Fool Me Once - Shame On You. Fool Me Twice – You Won’t

Part One: The Fake Priest

Do you have a prayer closet? Or a little nook where you sit, contemplate, pray and meditate? When we lived in Pennsylvania I had a prayer closet. Well, not really, I had a walk-in closet where I made a little area; a bulletin board with prayers, prayer cards, and all sorts of uplifting things, a corner with all the colored gel pens, and small stacks of journals and encouraging what-nots. And most importantly, a door that closed. A peaceful private nook.

During the pandemic there was a lot of time to be in that prayer closet. There was a lot of time to noodle, think and pray … a lot of time.

This is a story of how I was a fool.

Throughout the years of evolving social media I’ve been on and off again and on and off again. I get really into it and then get despondent and depressed about the state of the world and how we don’t ring the doorbell anymore and just sit and talk. (I’m pretty sure that attitude is a healthy one.) I was discussing yesterday at the dog park childhood board games; how Mom would play Monopoly with us, setting a timer or we’d be there all day. But this whole debacle takes place on Instagram. That’s where we’ll hang out for this one.

I’m dead serious when I say I don’t remember how I fell into this exactly or why I was so incredibly stupid. Now, if this had happened to you and you were telling me the story, I’d tell you that you were not stupid. You were vulnerable to attack in a tender area of your life that lacked spiritual armor. It’s hard to have armor when you don’t realize you needed it. But that’s the game of evil isn’t it. The devil is a prowling lion seeking the ruin of souls.

A Little Backstory First

My mother imposed upon me that having children was not all it was cracked up to be. I was also ambitious and independent from an early age. “Liberté!” was my inner anthem though I’m not sure I consciously knew that early on. And whether that was nature or nurture is left up to perspective. But the other thing is, from a very (unreasonably) early age, I was terrified of childbirth. Where had I gotten this? There were no family stories to foster this. Now my mother (grandmother) would have told me something like, “It’s okay, you probably just died in childbirth in a past lifetime and are remembering that fear.” She told me something like that once about war. I remember there was a rumor going around school that Reagan was going to start WWIII. I was, again, unreasonably… well, no, perhaps there’s reason there… terrified. Mom just said the same thing… “You probably died in a past life from war…”

You know what’s crazy about that? It worked! It took the fear away. Well, the immediate fear anyway. It distracted me enough to replace my immediate fear with thoughts on what my life was like in that war or that childbirth (ever the storyteller) than to focus on the dread of death. Mom had been bitten by the New Age bug. She’d also been bitten by the Second Wave of Feminism Bug as well. I was going to be different. She’d raise me differently. And she did.

All this to tell you that I was not encouraged to get married or have kids. Nothing should get in the way of … me. You know… me, me, meeeee! The ever-present altar of “Me”. We all self-worship at varying levels. When you have a mom that tells you “you are God,” that’s the making of a lot to unpack in later life when you find yourself a believer at the sacrifice of the mass and faced with the reality that you are not and perfectly satisfied with that.

All of this also to tell you that one day you wake up and you’re forty-five and you wonder where the kids are.

Especially when you adore children. Even when I was a child, I was the pied piper. I was eleven playing with and teaching the younger kids. I ended up teaching theatre and music to all ages most of my life. Perhaps that was always the Plan.

I married at forty-five to my sweetheart. He’s nine years older than me. He had no children either. We talked about it. Were open to it. But my body just didn’t cooperate. You may have already read that harrowing story too.

January 2020, my husband and I took a New Year’s Day walk. As we held hands and strolled, we discussed that perhaps, late as it was, maybe this would be the year we adopt.

2020.

That didn’t happen. Because 2020.

Back to The Stupidity

The stupidity takes place somewhere in 2021. As I engaged in social media, I followed all sorts of Catholic and Protestant profiles. Anything that was encouraging and uplifting. And in some cases occasionally making contact through direct messaging or commenting.

One day I began chatting with a priest. (I’m so stupid.) This is so hard to tell you this story because I feel I need a disclaimer. There are good and bad people in the world. There are also good and bad priests. That’s the best way to get on with this. I have found some of the most faithful to be from Africa. This priest was in Ghana.

I know he reached out to me first. He must have. These scammers are so smart. Stealthy in their prediction. I was well on my way in my online business at the time. (I was teaching music online for children. As a certified early childhood music educator, I’d created Look Up! Music and Creative Arts. I was writing my own curriculum, songbook and creating theatre arts integration exercises while many families were still in lockdown.)

This priest encouraged me to pray, fast, and use traditional Catholic prayers. This lasted over the course of a couple of weeks. I would pray the hours: 4, 12, 6, and 9.

So, for two weeks I arose in the morning at 4:00am for morning prayers. I fasted until noon. We’d check in with each other. I was held accountable. He’d encourage me to keep going. As I recollect now – he was promising me the moon.

The moon, in my case, being a baby.

Now, I would be lying if I didn’t confess to you that all along, I had this uncomfortable interior impression that this – well – this just cannot be so. I did. And as it got nearer and nearer to the end of the fasting and praying period, I realized that all of his communique seemed too, what’s the word? Linear. Like a list. Spiritually transactional. Do this first. Done? Now do this. Now do this. Don’t skip a step. Don’t miss anything. There is a specific order of prayers and fasting so that you may get what you want.

Which is not how God works at all.

I look back. I should have known. I should have known. As I often say within my spiritual community, there was a “check” in my spirit about it. But as I got further and further into the commitment of prayer, I chose to believe, to hope, that it could be real.

But I worried (in the furthest reaches of my mind) there was a hitch.

A catch.

I wasn’t smart enough at the time to pray something like I pray now. “Lord if this is not you, SHUT THE DOOR! Defend me, Lord!”

Or my favorite: “Have mercy, Lord.”

Each time I did another thing this priest asked… some specific prayer… he’d lead me on through encouragement. He was good at it. I also like encouragment. (You can fool me now though, so put away the pom poms.)

Then it came to the Finale. The final ask. And that “ask” sounds just like it does… and sounded just like it was.

To be continued…