Continued from Part III.

Now that I look back, I spent most of my time during the ages of 18-21 just goofying off.  Sure I was going to college and working, but a good portion of the time I was just partying.  Drinking illegally, we thought, was oh so cool and we did it a lot.  I remember countless hotel and house parties and playing drinking games.  On several occasions, we would steal/borrow a canoe from a local subdivision’s lake and in our drunkenness we would sail to the middle of the water.  Besides the fact that we were drunk, it was so stupid because we easily could have been caught and taken to jail.  The stupid things you do when you are drunk.

By the time I was 21 I was ready to grow up.  Or at least I could legally drink so the risk factor was gone.  Three weeks after my 21st birthday, a friend Kelly from high school got married at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church on the campus of St. Louis University.  My friend Jenny and I thought it was weird that we were invited to the wedding because we barely knew Kelly.  But we were close friends with the Maid-of-Honor Cindy so we assumed that’s why we were invited.  Regardless, we both decided to go to the wedding.  I think it was the first time I had been in a Catholic Church since high school.  I don’t recall going to church at all during college so this would make a complete absence from church for at least three years.

During the wedding, I heard God talking to me through the priest Father John Leykam.  I’m not really sure what He was saying but I felt His presence in a way I had never felt before.  Father John spoke with such compassion that you could easily feel God’s love through his words.  I remember having chills as I listened to him conduct the wedding.  He did such an amazing job and I’m sure Kelly & Lee were well pleased.  But for me, Father John helped me hear God.  A voice I hadn’t heard in years.  I had no intentions of finding God that day but I’m really thankful it happened.  The light bulb was getting warmed up.

I remember after the wedding I wanted to go back to church but I just didn’t know how.  I wasn’t at the point that I was ready to go alone so I needed to find someone to go with me.  Asking my then-boyfriend would have been hopeless so I never brought up the issue with him.  I only had one friend that was a practicing Catholic and she was really busy with school so I didn’t want to ask her either.  So instead I sat on the issue for about eight months.

It finally started eating away at me and I mentioned to my mom that I wanted to go to church.  It just so happened that her friend from work, Nancy, had asked her to attend church that very weekend.  My mom said I could come along.  I asked where we were going and she said Nancy belonged to St. Kevin’s Catholic Church.  Oh and it just so happened that Father John Leykam was the head priest at that parish.  Coincidence?  I think not.

To Be Continued

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