Thank you all so much for your heartfelt replies. I wish I could respond to each one of you personally. The fact that, though I have been reading, researching, developing for 8 months now in my faith, I have not been able to vocalize a lot of my concerns and thoughts except too my mom who goes to church with me, and that all of you take the time to read my posts and respond thoughtfully, really touches me. (Sorry for the crazy, run-on sentence haha)
Fran, thank you so much for your words. I have been praying for my mom and I to discern the correct paths for ourselves, and to be guided as such by the Holy Spirit, both as individuals and family, for months now.
I want to clarify a bit to everyone. It’s not that I’m a “momma’s boy” or am obsessed with somebody else’s personal sin or am relying on anybody making decisions for me (I’m not saying anybody is inferring this, just trying to clarify) but that, based on my journey, being able to experience this with my mom holds a special importance. During all those years that I professed to be an athiest and ridiculed the church I was also emotionally and physically estranged from my mom. All the while she patiently and quietly prayed for me to return to my faith and turn my life around. When I expressed to her my desire to return to God, which I came to by my own discernment and through the Holy Spirit, my mom cried with joy. Being able to go to church together has brought US closer together, and has helped us reconcile in many ways. So it would hurt both of us if, after all this time, I came back to faith only to go where she feels she can’t. Will that ultimately decide my return to Catholicism? No, it won’t. But it’s important to me nonetheless, and I know what concerns she feels and that she would not create an account to start talking to other Catholics about it herself!
I will continue to pray. I will approach a priest with these questions as well (and, really, these are just part of 7 or 8 issues I feel I need to reconcile before I feel I can sincerely and honestly make a full return, which is what I want to be able to do). I have started praying the rosary, as well, and will try to give myself up to the Holy Spirit more and more.
One more note on the issue of my ex girlfriend and I. It hurts me deeply that we couldn’t make it work. But I do fundamentally disagree with what @LethalExistance said. I have faced advanced, life-threatening cancer, I have faced ridiculous, horrible life circumstances that I brought on myself through my own sin… this IS important–finding truth, regaining a relationship with God, finding forgiveness for my sins… This IS life and death, and even more, it’s eternal! I can’t expect God to demean Himself to society’s standards, to make exceptions because “everyone has sex before marriage now.” Sin is always the same, what is good for us is always good for us, what is bad always bad, regardless of what the society says at the time. So the decision to leave my girlfriend, though I love her and care about her deeply, though it wounds me, because we were living in sin and she refused to allow us to live any other way, was the right decision in my mind. I prayed on it for the better part of a year, I NEVER imposed anything on her but merely attempted to inspire an honest interest in her through my example, and still she, in her own words, “hates everything to do with God and church.” Religion was one aspect of our break up, but a critical one to me. It’s not about scrupulosity–it was about the basics, about just being the right people for one another and trying to avoid the most basic sins. I miss her so much… I miss her so much all the time, at this very moment–but I just cannot put her above God.
Anyway, sorry about the rambling. Again, it’s good to be able to put some of this into words. Thank you all again for taking the time to read and respond.
@johnnyc: I am considering going with her to church and attending mass myself, it would be hard with my schedule, but I still may have to do it.
@DCNBILL: my father is passed away, does that mean an annulment can’t be granted?
