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I was born a raised a Catholic in the forties. I suppose I should say when I was born my mother was a Catholic and she raised me as a Catholic. I had no choice in that matter. I was in my mother’s womb when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese. I am now over eighty and this will be my journey of faith and religion. 

First a little history of my family. My mother was a born and raised Catholic. Her mother, my grandma immigrated from Germany around the 1890’s when she was seven years old. She was a devout Catholic. She mothered fourteen children, seven of whom did not survive birth or lived less than a year. That is hard to comprehend having that many children. My father was born in Iowa as a Baptist. I heard that he left his parents farm because he didn’t agree with the Baptist ways, and they said, “as long as you live here you practice the Baptist ways.” He was in his late teens so I would guess he was also ready to go on his own and that was only one of the reasons. He ended up in Denver Colorado.  

My mother was born in Minnesota and moved to Denver Colorado with family when it was determined that they should move to a dryer climate because her father had asthma and the climate change may help him. Unfortunately, he passed away soon after the move. There my grandma was in a new city with seven children to feed and support all under twenty years old. My mother was in seventh grade and had to quit school with her older brothers and sisters to start to help bring in money to survive. There were also three sisters below my mother’s age that were too young to work. Grandma had no formal education since she was seven years old when she came from Germany. I never heard much about my grandma’s history. I never heard who she came to the US with or how she met my grandpa. Grandma brought in laundry and scrubbed floors for income to support the family. In those days assistant programs did not exist. My mother worked at a laundry and dry-cleaning facility. In those days there were no apparent child labor laws. My mother passed away in her seventies from bone cancer and I speculate that those harsh chemicals she was exposed to when working at this laundry was the deciding factor for her acquiring cancer.  

I do not know much about the romance of my parents. All I remember is they met because they both worked at the laundry. When they became married my mother was in her late twenties and my father was three years` younger than her. Since my mother was a Catholic, she demanded that they get married by a Catholic priest. Because my father was not a Catholic, they could not get married in the church. They could only get married in the church office. Also, my father had to sign an agreement that he would allow all children to be raised Catholic. During those times mixed marriages were highly frowned upon and did not encourage or make it easy to happen. One may think my mother was probably pregnant at the time. I thought that also and I checked into it and found out they were married in August and my brother was not born until the following October of the next year. Therefore, no, she was not pregnant when they got married. The things she said to me when I was growing up and when my hormones were becoming active, and she believed that sex outside of marriage was very sinful she abided by that belief. That may be the reason she did not get married until her late twenties since most of that time many got married in their late teens or early twenties. The three younger sisters were married before my mother, and I think one or two of them were with a child when they married. Two out of the three sisters became divorced, and one ended up with three or four husbands. In fact, one sister divorced, and the other sister married him. That ended up in divorce also. I would speculate that was another reason for her late marriage by seeing the failures of her sisters.  

My mother is Catholic, my grandma is Catholic, and my dad signed an agreement that the children will be raised Catholic. Therefore, I am baptized as soon as possible. At the time the belief was if a baby dies before they are baptized, they do not go to heaven, they go to a place called Limbo and spend eternity in Limbo. I don’t have a clue what the belief is now. All I know is that I was baptized at a young age. I do not ever remember meeting my god parents. I think my mother told me who they were, but they were never a part of my life. 

Recently my wife asked me if I remember my mother or grandmother saying nightly prayers when going to bed. I told her “No I do not remember anything about that kind of event”. Since they were strong believers in religion, I would imagine they did that when I was young. Since I do not remember anything about evening prayers it obviously did not leave a lasting impression on me. I do remember during the day them talking to me about God and what is right and wrong and what is expected to be good. I remember my mother and grandmother sitting there and saying their rosary and they would say they need some quiet time. 

At five years old I started going to kindergarten at a public school. These were scary times; the school was maybe ten blocks away and my mother would walk me to school and come pick me up after school, around 3:30 in the afternoon. My world was expanding. Since I was not going to a parochial school, I was told I would have to go to catechism after Sunday mass and learn about my faith and religion. On Sundays my dad would take mom, grandma, and my brother to Sunday mass. An hour later he would he come to pick us up. Now he had to make two trips, one to pick up mom, grandma and brother. Then an hour later to pick me up. I never heard him complain about the situation.  he did uphold his agreement to allow the children to be raised Catholic. After a period, they decided I was old enough to come home by myself. They did have to bribe me though. They gave me money to buy a candy bar from the drug store on the way home. 

In a couple of years, it was time for first communion and first confession.  I do not remember much about either event. I do remember that you had to fast until you received the communion. You would eat the previous evening and then must wait until communion time. By that time, you were starving. I do have some photos of me all dressed up in my white clothes though. The first confession was scary. Here I am seven years old, and I am supposed to remember all the sins I have committed. What kind of sins does a seven-year-old commit? I have a feeling I made up most of what I confessed. During that era all were sinners and it was a hard job to make it to heaven. 

After communion and confession came confirmation. I was around thirteen at the time. This was the sacrament when you confirm your belief in the Catholic beliefs. You become a soldier of God. This ceremony was so important that the bishop had to officiate, not just a mere parish priest. He would ask a bunch of questions to make sure you knew the laws of the church and would give you a lite slap on the cheek to affirm you were willing to die for the church beliefs. I just did what was expected at the time. Now if I had to do it at my age now, I wonder if my response would be the same. 

When I was fifteen Grandma passed away. Grandma lived with us all the time I was alive. In fact, I slept with grandma when I was young because of the small home we lived in. She was part of my faith journey. Somewhere in our time together grandma said to me, “Tom, the Lord will never expect you to do something that knows you cannot do.” I remember more than many of the statements I heard in religious classes. Also, when she was on her death bed, we would go visit her and she would not take time to visit with us, saying she was busy talking to the two angels in the corner waiting for her. There will be the ones that will say, “she was just hallucinating and there really wasn’t anyone there talking to her.” I do not care. I remember seeing the peace she was in, and she had no fear of passing on. This experience made me think that there is more than likely something after death. That is more than all the religious teaching I experienced from so-called professionals. 

So, this is fifteen-eighteen years of religious experience and teaching in my life. What I got from this was God was someone to fear and you will have to work hard to ever be worthy of a continuance after death. For many years I lived in fear and guilt. I tried to be a good Catholic. I went to Sunday mass, didn’t eat meat on Fridays, tried not to think of sexual thoughts and all their other rules of the era. At this age I thought that the chances of making the grade was slim next to none. I was a mere mortal and when I went to the pearly gates the master accountant would be there with the general ledger of all my sinful events. I would never make the grade. 

Here I am close to the end of my teenage years, recently graduated from high school and my formal religious education was over. My teen age years were hard for me. I don’t know why. It could have been those hormones rushing through my body and it was changing in ways that I did not understand.  could have been the conflict I was experiencing between the world I was living in and what my religious training told me the way it should be. Or maybe the neighborhood environment I grew up in. I am sure I will never know why it was a difficult period for me. 

I know one thing for sure I was having a hard time dealing with the situation with sex in this world and what my religious training was telling me. The religious training was saying any kind of sex was sinful outside of marriage and once you were married everything was ok. I thought, “how can that be?” The creator made us and now this creation can’t be used until the circumstances are right. What about the millions in this world where marriage is not available. Do they have to pay for that?  

I didn’t have a sister in the family, so I learned about the biological differences outside of the family. I remember going to the drugstore with my friends and looking at the Playboy magazines on the upper shelf of the news rack. Whoever created the female body sure knew how to make it desirable to the male population and another source of temptation to sin. 

My mother also made it difficult for me too. Many times, she said to me. You should marry someone with the same religion. I suppose this came from because she married a Baptist, and she was Catholic and that was the trend in that era to stay within your own religion and race. I met a young girl in grade school, and we really clicked. We were close through our school years. Unfortunately, she was not Catholic and what my mother said many times stuck in the back of my mind. During our high school years, I intentionally made a point to avoid her and got farther and farther away from her. I am sure she wondered, what happened? Well, she went her way, and I went my way. Forty years or so later something happened that I will cover later.  

Another thing that my mother told me was, “Tom don’t forget that girls, (women) get pregnant. Many women intentionally get pregnant to get their Mrs. Degree.” Well, that scared me. Now I started looking at women differently. Are they attracted to me or are they just looking for a husband. I am sure my mother was just trying to make my life easier and avoid possible pitfalls in life and she didn’t realize how I took it. 

Here I am almost past my teen years. I am a practicing Catholic, not by choice, it was what I was trained and raised up in. In that era the religion was a fear and guilt organization. If you were human, you were a sinner and you had to work hard to be worthy of eternity in heaven. They had mortal and venial sins. If you died with a mortal sin on your soul, you went directly to hell, no ifs ands or buts about it. Venial sins were not as bad mortal sins but after death you would have to spend time in purgatory for those sins. The vision I had of final reconciliation was that the Lord was there with the gigantic ledger, and I had to justify every little thing I did in my life. I always thought, “how am I going to remember all these sins.” You had to convince the Lord that you were worthy of life in heaven. I was stuck with this fear and guilt throughout maybe half of my life. The good things you did in your life were not considered, it was just the bad things or sins that you must account for. I guess this guilt and fear came from the Dark Ages when the church was many times stricter than what I grew up in.  

I also have an older brother that is five years older than me. We pretty much both grew up in the same environment. My parents rented their living situation when my brother was born until he was four years old. My parents bought a home six months before I was born. Other than that, my brother and I grew up in the same environment, but we grew up totally different. Many times, I have wondered how can two brothers grow up and be so different? The only thing I can remember is that my brother said he wanted to be a priest. I never heard him say that he wanted to be a fireman, teacher or any other career. He was an altar boy, would walk to church almost every morning and always willing to help around the church. I was exactly the opposite. I never had time for church, but I was forced into it. Yes, my brother ended up becoming a priest and still appears to be happy with his decision. Religion was always my last choice. My mother and the fear I learned from religious training was the only thing that kept me in line. Many times, I thought, “my brother got all the religion and all I got was the leftovers.” when I was young it was difficult for me to admit that I was Catholic. If I remember right, I think that was a sin too. 

Here I recently graduated from high school and don’t have clue what I want to do in life. As I mentioned in previous chapters, my teenage years were hard for me. I was mad and angry for some reason. This was one of the reasons I didn’t go on to college. I was burned out on education and decided to try to make it in private industry. 

I am a practicing Catholic; I go to church every Sunday and Confession maybe every month or two. I must admit that many times I am just there physically but, my mind is elsewhere thinking about other things totally unrelated to religion or God. I do all the things I do not understand, like not eating meat on Friday, Fasting during Lent, holy days of obligation and so on and so forth. 

I decided to not continue to college and am going to find a job. I graduated from high school in June, and I finally got a job at the end of August. A few years prior to graduation a military contractor opened in the Denver metro area to build the Titan I ICBM. They were hiring like crazy. Because I took typing in high school, I was placed in the purchasing department as a teletype operator. Unfortunately, this was on the swing shift. There went my social life.  

I was a young man. My hormones were rushing, I wanted some young love in my life. My mother and my religious experience did not help in my love life. I was afraid of girls; they could get pregnant and just want to get a Mrs. degree. Also, sex outside of marriage was a mortal sin and if you died with a mortal sin on your soul, you go to hell immediately, no ifs and or buts. To satisfy your desires you may sin and go to hell for that. What a cruel world! Also, the introduction of alcohol in your life made life more complicated. At that time eighteen-year-olds could drink 3.2% beer. I don’t care what they say. You could get very drunk on 3.2% beer, you just had to drink twice as much. There were 3.2 bars with drinking, dancing and live bands. They would pack the people in, with drinking being the primary purpose. I was introduced to pitchers of beer. Many times, I should not have been driving. However, I was never stopped or arrested for DUI. Fortunately, I never got in a wreck and could have killed someone.  

This lifestyle continued for about three years, and then I received this letter. “Your friends and neighbors have selected you to be in the United States military.” I WAS DRAFTED! This was a major event in my life. Sometime in March I went to the induction center and took the oath to the United States Army. Then me and seven others were taken to the train station and got on a train to St Louis. Our destination was Fort Leonard Wood Missouri. After eight weeks of basic training, I received orders to report to Fort Huachuca Arizona for twenty-six weeks of advanced individual training. After the training I received orders to Germany, sixty miles away from the Iron Curtain. An interesting note, at an orientation meeting they told us that many of the women want to get pregnant by a GI so that they would have a ticket to the United States. That is basically the same thing that my mother told me back when I was starting to discover girls. No, I did not meet the love of my life in Germany. After thirteen months in Germany, I return to America and discharged from the active army.  Later I found out that all the other seven I was drafted with went to Viet Nam. Talk about dodging a bullet.  

At every army location I went to they had facilities for religious time and never indicated any opposition to suppress religious time. At that time there was Catholic, protestant and Jewish. The Muslim population was nonexistent in the military. I practiced my faith all the time through the military. During my time in the army, I met men from all walks of life. New York, Pasadena, New Orleans, and hundreds of other areas. Irish, German, Japanese, Black, white, and all nationalities. Meeting a diverse number of people taught me that most people are basically good. This was one of the most important things I learned about people, and I began to trust people easier than I did before. Never learned that from organized teachings. Many times, I was told that protestants were sinners because they fell away from the Catholic faith and did not practice the Catholic faith, therefore, they were sinners and destined to hell. The same with Jewish, they rejected Jesus Christ, and they are destined to hell. Hell must really be a crowded place. I never met a Muslin in the army. In fact, I do not remember if Muslin religion was ever brought up in my religious training.  

Here I am close to twenty-five, recently discharged from the active army and went back to work with the company I worked for before I was drafted. Everything is great, yea right! I feel life is passing me by. I haven’t met the love of my life yet. I am beginning to think that the love of my life is not out there, and I will have to compromise. I want to get married and start having a family. There was this young girl that had recently moved in with her aunt and uncle near to where I was living. She came from a farming community and came to Denver to attend beautician school. She was almost ten years younger than me. Life is not perfect right? I asked her out and the romance started.  

So here I am starting to romance my future wife. We do all the normal things, go to dinner, movies, take rides and all the other romancing events. Couldn’t take her to a bar since she was only nineteen and you had to be twenty-one. It bothered me that she was over nine years younger than me. But I was at the point where I was beginning to think that I would never meet the love of my life and I had to accept that fact. I was ready to get married and have sex without sinning or feeling guilty. After three months of romancing her, I asked her to marry me.   

Here I am a Catholic and she is a Presbyterian. I am not going to marry someone of my own faith. She is younger than me, not of the same religion and I am rationalizing that everything will work out. It is time to take a chance, life is passing me up.  

Her beautician training is coming to an end, and she will have to return to her small-town farming community. I was concerned if she goes home our relationship will crumble and disappear and I will have to start over, looking for love. Later in my journey of life I found out she did not want to return home and the proposal of marriage gave her reason to stay in Denver. Her aunt reluctantly allowed her to stay with them until our marriage. The proposal was in the summer and the marriage took place in October of the same year. 

My parents, especially my mother, were not too enthused about this news. My dad never said much about the issue. The bride-to-be-aunt who she was staying with was not enthused at all. Her parents said, “well this surely came as a surprise. “If that is what you want then ok”.    

I told my bride to be that I would like to get married in a Catholic church. She replied “that’s ok, I am willing to convert to being a Catholic so we can get married in the Catholic church. However, I want to get married in the Catholic church in my hometown.” so she started taking convert classes in Denver and we travelled to her hometown and talked to the priest there saying we wanted to get married in his church. He said, “you are a Presbyterian and that creates a problem.”  She said, “I am taking classes to convert to Catholicism and once I finish these classes, we want to get married.” he replied, “that’s great, but you also need to take pre-Cana classes before marriage”.  Since we reside in Denver, we should make arrangements for the pre-Cana classes. To make things more complicated when I inform my brother, who recently became a priest, said he would like to come and officiate the ceremony. How can you turn down a brother who wants to officiate your marriage?  

Things are going well; the bride is going to convert classes. She has started going to Sunday services with me. We go back to her home a couple of times, and she has a wedding shower and plans are being made. We will get married in the Catholic Church and the wedding reception will be at the Presbyterian fellowship hall. I ask my best friend to be the best man. The rest of the wedding party is from the bride’s family and friends. I forget how it was verified that she became a practicing Catholic. The only thing not done was I did not arrange to have pre-Cana classes in Denver. We go back to the bride’s hometown sometime the week before the Saturday wedding. During the meeting with the local priest, he asks when we took the pre-Cana classes and I had to admit that we didn’t take them. He became unglued and gave me a lecture I will never forget. He is silent and is thinking. There is a lot at stake. The marriage license has been obtained. All the plans have been made. People are coming from other locations and if he says, “sorry you can’t get married this Saturday” he knows he will be the one blamed. He finally breaks the silence and says “ok we can still get married this Saturday. But we must guarantee that we will take the classes after we get back to Denver.” Sorry, that never happened.  

We get married, have a wedding reception, and leave to go on our honeymoon. Just think, I can have sex without feeling guilty and not feel like a sinner! It is amazing what a forty-five-minute ceremony and a piece of paper can do.  

In the following months we buy a house, move out of our studio apartment and prepare for the next event of our life. This is our first son who is born the following August of next year. A year and a half later we have another son, in June of that year. Life is good, I have a good job, a wife and two healthy happy sons. I get along with my in-laws and my wife gets along with my parents. I enjoyed going to the farm and helping with the activity of farm work such as irrigation of the crops, the harvest of the sugar beets and field corn. Our two sons would stay with Granny and Grandpa during the summer and that would give us some alone time.  I was happy and my wife appeared to be happy. We go to church and participate in other church activities, take trips and have friends over.   

The only indication I had was when the boys were four or five years old my wife asked if she could get a part-time job. She said the neighbor would be willing to watch the boys while she worked. I reluctantly agreed. I was from a family where the father worked, and the mother was a housewife. My mother never worked outside of home after she got married. That tradition is what I was accustomed to.  

After ten years of what appeared to be a happy marriage, I received the shock of my life.   My wife informs me that our marriage was a mistake, and she can no longer continue as a loving wife. I am devastated! 

here I am with the news that my wife of ten years tells me that our marriage was a mistake, and she does not love me. What happened? I thought our life was good and happy. We had two young boys, a home, money in the bank, good reliable jobs, and faith and religion. I was devastated. There must be a reason for this life-changing event. I must find out the reason for the worse thing that happened to me in my life.  

We continued to sleep together. We did not want the boys to know that there was a problem yet. However, all intimacy stopped and periods of talking together. All we did was sleep, period. How boring!  

I thought, maybe marriage counselling would help. My semi-wife agreed to go to counselling. I located a counsellor, and we started going to counselling. If I remember it was once a month for one or two hours. After three or four sessions I decided that this counselling is not doing any good. My semi-wife had decided that the marriage was over and there was no changing her mind. However, she never mentioned separation or divorce. After about a year of this brother-sister relationship I decided that I wanted more in life than this kind of relationship, told her it was time to make it official and get a divorce.  

A couple of years prior to my marriage disaster my mother was diagnosed with bone cancer. She had one of her femur bones in her leg removed and a prothesis put in place of the femur. She went through Kemo and radiation therapy. And they said she was cancer free. However, at that time they said in three to five years the cancer will more than likely come back and this time it will be very aggressive. In other words, you have three to five years to live. As the journey continues this information will be a necessary part of the story.   

Since my semi-wife and I have decided that the next step is divorce and Colorado law has no-fault divorce we decided to use just one attorney since we thought we could work out child support, visitation rights and division of finances between ourselves. I locate an attorney and the divorce procedure is started. At that time there was a ninety-day cooling off period and our divorce became official in ninety-one days.  

The settlement was her and the boys will stay in the house, and I will continue to pay the mortgage. She will be responsible for monthly expenses. Both of our names will remain on the property deed and trust. I will make monthly child support payments also. I have visitation rights every weekend and any special events during the week.  

I found an apartment and moved out. I took the bed from the spare bedroom, some living room furniture and some kitchen cooking supplies. I learned fast that my income did not support two living arrangements and money quickly became an issue.   

Everything was going satisfactorily. I hated apartment living. Tenants would go into the apartment and disappear. There was a recreation room, but it was empty most of the time. No wonder so many starts to go to bars and start drinking. The apartment had a swimming pool and I thought that would be good entertainment for the boys. The first time I brought the boys to the pool the manager told me the pool was for the residents only and guests were not allowed. I wish I knew that before I signed the lease. 

When I told my mother that I had moved out and got a divorce she became very upset emotionally. She was from the old school and the belief was “until death do us part” and she was heartbroken that I would have to spend the rest of my life alone. A short period of time and her cancer came back and metastasized, going to other organs and brain. In less than six months she passed away. I have no facts but, I speculate the news about my situation was a factor in her cancer returning and finally death.  

As the saga continues, I find out my former friend has moved into the house with my former wife and two boys. I met my former friend from the workplace environment. He had a wife and two children. We became friends and started doing things together as families. Everything was great for a while, but I was starting to feel something was wrong and it was more than just a friendship between my wife and friend. During the time from when my wife became my semi-wife and our divorce, I asked my semi-wife if something was going on between her and my former friend, naturally she denied it.  

I was not happy at all about my former friend living in the house that I was paying the mortgage on. Our divorce agreement was starting to disintegrate. I do not remember the exact timeline for the next events. However, my former friend found a place on the other side of Denver and my former wife followed him with my two boys. They basically deserted the house leaving a dog behind. Since my lease was up at the apartment I moved into the house since it was vacant, and money was tight.  

A short period of time later she told me that her job was sending her back to Michigan for some temporary work and asked if I would take the boys for a while. I would not have to pay child support when she was in Michigan. I agreed but I did not feel comfortable about a verbal agreement defying a court order. I contacted an attorney to make it legal. She said if the boys are living with me my former wife should be paying child support to you. After finding out that she should pay child support to me her temporary duty in Michigan suddenly concluded.  

In addition to the drama from my personal life my dad passed away from a heart attack while visiting a niece in California. Now I must deal with the stress and mourning from the loss of my dad.  

In addition to that, after a period I found out that the company I work for is going to close thirteen distribution warehouses across the nation. I am also going to be unemployed. During this stressful time, I still try to abide by the teachings being a Catholic. However, I am beginning to wonder, I am trying to do what is right and obey the teachings, why are all these obstacles being thrown at me and testing my faith? 

Here I am at the rock bottom of my life. I am newly divorced, live in an apartment that I hate. I am lonely and have lost my confidence in myself and I do not trust any human. My finances are being stretched thin. I am still attempting to follow the teachings of my faith. However, I am beginning to question my religion. Life is not what I dreamt of, find the love of my life and celebrate our fiftieth anniversary and grow old together.  

Somewhere in the time frame my mother tells me the Catholic church she goes to has started a divorce support group and suggested I start going to. After some time in my new lifestyle, which I hated, I decided to give it a try. I was kind of surprised that this was sponsored by a Catholic church because of what I remember that if you become divorced you are welcome at church but not really welcome. I always had the impression that a divorced person was damaged goods.  

The group was facilitated by a husband wife team. I do not remember the credentials of the man. The wife was a former nun and dropped out of her calling and became married. It was basically set up like an AA group. The group would have meetings and share their marriage breakup experience and the group would discuss their situation. The group consisted of about the same numbers of men and women. Most were the victims of being surprised and dumped by their spouse. There was a small number that were in abusive relationships. They would have classes about self-esteem, trust, finances, support and other items a divorcee goes through. I do not think their discussions about sex abided to church doctrine of the time. It was very liberal and basically anything goes. There were social events, luncheons, dinners and going to dances as a group. If anyone was having a difficult time, they could call anybody for comfort and consolation. I didn’t know or plan it, but I met my future wife in the group. We have now been together for over forty years.  

My future wife was in the same situation as I was. She had been married close to twenty years and her husband decided that he wanted to move on, and it was a total shock to her. We became friends and cried on each other’s shoulder many times. As time went by, we discovered that we had a lot in common. We were both practicing Catholics, close to the same age, basically the same amount of education and so on and so forth.  

I wasn’t looking for a future wife. I was looking to heal from the traumatic experience I just went through. Thinking that it would help me I applied for annulment since I was Catholic and knew that I needed and annulment before I could marry in the church again. It took about a year for the process and yes, I received the annulment. I never used it though because my next marriage was not in a Catholic church.  

My future wife was the church secretary for a Lutheran Church sometime in the early start of our relationship. With that association I started to find out that protestants were not the evil sinners that was projected on me during my influential growing up years. Come to find out they are God loving people just like Catholics. As time went by, we decided to visit other Christian denominations to widen our experience. We went to Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglican, and others. It was a very interesting experience visiting these different denominations. Some were very friendly, and others were unwelcoming and cold. They all had the same basic belief of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. From that time on we decided to call ourselves Christians instead of Catholics. Judaism and Muslim faiths were not on our radar at the time. As time went by, we became more involved with the Lutheran branch of Christianity.  

After divorcing you tend to not trust any human being. Not trusting other humans was the hardest thing for me to overcome. Finally, after over ten years my future wife and I decided to give marriage, another try, and we were married in the Lutheran Church we have become active in. We are now husband and wife. We have been together now for over forty years and are growing old together. I love her very much and I am very glad that we took the big step and tried marriage again. I trust that she also has the same feelings for me and is just as happy and satisfied as I am. Yes, I do trust people again! 

We met after the child raising age, but she blessed me with two stepdaughters and two stepsons. I gave her two stepsons. The entire family gets along, and I love my stepchildren as much as my biological sons. Love is a strong force. 

My wife and I have done many things together. We took a trip to Italy and visited the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Museum. After seeing all the wealth and gold there I thought, “this is not what God wants from his people’. All that gold and wealth upset me. This may be Gods religion, but humans have run it for two thousand years and they are destroying the message that Jesus Christ was bringing across. With all the pain and suffering going on in this world why are they hoarding this wealth when it could be put to good use for the welfare of humankind? Greed and self-satisfaction can be found everywhere.  

Here I am, over eighty years old. My journey of life is more complete than what is left. Faith and religion have been a part of my life. This is because of the family I was born into. I was very fortunate to be born into a loving family. There are six events in my life that have influenced my life and have made me what I am and what I believe. This chapter will cover these events.  

My first event was from my grandma. First, I want to give a little history about grandma. Grandma immigrated from Germany somewhere in the late 1800’s, maybe 1890. She was seven years old when she immigrated to the United States. I never heard who she came with family or friends. She ended up having fourteen children which seven died in childbirth or shortly after. She was living with mom and dad when I was born in the early 1940’s. I remember grandma, saying the rosary, praying, crocheting and helping mom with the cooking and cleaning. I have many fond memories of grandma. 

Sometime in my early life, maybe five or eight years old, I remember grandma telling me. “Tommy, the Lord will never expect you to do something knowing that you are unable to do it.”  I remembered this comment throughout my life up until now. It left a lasting impression on me. I learned from this that God is a caring and loving God.  

The next event happened when grandma was dying, and we would go to see her in the hospital. She did not have time for us. She said, “I am busy talking to the two angels in the corner, they are waiting for me.” There will be the ones that say, it didn’t happen, she was just hallucinating. I do believe it though. I learned that there is an afterlife and sometimes life and afterlife cross over at times.  

The next life changing life event I had revolved around my mother. First, I want to give a brief history of my mother. She was one of seven surviving brothers and sisters, somewhere in the middle. She was born in a small town in Minnesota above a bar. I do not think she was ever a registered birth because when I was going through my parents’ estate papers, I could not find anything about her birth. All I could find was a letter from someone verifying that she was baptized at the local Catholic church. I found my dad’s birth certificate and high school diploma, but nothing on my mother except what I mentioned above.  

When my mother was young the family moved to Denver because her father had severe asthma and the doctor’s recommendation was a dryer climate than Minnesota. About a year after the family moved her father died and left her mother to support and raise three or four children under the age of twelve. My mother had to quit seventh grade school and help bring in money for the family to survive. At that time there were no assistant programs and no child employment laws. She began working in a laundry, dry cleaning operation. She worked with harsh cleaning chemicals, and I speculate that is why she came down with bone cancer later in life.  

Yes, she did come down with bone cancer and that is what finally took her life. She was in hospice, and I would come and visit her. One visit she said to me, “Tom I am not ready to die, and I am afraid of dying and she started crying!” I did not know what to say or how to respond. Here she is in hospice, and it is just a matter of time before death. That really bothered me. She was a religious person and followed the laws of the church. I thought how can this happen? I thought faith and religion was supposed to prepare you for death and the hereafter. She had a horrible and agonizing death. Cancer can be very cruel.  

Her death was very hard on me. It was a short time after I divorced and now, I had to deal with the death of my mother and the conversation I had with her about the fear of dying. Her response to death and dying had me questioning this faith and religion stuff. It appears to have failed my mother. However, weeks later I had this dream. It was my mother. She was sitting in her favorite chair and had the Mono Lisa smile on her face. She said to me, “Tom, everything is ok, I am at peace and very happy. Do not be concerned about me.” This immediately put me at ease. Critics will say it was his sub conscience rationalizing and just going through the mourning process. So be it. I was there and it was one of the most vivid dreams I ever encountered. I learned from this experience that my mother’s fear of death was unfounded.  

Around twenty years later I had another paranormal dream. This involved my grade school, high school first love. It is possible that we should have ended up together. But during that period, it was very important according to religious believers to marry in your own faith. I was Catholic and she had none. I started to pull away from her and I am sure she wondered why. Anyway, we ended up going our separate ways. 

Anyway, she came to me in a dream and said to me. “Tom, you and I were meant to be together. If we had stayed together our lives would have been totally different.” I woke up immediately! This bothered me very much, why after sixty years would she come to me and give me such startling news? The vision of her was what she looked like in high school. This bothered me quite a bit and after pondering on it for a week or so I decided to do some research. I didn’t even know her married name. I had to go to high school alumni newsletters and get her married name. I made a Google search on her and discovered that she passed away three days before she came to me in a dream. One could just think she was cleaning up items before moving on to the afterlife. Maybe if I married her, I would not have to go through the pain and suffering of divorce and separation. Now, one can only speculate. I learned from this that for sure there is an afterlife!  

About two or three years later I am out taking a walk since the doctor said I should get exercise. I was totally alone walking along the trail in the green space near where we lived. Suddenly, this voice says, “Tom stop trying to be something you are not! You were created to be you, not someone you think you should be!” Since that time, I am me, period! I have been more comfortable and at peace with myself since then. Life is so much better! I learned to be myself instead of someone I am not.  

The next event is a life-threatening experience. This happened less than a year ago. I wake up around 3:30 in the morning with a terrific pain in my left calf. I massage the calf thinking it is a Charlie horse like it has been in the past. Thirty minutes later I am having difficulty breathing. I woke my wife and told her to call 911. I thought I was having a heart attack. They stabilized me and took me to the ER. The diagnosis was a Pulmonary saddle embolism, which is a large blood clot between the lungs. They say the best procedure is for the patient to stay awake and go up through the groin and attempt to remove the clot. About halfway through the procedure, I am really starting to feel bad. I heard an attendant shout out to the doctor that my blood pressure is dropping. I am really feeling bad, and I thought I was going to breathe my last breath. I do not know what they did or what happened, but I started to feel better and survived the procedure.  

The surgeon talked to me after, and I asked how low my blood pressure went. There was a pause and he said, “you do not want to know, and I am not going to tell you!” Continuing the conversion the doctor says, “Thomas I think we made the correct decision for you to stay awake. I am afraid if you had gone under anesthesia, we would have lost you. I did not know what to say after hearing that. After four days in ICU, I was sent home as TomT 2.0. I later learned the survival rate of this kind of procedure is only 3 to 5 percent. I beat the odds. I was given an extension on life, now I must discover why my life was extended. I am still working on what I learned from this experience.  

So here I am trying to find out why my life was extended. What is my assignment to do in this extension of life? I have never been a Bible reading person, so I think I can scratch that. Many times, during church services my mind is elsewhere, and I can’t really say I get much out of Sunday church services. I can’t see me standing on a street corner promoting the Christian way of life. Being myself like I was told to do, I must admit that I have not been a very good Christian.  

I am just a speck in this gigantic universe of humankind. So far, the only idea I have is to share what I have experienced in life. Maybe I should start to write and share my experiences instead of taking them to my grave. This is where substack has come in. It is a good medium, and I am sharing my experiences here. Sometime in the future my life experiences may help someone cope and make the right decision in the challenges of their individual life.   

The six experiences have changed me, emotionally, spiritually and the way I live life. I am over eighty seasoned years, and my journey is coming to an end. It may be soon or twenty years from now. The thought came to my mind recently that maybe I am writing my own death certificate. Once I share my experiences Doctor Death may come knocking on my door. Time will tell.  

In conclusion, my faith and religion have become very simple. God loves us unconditionally, Jesus Christ died for our sins, and The Holy Spirit is always by our side. The hard part to accept is that the Lord loves unconditionally and that also applies to all the bad guys. Jesus Christ died for all sins including the bad guy sins. This is very difficult for me to accept. I guess that is a fault of us mere mortals. Total forgiveness is way above my pay grade. I will leave that up to God on judgement day. We still go to church every Sunday and participate in church activities. We have not deserted organized faith and religion.  

One may ask, what is the purpose of life if it is not to earn the afterlife. My simple belief is that you spend this speck of time on earth to learn! At birth the first thing you learn is to breathe. You learn it is better to go in the toilet instead of your pants. You learn and feel the love of your mother. You learn trust around you. The first twenty years you are exposed to commercial education and learn, learn and learn some more. All through your life you experience all kinds of situations that have a lesson for you. During my life after a situation, I tried to reflect on “what did I learn from this and how can I do better next time.” I will never be too old to learn.  

I am at peace and prepared for the time my journey is over.