Hi

back to all of you and thank you all so much! I do remember at least two of you and I'll write a personal reply back to each of them, but I wanted to write this collective reply to all of you, since I was so surprised that so many of you responded like you have, and I couldn't be happier about that!
Well, this morning I asked my husband if he could see his way to driving me up to our old hometown so I could attend Mass at the one Catholic Church in this part of south New Jersey that I've loved more than any other I've gone to so far, and the one in which my younger son was baptized so many years ago--St. Patrick's--it's called simply St. Pat's by everyone who knows about it, but when I told my husband I had this inner desire to go there again, I said "St. Patrick's", and at first he thought I was asking him to drive me all the way up to NYC to that St. Patrick's! [I wish!] But, no, our St. Pat's is about that old though, yet no where nearly that huge[!], but that's part of it's beauty. It's definitely on the smallish side, but so beautiful inside. It's one of the old-time style sanctuaries filled with the beauty of heavenly personages and things, and from the first time I ever attended Mass there way back when my sons were very tiny, I loved St. Pat's! Since we were a military family though, we only spent a very limited time in that area off and on--we stayed with my husband's family between duty stations, then we lived in his hometown for around 5 years after he retired--now we live about 25 miles south of there, so making that trip would mean we'd be making a whole day of it, including brunch--I like that idea a lot!

He appeared to be thinking it over, so I'll pray hard

about it, and see how things go!
Maybe, if I do get the chance to begin attending Mass at St. Pat's I'll be able to speak to one of the priests there at least--if they can't help me out maybe they could direct me to someone who could, because the Lord is really pressing me hard, inside, about this now--it's as though this is the time, and things have to be resolved so I can join the Church--frankly, this is the first time He's pressed me this hard about this, probably due to all the inner fears and troubles I had to work through over the decades by this time--that was nearly a full-time job for me, since I realized if I didn't work to resolve those inner terrors, and just gave up and did nothing about it, I would end up being separated from my husband and boys, and find myself sitting in a padded room, wearing a white suit with buckles on it--not a prospect I would ever consider!! So, I worked as hard as I could for decades, until finally the inner desire to finally be free of those drugs that had helped me through the worst of things, but were very scary to me, so I wanted to be rid of them, had arrived--so, I was more than happy when the dr. told me he though I could go ahead and stop taking them. I also realized how hard it was going to be to get off this one particular drug, but I worked at it for a few years believe it or not, lowering the dosage a tinsee bit at a time by cutting the pills into pieces--that drug was so vicious to patients that were taken off of it too quickly, that too often they suffered the very symptoms that the drug was supposed to prevent, but those symptoms were due to the drug itself, which shocked all the doctors! So, I went very slowly, and steadily, and when I'd finally gotten completely off of it, and told the medical assistant at the military hospital during one of my regular visits for general health check-ups, that I was finally free of it, he stood up and clapped, and told me he'd never heard of anyone ever getting off one of those drugs like that!

That really made me feel so great, too!
So, about what the Deacon did by telling me I couldn't take the RCIA classes--he was brutal about it, too, and at the time I was so shocked at what he was saying to me about what a terrible person I was, and that it was all my fault that my husband's family was never there for us after our son was killed in Afghanistan, and that I was crazy and should be put away, plus I was a liar because there were no priests as I'd described in my email to the RCIA teacher[they were the Dimond brothers, who said they were priests, who have a channel here on YouTube], and that I was a disruptive person, and on and on and on--he was saying horrible things to me about myself, yet I'd never even met that man before in my life, nor had I ever cried on the shoulder of anyone at that Church before, concerning how we'd been treated by my husband's family after our son was killed--as that Deacon went on and on and on, my mind was reeling--how did this man even know about my husband's family?! We lived a whole 25 miles away from my husband's hometown, and both of my husband's parents had been deceased for years--so, who was telling him all of those lies about me?! The devil?!
I got out of his office as fast as I could, but it took me awhile before the shock wore off so I could think straight, and it finally dawned on me that there were only two sources who could have filled his ears full of that idiocy about the situation in this family--my daughter-in-law, [and anyone who believed her--she despised me, but she had no reason to]--and, my husband's family members who lived fairly close by us, in Pennsylvania--the whole thing, to me, was so diabolical--I was being gossiped about behind my back, and when one of them confronted me about what was being said about me, he refused to give me a chance to clear things up, and set the record straight--instead, he called me a liar--when I asked him if he'd even read my last email to the RCIA teacher he said he had--but he was lying to me about that, since, if he had, he would have seen that I had looked into the subject of 'sedevacantism'[sp?] myself, and even though I still didn't understand it as fully as I needed to, I told the teacher that I had decided that it shouldn't deter me from moving forward with converting.
So, it seemed that my personal enemies had drawn and quartered me before I'd even had a trial! It also dawned on me that the Deacon had literally sentenced me to hell by barring me from the classes that way, and that frightened me half to death! I just felt so defeated for the first time in my entire life, and had no idea if there remained any hope for me at all.
I am so glad to have come back here--I wasn't sure about anything before I posted that intro--wasn't sure if I wouldn't be rejected from this board due to my being barred from the RCIA classes like that--I'm often so confused and frightened that I think it makes me a bit paranoid at times--I definitely need to work on overcoming that before it overcomes me! Well, I'm nearly all set, though: I have my Rosaries, one of which has been blessed at the Shrine of Our Lady if he Miraculous Medal; I finally have a wonderful hardback copy of God's Word in the Douay-Rheims translation that I love so much; I even have a volume of Catholic Catechism--it's very old[used book store copy], but I thought I still might learn from it; and, book after book on Our Lady's visitations which I think are so very fascinating, and exciting! I've always been drawn to Lourdes and St. Bernadette, whom I have always wanted to be my Patron Saint. What's odd about that is when I was having heart trouble about 10 years ago, and I was resisting even telling the dr. about the pains I was experiencing, when, as we were in the car traveling down Rt. 130[I think] up near my husband's hometown, I suddenly looked out the window and the first thing I saw was a huge billboard with an ad on it for--Lourdes hospital, and their cardiac dept.--I suddenly realized that God was trying to tell me something, so I said to my husband that, ok, I'd tell the dr.! I ended up having the heart procedure done at--Lourdes hospital, too--so funny!
