing incredibly.
I loved it but couldn’t keep up because I couldn’t afford it after a while. I
went to Arizona! The morning I arrived at the airport, I went to the receptionist
and handed her my passport. It had expired! She was quite understanding and had
my flight booking delayed for the afternoon. I found a bus and walked a couple
miles to the passport office in Mississauga where the receptionist also was
quite nice and got me a same day passport for a good price. It took quite a bit
of pleading! I returned to the airport and took off. What a flight over the
Rockies! I spent a couple of nights in Phoenix. I will never forget the awe I
felt at seeing cacti in the middle of the street. After Phoenix, I took the
light rail to Tempe and walked around for a while. Then I went to Scottsdale,
where I was staying for a while. What a beautiful little town. I went to daily
Mass. For the most part, I spent this time working on a book I was writing. I
did daily exercises and worked out on the stationary bike. I also went grocery
shopping for myself instead of eating out. I was learning to become a little
more respectful of money. The people there were incredibly nice to me. Towards
the end of my trip, I booked a day retreat to the Grand Canyon. I woke up early
this day and the bus departed. We passed some beautiful parks and stopped at
the Navajo Reservation where we had lunch. The glory of seeing the Canyon for
the first time! Rounding the corner of a road, which winded upward, it became
visible through the leaves of some trees. What an experience! Mostly, the
people who I met on this trip were the precious part about it. They were all so
great and nice to me. We had a great time together! When I returned to Toronto,
I was walking downtown and saw a woman who was holding a sign, which said she
had been abused and was in need. I felt such compassion for her, I offered her
a fifty dollar bill. As time went on, I started to simply offer to buy coffee
or a snack for people I would see asking for help. All this time, I had
continued to go to the gym daily. For a while, I was going twice a day. I was
spending twenty minutes on the stationary bike and doing weights. I was taking
protein and creatine. I was ripped for a while. I think. Always hard to see
yourself the way others see you. I felt good. I was becoming quite proud of my
accomplishments at the gym. One day, I was doing the standing tricep pull down
at the machines. I pulled way too much weight and when I pulled a couple of
times, heard something pop in my back. I was worried and so stopped the
workout. After a couple of days, I was in such terrible pain. It was nothing
like a brain bleed, mind you. Or a kidney stone. Still, it hurt. It was a deep
hurt. Every step felt like I was on the verge of hemorrhaging. It seemed as
though with each step, my back gave out and I was not able to keep myself up
straight. When I walked at this time, I moved like baby steps. I also started
to feel numbness and tingling in my legs. So, I called telehealth. They said
that it sounded like I should go to the emergency room. Hold this thought and I
will return to it. Around this time, I began to recognize the fact that people
were spying on me. I don’t know if it was some sort of advanced surveillance
method. I said earlier that people were somehow connected to my electronic
devices, because every time I wrote in my phone, on the notes app – even when I
wrote in my private and unconnected computer – I began to notice people’s
reactions and heads turn. I still haven’t an idea how it is possible. And I
have tried absolutely every single thing I could imagine to relieve this
phenomena. I have tried to get new phones, new computers – every time I did,
after a while, the same problem would shoot up again. I tried to put away my
devices and instead, write simply into a paper bound journal. The times I did
this, people kind of broke into my rooms and went through my belongings without
my consent. I say, it is – in terms of public opinion – at times, in my favor
for this to happen. Since I am right, people can see that. Even the pope, I am
sure, doesn’t have cameras in his bedroom, in the shower he uses. Even the
pope. If I am inculpable, what’s the question? Why the surveillance? I think
you are simply looking for something to be wrong. I will tell you, if you were
to put cameras in the pope’s private bedroom and shower, chances are you will
catch him doing something, which you could say was ‘wrong’ as you have deemed.
Privacy is a human right, friends. Anyways, I also started to recognize the
fact that my internet viewing history was public for everyone nearby my device.
This whole surveillance thing had been happening for the past five years or
more. This, friends, is how people came to know my politics. I had been always
silent about politics prior to this. When people would ask, I would simply
smile and shake my head. When I began to recognize that the political videos
and articles I was viewing online were visible to others and then broadcast to
the world through these people, my message was obscured by a constant defense
of my character and an apology for the things I had done. It seemed as though
the second, people started to get wind of my politics, they began looking for
ways to discredit and demonize me. Friends, my politics are shared by about
half of the Western world. Anyways, back to my story. I suffered an injury to
my back. I went to the emergency room four or five times over the fall. I would
tiptoe my way to and from the hospital from the bus stop. The doctors at the
hospital, each time that I went simply said, it was a general back injury and
there was little they could do. I found it hard to believe, which is why I kept
going back. My girlfriend and I parted our ways. She became quite upset with
me. I truly believe it was a result of my politics or how I reacted as a young
person. Shortly after my Confirmation, I made a confession regarding how I had
reacted as a result of what happened to me. It was unnecessary for me to
confess considering it took place way prior to my baptism. Still, I sensed
people were speaking about this. And so, out of respect for the person
involved, I took it to confession. Anyways, after this day, I had always been
suspicious that my confessions were being recorded and broadcast. The obvious
reactions of people as I exited the confessional booth or the church, told me
that this was almost certain. Or some slipped word uttered by a friend in the
church. More on this later.
I was still
playing chess. My ELO rating had risen to about 1100 by then. Around this time,
I was praying the full rosary every day and spending more time at church than
at my home. This had been consistent ever since my Confirmation. Actually, I
had become a lay Eucharistic Minister for a while. This I really struggled with
physically and out of respect for our Lord, I asked the parish priest if I
could stop. For a while longer, I was a weekday lector at my parish. Again,
when I had been asked to do these things, I was not aware of how I had reacted.
And I still had the CLEAR background check. I also helped out with the social
committee at this parish. I am telling you – I started all of this before the
injury to my back – I worked myself to death for the Church. I would stack
chairs, sweep. I even went out in the community to seek donations and sponsors
for events. Again, I was and have always been quite honest in my dealings with
church property. Why would someone who loved money more than people give half
of their fortune to charity and personally to the needy? I truly loved these
positions. I found such joy in them. They were in a way, a vocation as well. I
met so many beautiful people at this parish. They had become my new family.
Here, my roommate and I started going to the parish nearby and after some time,
he asked me to sponsor him to the Church. I was asked a couple of times to be a
sponsor. I was deepening my faith with God and in turn, He was being reminded
of the graces and love He had always possessed for me and of the promises He
had made me. At my parish in Toronto, I found a wallet on the ground under the
pews. It had a twenty dollar bill in it. I gave it with the bill still in it to
the priest. I could have used the money. It was not honest. One day, God
encouraged me to try praying the Jesus Prayer because I was having a very
difficult time emotionally. I remember walking up Yonge and Eglington, focusing
on the prayer when I saw a man curled up in a blanket in a store front. I was
on my way to all night adoration for First Friday. I knelt down next to him and
asked him if I could pray for him. After, I took him shopping at a drug store.
I bought him a whole bunch of things. I took him to the coffee shop next door
and bought him a sandwich and coffee. After, I prayed about it and invited him
to the church where we were having all night adoration. I have never seen
someone sleep so soundly as when he was assured that he was safe. At first, he
woke started a couple times. I went to him and encouraged him that he could
sleep. In the morning, I noticed some people in the church giving me frustrated
looks. I waited for him until he woke up after morning Mass and we walked to
the coffee shop. I bought him another coffee and sandwich and gave him my
number. After this, I left. I received a beautiful locution from God the Father
one day when I was sitting in my apartment. In the locution, He told me many
things. Of these, He told me that the reason for my disobedience in past was
because my soul was wounded. He wanted me to seek religious vocation so that I
could heal that wound. The next day, I went online and started sending query
emails to communities. I was quite familiar with the Trappist community from my
experience with quitting smoking. While I was not Catholic in the time I spent
with them, I immediately associated the call that God was giving me, to them. I
remembered experiencing such peace there. I got in touch with a monastery. The
vocations director told me to write a letter as to why I was searching
vocation. I wrote a fourteen page long letter. He was quite impressed by the
letter. He was a little worried because the work at this monastery was rigorous
and in my physical well-being, I may have struggled. He still referred me to
another monastery in upper USA where the work was not so demanding. So, I went
and spent ten days with them. I went to every Hour except the 3AM vigil every
day. It was a beautiful couple of weeks. There, I met a couple of wonderful
people. One of whom, for a strange reason, kept giving me gifts. He was a great
guy and I was so blessed to meet him. There, we went for dinner one night. He
had a rather impeccable and wonderful occupation, from what I remember him
telling me. I will not share it here but, if you are reading, thank you for
everything, brother. I wish you the best. At the monastery, I was reading St.
Faustina’s ‘Diaries’. While I was there, I also kept a journal in a paper bound
notebook, in which I kept my thoughts about my vocational discernment. I often
got the impression that people were reading through my journals when I was gone
from my room. I worked for a day at the bakery. I did not have to but wanted to
show my enthusiasm. After this, the vocations director there, began to give me
a tour of the inner cloister. He asked if I was ready to join. He said that he
wasn’t able to say as of that time but that he felt good about my vocation. I
had regular spiritual direction there. During one of the sessions and inspired
by the faith of Kowalska, I mentioned the fact that I was often spoken to by
heavenly beings. After this, everyone’s attitude toward me shifted. I remember
I had put my computer away at my apartment in Toronto during the time I was at
the monastery. I had noticed that during this time, people’s attitudes towards
me were shifting and becoming more and more hostile. After the weeks were over,
the vocations director handed me an envelope, which said I wasn’t a fit. I
still felt convicted because of what I had been told and so asked to see the
Abbot. He, again, told me the same thing. I was resigned to the will of God
that this was not my vocation. The Abbot, though told me of a couple of other
places, which I might seek out. Resigned and discouraged, I returned home later.
After getting home to Toronto, I noticed some people mocking me and laughing at
me. I was very hurt by this. I went home and I immediately wrote into my
computer, simply cutting and pasting elements of my story, which were pertinent
to the way I perceived people being upset with me. Suddenly, as if spurred on
by a miraculous zephyr, the attitudes of people towards me were softened and
compassionate. A couple of days later, the friend I had met at this monastery,
phoned me. In the conversation, he said that the monastery had made a big mistake.
Around this time, I was asked to be a God Father of a child at the parish. This
filled me with such joy. I have kept in touch with the family since. Around
this time, a friend invited me to a Latin Mass and a Fatima procession in Port
Perry. It was a beautiful experience, experiencing the Latin Mass the first
time. While I was there, in the middle of Mass, I heard a voice saying to me
thrice as if in echo, “these are your people. You are their leader”. I was
surprised by the voice but believed it. I remember adoring the pipe organ and
paintings around and thinking to myself that beauty is true. Beauty and truth
must be persevered. For quite a while after my Confirmation, I cherished a
saint by the name of St Germaine Cousin. I wore her medal. When I started to
realize the way I had reacted as a child, I lost the medal I had of hers. It
was very strange. I woke up one morning and her medal was gone, off the string
that I used to wear it. The strange thing about this was that the string was
intact and the knot very tight still around my neck. I remember receiving a
message from her one day. It was as though she were a little upset with me! I
say that with most tenderness and love. She is quite a beautiful saint. And
when you understand her story, it is easy to see why she was hurt. Around this
time, I heard another voice. The voice identified itself as St Bernadette. She
told me that she would be my patron saint. Around this time, God permitted into
my awareness another way of how I had reacted as a child. I remember taking
this to confession soon after realizing in spite of the fact that it happened
prior to my baptism. When I emerged from confession, I remember people’s
demeanors toward me shifting completely. It was as though they had been there
with me in the confessional. I was a new Catholic and didn’t think too much
about it. I even expected it because of the nature of the sin. A couple of
years later, I had a realization of another way I had reacted. I took this also
to confession at a different church. The priest invited me into a room and
asked me my name. Strangely, he kept adjusting his watch face towards me. I
confessed and the priest said it was a good confession. He gave me a penance
and I left. Strangely, the friend who I had gone to the church with, made a
comment about the penance I had received, lamenting how his penances were
always much more strict. I did not mention to him a thing about the penance I
had received. Anyways, a little while later, I apologized to the person about
whom the confession was about. It seemed only right. Again, the act took place
prior to my baptism. For the peace of mind of the people involved, I wanted
them to know I was changed. Confessions have been a tricky thing for me ever
since my Confirmation.
I did not
wait long before I contacted this other religious community I had been told
about. I was delighted when they told me I could visit for two weeks. So I went
and there, was put to work. They were full days. Quite full. Because I had hurt
myself earlier, I still struggled a lot. It was quite challenging those first
couple of weeks during that first visit. I could barely walk. The complex was
quite large. Also, I had never really experienced a day so full. In mornings,
we rose early, went to morning prayers and then ate breakfast. Followed by the
normal course of the work day, interrupted only by lunch and spiritual reading.
We had Mass in the evening, followed by dinner and after dinner, we would
prepare vegetables for meal preparation. After this preparation, we were given
free time. In this first week, during free time, I was so exhausted, I would go
up to the lounge area and collapse into the rocking chair and fall asleep. In
this first visit, I mostly cut kindling. The first day I was there, I went to
the farm but it was quickly discerned that I was not well enough at that time
for work there. I enjoyed kindling firewood so much I did it even in my free
time. My department head at the community and many other people there said that
the kindling I produced was some of the finest kindling they had ever seen.
This was a result of the quality of the wood I was splitting. Cedar cuts small
and like butter. Even still, my department head was impressed with the amount
of love and attention I put into creating exceptionally thin, yet still usable
kindling. The time I went was over the last week of Advent and Christmas week.
We had gone caroling one evening. The people I met there during this week were
all quite loving. Some of the guests gave me a bit of a hard time but quickly
warmed up to me. I think this was because I was recording my thoughts in my
cell phone. I noticed that as the days progressed, as I continued to record my
thoughts, people really warmed up to me. I met a woman who was also a guest
during this time. She was quite a beautiful person. I could sense immediately,
the compassion and love in her heart. When Christmas came around, I sure was
glad because I needed the rest. Here, we got three days off. The consecrated
lay man who was responsible for my work while I was there was incredibly
patient and kind. A couple of days before I left, he told me that the community
would be happy to have me return for a longer period of time. When I was
leaving, it was quite beautiful to see people’s reactions. I don’t think I had
ever been treated so genuinely well before. So, I returned home and began my
old routine of going to church. I tried to return to the gym but every time I
lifted weight, it aggravated my spine. Generally, after I returned to Toronto,
people were treating me well.
They had
told me to contact the religious community when I was ready to return. I wanted
to return as soon as possible. I contacted them pretty much the moment I got
home. I arranged to return in two weeks. During these couple of weeks in
Toronto, I regained a bit of hope. My back, though not well, was healing a
little. At my place, I took it about myself to clean the entire apartment. My
roommates were pleased. I went to a couple of movies and cancelled my
membership at the gym. I said goodbyes to my church family. The day of my
departure, my roommates were kind enough to give me a ride to the bus station
downtown after I realized the subway station near me was closed at the time. I
got a lock on one of my bags, which I was bringing to the community. I was
dropped off at the small town near the community and greeted by quite a few
guests and the dorm master. They were so pleased to see me. I was already
living a reformed life before my arrival to the community. I still struggled
emotionally. To say this is an understatement. I suffered from cPTSD, which is
a very serious mental and emotional illness caused by early, confined trauma.
It’s easy to see that it is as serious as schizophrenia. I remember in the two
weeks where I returned to Toronto from my initial two weeks there, I was
triggered, suffered a flashback and started calling people communists downtown
Toronto. This was actually a common thing for me. I have always struggled with
emotional regulation because of my trauma. When I was triggered or suffered a
flashback, I would often vocalize my internal processes and frustrations. This
was a result of trauma. It is called hypervigilance. In addition to my
emotional well-being, there was also the fact that it seemed regardless the
countless amount of times I would tell my story, people couldn’t seem to
remember what I was claiming. This friction was caused by my politics, which
threatened a lot of people – therefore, they tried to discredit me even more. Communism
is a heresy in the Church. I am not the first person to say it. It was also
caused by the forces counting as the other side of the story. If what I am
claiming is true, there really is not another side of the story. It also started
to become evident that a lot of people were incredibly envious of me. I will
say to this: first of all, envy is also a mortal sin. Secondly, if you knew
what I had to endure in my life, your envy would shatter.
This time,
I stayed almost two years at the community. The first couple of days back to
the religious community was delightful. People welcomed me greatly. One of the
guests who I was in the dorm with, when he heard that my back was hurt, brought
another mattress up to the room and put it on top of my mattress. This made my
sleep much improved. For work while I was there during the first while, I
continued to do kindling. I produced at times, seven to eight banana boxes of
fine kindling every day! Because of my profound disability, my department head
asked me if I would want to be employed in the gift shop and a crafts center. I
started at each a couple of days later. At the time, because I was kind of in
shock because of the intensity of the community life and because of the
seriousness of the recent injury I had acquired, I struggled even at these
occupations. Thanks God for their patience. At the gift store, I did work like
sorting coins, stamps. Later, as my health improved and as I adjusted, I was
given more complex jobs there like bookstore inventory, stocking bookshelves,
coin inventory and fur cleaning. At the crafts center, I will never forget one
of my first jobs was sorting and shelving cross stich thread. I was slow but
after a while, got into a rhythm and moved quite quickly. I will never forget
the time my employer at the craft place told me that someone had come into the
building looking for cross stitch thread and was immediately able to find the
one she was looking for because I had ordered them so well. I did many
different jobs at the craft place. I cleaned the building, cleaned candlewax,
did statue restoration and gardening. By the end of my time there, I fell in
love a little with my employer there. It was a fraternal love since she was a
consecrated woman but quite a deep love I felt nonetheless. I am thankful that
we have kept in touch after I left. I worked for a while in the gardens. For
the most part, I was employed in weeding in this job. I weeded a lot there. I
loved the gardens so much that for both summers I spent there, I adopted a
little plot of land in the orchard, where I planted and kept a garden going.
One summer, I planted bachelor buttons and poppies and the summer after, I
planted tomatoes and hot peppers. I learned a lot about edible weeds. A skill
that I have kept up. In my time at the farm, I also weeded a lot, harvested, took
care of the animals and shoveled the cow yard (when I was feeling well enough).
For well over a year, I was responsible for cleaning the men’s jons and the jon
at the chapel. This was a lot of walking but, by the grace of God, I did it. A
humbling, yet essential service. I was honored to do it. I also set up the
handwashing stations in the summers and set up for tea in the mornings. I spent
about a year learning the skill of chair repair. In my time there, I fixed
probably close to twenty or thirty chairs. Right before I was leaving, I fixed
a rocking chair as an extra project on my free time. I fixed also a couple of
stools that were wobbly and ready to fall apart. I fortified them so that they
will withstand anything now. In the shipping and receiving department, I did
many things. I cut up boxes, swept outdoor cement blocks, gardened and did
parcel delivery. I also got to spend a day in the wool room, cleaning wool in
its first stages of cleaning. I worked in the root cellar too, binning and
sorting potatoes. I worked at two potato harvests and two chicken slaughters. I
got a lot of experience here. I will say that in spite of how difficult and
challenging my work there was, I found such an incredible joy and peace in it.
It was truly of God. It is no wonder many of the people who are there are in
their old age and still working as though they were thirty years old. The
stress you experience there is a good stress. You are always busy. Always
occupied. In service. In love. Every couple of days during the work week, we
were given an early night. Here, we would return to the dorm around 8PM.
Sometimes, we would go to the lake in the summer for a quick swim. Sometimes,
we would go on drives. Most of the time, we would return to the dorm to rest,
do laundry or play games. There were a couple of times, over the course of the
years, where we would have barbeques or dinners at the camp on the lake by our
dorm. The community owned the camp.
I was at
the community for about two or three months when covid struck the world. It was
a bit of a scare at first. I actually spent a couple of days in isolation
because I had muscle stiffness and a bit of a cough. I didn’t realize that the
aches I was experiencing were a result of having played volleyball the day
prior! During this time in isolation, I was able to write an additional couple
of chapters within my novel that I had started before coming to the community.
The novel I called, LADIRAE. All in all, the community handled the pandemic
very well. In the entire time I was there, no one got sick, which was
surprising considering the fact that we were so many people living together in
close proximity. At spiritual reading, after lunch, sometimes the topic of the
pandemic would come up. I would always raise my hand and share my opinion about
it. I cannot tell you how tragic it was for me to see the televised Easter that
year of the Vigil at St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Seeing the pope celebrate essentially alone was mind boggling and painful. The way
he walked through the courtyard. Name of God! I felt so sad. I suppose part of
my sorrow was in the fact that I was still in community and was not forced to
isolate during this time. The greater part of my sorrow was in seeing the state
of the Church and being paralyzed with fear, removing from people the right to
worship. Removing, in a lot of places, the Mass itself from being said.
Obviously, there was probably little choice. It broke my heart to see the world
– especially the Church – succumb to this fear. Anyways, on these early nights,
sometimes we would go to a little park, looking over another lake. There were
killer sunsets there. A couple of times, one of the community members took me
and some others fishing! I had bought a fishing license. By the time I had been
out four times, without catching anything, I was about to give up. A couple of
days before I was scheduled to leave, I finally caught a little rock bass,
which we ate! Shortly after my arrival to the community, we went, a couple of
us, to the high school in a local town where there was a play shown about the
life of St Bernadette! I loved this play and it was a beautiful thing to learn
about the saint. That evening, St Bernadette spoke to me. Earlier, during the
first two weeks I had spent at this community, I had asked one of the community
members who worked at the gift store whether they had in stock any medals of St
Germaine Cousin. I was feeling sorrowful still about losing her medal and
wanted her to know that I loved her. She told me that there were no medals of
the saint in the store but that if she were to come across one, she would save
it for me. Miraculously, a couple of weeks after I returned to the community, this
member who worked at the gift store received a little envelope with a St
Germaine medal inside it. She gave me the medal. It was quite unbelievable. It
was as though the saint wanted me to have her medal. My devotion to her has
increased. Every June 15, since, I have honored her with reciting a novena to
the dear saint. Every once in a while, we would watch movies at the dorm on
early nights. We watched Braveheart, John XXIII among others. In a way, it felt
as though, the memories I was gaining here were replacing or superseding the
memories of my youth. I played a lot of chess at the community on my free time.
My department head and I had become quite close and enjoyed a game of chess
every Sunday after vegetable preparation after brunch. By the end of my time
here, my rating on one site was 1200 and on another 1400. By the time, I had
developed two openings on my own. One is an exceptionally original decoy
variation on the saragosa opening. Another is a powerful variation of the
fianchetto opening. I developed my skill quite a bit there. I remember playing
online in a tournament with over six thousand people. I came third place. This
has happened a couple of times. I read a lot of books while I was there too.
The most impressionable I read was Mark Twain’s ‘Joan of Arc’. What a beautiful
book. After I had finished reading the book on the saint, she came to me one
night before bed in the dorm. She told me that she was grateful to God that she
had been chosen to be my special patron and guardian angel. She told me many
other things. I remember her telling me not to forget about her. This made me a
little sad and for the next couple of weeks, I was looking for other books on
the saint. To this day, I keep a copy of Mark Twain’s historical novel on my
bedside table.
There was a
point where, when everybody was realizing again (it was obvious because of all
of the messages I was getting on social media and because of the demeanors of
the people in the community), where the laymen’s department had decided to go
on a hike. I wanted to go but it was impractical. There would be no way I could
handle walking more than five kilometers without extreme exhaustion and muscle
fatigue. I felt so humbled by a lot of the guys. My department head (the gent
with whom I had become close friends) had actually fitted up a little buggy. It
was kind of like a wheelbarrow but it had a seat for me to sit in. I still
can’t believe the way they pulled me around that day, practically the full day,
through woods, weeds and tree roots. What a beautiful day it was. We stopped a
couple of times along the way at waterfalls where we had picnics and went
swimming. At the last place where we stopped for late lunch, we went swimming
and one community member, with whom I had also become close, caught a 2 foot
walleye. He had been trying all day and we had eaten all our food. So when he
caught it, it was a welcome miracle. We went to the community camp ground after
and had a barbeque. There were only a couple of hours during the week when we
guests were allowed to use our electronic devices. This was difficult for me because
for a long time, my mysterious, broadcasting cell phone and computer were the
only things preventing people from forgetting completely. This is not entirely
true. God is and has always been in control. I have seen it here, at the
community, especially. People can be quite upset with me but then, all of a
sudden and out of nowhere, they will remember and their demeanors toward me
will change completely. During the duration of covid, there was a group of
guests at the community who had stayed for long-term. They are all wonderful
people and I was so blessed to get to know them. One of these guests was the
woman who I had met in my first two weeks at the community whose heart caught
my own. Actually, I found it interesting that she had left the community
shortly after I had left for the first time and had returned shortly after I
had returned. I will never forget the hug we shared upon seeing each other
again. We were not really close for the first little while. I will remember
with warmth until the day I pass away the way, when people would realize and
remember what I was claiming, she would react. It would affect her strongly. Sometimes,
she would cry, other times, when she’d see me, she would run up to me. My heart
was warming to this woman because of her compassion. I’ll say that it was all
quite overwhelming for me. This phenomena of people forgetting. I suppose it
was especially difficult there at the community because the reactions were
heightened. It was like living amidst a large family for a long time. Anyways,
one day, the same community member who had taken me fishing previously, was
planning to go out fishing with her and a couple of other people. I asked if I
could come along. We all spent the afternoon on the lake by the campground.
This woman was the only one who caught a fish. It made me so happy seeing her
with the fish. She asked me to take a picture of her with it. After this day, I
began to grow feelings for her. For the nature of a Catholic community where
men and women live together, chastity is essential. It is something I struggled
with greatly. Because of the nature of the wounds done to me, chastity is
incredibly healing but not entirely what I need for my healing. I need healthy
and loving intimacy for my healing because of the wounds to my sexuality.
Anyways, all this to say that, dating is not encouraged at the community. For
the very large part, I embraced a completely chaste and celibate lifestyle
while I was there. I heard a voice one day, echoed thrice, while I was up
listening to music near the chapel. It told me to write a letter to her. I
reflected about it a long while and considered her picture on my cell phone. I
wrote a note and placed it in her shoe box. The note was simple and told her
that I valued her as a person and wanted to get to know her but didn’t know how
to say it in person. The day after, I heard another voice telling me that I had
met my wife, ordained by heaven. I sort of resisted it at first. I barely knew
her. The conviction and more so, the voice were persistent. A couple of days
passed. There was not really a change in her attitude. I wanted to give her
space until she wanted to talk about it. Finally, one day, she came up and sat
next to me. She asked me what the intention was with the letter. I stammered
for a bit and then said “I like you.” I didn’t really know what else to say. My
feelings were encompassed in these words. In my mind, I was only expressing my
feelings, my heart. It was deeper than that. I did not know how to express it
verbally. She got upset with me and walked away. I was a little shocked. But
after, I met with a community member who was explaining to me that people have
come from all kinds of different backgrounds, people have their own traumas.
And that people often come to that community to seek shelter from the world. He
said that people interpret things differently. It made sense how I had offended
her. She avoided me for the first little while. It hurt terribly that I had put
her in this position. I tried to respect her and gave her space. I noticed that
people around the community were treating me differently. Like they knew I had
been hurt and needed to grieve a little. After some time of being distant from
my electronic devices (I think I remember putting them away for over a month
then), I brought my computer to the community from the dorm and cut and pasted
my story into a fresh document. After this, people’s reactions shifted
completely. I noticed that people were almost shocked. I remember one of the
community members saying to another, “God is moving”. This other member
replied, “He is definitely doing something”. That day, I was playing chess with
one of the guests and another guest (a friend of the woman to whom I had sent
this note) came up to me and handed me a small flower. I was surprised but
didn’t think anything of it until this guest simply stood there staring at me
with kind eyes. I kept the flower in a little pocket book until it
disintegrated. The fear from my childhood returned and I was guarded. There
were a couple of times that the woman to whom I had sent the note sought to
speak to me. At times, we would be in the chapel together and she would start
crying softly to herself. It hurt me a lot. Once, I offered to get her a tissue
and handed it to her and walked away. After this, when she saw me downstairs,
she looked at me with a sorrowful expression. I didn’t know why she was upset.
I remember hearing voices around then telling me to sit with her at dinner. I
sat with her a couple of times. We had some nice conversations but in the
spaces of silence, my mind went blank with anxiety. I remember in one of these
moments of silence, she started humming and singing the words, “If you ask, you
will look and you will find me,” from a popular 80’s song. Another time, I remember
her saying while I was playing a game and laughing loudly, “I wish he would let
me make him laugh like that”. There were a couple of dances in the community.
The spirits encouraged me to go to the dances but I wasn’t able to get courage
to ask her to dance. Then news came that she was leaving the community. She was
leaving right before a retreat was scheduled for the guests. I did not
understand why she was leaving. I remember being really confused around this
time. What I remember of it is that she kept looking at me. One day, when I
knew she was leaving, I approached her and said, “I just want to say goodbye.”
She stood and hugged me tightly. She kissed my neck warmly and whispered in my
ear, “Goodbye, brother.” It came as a bit of a shock and I said simply, “I hope
we can keep in touch.” She looked at me again sorrowfully and kind of lowered
herself to the ground. There is quite a large space of amnesia in my mind after
this. Some of the memories returned after I had left this community. The next
couple of days, I remember being quite sad. I was crying at breakfast one
morning when a community member stayed behind with me and said, “It’s not too
late to change your mind.” I could not understand what she meant. I cried for
the next couple of days. It was breaking my heart but I didn’t understand why I
was so sad. From what my memory was telling me, we were not even close. I heard
a voice a couple of nights after she had left.
We had the
guest’s retreat a couple of days later. It was a beautiful week, a much needed
rest for me. About this time, I began to notice people’s attitudes toward me
changing. Especially priests. Even in SD, whenever I would mention my story,
they would intentionally yawn or skirt around the subject as though it were
nothing. I had a fear growing around this time. I felt I was about to be
confronted. I did not understand the fear. It seemed terribly, terribly cruel,
considering who would confront me. I brought the fear before my SD and he
simply acknowledged there was truth to it. I was terrified and for the next
couple of nights, did not even sleep. There was one more real time that people
realized before I left. I had done another fast of my electronics. I had begun
to notice people becoming almost hostile with me. Not in a physical way,
obviously. Instead, it was as though they were hearing something terrible about
me. So, after the fast, I connected my laptop and wrote again. At first, I
noticed people become a bit agitated. And then, right before dinner, people
were looking at me intently and with a mix of awe, concern and frustration. I
remember one person saying, “That was close”. Around the time, I was spoken to
by Saint Therese of Lisieux who promised me a comforting grace, which I will
not mention here. Saint Maria Goretti also spoke to me. Once while I was in the
dorm on my own, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr spoke to me. He said many
things. At last, he told me that I will make his dream a reality. He left with
the words, “You’re the man, Jonathan.” I found this in every locution I have
experienced to be one of the most pleasing things about the experiences. When
they come to me, their voice is always so different and characteristic. Young
Maria had an Italian accent but she spoke to me in English. It’s wonderful. A
couple of weeks after my wife left the community, I wrote her an email telling
her that it was a great blessing for me to have met her and that I hoped to
keep in touch. I found her on a social media site and added her. I was
surprised to receive an email shortly after saying that she did not want to
continue talking. I was shocked and did not understand what was happening. I
could not reconcile this with the manner in which she had left weeks earlier.
Over some of this time, I made a public act of consecration to our Lady. I
asked the Director of the community if I could become a member. We had a
meeting and he told me that he would pray over it. At this point I had already
been at the community for a year and a bit. He told me that I could stay for a
while longer as a period of discernment. After a couple of months, he asked to
see me and told me that he had discerned that it was not God’s will that I join
the community. I felt terribly but resigned to this will for a couple of weeks.
Then, convicted again, I wrote him a letter in which I laid out fully my
feelings and love for the community, how in spite of how challenging it was, in
every single job I was assigned I found peace and joy. I put the letter in his
mailbox. A week passed and he found me and asked if he could show the letter I
had written to some people. I said that would be okay. A couple of weeks later,
the director of vocations asked to see me. We went outside and had a
conversation about what to expect when I became a novice in the community. He
asked me if I had any questions and said that he could not say for certain
whether it would be discerned by the director that I have a vocation but that
he felt good about it. I thanked him and we parted. A week later, the director
returned and called me to see him. In our conversation, he told me that he had
again discerned it was not God’s will that I have a vocation. He told me that I
would have to leave the community in a month. I was pretty sad. A while before
I was leaving, I fell and scraped my nose rough. It bled an awful lot. I was
told that I should go get stitches. So I was taken to the hospital. I received
a locution from the Blessed Virgin Mary. She told me what God wanted from me
and that I would receive the help I needed. She was very warm but there was a
strictness surrounding her demeanor. I suppose it was understandable. Before I
left, on an early night, we were surprised to see the entire bush area toward
the water, filled with fireflies. It was a massive area and the bugs spread out
like an array. It was delightful. One of the community members, the one who had
told me that it was not too late to change my mind, came running up to the van
I was in, shouting, “Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan! Look at the fireflies!” It
stayed with my memory because it was so magical. I admired the sunsets deeper
after that. We watched some more movies in the dorm. I remember watching John
XXIII around this time. I had no memory that I was married. I had been rejected
from religious life. I was very confused. I was seeing my SD a lot during this
time. Every time I asked him what he felt the will of God for me was, he would
tell me something about the life of an obscure saint who died a lonely death. He
said that when he thought of my life, this saint came to mind. This only
confused me more. I also was reading a preparatory book for consecration to St.
Joseph, which I finished reading right before I left. My SD consecrated me to
him before his statue. I discovered that a couple of checks that I had left in
my apartment had been forged and cashed. The amount taken from me was about
$1800. I called the bank and at first they brushed it off and said I should
have kept my checks safer. I persisted with encouragement of some of the
community members and finally got a meeting with an advisor at the bank. She
started an investigation into it and before long, I was reimbursed the money.
My department head drove me all the way into a town a couple of hours away for
the meeting. I spent a couple of weeks planning what to do next. My apartment
in Toronto had been lost because one of my landlords passed away and the wife
had to move to a smaller unit. During the time I was at the community I was
able to pay off my debt sum that I had accrued years earlier. I wanted to seek
community life and kept looking for somewhere similar to the community I was
at. I looked even into Buddhist temples. I had asked a monastery in BC, if I
could come and discern a vocation. My department head at the community I was at
actually wrote a long and wonderful letter as a reference for the monastery. I
did not hear back from them. After searching unsuccessfully, I booked a couple
of nights at a motel a couple of hours away. My department head and I had a
meeting. He told me that he thought I would have been a great community member.
He had actually written the director a letter about that. He asked what I was
going to do. We wept together as friends. On the day I was leaving, my
department head told me that he was going to drive me to the motel. We had a
great drive. He made a gift of some money for me. We said goodbye. The moment
the door of my motel room closed behind him, I broke down in tears and sobbed.
I struggled
at first. I did not know what to do with myself. I fell into sin a couple of
times because I was so lonely. Afterwards, I trekked about a half hour’s walk
(for me, it is quite a long walk) to the local parish where I waited for
confession. When the Mass finished without confession being offered, I
approached the altar and begged one of the ministers if I could see a priest. I
confessed to him and returned home triumphantly and convicted to be chaste
again. I remember having a lot of difficulty with not being able to receive the
Eucharist every day during those first couple of weeks away. A year earlier, I
had canceled my social assistance because I wasn’t paying rent and so in those
first couple of days, reconnected to have it reinstated. I was grateful that
they were happy to help. I found everything so absurd at first. People wearing
these flimsy masks to protect themselves from a ‘deadly’ infection. I went into
a fast food restaurant where I was asked if I were vaccinated. I told them that
I was not. I said it kind of proudly. They looked at me like a leper and told
me I could eat outside. I was looking online for cars. I imagined I would sleep
in my car and just drive for the first while. Instead, I stayed in the motel I
was in for a couple of nights before cabbing to the capitol. When I got there,
I stayed in motels for another couple of nights. I realized it would have been
impractical to live in a car and so started looking for rooms to rent. I
eventually found a room and have stayed here ever since. Ever since returning,
I have been engaged in keeping compost and a garden out front of the place.
Valuable skills I had learned from the community. I started a little hobby
business of crafting walking sticks. I explored many different parishes when I
first arrived. The first time I was able to get to Sunday Mass after (though I
did not miss a Sunday Mass), I practically wept in the church. I was so
grateful to receive our Lord again. The very first church I went to, after a
while I stopped going because the message seemed terribly liberal. Also, one
day, when I had gone for confession, sitting down the priest asked me my name.
When I told him, he kind of smirked and withdrew his cell phone from his
pocket, fidgeted with it a bit and lay it on the table. He then told me to
proceed. I have always had the impression that my confessions were being
recorded and broadcast. This was so overt, it frustrated me. I ceased going
there immediately. I get the feeling as though my confessions are being
recorded. If not recorded, otherwise broadcast. And almost immediately. It is
not only a feeling. This is based on reactions of people after I emerge from
confession, it is apparent that the sin matter is being broadcast. I've been
noticing it for years really. Clergy continually, re-focusing their watch faces
toward me as they see I would like to take confession. For a priest to divulge
a penitent’s sin matter from confession is an excommunicable offence. Even I am
not blind to see that it is a problem higher than the priesthood considering it
happens essentially with every single priest I visit. It is clearly a dictate
by higher ranking members. All this makes approaching the Sacrament extremely
difficult for me. I am in a state of grace. There are no mortal sins I have to
confess. Really, who would want to confess their sins with sincerity, when they
knew that the whole world would know exactly what you confessed afterwards?
There is no reason for this to be the case. The only explanation is envy.
Because of what I am claiming, who I am claiming to be. I tell you, the reason
my sins – even the smallest of sin – are being paraded is the same reason why
my computer is paraded. They want to humiliate me. Isn’t it clear? Laity! It
has not done so in my case, but I can imagine this would prevent a lot of
people from confessing the full truth or even confessing it at all, if they
were in the position. Around the time when I started realizing that my
confessions were not being held in exclusive privacy, God the Father came to
me, telling me that if I needed to confess, He personally would be my
confessor. He was offended by this breach and offered to hear my confession
whenever I needed. He tells me, after confessing to Him that I am brand new, I
am spotless like a lamb without blemish. Friends, if they can do this to me,
because of envy and by the justification of a couple of forgiven sins, what
does this say of the future of confession? It will not be long before Church
knees to state and starts revealing the sins of others. If they can do this for
me, if they can make that exception, it will not be long before there is an
urgency to report on everyone else deemed as threat to the state. Watch
yourselves. Watch and guard your freedom.
Anyways, when I got to my new city, I discovered a parish,
which offered exclusively the Traditional Latin Mass. I decided that I would
continue going here and asked to be a parishioner. I fell deeply in love with
the Traditional wing of the Church. For some time, I helped out with cleaning
and started to help with the gardening. I noticed that the confession leaks
were still going on here. I resigned, submitted to the knowledge that the cause
must have been high in hierarchy for it to happen literally with every priest I
visit. God started to reveal to me many truths of the faith, which by most
circumstances would have been considered common sense but which had been lost
resulting from the creeping of modernism, secularism and communism into Her.
During the course of the winter months after I had left, I finished the novel I
was writing. I called it LADIRAE. I edited it myself and sent it to Catholic
publishers. The first publisher I had sent it to declined it. I was a little
intrigued. There was a man who used to take me out for coffee who I had met at
the first church I went to in Ottawa. One day, I mentioned to him about this
book. He replied, “Well, maybe it could have been published if you left
something out”. Here, I knew for certain he was referring to the scene illustrating
the Latin Mass within the book. I know that the book is good. Very good. It
wasn’t entirely me who wrote it. Its production was carried by the Holy Ghost. It was at that moment, I realized that there
was someone or something high up who was preventing my book from being
published. Maybe, it was the same reason my confessions were being broadcast
and the same reason my vocation was denied. I developed a relationship with a
new SD in my new city. Again, speaking to him about the will of God in my life,
he responded that thinking of my life, the life of that same obscure saint comes
to mind. Nothing further. I was still confused. Anyways, I also did some
carpentry work. I searched quite intently for work but wasn’t receiving
anything. Still, I kept quite busy. I rekindled my childhood love with the
sport of baseball and following the teams. I cleaned the house where I was
living quite often by sweeping, mopping, wiping down tables and cleaning jons.
I remember hearing a voice one day telling me to speak to a woman. I inquired
what the voice meant. It told me that I had to speak to any woman. I asked what
the reason was because the thought filled me with anxiety. It said that it
would be very meaningful afterwards and would be good for ‘them’. It was
referring to the world. I spoke to an elderly black woman. She was very warm. I
simply commented on the weather. I got the impression she was expecting me to
pursue the relationship further. The anxiety increased and when she got on the
bus, I waited for the next one. Part of me at the time was unsatisfied. A large
part of me was scared to return to Toronto. Actually, it was the reason I went
in the other direction after I left the community. A dear friend invited me to
visit him in Toronto but it was not until my second year in the capitol that I
decided to take him up on the offer. So, I went to Toronto. One thing I didn’t
mention about my return to the world after living in the community for two
years was that I experienced an almost miraculous healing of the physical
symptoms of my traumatic disorder. I quickly learned that the reason I was
struggling emotionally before I went to the community was because of a couple
of factors. First, I was traumatized and did not understand human love between
people. Secondly, my understanding of how to deal with big emotions was warped
and impractical. We live out what we learn by emulating those close to us.
Anyways, the physical symptoms of my cPTSD were healed after leaving. No more
flashbacks, no more hypervigilance. The triggers still existed as did the fear.
But, from what people could see, emotionally I was fine. When I arrived in
Toronto, people seemed perturbed by my presence. A couple of people actually
made public show of it by spitting at me and saying all these hurtful things. I
said nothing but smiled. After arriving, I wrote in my computer. It took a
couple of days (obviously, it’s a big city) but before long, people again
warmed up to me. While I was there, I went to the Oratorian parish for the
Latin Mass almost daily. I had an eye on the SSPX parish and was quite
interested. I thought my message might be well received there. The city I had
moved to had closed its SSPX chapel so in Toronto, was my only opportunity to
visit one. I went first during the week, to an evening Mass at this chapel. I
remember people being very glad to see me and welcoming me. I stayed after Mass
and finished a rosary. While I was praying, I heard one of the priests
inquiring about me and somebody said in response, “He is a very holy man”. So,
I returned to the chapel on Sunday and was a little surprised by the welcome I
received. It was a beautiful Mass but the homily went contrary to my message
and my experiences. After the Mass, I noticed people almost being upset with
me. Still, I stayed and prayed my rosary. After, when I returned to my friend’s
home, I wrote in my computer my thoughts about what had been said at the
homily. Suddenly, people seemed sympathetic again. Common sense cannot be
learned in a book. Anyways, I helped out at my friend’s place by cleaning and
getting groceries a bit. By the time I was leaving Toronto to return home,
people seemed almost sad to see me go. They were realizing. Also, while I was
there, I started writing in the same manner I used to, many years earlier – in
encouraging ways. As soon as I started doing this, it was as though something
was triggered in people’s memories. I returned home and continued my routine of
going to Mass at my parish and working away at my place. I received a couple of
locutions around this time. The first was from St Philip Neri. It was after I
had seen the movie about his life. The voice told me that I have as much love
for people as he did. I simply need to be free of excess emotions. Another was
from St Germaine who told me that she did not understand the nature of my
mission but that she supports me now with her whole heart; that next to Jesus,
I have given purpose to her life. I heard also from St Michael who told me that
my soul was like a diamond within a precious jewel. The first time I heard from
him was prior to visiting the community. Here, he told me that at the end of my
life, he would be present with a legion of angels to defend me. He spoke to me
for about thirty minutes. Mother Mary appeared to me in physical form. She told
me the following: “World is in a grave
state. Church as well. So much sin. The time for His justice is near. If people
only knew how real this justice will be and how real the mercy the Father
desires to offer every soul through our Son, Jesus. I simply long to see souls
find Him. In these days, He has called every soul. Not every soul chooses Him.
It is an unnecessary tragedy for a human soul to be lost. Still many will be
lost if they keep on the path they are walking. Justice is coming. A day prior
to that day appointed, which no one knows the time of, a day where man will
know that God exists in the Heavens as well as on the earth. And that He is
king of this world too. The genuine evildoer will tremble in this instant. The
Father desires so much for souls to be saved in that day. This is why He sends
this day. For those who have abandoned Him completely, are persistent in their
evil ways, He loves them too. It will be their own choice if they are cast off.
This coming day will be entirely glorious and a strength for the faithful and
true. I want to encourage the world. God is true. He loves every one of you. He
will never give up on you. Repent, my children. Pray. Pray like you have never
prayed. Jesus, my Son, is nearer than ever.” There was a period during which
the Father Himself appeared to me almost nightly. He simply wanted to comfort
me. Jesus spoke to me a couple of times. He has said, “Most in Heaven are in
the dark as to the true meaning of my life. They have only seen it through
superficial lenses. Like everybody, within me is an entire universe, feelings
and emotions. I am going to change the course of the world. It will be a
surprise for them. My message has the capacity to bring peace and healing. The
Church has forgotten that we are spiritual beings in physical bodies. They will
come around. I have the support of every being in Heaven. I am innocent even
though I have sin. There are many similarities between my life and your life.
The crucifixion I (Jonathan) endured was in my childhood.” Mary also told me
that when people realize truth, they will be attentive to my needs. It is not
their fault that they are being deceived. When they realize, they will scourge
through every single word I have said, trying to make sense of it. When they
realize, they will be flooded with memories of the real me, the real Jonathan. I
received one day a message from an unknown spirit of God. It said, “No one is
as important to God as I who is living. I am innocent. Much good has happened
as a result of my prayers. Roe Vs. Wade. Remember in 2017 and the peace in N.
Korea? Humility will come. As will exaltation. My true family is growing in
heaven. When they realize truth, I will receive everything I was deprived of.” Jehanne
D’Arc, my patron and guardian angel also visited me quite often. St. Pope JPII
spoke to me. He told me that I had been chosen for a very specific mission and
was going to glorify God even greater than what was originally intended. I am
not even trying to prove these apparitions. I’m actually not trying to prove
anything I have been saying about my spirituality. As well, around this time, I
began to have realizations that the nature of some of the stuff I had
experienced in childhood was even more serious than I had at first believed.
Not to dwell upon the matter. I realized that in my infancy and childhood, I
experienced a bit of satanic abuse from some people who really mattered not.
After realizing this, I set out passionately to save myself through prayer,
fasting, charity. I would pray constantly. There were periods where even on the
bus, I prayed consistently. I read the entire Bible over the course of Lent. I
was planning to visit the religious community another time over the summer.
When I returned, I again asked the director if I could join the community. He
responded that nothing had changed. I had accepted this rejection a little
easier. Even still, I started to recognize the fact that the periods of social
amnesia over which they forgot about what I had endured were being more
frequent and more intense. I noticed that people’s outright envy and
frustration with me were increasing. I realized why I was seeking vocation. I
also visited Toronto again. Here, I started to realize some things. Ever since
my long stay with the community, I had clung to the thought of the woman to
whom I had sent the note. I heard a couple of voices telling me that if I have
faith, I am already married. While I was in Toronto, a woman approached me when
I was going for Mass one night. It was clear that she was interested and spoke
to me for like twenty minutes, on the steps of the church. After realizing
there was not going to be a Mass, I walked away. Moments later, she came
running up behind me and told me there was going to be a Mass at another nearby
church. I thanked her but decided to go back to my friend’s place. Meanwhile,
in my new city, I became active in pro-life advocacy and took part in a couple
of protests. I was terrified the first time I went out. I consider myself quite
intelligent and have debated the pro-life cause strongly on social media, but
in person, I have social anxiety and struggle to express myself because of my
trauma. Also, the method employed in activism is different than simply
intellectual debate. So the first couple of times I went, I handled the camera.
We also did some practice dialogue sessions. Finally, I was able to calm my
nerves and I did a practice dialogue very effectively. I am beginning to
realize that this type of activism is not for me. The reason I kept trying to
commit was because of the importance of the cause. What they are doing is
changing hearts and so incredibly valuable. I am called more to pray over the
situation and to, if need be, use my intellect to encourage people to think
from a different perspective. I was interviewed by a large media outlet for a
program that was being done on teen swarmings. I returned to the community in
the spring of 2023. I had on the desktop of my computer and the background of
my cell phone the photo of this woman. I was surprised that some of the
community members, when they had seen this, smiled warmly. It was a little
validating, if anything, of what the spirits had been telling me about her. I
started to swim in the idea that I was married and started saying stuff like,
“I love my wife,” around the dorm. I kept saying it until a brother asked me if
I was married. I told him I was. I don’t think he believed me at first. The day
before I left from the community this time, we were having an early night. At
dorm prayers, I prayed for my wife. I asked God to keep her safe and blessed.
To keep her healthy and to let her know that I loved her and cherished her and
that if it be God’s will, we be united soon. After, this same brother asked me
if it were public knowledge that I had a wife. I said yes but then said no. He
asked where we met. I said there, at the community. I said then, “I miss her.
Please pray for her.” This night, we watched the movie about Winston Churchill
in the early part of WWII. After I went to bed, I could barely sleep. I was so excited
and played over and over in my mind the words I had said and prayed for my
wife. When I returned home, several more realizations and memories came to me.
I guess that this sort of proves the fact that memories can be blocked. I
started to recollect a priest saying the words, “I pronounce you husband and
wife”. There was no wedding, no exchange of rings. I remember it being kind of
urgent. I still don’t remember much about what happened during that time. Can’t
tell you how happy it made me, even realizing that I have a wife. It has given
purpose to my life unlike anything I have really experienced before. My heart
came so incredibly alive. Even the thought of her made me so thrill. Still, it
is incredibly frustrating and painful that I have few other memories around
this entire time. It’s also painful that she will not speak to me because I
can’t remember what happened to upset her. All I want is to be with her. If it
is true that I have a wife, the only thing I want is to be with her. My heart
is breaking at the thought that she is away from me.
When I returned to the capitol, I deleted my online chess
account because God had revealed to me that, at times, it was an idol for me.
Not the game. Rather, the way I was using it. I was sad to delete the account,
with the work I had put into the game over the past ten years. ELO difference
from 400 - 1200. Recently, I have reopened my chess account with this site and
another site. I am simply using it in moderation now. I was riding the bus one
day when God the Father spoke to me personally. He said that I have repressed my
sexuality because I fear hurting someone or having people accuse me of hurting
them. I am completely docile. I am completely changed and have no reason to
worry about this. On my end. Not everybody has the intention to hurt me. If my
trust is well placed, I will not be hurt. My sexuality is acceptable to God.
Even if I were gay. God approves of my sexuality. God just doesn’t want me to
continue hiding it. Sexuality is at the center of who we are as individuals. As
creatures. A large part of the reason my soul cannot liberate is because my
sexuality is so damaged and so shamed. If I trust God, what He has prepared for
me is so much better than even a lifetime of passion and intimacy. But, God
wants me to enjoy this life. This locution ended with the words, “Do you trust
me, Jonathan?” I went to the March for Life. For the first couple of hours, I
was noticing people being really harsh with me. Including the members of this
community who had come to be at the protest. It was difficult because these
were the people who were on my side who were intentionally ignoring me and being
rude. A man asked if he could interview me for his social media channel. I told
him I didn’t want to be interviewed. In hindsight, I could have. I need to
always remember God’s purpose and will in my life. This has to always be on the
front of my mind. I am not a politician. At the end, it will not be in anything
I say or do that acts as the catalyst for change. After a little while, I
started to write into my phone, some notes I had saved over the past couple of
weeks. Within twenty minutes, people grew compassionate with me again. I don’t
know what God has in store for me next. I am still praying that my wife will
return to me. Or that at least, my memory would open up. That she would open up
to me.
As an epilogue of sorts, I started seeking a new dentist a
couple of weeks ago. I found a new dentist and after going, was surprised by
the quality of treatment and by a couple of things he said. He told me that
doctors, when they see people are on social assistance are less apt to offer
benefits and treatment. Remember, people are not disposable. The way we
approach every individual matters. Anyways, I started remembering a lot of
images and MRI I had had over the past ten years and wondered if I had been
taken care of well. He told me about a connection between a dental issue and
PTSD. I went out and bought a device to help with this immediately following. Whatever
the circumstances of what is happening now, it is clear that I am in the
crosshairs of the evil one. It is clear that he is trying to destroy both me
and my message. This is the reason my sins were brought forward before what
happened to cause them. It’s the reason people continuously forget my story.
It’s the reason for people’s ill feelings towards me and it’s the reason for
their desire to humiliate me. It’s the reason my confessions are leaked and
it’s the reason people are always breaching my privacy to spy on me. It’s the
reason I was seeking religious vocation. I need help. I used to believe that I wasn’t
able to surrender to the will of God because I couldn’t trust. I am starting to
realize that the real reason is because I haven’t been able to seek the remedy
to the consequences of the satanic abuse in my younger days. I am praying for
my wife to return. I just want to be happy. I don’t want to be hurt. I just
don’t understand why anybody would oppose my message. When the implications for
it being true are so vastly glorious for the world. I want for the world the
era of peace, the restoration, the justice that it deserves. That it is
promised. I submit to the will of God. Whatever this may be. And I trust Him in
this. I only desire to be happy now.
