Converts from protestant churches

[TwinMommy]

Am I the only one who is converting that is feeling more and more like I wasted so many years in protestant churches? The more I learn and the more my faith grows I feel like I was lied to non-stop. I feel like scripture has been twisted and I that I never got the full teachings of God. I knew I was getting unhappy with the church I went to but I didn’t know why. I want a parish that is so far from the settings in protestant churches that I am use to. I want to be in Mass where it is all focused on Jesus. IDK I am just in a strange spot, one I never thought I would be in. I am feeling angry and bitter, and I don’t like or want these feelings. Any time I pray the Rosary and other prayers it hits me how far from the Lord I have been. I am seeing scripture in a whole new light. I feel like I was totally blind.

 

[Kal2012]

I feel the same way! Totally understand.

 

[HoosMommie]

While I don’t harbor anger or animosity toward the Protestant church out of which I came I kind of understand your feelings. What I do feel is gratitude for having been taught the love of God and all His mercies. And I don’t think I was necessarily lied to, just heard misguided doctrine that was preached and taught in all honesty. My parents were/are (Daddy died in 1996) God fearing Christians who now believe differently than I do. But I will see my Daddy again on that great resurrection day.

ETA: Might I suggest you do what I did after my first Reconciliation? When I got to my car the thoughts of those heinous sins I had just been cleansed from crept back into my head, so I prayed OUT LOUD that the Lord would take those thoughts away and then, again OUT LOUD, I said “Satan, get thee behind me!” I wanted satan to hear me and hear me well. Since that moment I cannot even formulate those thoughts.

God bless you in your journey.

 

[Christy_Beth]

I am also a convert. I think my greatest feeling when I converted was one of relief. I had come home. And I still believe that the Church is home for me warts and all.

 

[landon13]

I am in the process of converting but have felt as a Catholic for my entire life. I think that my deep studies in Scripture thanks to my Baptist upbringing have had a great impact on my life as a Catholic. My father who left the Catholic church for a time said that the years of being a Baptist have led him to be a better Catholic. I harbor no anger or sadness against Protestantism because I think that without being Protestant, I would have never joined the Catholic Church on my own accord.

 

[twopekinguys]

Am I the only one who is converting that is feeling more and more like I wasted so many years in protestant churches? The more I learn and the more my faith grows I feel like I was lied to non-stop. I feel like scripture has been twisted and I that I never got the full teachings of God. I knew I was getting unhappy with the church I went to but I didn’t know why. I want a parish that is so far from the settings in protestant churches that I am use to. I want to be in Mass where it is all focused on Jesus. IDK I am just in a strange spot, one I never thought I would be in. I am feeling angry and bitter, and I don’t like or want these feelings. Any time I pray the Rosary and other prayers it hits me how far from the Lord I have been. I am seeing scripture in a whole new light. I feel like I was totally blind.

I converted officially in 1995. I cannot honestly say my years as a protestant were “wasted”. After all, my grandfather was a Presbyterian Minister .

I will say my years in protestantism helped prepare me to accept the truth of the Catholic Church. Those years helped me get familiar with prayer, scripture, humility, charity, etc.

Those years were stepping stones that led me to the **full **truth.

Without those years, I don’t think I would be as heavily involved in RCIA that I have been in the years since my conversion.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

You’re not wasting your time. Remember Rom 8:28.

The reason you are where you are may be the same reason I did certain things during my Dark Night. It is a formation process. You spend time “in the trenches” seeing what goes on outside the Church, and that can build you up in several ways. It can help you learn to take things you are told as tentative until you check them out. It shows you how many, many Christians think which will be of great benefit when having to deal with them in social and professional life just as a spy, or scout if you prefer, goes undercover in camo to see what the “other side” is up to.

If you are body building, you do it by exercising your physical muscle against a machine that resists. If it resists too much or too little it’s not useful. You are in exactly the state of anxiety now, that the Holy Spirit can use to take you to the next step. In fact, that’s always the case.

Just as relaxation is better after hard work, anxiety, or other “taxing” processes, this tension will stand ready to elevate you when you do get into a better space. It’s like a trampoline… for a believer, the farther down you are pulled by gravity and other forces, the higher you will spring. Remember Jesus went to hell before He went to heaven. So on earth you can even go through your purgation and then you are purified like as described by St. John of the Cross, and enter the kingdom. Even while still on earth… like VII said, we are all called to holiness.

I suggest you take up a form of prayer that transcends belief systems so you can be Catholic or not, and do it. Contemplative prayer. It can help enter you into the Dark Night, and transforming union, on to Divine Union. When you get to that point, whether you have become Catholic by then or not, all of your life will become clear, and make sense, and you will have so much serenity and joy and hope you won’t even know how to put it into words.

BTW is there any particular reason you can’t go to a Mass every now and then? Are you accountable to somebody who says you shouldn’t? You don’t have to skip your regular worship for it; Masses are both Saturday evenings and Sunday morning in most places where there are enough priests.

Alan

 

[coachkfan1]

It’s not where you start the race, it’s where you finish!

 

[Della]

Am I the only one who is converting that is feeling more and more like I wasted so many years in protestant churches? The more I learn and the more my faith grows I feel like I was lied to non-stop. I feel like scripture has been twisted and I that I never got the full teachings of God. I knew I was getting unhappy with the church I went to but I didn’t know why. I want a parish that is so far from the settings in protestant churches that I am use to. I want to be in Mass where it is all focused on Jesus. IDK I am just in a strange spot, one I never thought I would be in. I am feeling angry and bitter, and I don’t like or want these feelings. Any time I pray the Rosary and other prayers it hits me how far from the Lord I have been. I am seeing scripture in a whole new light. I feel like I was totally blind.

If you came from an anti-Catholic environment, I can see how you’d feel this way. I went through some bad feelings after I left my sect, as well. But, after embracing the Faith and having practiced it for 25+ years now, I see how I benefited from even the bad experiences and all the misinformation and outright lies I was told. The people who told us those things sincerely believed them, so they weren’t at fault in their intentions. Only those who know what the Church actually teaches and still go on to teach falsities need to worry about being culpable before God.

On the positive side, I learned a lot of Scripture and how to find my way around the Bible, but it was used primarily to “prove” how right they were (and how wrong the Catholic Church was) that for a very long time I couldn’t even look at a Bible without getting the heebee-geebees. :hypno:

I learned to pray to God daily, to take everything to him in prayer and to trust in him no matter what. Fortunately, my sect was orthodox in the Christology, so I didn’t have to relearn all that, but it had no real understanding of Mary’s role in our salvation and so a good deal of nonsense was being put forward to try to “prove” that she was nothing but a “vessel”, not realizing that in doing so they were undermining the Incarnation itself, but I digress.

Knowing that you believed a lot of rubbish that you were emotionally, psychologically and spiritually attached to is a wrench when you see how false it was. It’s natural to blame those who taught it to you, but they are as much victims of these lies as you were. We need to pity them, not be angry at them. So, we need to forgive and move on. It will take time, but in time, by God’s grace, you’ll get there. :console:

 

[TwinMommy]

When I say “waste of my time” I mean more of what I studied, how now I know it wasn’t the Biblical truth. I don’t know, maybe this is coming from many giving me a really hard time about this. Maybe my feelings are misdirected.

 

[cheezey]

You’re not wasting your time. Remember Rom 8:28.

The reason you are where you are may be the same reason I did certain things during my Dark Night. It is a formation process. You spend time “in the trenches” seeing what goes on outside the Church, and that can build you up in several ways. It can help you learn to take things you are told as tentative until you check them out. It shows you how many, many Christians think which will be of great benefit when having to deal with them in social and professional life just as a spy, or scout if you prefer, goes undercover in camo to see what the “other side” is up to.

If you are body building, you do it by exercising your physical muscle against a machine that resists. If it resists too much or too little it’s not useful. You are in exactly the state of anxiety now, that the Holy Spirit can use to take you to the next step. In fact, that’s always the case.

Just as relaxation is better after hard work, anxiety, or other “taxing” processes, this tension will stand ready to elevate you when you do get into a better space. It’s like a trampoline… for a believer, the farther down you are pulled by gravity and other forces, the higher you will spring. Remember Jesus went to hell before He went to heaven. So on earth you can even go through your purgation and then you are purified like as described by St. John of the Cross, and enter the kingdom. Even while still on earth… like VII said, we are all called to holiness.

I suggest you take up a form of prayer that transcends belief systems so you can be Catholic or not, and do it. Contemplative prayer. It can help enter you into the Dark Night, and transforming union, on to Divine Union. When you get to that point, whether you have become Catholic by then or not, all of your life will become clear, and make sense, and you will have so much serenity and joy and hope you won’t even know how to put it into words.

BTW is there any particular reason you can’t go to a Mass every now and then? Are you accountable to somebody who says you shouldn’t? You don’t have to skip your regular worship for it; Masses are both Saturday evenings and Sunday morning in most places where there are enough priests.

Alan

Well, gee whiz, Alan, once again…
:clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping::clapping:

 

[cheezey]

You’re not wasting your time. Remember Rom 8:28.

The reason you are where you are may be the same reason I did certain things during my Dark Night. It is a formation process. You spend time “in the trenches” seeing what goes on outside the Church, and that can build you up in several ways. It can help you learn to take things you are told as tentative until you check them out. It shows you how many, many Christians think which will be of great benefit when having to deal with them in social and professional life just as a spy, or scout if you prefer, goes undercover in camo to see what the “other side” is up to.

If you are body building, you do it by exercising your physical muscle against a machine that resists. If it resists too much or too little it’s not useful. You are in exactly the state of anxiety now, that the Holy Spirit can use to take you to the next step. In fact, that’s always the case.

Just as relaxation is better after hard work, anxiety, or other “taxing” processes, this tension will stand ready to elevate you when you do get into a better space. It’s like a trampoline… for a believer, the farther down you are pulled by gravity and other forces, the higher you will spring. Remember Jesus went to hell before He went to heaven. So on earth you can even go through your purgation and then you are purified like as described by St. John of the Cross, and enter the kingdom. Even while still on earth… like VII said, we are all called to holiness.

I suggest you take up a form of prayer that transcends belief systems so you can be Catholic or not, and do it. Contemplative prayer. It can help enter you into the Dark Night, and transforming union, on to Divine Union. When you get to that point, whether you have become Catholic by then or not, all of your life will become clear, and make sense, and you will have so much serenity and joy and hope you won’t even know how to put it into words.

BTW is there any particular reason you can’t go to a Mass every now and then? Are you accountable to somebody who says you shouldn’t? You don’t have to skip your regular worship for it; Masses are both Saturday evenings and Sunday morning in most places where there are enough priests.

Alan

(I think my prayers ‘transcend belief systems.’ Thank you for putting words to my method!!)

Am I the only one who is converting that is feeling more and more like I wasted so many years in protestant churches? The more I learn and the more my faith grows I feel like I was lied to non-stop. I feel like scripture has been twisted and I that I never got the full teachings of God. I knew I was getting unhappy with the church I went to but I didn’t know why. I want a parish that is so far from the settings in protestant churches that I am use to. I want to be in Mass where it is all focused on Jesus. IDK I am just in a strange spot, one I never thought I would be in. I am feeling angry and bitter, and I don’t like or want these feelings. Any time I pray the Rosary and other prayers it hits me how far from the Lord I have been. I am seeing scripture in a whole new light. I feel like I was totally blind.

I am glad you didn’t say a complete waste, because without my inherited beliefs, 1-I might not be a Christian at all, 2-, I might not be considering converting to Catholicism, and 3-
I wouldn’t be wishing and hoping, and praying far more, for unity between the two. Not that I expect one to become the other, not at all; we are both called to Glorify God and His Son
and that is the unifying focal point for me. I also grew up with the battle of animosity and finally laid it to rest 30 years later. 30 years!!! This will never make sense to me.
But it did give me an appreciation for some differences; for instance, at the end of RCIA, I will probably continue to pray the same way I did growing up. It, too, Glorifies God.
Just as I did while attending Mass more times than I can count for many years PRIOR to even considering conversion. This is a good thing…
I probably didn’t say this well; had to try!!

 

[twopekinguys]

When I say “waste of my time” I mean more of what I studied, how now I know it wasn’t the Biblical truth. I don’t know, maybe this is coming from many giving me a really hard time about this. Maybe my feelings are misdirected.

Things like this are hard to put into words. Anyone who has gone through the conversion process will tell you that. It doesn’t matter if you’re going protestant to Catholic, or the other way around. Converting is very hard.

I remember when I went through RCIA, Lent was the best, and the worst time for me.

The best part was the deepening of my faith, and the realization that I was becoming part of the One True Church. Adoration helped me the most.

The worst part was the devil knew that too, and he dug his claws in HARD. Especially during Holy Week.

The good news is the devil didn’t win, and he won’t win with you either.

I will be keeping you in my prayers.