Did I ever tell you about my encounters with evil?

On August 24, 2020August 24, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Did I ever tell you, SeriesLeave a comment

+JMJ+ Someone asked on Twitter today if anyone had ever seen anything holy or demonic (outside of the sacraments as he later clarified, which is exactly what I understood him to mean and hence my answer). I gave a brief Twitter reply but here on the blog I can tell the story in a fuller, more fleshed-out fashion. So here it is.

Out of Nowhere

It was a dark and stormy night on a lonely road. Well, the night was dark and the road was lonely, but the only storm was my heart thundering in my chest. It happened many years ago but I remember well how the car appeared behind me, out of nowhere, traveling so close behind I thought surely the driver was going to ram me. I sped up to get away but the driver sped up, too. I slowed down and signaled for the driver to pass me (we were on a divided four-lane highway), but the car slowed and matched my speed.

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Did I ever tell you about my embarrassing convert class?

On August 17, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Did I ever tell you, SeriesLeave a comment

+JMJ+ Did I ever tell you about my convert class? It’s something that happened during our first session back in 1995. I’ll always remember, not only because it was personally embarrassing, but because in later years it took on a deeper significance.

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Did I ever tell you I saw a ghost?

On February 24, 2020July 25, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Did I ever tell you, SeriesLeave a comment

This is a ghost post inspired by a video by Fr Mike Schmitz. (Video below, notes and links at the end of the post.)

“The mere thought of ghosts can give us goose bumps sometimes, but there are still moments when we think ghost stories are just made up to scare us. Maybe it’s time for some real talk about things that go bump in the night, and other stirrings we suspect may be specters. Can souls continue to communicate with the living after they die? In this video, Fr. Mike gives a powerful reason for why he believes they can.” —From “I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost!” a video by Fr. Mike Schmitz.

When I watched Fr. Mike’s video (see below) I was reminded of what Dom Wiesinger, OSCO, said in his book from earlier in our series. A ghost might not even be a ghost, might not necessarily be a person who has died, but might be a soul coming into contact with another soul, consciously or unconsciously (on either person’s part). We are taught so little about the soul that we do not know how to recognize ghosts, persons alive here and now, and the difference between these and demons.

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Did I ever tell you how I found my spirit guide?

On June 3, 2019July 25, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Did I ever tell you, SeriesLeave a comment

Celestial Fireworks, Westerlund 2, Hubble, STSci-2015-12, public domain.

I haven’t shared this story with many people. I was afraid they would think I was either crazy or making it up. But now I’m older and I don’t care what other people think. Much. So tonight I’ll share it with you.

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Did I ever tell you this about Mary?

On May 7, 2019July 25, 2020 By Lee (@disciple96)In Did I ever tell you, Mary, Series, Something About Mary Every Day In MayLeave a comment

Did I ever tell you how the Blessed Virgin Mary helped me through one of the worst times in my entire life? After I had what doctors think may have been a heart attack, I was stuck in hospital with a breathing tube in my throat and a feeding tube in my nose for three weeks in an ICU. Normal people are unconscious while intubated. I don’t mean just during the process of having the tubes put in place. I mean, the whole time they have those things in there. Do you know why? Because a normal person cannot stand to have tubes in places where tubes ought not be!

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How I started praying the Rosary before I became Catholic

On April 30, 2019May 8, 2023 By Lee (@disciple96)In Conversion, Did I ever tell you, Mary, Rosary, Series12 Comments

Image: Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of all of the Americas and of the unborn. From Wikimedia. Public domain.

Did I ever tell you how I started praying the Rosary before I became Catholic?

If you haven’t read my conversion story or followed me on Twitter for a while, you may not know that I was a new ager and Buddhist back in 1994 when I began volunteering in a Catholic bookstore. I volunteered at first just to help put the place in order. I would grab a fast food dinner and head to the bookstore after my day job, and the store staff would lock me in and leave me to it for a few hours at a time. After a few days I even got a key. My self-appointed task was to clean every shelf in the place, figure out what things were (a daunting task for a gal raised Methodist and clueless about Catholicism), and put it all back together again in a way that made sense. The all-volunteer staff at the time had been shelving things by the “I can reach this shelf from where I’m standing, so that’s where this goes” method. Oy.

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