The Story of My Resurrection

A while back, my sister-in-law asked me to write a shortened version of my testimony. Praised be Jesus Christ, I have a story to tell.

I often thought of myself as a prodigal son who has returned, but after thinking about it, the better comparison is with Lazarus coming out of the tomb. I died and died and died by entering into a life of repeated mortal sins, only to be resurrected many years later through the grace of forgiveness offered in the sacrament of reconciliation. The stone has been rolled away and I came out of the tomb wrapped in burial garments but filled with new life. Oh, the sweetness of His voice when I first heard it from within the tomb. Praise the Holy Name of Jesus.

I was born into a Catholic family and baptized at the Church of Christ the King in Idaho Falls, Idaho. I received my first communion and was confirmed in the faith according to the normal pattern of Catholic life. In high school, I played the organ at a little Catholic Church in the country, not due to any particular musical talent but because my very talented older sister had left for college. By this point, the world had already taken hold of me. To avoid scandalizing my readers by too much detail, suffice it to say that the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life had taken strong root. These vices devoured my store of faith, hope, and love like a horde of locusts.

Sadly, during this time I fell under the influence of the modern heresy that mortal sin is practically impossible to commit. This directly contradicts Jesus’ statement that ‘wide is the road that leads to destruction and many those travel it.” The book of Sirach confirms our Lord, saying, “The path of sinners is paved with smooth stones.” Whereas the grace conferred by the sacrament of Confession soothes the sinner’s troubled conscience, this fallacy acts to anesthetize it… to lull it into a false sense of security so that the stings and pricks used by God to lead a sinner to repentance go unheeded. No doubt, teachers of this falsehood are blind guides leading blind sheep into the pit of darkness. My pathway was paved with smooth stones. Death followed death.

College did not improve my situation. I went to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles to pursue a degree in theater. While founded and run by Jesuits, LMU has absorbed the spirit of the city of fallen angels. A case in point was their decision to allow coed dorms. It is unreasonable and foolish to expect chaste and holy behavior when 18-year-olds of both genders are living in the same building with little or no adult supervision. Death followed death. Pray for the Jesuits who run that institution. They will answer for the souls lost while under their care.

Though I stopped attending Mass, I still desired God and went to the campus ministry for guidance in my search. The nun who ran the ministry became a good friend of mine and gave me a book on the enneagram, saying that it would help me know myself better. I now know that the book contained spiritual poison, but at the time I just found it confusing and stupid.

The professor of my classes on the New Testament participated in the Jesus Seminar, a group of biblical scholars that tried to distinguish between the historical Jesus and Jesus as depicted in the Gospels. I recall vividly his description of how the conference would vote on whether Jesus said something recorded in the Gospels. Apparently, the only saying they were unanimous about was, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” This teacher obliterated any sense I had of the authority of the Scriptures. I stopped identifying myself as Catholic and started thinking of myself as Christian but without a lot of that ‘morality’ baggage. Jesus plus free love, that kind of thing. Death followed death.

Graduating from college with a degree in theater brought to my attention the startling reality that it is practically impossible to make a living with a degree in theater. So I decided to get a job in Hollywood. It is not a stretch to call it Unholywood. My first job was as an assistant at Creative Artists Agency, a company that helps important actors, writers, directors, and producers make movies. It was like the high temple of the cult of fame and fortune. Million-dollar movie stars walked around the building regularly. They paid us assistants practically nothing because, as they said, ‘There are 100 people who would take your job today’.

I was so miserable and poor that I had the early stages of an ulcer at 23. Looking back, I can see that God in His great mercy kept me poor because a lack of funds translated into a lack of opportunity for vice. Not that I didn’t find vices that fit into my budget (the devil can find ample opportunity in pockets of every size), but I could not afford the truly spectacular vices available to people who succeed in the Entertainment Industry. Over the next few years, I changed jobs every few years, trying to ‘work my way up the ladder’ and ‘pay my dues’ to get to a more highly paying and prestigious position.

By this point, my faith had so disintegrated that I considered myself an agnostic. I believed that something like a higher power existed, but that every religion was man’s attempt to figure out what that was and each had equal value. I had a vague appreciation for something like ethics, but a pointed fondness for those things that satisfied the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. Death followed death.

At 25, my career took a dramatic left turn. A mad scientist-type inventor who happened to be my former college roommate showed up with a mad science-type invention that we both thought could be our ‘big ticket’. Fame, riches, and power were just around the corner. We only had to figure out how to turn his invention into a business that would make money. This endeavor would consume the next three years of my life and end in utter failure.

During this period, I met a girl and moved in with her after dating her briefly. Death followed death. I should have recognized that all of the occult paraphernalia that she had around our apartment was a bad sign. The tarot cards and the books on witchcraft slid entirely beneath my notice because by this time I had decided that the material universe was all that existed. Aggressive ‘New Atheism’ had become my creed and I mercilessly attacked anyone stupid enough to profess belief in the supernatural. I rejected the faith I was raised in and mocked my parents for continuing in their delusion. I despised Christians for being sheep and Christianity for being an ancient superstition.

As a parent, I have learned that some behavior by children absolutely must be answered with punishment. In St. Bonaventure’s conference on the Fear of the Lord, he writes about the 7 judgments of God – the divine version of time-out/grounding/spanking. The first 6 punishments are experienced in this life, and the 7th lasts for of eternity. God punishes during this life to chastise sinners and bring them to a place of repentance. If you are not familiar with this luminous teaching, here is a summary.

• The first judgement is slavery to sin.
• The second is blindness to sin.
• The third is hardness of heart towards sin and virtue.
• The fourth is God turning His face away from you and allowing temptation free reign.
• The fifth is the failure and dissipation of all temporal goods.
• The sixth is the destruction of hope.
• The seventh is eternal damnation.

I can look at the period between high school and my 28th year as descending these steps to the very brink of the abyss. In late July of 2006, God had enough. He took me through the 6th judgment and allowed me to peer over the edge at the seventh and final judgment. I refer to this as the time God took me behind the woodshed for a whooping I would never forget. The form this whooping took was a complete descent into madness.

What does madness look like? Hard to describe. I went for 9 days without sleep. My ability to distinguish between fact and fiction completely disintegrated. I walked barefoot through the streets of Los Angeles until the soles of my feet had holes in them that took several months to close. I ran naked through the streets in the middle of the night. I buried a diamond engagement ring in some stranger’s front yard fully expecting it to grow into a bush covered in a great variety of beautiful rings. I have a permanent hole in my vision from where I stared at the sun for three hours. I trashed my apartment and quarreled so fiercely with my fiancé that the last time I saw her I was wearing handcuffs behind a Los Angeles Police Department cruiser. She broke up with me using a restraining order. I ended up in the hospital for three days under heavy sedation.

\When I was released from the hospital, my life as I knew it was completely obliterated. My mind, which had always been my greatest source of pride, just didn’t work right anymore. The psychiatrists and counselors who treated me said that I would need to be institutionalized for the rest of my life. I could no longer work. My apartment was gone. I never saw the woman I planned to marry again.

Losing hope is unbearable. One night, mired in despair, I climbed the 13-story fire escape on the side of my sister’s apartment building. She and her husband had quite generously taken me in, a real act of love considering I was still pretty much a crazy person. The building was part of a large complex called Park La Brea, right on the edge of the La Brea Tar Pits which have preserved so many fossils in dark, sticky tombs. Appropriate. God has a real sense of story.

As I reached the top of the building, intense pressure to throw myself off and end my suffering washed over me. Yet God had mercy. I was listening to music on an ipod and a song started that had the refrain, “Find another place to fall.” I heard a sound like a car crash – directly over my head in empty space – and the desire to commit suicide vanished. I took the slow way down and never returned. I know without a doubt that my death at that moment would have brought me eternal suffering.

I’d love to say that this was the turning point where I came to faith, but I’m hard-headed. In my addled state, I decided that I would THINK and WILL myself back to sanity like the main character in the movic A Beautiful Mind. I would be my OWN SAVIOR!!! A terrible idea, I know, but it seemed like the only way to go at the time. I forgot at the time that id didn’t work in the movie either.

Interestingly enough, a significant turning point in my recovery was sitting down and reading the book of Proverbs from start to finish in one afternoon. Many of the demons that were swirling around me departed in the presence of the Holy Scriptures, but I had no idea of the spiritual effects of my actions at that point. I was still a materialist, but Proverbs has a lot of common sense, “I can agree with that,” kinds of passages. God’s grace was on the move.

During the next year, I left Los Angeles, went to Oregon, and then moved to Colorado to start a new business with the same mad-scientist inventor friend. I was so broken. I tried to fake being put back together, but fear and anger and bitterness and sorrow nearly consumed me. Death followed death.

I started drinking too much alcohol on too many occasions and my behavior was out of control. My friends staged an intervention. Imagine my surprise when I walk into downtown Pueblo, CO, and find my mother from Georgia who tells me that I need to come home TO GEORGIA with her. Betrayal! My friends couldn’t deal with me anymore and wanted to send me to live with my parents. I have never been more angry with anyone in my entire life. Somehow I managed to avoid committing murder and got onto the plane with her.

I arrived in Georgia with nothing but a single suitcase of clothing. I had to sleep on the pull-out sofa in my parent’s living room. Talk about humiliation. I was destroyed. Still, my wheels were spinning on how I could put the pieces of my life back together again. I somehow convinced my little sister to come with me back to Colorado to see if we could both get jobs out there. She is a computer programmer, so she lined up an interview with Hewlett-Packard.

We flew out and stayed with some friends I had made (not the ones that staged an intervention). On Sunday, she convinced me to check out a non-denominational mega-church with her. While there, I felt something stirring deep in my heart that I couldn’t explain. When I told her about it, she said that what I was feeling was the presence of God. Holding onto my unbelief, I tried to come up with some natural explanation. She laughed at me.

The next day, when she went for her multi-hour interview, I drove off to find a coffee shop. The first one that I found was in a Christian bookstore named ‘Hagia Sophia Coffee Shop and Bookstore.’ While drinking my coffee, I overheard several conversations that had a powerful impact on me. The first was between two beautiful young women discussing the possibility of getting married to their boyfriends. They spoke of marriage like it was something beautiful and good… holy. This was a breath of fresh air compared with the disposable relationship culture that I was used to in Los Angeles.

The second was a pair of older ladies discussing whether God was calling them to start a new business venture. The idea that there was a God somewhere who might be interested in the mundane details of people’s lives shocked me. These two women were interrupted by a young woman who came up to them and started crying. They cooed a bit and asked her what was wrong. She said she was new in town and having trouble meeting people. When she explained that she was a Christian, the two ladies told her that they went to the church that I had attended that Sunday. They got her information and told her that one of their daughters would love to show her around. They were so kind and welcoming. They were very different from the picture of Christianity that had formed in my head while growing up in Georgia and living in Los Angeles. It shook my conviction that Christianity was for idiots, an idea that had been drilled into my head by the entertainment industry.

My sister and I returned to Georgia a few days later to wait for a response to the interviews. While traveling, she said to me, “Nathan, your life is crap. Ask God what you need to learn so you can move on with your life.” It struck me as a no-lose proposition. I was an atheist, so I had nothing to lose. If God didn’t exist, I wouldn’t hear back from Him. If He did, well that would change just about everything. A few nights later, I took a walk through my parent’s neighborhood in the middle of the night. I said my first prayer in about a decade. “God, everyone who I have loved has thrown me away and everything I touched has turned to garbage. If You’re there, and You’re real, Teach me. Teach me, Teach me, Teach me, Teach me, TEACH ME!!!!!!”

God spoke.

“Stillness.”

I knew His voice. The small voice that I heard in the depths of my heart was God’s voice. I was stunned. I walked to a nearby park and sat down on a bench. God had told me to be still. I was going to obey. After another interval, He spoke again.

“You danced through the pain.”

I began to weep. He knew me. He knew my sorrows. He knew what was behind the chipped and fractured mask that I used to conceal my brokenness. I wept and wept and wept. I knew in this instant that God existed, that Jesus is Lord, and that I was not lost any longer, but had been found. God met me on that dark night and gave me hope. It was like finding the surface of the water when you’re drowning and take your first deep breath of cold air. I inhaled Life and everything changed. Life conquered death.

God was just getting started. Four days later, I had a vision of being baptized in the lake by my parents’ pastor. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced – like watching a movie on my eyelids. Even more importantly, it was accompanied by a peace and tranquility that surpassed understanding. For a person living with so much chaos on the inside, peace was more precious than gold. A few days later, when my parents were saying grace before dinner, I chimed in at the end, “And welcome back Your prodigal son.” My mother leaped up from the table and started shouting and crying and praising God. I explained to them what had happened in the previous week, and my mother exclaimed that her pastor’s annual baptism at the lake was that upcoming Sunday, seven days after I received the vision. Well, if this was what God wanted to do, my answer was, “Yes, Lord.” A few days later, I went with the whole family to the lake and was baptized in front of a huge group of people. To have the vision fulfilled was an enormous confirmation that this was not just another episode of craziness. I was so excited.

A quick word about this Baptism before I continue with the story. I was baptized as an infant in the Catholic Church, and I know that it is not something that can be repeated. My parents had left the Church and were attending a non-denominational charismatic church because they liked the music and the teaching they received on the Bible and on operating in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. For whatever reason, this was the route God chose for my return. More than anything else, it was symbolic and an opportunity to practice obedience. It did serve as a major turning point in my life.

My parents have since returned to the Church, although they still go to the other church because they have so many friends and really like the teaching they get. Anyway, I was still deprived of sanctifying grace at this point, but God was pouring out actual grace to draw me back into the light. Lazarus heard Jesus call to him, even though he was completely dead. I was spiritually dead, but I could still hear Him calling. I started running towards His voice.

The day after the baptism, my life got weird. I felt exactly the way I had the day after I exited the mental hospital. My head was filled with chaos and my body felt like it was vibrating. I called up my mother and said, “I have a problem. I think it’s demons.” She responded, ” I know what to do about demons. Come to the house.” For the previous several years, she had been reading about and practicing deliverance prayer. It is relatively common among Pentecostals and the Catholic Charismatic renewal, but it was completely new to me. The fact that I knew that my mental and physical state stemmed from demonic forces was a revelation of the Holy Spirit. I was not possessed, because I had never voluntarily given my will over to demons. Becoming an atheist, however, was kind of like using a bulldozer to rip off the side of your house. All of your defenses against the darkness are thrown wide open. Like a horde of cockroaches, demons sought out all of the places in my intellect, memory, and will where sin had caused corruption and darkness. There was lots of darkness. Consequently, there were lots of demons.

I went straight to my mother and we started casting out demons. WHAT?!?!?!?! DEMONS!??!??!!? This is the 21st century, right? All that stuff about the devil is just ancient superstition, isn’t it? Ummmmm, no. It’s really easy to think that until you start casting them out. After the first demon came out violently with vomiting and shaking, I was convinced. This was very real and very serious. I won’t go into a lot of detail, because some of it is frankly a bit gross (demons being essentially icky), but I had so many demons to get rid of that the process of deliverance took months of praying every day for hours. It was exhausting, but also exceedingly liberating. Finally, the root cause of my nervous breakdown was being dealt with. God used my mother to accomplish enormous amounts of healing in me during this time. A mother can be the most fearless of warriors when she is fighting for her children. Amazing.

During the times that I was NOT casting out demons, I was trying to learn to hear the voice of God better. I now knew that He could speak to me, but after that first initial gift, it became more difficult to get quiet enough internally that I could hear Him. I asked Him to speak more loudly. He said, ‘No’. I asked Him to teach me how to hear Him better. He said, “Yes.”

I realized that I could hear that still small voice pretty clearly in response to yes or no questions. I started taking prayer walks through my parent’s neighborhood. At every intersection, I would ask Him if I was supposed to go left, right, or straight. I would obey His instructions this way for hours, with no idea of where I was or where I was going. Right about the time I felt thirsty or tired, I would find myself on familiar streets heading towards my parent’s house. As months passed, I found this easier and easier to do. God wanted me to be able to hear Him, but I had to approach it on His terms. I was all too willing to do so. God had revealed Himself to me and I wanted more. Looking back at this time, I see it as one of extraordinary grace. A lot like the celebration the father holds when the son returns from California.

A reality check came in the form of my bank account. I had no income, but I still had bills to pay and loans to pay off. I still had one credit card that was worth something, but the remaining balance was getting perilously low. I asked God if I should look for a job. He said, “No. Pray.” This was in August. I asked again in September. I received the same answer. October and November passed, and still, God’s answer was, “No. Pray.” December rolled around, and the bills that I had to pay almost exactly totaled the amount of money left on my credit card. I had reached the absolute end of my resources. I was a bit nervous.

Finally, in the middle of December, He said, “Yes.” I got two interviews. I got a call back from one and started a new job on January 1st. God is faithful. As someone who had newly encountered God and the power of the Holy Spirit, I told pretty much everyone about my conversion and battles with demons. I was so excited. One of the people who I told replied, “You know, you should check out the Alleluia Community. They will understand you there.” Her name was Alethia, which is Greek for ‘truth’. Alleluia is a charismatic, ecumenical, covenant community that was founded in Augusta, GA. Alethia gave me an e-mail address for Mary Fuller. She introduced me to Larry Napier (who is now Brother Malachy Joseph with the CFR’s). He introduced me to Andy Hatfield, who was my best man when I took Mary Germann to be my lawfully wedded wife. Clearly, the Alleluia Community did understand me.

Two months after starting the first job, I got the other one, which just about doubled my pay and gave me full benefits. Wow. Trust in God. All a part of His master plan.

The parable of the prodigal son ends with the big party and the father goading his oldest son into being happy that his younger brother has returned. What about the day after that? The younger son has come back, humbled perhaps, but with some really bad habits. A fondness for prostitutes and gambling brought about his ruin, and it is doubtful that his appetite for these things disappeared during his time with the pigs. Those appetites probably increased during the time when the son was unable to satisfy them. A wise father, knowing this, would realize that the son would need to go through some serious discipline before he was allowed to use the company credit card or borrow the family car. The party was the celebration of his son’s return, but then the real work would begin of helping the dissolute young man become a responsible member of the household. All of those bad habits had to go.

As I understand it, this process is what is known as justification or metanoia – the transformation of the inner man. God decided that the process of justification would start with the sin of unrighteous anger. My temper was so bad in those days that I would punch holes in walls. My new job was as a phone customer service representative for AT&T. When a customer was angry at AT&T and wanted to abuse someone, they would call me. I had to listen to angry people for 9 1/2 hours a day (mandatory over time), solve their issues, and then sell them more AT&T products. For three years. I don’t quite remember the point when I realized that the angry idiots I had to deal with sounded exactly like I sounded when I got angry. I’m sure it took a while. This purification was painful, but the patience I learned during this time is tremendously useful when my two-year-old wakes up for the 7th time in the middle of the night looking for consolation.

God kept working on me. One day, He said, “Nathan, You’re Catholic.” I responded, “Oh yeah, that’s right.” I learned from Andy that all I needed to do was go to confession. Great. I called the priest at St. Joseph’s and asked him when I could come in for confession. He responded with the normal Saturday confessional schedule. I told him, “No, I don’t think you understand. I have ten years to cover. This is going to take a while.” My first general confession after ten years of apostasy took about two hours. Life conquered death. I felt great.

I think I was in a state of grace for at least a day or two before committing another mortal sin. Have you ever seen the birthday candles that have gunpowder in them? You blow them out and then they light back again. This is a good image to describe the state of my soul during the next season of my life. I would repent and the light of life would be restored, only to be snuffed out again through my own stupid, sinful actions. Thank you Jesus for the sacrament of confession. Confession not only forgives the sin, it also pours out grace to heal the soul strengthen it to resist new temptations.

God blessed me with the gift of the Fear of the Lord to help me resist sin. It turns out that the fear of God’s punishment has a more powerful influence on the soul than the lust of the flesh. It is a good and healthy fear to recognize that your sinful actions will be punished by someone who KNOWS EVERYTHING, including what is going on in the dark recesses of your mind. People don’t want to talk about mortal sin because they are afraid of offending others. They would prefer to avoid the subject so they won’t hurt anyone’s feelings.

A good comparison to this reluctance is the doctor whose patient comes in complaining of ankle pain. The doctor examines the patient and discovers that a badger is biting his ankle. The doctor prescribes aspirin and tells the patient to call back in a couple of days if the pain doesn’t go away. This is not charity. This is foolishness. The remedy for mortal sin is frequent confession. The preventative is a well-formed conscience and the fear of God. Confession kills the badger. Proper spiritual formation puts out badger traps. God knows that a serious badger infestation takes time to eradicate. He is patient. Kill the badgers until there are no more badgers, avoid places where badgers hang out, and carry a gun at all times. Life conquers death.

One night, the Lord woke me up and told me, “I am going to make you hungry for purity and humility.” Then He poked me in the chest. The touch of the Lord is indescribably sweet. He changed something inside me that night; planted the desire to be pure and humble. He is so good. It was even more than that. The Eucharist is perfect purity, demonstrating the complete humility of the God who comes to us in a house of bread. The desire for Himself is the best gift He can give. It is an infinite desire that can only be filled with the infinite.

I have many more stories, but I think this captures the essence of how God called me from the tomb. I have tremendous gratitude for my sisters, mother, and so many others who answered God’s call to roll away the stone. I hope you found this story of God’s Mercy entertaining and edifying. May the Lord grant that we get to celebrate the triumph of His mercy together for the rest of eternity.

---

This is a condensed version of my story. If you want to hear more about how God brought me back from the dead, check out Demoniac, now available on Amazon.