The Story of My Road to Confirmation

It's my story of my road to confirmation and only some very miniscule percentage of this planet will care. To those who do, this is the first installment of this somewhat interesting story….confusion, lies and divorces.

To parishioners of St. Jude the Apostle who might also be my Facebook or personal friend….please read this story at will and share with whomever you might want. It is very public after all. But know that it is a true story and sometimes….well shit happens.
================================

It's a simple bookkeeping type of thing, the process of getting confirmed in the Catholic church. I grew up in Baltimore and attended a slew of Catholic schools. The Bishop does confirmations and such a busy fellow can't go to all the Catholic churches in one year. Thus a staggered arrangement was created that would have the Bishop doing confirmations in St. Jerome's this year and to Blessed Sacrament next year, and so on and so on.

My parents were in the process of divorcing and if I was living with my mother I attended St. James' and if I lived with my father I went to St. Patrick's. For one very strange half a year I lived with an Aunt and attended a public school. It wasn't so bad. I was ten times smarter than all the other kids in the public school and this was back in the 50s!

Simple fate would have it that around age 14, the age when most Catholics get confirmed, I was at this school while the Bishop was at that school. The next year when I was at yet another school seems I just missed the Bishop.

I attended Catholic school for eight grades and went to public school throughout High School. My sister, by fate, was AT the correct school when came time for her to be confirmed in that the Bishop showed up when she was ready to be confirmed.

I then went through my absurd Atheist phase which segued into my "I dislike organized religion phase but I believe in God", to the beginning of my senior years when I desperately wanted to go back to my faith. Estimate is that I spent about twenty plus years either disbelieving in God or calling myself an Agnostic, which is an Atheist without balls. During that time I gave birth to my one and only child, who was never baptized under my watch and never exposed to any regular attendance to any church.

Hey I'm not proud of this story but as I share my story of my road to confirmation it's time to lay all the cards on the table. For I feel like God has a plan for me although here I am 65 and a bit tired. But they didn't have social media or Blogging when I was born. I was born to be a Blogger only they didn't have such things when I was born.

I digress. More on this later. And yes, it is germane.

I joined my current church, St. Jude the Apostle, in 2003, the year I moved down to Delaware with my husband, from my home state of Maryland. St. Jude's was in it's infancy at that time, strangely, and I feel like I've grown up in the church, so to speak, as a Catholic renewed, if you will, at the time.

When I joined St. Jude the Pastor too was new. He was Father Jim, still St. Jude's Pastor but wow, has a lot happened since I began to attend the church of my faith, a faith I knew I loved, had always loved, sad that I missed so many years in my liberal haze but let's not get political.

The first few years I attended St. Jude it was but a church on a rather expansive campus. It was certainly a nice church, seats around 700 people in a thunderstorm I am told. Now it has a Parish Life Center, a Religious Education Building, a lovely chapel….open almost 24 hours every day! I was knee deep in it all I am proud to say, even was on the Finance council while it was all going, looking over the budget, knowing stuff and watching the funding of my church. Father Jim was great with the money and excellent, obviously, with new building because it is amazing all that is involved with such dramatic transformation.

Father Jim and I grew up together is what I'm saying here, and sometimes we snarled like dogs.

So okay, it's St. Jude's, the church and its history are not all that critical. But it's all part of my confirmation story so indulge me.

My first effort at getting confirmed was a few years ago. My husband, Billy, was still alive. I approached St. Jude's religious ed office and thus began a bonanza of confusion.

St. Jude's religious education director, her name not all that important, we'll call her Pam, was enthusiastic for me and discussed why I was not confirmed and began what I would need to do to get confirmed.

I assured her that I'd been baptized a Catholic though I had no proof. I DID have proof of my first communion in the form of a picture of my 7-year old self complete in first communion attire, in front of my church at the time, with my mother.



I completely forgot that Catholics aren't supposed to be divorced. My marital history was a mess, absolutely none of it my fault.

To be continued…..

NEXT….the terror of being denied the ability to take communion, the lack of information, the confusion of it all.