Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E151: How to Forgive the Unforgivable w/Deacon Charlie & Jess

Transcript

E151: How to Forgive the Unforgivable w/Deacon Charlie & Jess · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  I gave birth to my first child two months shy of turning 17,
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  and then I I had to leave without him, which was
• 0:06
  devastating, and ended up back out on the streets because I had
• 0:10
  nowhere to go. Honestly, I just believed what
• 0:12
  Oprah said. Oprah would tell me the powers
• 0:14
  within me. You got all control of your
• 0:17
  life. I was trying to do that, to find
• 0:19
  peace. We.
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  Could not have come from more different backgrounds or
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  scenarios. The fact that we've ended up
• 0:26
  together is. Ludicrous.
• 0:28
  It's Provident ludicrous, but I like the garlic.
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  Yes, I fell to my knees and I had a mystical experience where
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  Jesus looked me dead in the eyes and just said I'm the one you're
• 0:38
  looking for, you're searching for me.
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  Jess Deacon, Charlie, thanks so much for joining the show.
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  Thank you for having us. Thank you.
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  Jess, I just finished your book Dazzled.
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  It was absolutely incredible, made me cry multiple times, and
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  I'm so excited for people to hear about your story because I
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  think everyone needs to hear it. It's one of the most incredible
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  testimonies I've heard. Thank you.
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  Thank you. And Deacon, you're amazing.
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  Thank you for all that you're doing for the church and for the
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  faith, and you're just an inspiration.
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  So I'm really excited to have you here too as a married couple
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  because we need to have more married couples on the show and
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  in general doing ministry together.
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  And Deacon, it's so fun that you are you because you do all of
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  these amazing things for the church.
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  You also ride a motorcycle and you do all of this crazy stuff
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  in media, so. You want to know something that
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  one of my favorite things in the world to do is to, like, be in
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  some fancy gala with the white tablecloth and, you know,
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  clinking of silverware and having somebody turn my wife and
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  say, like, well, what about you? Like, what's your story?
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  I love that stuff because everything, just all the facade
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  and all the niceties just come crashing down and we get really
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  real love that. Yes, my, my, our story is.
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  Really real. Well, I mean, it starts.
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  What I'm saying is that's how the iceberg begins to break and
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  melt. Is is when literally when you
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  say it and especially in polite circles, it's just nice.
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  But that's that's real life. So let's let's start with there.
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  When someone turns to you, Jess, and says, what's your story at a
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  gala? Where do you, where do you
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  start? Where do you start?
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  Well, yeah, it depends on the gala event, but I usually tell
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  them that I work within the Ministry of Homelessness because
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  I have that in my background. And that usually leads to them
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  asking me just questions about, oh, well, what do you do and
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  what organization do you work for?
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  And that brings about my story, my own story of abuse and
• 2:30
  brokenness and homelessness and just what I usually say is, you
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  know, just all the boxes, pretty much all of them have been
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  checked in my story. Not all of them, gratefully.
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  Yeah, and that's kind of the dynamic I was referring to,
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  right? When you're in like a gala dress
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  and then the person next to you is like, I was on, I was
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  homeless for seven years. And it's just like that moment
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  of like what? And people don't know what to do
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  with that. Yeah, they really don't.
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  Because I'll look at somebody and say, oh, you know, what
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  business are you in? And they'll be like, oh, I'm in
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  real estate or, you know, investments or something like
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  that. And they're like, oh, what
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  business are you in? I am in homelessness.
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  Yeah. All right, so I'm really excited
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  to go back and go through the journey you guys have been on
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  because again, your book's incredible.
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  And when I discovered more of your story, I was deeply
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  inspired and moved. So I think the audience and
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  people listening are going to really love your story.
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  But I want to start with where you're at today because you're
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  in a really amazing place today. You know, your kids, you have
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  ministries, you're both doing, I mean, amazing things.
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  I know you threw a lot of, you know, work in the the faith
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  filled space and, you know, doing media postulate stuff.
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  So I'd love to just start with what are you doing today?
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  Who are you today? And then we're going to go back
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  in time. Sure.
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  Yeah. So start with you, Deacon.
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  Well, so I've been ordained for seven years now.
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  So I'm, I guess, 2nd grade level Deacon, age 7 Deacon, and never
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  anticipated to be ordained to the clergy.
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  Didn't desire it, didn't wish it, never dreamt it.
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  It was just a series of sort of synchronous steps.
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  But I think across that journey is sort of helped to bring us to
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  where we are right now. And I would say is that I'm a
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  person who's very active, obviously my deaconel ministry
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  in Los Angeles, and that overlaps a lot with our
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  homelessness ministry. But I also come from a media
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  background, to your point. And so the idea of story, the
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  idea of helping to tell better stories, the idea of helping to
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  use new technologies to reach more people with the gospel,
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  those are all things that I'm very active in.
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  I have my own media ministry. I talk and I preach throughout
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  the country. And so that's sort of where I am
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  right now. How I got here is, you know, was
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  a circuitous path and, you know, maybe you could share.
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  And, of course, my father, you know, dad of five and, and, and
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  grandfather, foster father, stepfather, godfather.
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  Yeah. How many God kids?
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  I have 3. Yeah, he looks at me.
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  Two. Three, you have more than I do.
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  I do have more than, yeah. And then five kids and you just
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  had a son who got married. We did just on September 1st.
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  Literally like 2. Yeah, yeah.
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  And for folks listening, I know you've had, you have like, a big
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  resume. You've worked at a lot of big
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  media companies. Tell us a little bit about that.
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  And then also tell us what it means to be a Deacon.
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  Yeah. And what it means to be a part
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  of the clergy but not a priest. I got my start in media back at,
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  you know, in the year 2000 when the Internet was starting to be
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  a big deal. And frankly, shows like this
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  were an idea but not have had ever been realized.
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  I started a company called America Online, better known as
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  AOL, that had a dream of making the Internet as ubiquitous as
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  the telephone, and largely they were a big part in that actually
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  happening. Then I went to go work for the
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  Walt Disney Company. Disney taught me a lot about
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  story, taught me a lot about content, taught me a lot about
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  the value of intellectual property, things like that.
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  After that, I went to go to Univision, a big Spanish
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  language media company, where I ran their digital group.
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  And that taught me a lot about these sort of emerging
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  audiences, namely Latino audiences, which are very
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  important for the church too, frankly more important for the
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  church than for the secular world.
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  And then after that run, I went and got into the startup scene
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  in LA, worked to start and launch and sell a number of
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  digital media companies. And since 2018, I've had my own
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  firm, which helps folks kind of figure all this stuff out and
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  helps them grow. So that's been professionally,
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  the diaconate. It's really weird because the
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  diaconate kind of surfaced in the midst of all of that sort of
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  ascension through the career ranks and at 1st and it and it
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  came just by virtue of me interacting with a Deacon in my
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  mind, like sort of seeing a Deacon do his ministry for the
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  first time, which I couldn't recall.
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  This is the way the Holy Spirit works is like he opens up your
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  eyes at particular moments. I'm sure I had seen a Deacon
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  before, but it really happened that over the course of a few
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  years in my career, I experienced the diaconate live
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  in front of me and it really piqued my interest.
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  I don't understand what it was. I was very poorly formed about
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  the diaconate. To answer your question really
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  simply here, I have to take a page out of our Eastern
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  brothers, you know, playbook, because they describe the
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  overall priesthood as a priesthood of three degrees.
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  You've got the diaconate, the presbyterate and the episcopate,
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  deacons, priests and bishops. And so it is a degree of that,
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  of that priesthood, although it's a priesthood of service and
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  not of sacrifice like priests and bishops have, but it's one
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  of the the holy orders. You know, you're ordained.
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  There's an imposition of hands. Once you're ordained, you can't
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  be unordained. If you're married and your
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  spouse, God forbid, passes away, you can't remarry.
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  And every priest and Bishop is a Deacon.
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  And every priest and Deacon is a Bishop.
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  Priest and Bishop is a Deacon. We just read in the second
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  reading, who was that? St.
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  Cyprian, Yeah, he was martyred and he was.
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  Wearing his dalmatic. Wearing his dalmatic.
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  And actually he was a Bishop and some bishops still do that, like
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  Bishop Archbishop Coeurlean in San Francisco wears his dalmatic
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  under his chasuble to remind himself, right that of the
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  diaconate because they you don't lose that character.
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  So anyway, that's a lot, but. No, I love it.
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  I we need more deacons. I think it's a forgotten.
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  I think a lot of people don't realize that you can have
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  priests and deacons and that deacons aren't priests and
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  deacons can be married. And this is part of the Catholic
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  Church because I look at like, you know, Protestant world,
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  evangelical churches, there's all of these different sort of
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  posts that married men can have and married women can have to
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  share the gospel and do all this amazing work right in ministry.
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  And we can, I think if we built up the diaconate more in the
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  Catholic Church, where you can have married men who are
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  involved in preaching and baptizing, it would just be so
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  good for the church to have more of that.
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  Marriage. Marry, marry people.
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  If I could just say one more thing about the diaconate too,
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  because you bring up a good point.
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  I think that diaconate is we're just scratching the surface on
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  what the diaconate is and what it can be.
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  And I especially encourage younger men to look at the
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  diaconate as an option in the United States for a number of
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  reasons, which is a whole another show.
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  The diaconate is a kind of a graying, aging reality.
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  There is less than 4% of American deacons under 50 when
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  the church stipulates that a permanent Deacon cannot be
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  ordained until he's at least 35. Now, when you consider that
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  programs usually last five years, that means you could
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  enter a program for the permanent deaconate at 30.
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  But nobody does. Nobody does that.
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  And the reason is most times they're discouraged to think
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  about it. They're like.
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  They don't even know that it's an option.
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  They. Don't know.
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  I've had a I've had. Good guidance for them there is.
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  They hear all the time about, you know, we need more priests.
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  We need more priests and of. Course we.
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  Do and and pray and we do and all of these are things that can
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  be true at the same time, right where it's like pray for
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  vocations, pray for priesthood. We need priests for the
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  Eucharist like all those things. But you know one, I always say,
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  well, you get priests from from good holy families, right, And a
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  good holy diaconate family even more powerful to to get more
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  priests, but. Yeah, It's something that, for
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  whatever reason, has just been implemented in a way where
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  mostly older guys are guys who are retired.
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  Consider the diaconate. And there's nothing wrong with
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  that. And I love and encourage all my
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  older, you know, brothers in the diaconate, but there's a whole
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  swath of younger guys who have maybe younger families who are
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  on an ascendant track career wise, who are very connected,
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  who can act as that bridge in a very different way.
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  And for the most part, we've discouraged those guys.
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  And so that my encouragement should not be seen as validation
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  that everybody who thinks they're going to be a Deacon is.
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  But at least if you get the itch, scratch it and try and
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  how. Many of those older gentlemen
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  have gotten the call throughout their entire life and they put
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  it off and they put it off. It's true.
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  I hear those stories all the time too.
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  All. Right, So anybody listening, if
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  you, even if you're not Catholic, maybe it's also get
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  interested in being Catholic. But also if you're Catholic and
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  you're a young man, you might, if you might not be called to
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  the priesthood, but you might be called to the diaconate.
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  I love that. And we're going to put your
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  ministry, Charlie, in the Deacon in the description so people can
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  follow up with you because I'm sure you'd be willing to accept
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  mail from someone about this. Always happy to chat about this
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  specifically because there's a lot to be done.
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  And I think strategically for the church because I try to
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  think like a business guy. If we really lit up the
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  diaconate in a very special way, there's a lot of great things we
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  could do for the Kingdom, and we're doing some of that, but
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  there's more to be done. Amazing.
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  Yeah. And I'd like to see more of a
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  connection between speaking about holy families and raising
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  up holy families with the diaconate.
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  Yes, yes. All right, Jess, give us some of
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  your background. Well, actually before your
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  background. Tell me about your ministry
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  right now. You're a Mama.
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  You're doing amazing things, too.
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  Let's do that. And I get to get to the Jest
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  story. Yeah.
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  So my number one ministry is I'm Deacon Charlie's wife.
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  So that's how I, I always, you know, answer people who say
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  that. So I'm Deacon Charlie's wife and
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  that's been an incredible blessing so far.
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  And within becoming his wife. And in that sacrament of
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  matrimony, I, I'm a mother, a mother to 5, two within our
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  marriage and also able to do ministry to the homeless.
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  So education for my children, we did Catholic schooling, we did
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  home schooling, education formation, I have a passion for
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  as well. So I did that with my own
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  children and within our parishes that we've been involved in, but
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  then also the Ministry to the homeless because of my own
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  experience, experience of homelessness when I was younger,
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  so. All right, so your book Dazzled
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  talks about experiencing abuse, sexual abuse at a young age.
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  It talks about experiencing homelessness, like you said, it
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  talks about other kinds of abuse.
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  It talks about same sex attraction.
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  I mean, there's a lot of heavy themes in your story, which I
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  think are all in our culture. I mean, there's a people
• 12:53
  listening, I'm sure, who already resonate with an aspect of your
• 12:56
  story and they haven't even heard the whole thing yet.
• 12:58
  They just heard these themes. So I'd love to have you start
• 13:01
  with your background and some of the dark places that you walked
• 13:06
  before you met Deacon Charlie, because you met him even during
• 13:10
  a dark time. And so let's start, let's take
• 13:13
  up to the time where you met Deacon and then we'll go from
• 13:15
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  Well, I come from a broken home, so my parents divorced before I
• 14:43
  was a year old. And then there were step parents
• 14:46
  and step families and siblings along the way.
• 14:48
  That happened multiple times with both my mom and my dad and
• 14:55
  and in that type of environment, statistics show that abuse is
• 15:01
  more likely to occur. And that is a part of my own
• 15:04
  story. So I suffered child molestation
• 15:07
  and rape at the ages of 10 and 12, and because of that, really
• 15:15
  just felt like I was on my own as a person.
• 15:19
  My parents were within their own woundedness.
• 15:22
  They're very beautiful people and they did the best they could
• 15:26
  at the time, but it wasn't enough for for someone like me.
• 15:31
  And so I, I, I went in and realized I have to fight for
• 15:36
  myself. And that made me look rebellious
• 15:40
  in the household. So I was labeled A rebellious
• 15:43
  kid. I started running away at 12 and
• 15:48
  ended up being leaving and going into a group home at 14 and then
• 15:54
  running away from that group home and ending up on and off
• 15:56
  the streets and then people's homes.
• 15:59
  And then I ended up in a family members home at 16 as a way of
• 16:04
  my family trying to go OK, let's give her this help and see if
• 16:07
  this works. And I became pregnant in high
• 16:11
  school at 16. And so at 16, I tried to get an
• 16:16
  abortion on my lunch hour in high school.
• 16:19
  And my friend who had a car drove me to the abortion clinic.
• 16:22
  And every time I went, I went three times.
• 16:25
  And every time I went, I'd get a little bit further, but then I
• 16:29
  would just feel nauseated and hot and I would I would leave.
• 16:32
  And then that third time I was literally on the table in the
• 16:35
  gown. The nurse comes to give me my
• 16:37
  twilight and I just same thing happened, right?
• 16:39
  Nauseated, got to go, can't stay.
• 16:41
  And I get up and leave. And my friend actually was
• 16:43
  frustrated with me at this point.
• 16:45
  She was like, I know where to take you.
• 16:46
  And she took me to a pregnancy center and that's when I saw a
• 16:53
  video that the, the nice woman there saw a video and showed me,
• 16:56
  you know, babies on girls my age lap and pregnant girls my age.
• 17:00
  And that's when I realized that I was carrying a person.
• 17:05
  I hadn't really known that before, but in my own
• 17:08
  woundedness and selfishly, I wanted to have that person
• 17:13
  because in my heart it was OK. I have somebody that I can love
• 17:16
  and that who will love me the right way.
• 17:19
  So my desire was to have my baby.
• 17:23
  Unfortunately, that time I didn't have support.
• 17:24
  So it was either abortion equaled housing or no abortion
• 17:29
  equaled no housing and so. So someone you were living with
• 17:33
  was threatening to kick you out if you stayed pregnant?
• 17:36
  Yes yeah, it was abortion was the answer in order for me to
• 17:41
  keep my resources pretty much and I didn't want to I wanted to
• 17:46
  have the baby. So my boyfriend at the time
• 17:49
  found a a place for me to stay really cheap rent.
• 17:53
  He met somebody on the bus and it ended up being a crack in
• 17:57
  prostitution house and, and living there and being in that
• 18:02
  experience, I just, I couldn't take it anymore.
• 18:05
  I called, you know, my mom and I was telling her everything that
• 18:08
  I was experiencing, which was hell.
• 18:10
  And it involved children in the home.
• 18:13
  And so she got me out of there and I ended up staying in a
• 18:18
  Christian home for unwed mothers and that's where I stayed.
• 18:22
  At the time, they didn't have resources for for girls to keep
• 18:26
  their babies. It was just adoption only.
• 18:28
  So now I'm back in a situation where, you know, I can't have my
• 18:32
  baby, but and then I won't have anywhere to live.
• 18:35
  And I don't want to go back to the the crack and prostitution
• 18:38
  home that I experienced and what I experienced there.
• 18:40
  So I agreed to give my baby up for adoption it.
• 18:43
  Sounds like coercion. Yeah, yeah.
• 18:48
  So I did. I I gave birth to my first
• 18:51
  child. I was two months shy of turning
• 18:54
  17, a boy and spent an hour with him in the hospital and and then
• 19:01
  I had to leave without him, which was devastating.
• 19:05
  It was devastating. I fell into a deep depression
• 19:08
  anyway that I lost that child and ended up back out on the
• 19:12
  streets because I had nowhere to go still, even after all that
• 19:17
  and then went full into St. life, you know, But what I tell
• 19:22
  people is people don't understand that there's an
• 19:24
  economy on the streets. Like just like we wake up, we
• 19:26
  have the people around us. That's our family.
• 19:28
  We go to work, we make a living. You know, you just flip that
• 19:32
  upside down. It's the same thing on the
• 19:33
  streets. It's the same thing in that
• 19:36
  environment. People go to work in a sense and
• 19:38
  they make a living, although it's all bad, you know, there's
• 19:42
  no light. It's there's no goodness.
• 19:45
  It's and so I went 100% in. That's because that's what you
• 19:49
  have to do when you're in the environment on the street.
• 19:51
  You have to commit or you basically die.
• 19:53
  And so I committed to that life and was all in.
• 19:56
  And at 18, I got pregnant again. And this time I was in such a
• 20:01
  dark place that the voice that I heard was the best thing you can
• 20:05
  do for this child is to have an abortion.
• 20:08
  And it sounded like truth to me. It like nothing sounded truer.
• 20:14
  So I did, I, I went into an abortion clinic and, and I had
• 20:19
  an abortion of my second child at 18.
• 20:22
  And yeah, after that, everything, every desire, every
• 20:29
  person who's struggling, especially living homeless or,
• 20:31
  or on the street, has this desire to wake up every day and
• 20:34
  just go and still be and still live.
• 20:38
  But that was completely gone after I experienced my abortion.
• 20:42
  The life was literally pulled out of me.
• 20:46
  I didn't want to exist anymore. And so I attempted suicide at 19
• 20:50
  and I attempted suicide again at 20 and still stayed in that
• 20:54
  environment and ended up in, it's a type of trafficking
• 20:59
  relationship where you are with you're with a person so that you
• 21:03
  have a roof over your head and resources and a car to drive and
• 21:06
  food. And it was in that situation and
• 21:09
  it was extremely abusive. And at 21, I was pregnant again.
• 21:13
  So this is my third child and at 5 months pregnant was thrown
• 21:18
  through a plate glass window and just really severely beaten.
• 21:23
  And at the hospital and I allowed that nurse who begged me
• 21:28
  to let her help me help me. And so at 21, I ended up
• 21:33
  bringing home for the first time a baby of my own in my welfare
• 21:41
  apartment, food stamps, got food in my refrigerator and social
• 21:46
  services paying my rent. And I took my third baby home in
• 21:51
  a donated car seat in a taxi cab.
• 21:55
  And but I was happy in my mind at that time and in my heart, it
• 21:59
  was like if you would have knocked on my door and said, you
• 22:01
  know, hey, Jess, how is your life?
• 22:03
  I would have told you my life couldn't get any better than
• 22:06
  this, right? And like, think about what a lie
• 22:09
  that really is. And how much we accept that
• 22:11
  today and. How much we accept that.
• 22:13
  Today. And how and how just even that
• 22:16
  and not even homeless anymore. And I'm not in an abusive
• 22:19
  relationship anymore. But when you encounter a
• 22:22
  homeless person, right, that the whole dignity of the human
• 22:24
  person where they say, oh, no, I'm good.
• 22:27
  Like I want to stay out here. Like anytime I hear someone
• 22:31
  who's in need say that to me, I know exactly what that feels
• 22:34
  like. You don't know yet what you were
• 22:37
  truly created for and the dignity that you carry because I
• 22:41
  didn't. I honestly thought that what I
• 22:43
  had in that moment was the best thing that that was the best I
• 22:46
  could ever achieve. But but I use social services
• 22:50
  system for what its true purpose is.
• 22:52
  I got 2 jobs, I put my baby in free daycare and I saved and
• 22:57
  saved, bought a little car and managed to pull myself out of
• 23:02
  that and then very shortly met this guy over here.
• 23:06
  I always joke, I always joke that like after you hear this
• 23:09
  story, it's like back off guys, she's all mine, you know, cuz
• 23:12
  like we could not have come from more different backgrounds or
• 23:16
  scenarios. The fact that we even ended up
• 23:18
  together is ludicrous. It's.
• 23:20
  Provident ludicrous, but I like the Got it.
• 23:22
  Yes, of course. Yes, of course.
• 23:24
  A blessing and your background intact.
• 23:26
  Family, right? Intact family like you know.
• 23:29
  No homelessness. Lived all over the world, you
• 23:31
  know, best education. It was like super bougie kind of
• 23:35
  upbringing and that was that was my background.
• 23:37
  So, so Mr. Bougie, what what Jess went through and, you know,
• 23:42
  I think some people might be listening.
• 23:44
  You know, there's obviously like there's parents listening.
• 23:47
  They're like, well, if you're going to get married, you know,
• 23:50
  and you bring someone home, you want to.
• 23:52
  Don't bring me. But God clearly is.
• 23:56
  All. Together so and that's why
• 23:58
  that's why I'm so excited to Share your story, your love
• 24:00
  story with the podcast, because from all like just looking at it
• 24:05
  from without knowing any of the details, it's like if I was your
• 24:08
  mother, right, you know, you bring like who is this girl?
• 24:11
  She has a baby, Like, is she? With.
• 24:13
  Her with her background disaster, but you guys were
• 24:16
  brought together and God worked in that relationship.
• 24:18
  So let me hear first from you, Deacon, how you first met Jess
• 24:23
  and then what your early relationship with Jess was like.
• 24:25
  Well, the. And where your faith was at the
• 24:27
  time too, because that's obviously a true component. 100%
• 24:30
  So I met her around the time that she was beginning to get
• 24:34
  back on her feet at this moment of thinking all is right with
• 24:37
  the world, despite the fact that she was, you know, living with
• 24:41
  government assistance and really, in a way, putting on a
• 24:43
  facade on the outside, right? But she was working as kind of
• 24:47
  an office manager in an office building.
• 24:49
  And my first job after graduating college was selling
• 24:52
  office equipment, which of course is what you do with a
• 24:54
  communications degree. You know what I mean?
• 24:56
  You have a communication degree, you go sell office equipment.
• 24:59
  So I just called on the business that she was at and eventually
• 25:03
  that sort of led us to, you know, to, to, to date and
• 25:07
  develop our relationship. But when I first saw her, what I
• 25:10
  saw was really attractive young woman dressed up for an office
• 25:15
  environment. Like I thought all that was
• 25:17
  good. And So what was really going on?
• 25:19
  I think there's both a natural and a supernatural at the
• 25:21
  supernatural level, there were all kinds of people in heaven.
• 25:24
  And here I'm sure praying for things to happen because if I
• 25:29
  would have known everything right away.
• 25:30
  It actually reminds me of Scripture that Jesus says in the
• 25:32
  Gospel of John that I have so many things to tell you, but you
• 25:35
  cannot bear them now. Like if you knew everything I
• 25:38
  needed to tell you, you would run right.
• 25:41
  And that's how I feel about this is like there was supernaturally
• 25:45
  the Lord, I believe, put blinders on me in a way like,
• 25:48
  you know, just kind of protecting me from what I
• 25:51
  naturally wanted to do. There was something that was
• 25:56
  deeply necessary about her. Like there was a something that
• 26:00
  there was like a story that I could see was going to unfold
• 26:03
  that I didn't understand. And it kind of haunted me in a
• 26:05
  way. Her story.
• 26:07
  I didn't even know what it was. She even, she wouldn't tell me.
• 26:10
  Like she kept so many things the first year.
• 26:13
  She would dole them out like, you know, every month would be
• 26:16
  like, oh, and by the way, this thing happened.
• 26:19
  And so she would tell me. It took about, I think, a year
• 26:22
  or so for me to get the fullness of the story, but she was
• 26:25
  terrified that I'd run the other direction.
• 26:27
  And you know what? I probably would have because of
• 26:29
  the same things that you said my parents were like, first of all,
• 26:32
  marry. You have to marry a Hispanic
• 26:34
  woman first of all, so X on a on that one.
• 26:38
  She's got to be Christian or Catholic like 0.
• 26:41
  She's got to come from the right family.
• 26:43
  I mean it was like completely wrong I.
• 26:45
  Checked no box. No box.
• 26:47
  But however, to answer the other part of the question, which is a
• 26:49
  big part of the reason why we ended up together.
• 26:51
  My faith frankly was really nowhere right.
• 26:53
  So God used my disobedience, my wandering.
• 26:58
  I was like total womanizer and like drinking caught like a
• 27:02
  mess, right? And so he used that in a way to
• 27:06
  make me believe, well, there's nothing serious.
• 27:08
  It's just another, you know, woman in a list of potentially,
• 27:12
  you know, number of women that I'm interacting with.
• 27:14
  So there's nothing serious here. Had I thought that there was
• 27:17
  something so I'd be like, Oh no, that's not the one.
• 27:18
  And I may have like discounted her.
• 27:20
  So it's amazing what God allows, you know, because he's got a
• 27:24
  bigger plan. So my faith was culturally very
• 27:28
  much Christian, culturally very much Catholic, because I was
• 27:31
  raised in the faith, but I was raised in the faith from a
• 27:35
  Hispanic, A Hispanic vantage point in a way where the faith
• 27:40
  was another aspect of culture. We had a, we had our kind of
• 27:43
  music, we had our kind of food, and we had our kind of faith,
• 27:47
  our kind of church. And so for me, in a way, because
• 27:50
  it was presented that way to me by, you know, the way I
• 27:53
  experienced it, it kind of disappeared.
• 27:55
  The faith was just a sort of wallpaper, and so I was not
• 27:59
  living a faithful life. Their seeds were there, but I
• 28:03
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• 29:31
  When did you start living a faithful life?
• 29:34
  And then I want to hear from you Jess.
• 29:36
  When did you have your encounter?
• 29:38
  I know you have had encounters, but what was the moment when you
• 29:41
  really the light turned on for you with faith that you wanted
• 29:43
  to live a life of faith? For me, it was definitely
• 29:47
  synchronous. I mean gradual.
• 29:49
  It wasn't one moment of inflection.
• 29:51
  I think Jess has more of a, a kind of a, you know, Road to
• 29:54
  Emmaus sort of, or Road to not Emmaus.
• 29:57
  What's the other one? Saint Paul and the horse moment?
• 30:01
  But, but for me, it was a series of things and a lot of it
• 30:06
  through the relationship with Jessica, they kind of brought me
• 30:10
  and through the sacrament of matrimony, frankly, getting
• 30:12
  married like opened up a whole like treasure trove of grace for
• 30:15
  us. So you you got married in the
• 30:17
  church? We did.
• 30:19
  Yes. Before you were Catholic?
• 30:20
  Before I was anything. Really.
• 30:22
  And thank God nobody asked me, Lila, why it was important for
• 30:25
  me to get married in the church because I wouldn't have been
• 30:27
  able to tell him what? Yeah, but it was, it was like
• 30:29
  we're going to get married in the church and if we have kids,
• 30:31
  our kids are going to go to Catholic.
• 30:32
  School and were his two non negotiables.
• 30:33
  And when you got married, you knew when you were entering that
• 30:36
  sacrament. Like this is where we're not
• 30:39
  supposed to divorce. We're supposed to have kids,
• 30:40
  supposed to raise them Catholic. He knew that.
• 30:42
  So you knew you knew the basics. I did, yes.
• 30:44
  And so and you wanted to do the basics.
• 30:46
  I did. He did.
• 30:48
  And I wanted to just do and go wherever he went, basically,
• 30:52
  yeah. So you were saying yes, yes to
• 30:54
  these basics because it's you. I just I'd never encountered
• 30:57
  anybody male wise. All of my male relationships up
• 31:01
  to him were toxic or deformed right?
• 31:05
  My dad was absent. I longed for a good relationship
• 31:09
  with him but because he wasn't there it just it wasn't
• 31:12
  happening. My stepfathers, that
• 31:15
  relationship that was not really good relationships 1 was an
• 31:21
  alcoholic. So and then on the streets, your
• 31:25
  male relationships are definitely not healthy.
• 31:29
  And then obviously suffering abuse.
• 31:30
  So when I met him, I had not encountered a male female
• 31:34
  relationship like this. And once I did, it was like, you
• 31:38
  know what, I'm not going to let this go.
• 31:41
  Like wherever you want to go, I'm going whatever you want to
• 31:43
  do. You want to live in the car,
• 31:45
  I'll live in the car with you. Like I just wanted to be
• 31:48
  wherever he was because of. And what I didn't realize at the
• 31:51
  time, and I obviously know now is that he was treating me with
• 31:55
  the dignity to that that I deserved.
• 31:59
  And that's what felt so good and right.
• 32:01
  And that's what I was. And the reason I was, the reason
• 32:04
  I was doing that, despite evidence to the contrary and how
• 32:08
  I was living my life, is because the seeds of the faith had been
• 32:12
  planted. I had those.
• 32:13
  By your upbringing and the modeling of your.
• 32:15
  Parents and the modeling of my parents and despite the fact
• 32:17
  that, you know, we moved around a lot and we lived in foreign
• 32:20
  countries and also the stuff there was enough there, even
• 32:23
  though we didn't have a very vibrant faith life in a lot of
• 32:26
  my childhood to say that these fundamentals are real.
• 32:29
  So the idea of we're going to get married in the Catholic
• 32:31
  Church again, thank God nobody asked me why, and we're going to
• 32:36
  have our kids raised in a Catholic environment.
• 32:38
  Well, you. Probably would have said it's
• 32:39
  because it's my my parents is is I'm Catholic.
• 32:41
  Well, of course I would have said an answer, but I'm saying
• 32:43
  it would have been a lame answer.
• 32:44
  Be like, I don't know because my parents did it right like.
• 32:46
  But you still did it. I think that like, I, I, I, I
• 32:49
  know people listening to the show have friends or they have
• 32:52
  kids or they have whatever. And it's like, you know, there's
• 32:55
  people who get married a lot in the Catholic Church even today,
• 32:58
  and they're not fully maybe aware of why the fullness of the
• 33:02
  why, right? Or they're baptizing their baby
• 33:04
  and they're not even going to Mass every Sunday maybe.
• 33:06
  But I think what you're saying here, Deacon, and what you're
• 33:09
  saying dress is so powerful that this seed, the seed that needs
• 33:13
  watering. I mean, this is this is this is
• 33:16
  good. You know, we can celebrate.
• 33:17
  This is a start. This is a starting place.
• 33:19
  Yeah, well, the sacraments are powerful like that, and that's
• 33:22
  what we're working with. I agreed.
• 33:25
  Here's what So I come from an unchurched background.
• 33:28
  We didn't have religion or prayer or anything in my
• 33:31
  household. My father's mother, my Nana, my
• 33:35
  grandmother on my father's side came from Italy.
• 33:37
  So these very strong Italian background and she was raised
• 33:43
  Catholic, but circumstances LED her outside of the church when
• 33:47
  she was here. So there was a little bit of
• 33:50
  exposure there, you know, an uncle who was Protestant who
• 33:54
  would talk about Jesus all the time whenever I was around him
• 33:56
  as a kid, a little bit there. So it's not like I didn't know
• 34:00
  there was a God. I didn't know who this Jesus was
• 34:04
  or anything like that. I would literally see pictures
• 34:06
  of him and my Nana's trailer, you know, growing up and, and
• 34:10
  even when I was homeless, you know, Christians would come to
• 34:13
  the streets to give us bottles of, you know, food and like all
• 34:16
  that kind of stuff. And they would say, you know,
• 34:18
  Jesus is here. He's with you trying to, you
• 34:21
  know, evangelize to us and save us.
• 34:24
  And but to me it was well, well, where is he?
• 34:28
  First of all, he was he here last night when that happened to
• 34:31
  me? You know what I mean?
• 34:32
  And if and if that's who your God is, where he doesn't stop it
• 34:36
  from happening or doesn't do anything, then I don't want any
• 34:39
  part of that. And so I was, I think God knew
• 34:43
  that because of the circumstances I, I was living
• 34:47
  in, that I wasn't going to go to him, right?
• 34:50
  That he had to come to me in a sense.
• 34:53
  And that's how I see meeting my husband is, I think God knew
• 34:58
  that I needed to meet God through him in order to really
• 35:02
  truly learn and understand and believe who I am really and what
• 35:08
  I'm created for. So it's through our sacrament
• 35:11
  because it was really after we got married that everything just
• 35:15
  started turning into turmoil for me.
• 35:18
  Like you'd think I'm married. I'm a stay at home mom.
• 35:20
  I'm, you know, I have no need of anything, which is the complete
• 35:25
  opposite of my entire life before I meet him and I'm
• 35:29
  miserable. Like I'm just, I'm unhappy, I'm
• 35:32
  struggling. Who am I?
• 35:34
  Am I this street kid from Fort Lauderdale or am I the stay at
• 35:37
  home mom in Los Angeles? You know, it's like everything
• 35:41
  was colliding in on me interiorly.
• 35:46
  And that sent me to therapy because I'm not, you know, I
• 35:50
  don't have this belief. I don't have a faith background
• 35:53
  to lean on. For him.
• 35:55
  It's cultural. So it's not like he's sharing it
• 35:58
  with me. Like, oh, you know, we should go
• 36:00
  to church or do this and we would, we would go to Mass
• 36:02
  randomly. Yeah, like Easter, Christmas,
• 36:05
  and yeah, again, the cultural things.
• 36:07
  My parents would come over, we would even do novenas, like
• 36:09
  leading up to Christmas and things like that.
• 36:11
  But it was like, like it was like tamales, you know what I
• 36:14
  mean? It just, it didn't.
• 36:16
  There's no relationship there. When did the relationship start
• 36:19
  for you both and you just meaning you?
• 36:24
  Maybe it's the therapy, but you started to connect to a God, it
• 36:28
  to a God who loved you. It became your Catholic faith,
• 36:31
  not just something you would occasionally do with.
• 36:33
  Damascus This is what I was trying.
• 36:34
  To say Damascus. The road to Damascus.
• 36:38
  Yeah, Go ahead. Yeah, No.
• 36:41
  Because that was your experience was a Damascus.
• 36:43
  Yeah, I mean, look, I didn't see the need for God, so and I
• 36:48
  honestly, I just believed what Oprah said.
• 36:51
  You know, Oprah would tell me the powers within me, you got
• 36:54
  all control of your life. You know, you are the one in
• 36:58
  control. Learn how to harness that and
• 37:00
  just go and think good things, get good things.
• 37:03
  You know, I was, I was trying to do that to find peace.
• 37:07
  And so I was in therapy for seven years.
• 37:09
  And therapy was good for me in a sense that it taught me how to
• 37:13
  deal with my traumas. It helped me learn where they
• 37:16
  came from and kind of tie everything together.
• 37:21
  But then once I did that, I did, I felt lighter.
• 37:23
  I felt better. But then I was on this search.
• 37:27
  I was hungry. I was hungry for this power,
• 37:30
  right? Where is this thing that Oprah
• 37:32
  says I have and that all women have?
• 37:34
  And so I looked to the world to go find it.
• 37:37
  I started and then I started, you know, reading about Buddhism
• 37:41
  because I'm like, oh, they have peaceful, they're peaceful
• 37:43
  people. Let me go read about that.
• 37:45
  And so I was looking there and then I fell into this new age
• 37:50
  kind of religion called self realization.
• 37:54
  And they had a temple. They have a temple in Pacific
• 37:57
  Palisades. And so I started meditating, and
• 38:01
  my goal was I thought that if I reached the highest heights in
• 38:05
  meditation, that I would reach that power right?
• 38:08
  That place, that Nirvana. I even dragged him into one of.
• 38:12
  Our, our kids were younger and I would take the kids to Mass on
• 38:14
  Sunday, you know, because again, not maybe not every weekend, but
• 38:18
  a lot right. While she would go off to the
• 38:19
  Pacific Palisades to. Meditate.
• 38:22
  By the lake. Lake Shrine.
• 38:23
  By the lake. Shrine, yeah.
• 38:24
  And then one time when I was there, I'm meditating and I'm
• 38:27
  trying to reach this, this place, the light was shining
• 38:32
  through my eyelids like I was being shown on.
• 38:35
  And I don't know if that's the right way to say that, but.
• 38:38
  And I opened it and the temple that they worship at is on top
• 38:41
  of the hill there and it has a gold Dome at the top.
• 38:45
  And the sun was shining on it and glaring down on me.
• 38:49
  And it got my attention. And I was just like, oh, I've
• 38:52
  never actually been in there. I've never seen what it looks
• 38:54
  like. Let me go in there and see what
• 38:55
  it looks like. And so I walk in and it's shaped
• 38:58
  like a hexagon. And in the back are these really
• 39:01
  big long tapestries of the, of the avatars, like the people
• 39:06
  that they look up to and worship and, and admire, right, and pray
• 39:10
  to. And there were six of them.
• 39:12
  And that's when I looked up at them and I was like, oh, I saw
• 39:16
  Jesus on one of them in the center.
• 39:19
  And I immediately thought to myself, what are you doing here?
• 39:23
  Right? Like.
• 39:25
  Because you're like Gandhi and. Yeah, Paramount.
• 39:27
  So you're going on. That like all that, like, you
• 39:29
  know, all of the those people. Yeah.
• 39:32
  So it was like I was not expecting to see something that
• 39:34
  looked like it was in my nana's house, right.
• 39:37
  And so as soon as I asked myself that question, just my whole
• 39:44
  being filled and it was like the only way I know how to explain
• 39:47
  it is that it's heavy. That's not actually heavy, it's
• 39:51
  just fulfilling. And and I fell to my knees and I
• 39:55
  had a mystical experience where the Jesus one kind of came out.
• 40:00
  He came out like a hologram and was literally right there in
• 40:03
  front of me. And I, he looked at me and he
• 40:08
  basically said, welcome, I'm glad you're here.
• 40:12
  I see you've met my friends. That's what he said.
• 40:16
  And and then he looked me dead in the eyes and just said, you
• 40:20
  know, you're you're sort, I'm the one you're looking for,
• 40:23
  you're searching for me, You're I'm the one you're looking for.
• 40:26
  And it just it everything, every part of my being was filled with
• 40:35
  truth is the only way I know how to describe it.
• 40:38
  And there was just no going back from that.
• 40:41
  It was like, Oh my gosh, it's and then he was gone and and I
• 40:45
  was like released from this heaviness.
• 40:48
  And and then the first thing I hear in my head is my Hispanic
• 40:54
  mother-in-law. I'm reminded of her like every
• 40:58
  time I drive in a car with her, in the history of our
• 41:00
  relationship, every time we drive past a Catholic Church,
• 41:03
  Yosika, Yosika, do the sign of the cross, do the sign of the
• 41:05
  cross. And I'm like, OK, I mean, it's
• 41:07
  my mother-in-law, so of course I'm going to do it.
• 41:10
  But, you know, a few times I would say, well, like, why?
• 41:13
  Why are we doing that? And she'd say because Jesus is
• 41:15
  in there. Jesus is in there.
• 41:18
  And that's what I heard. I heard my mother in law's voice
• 41:21
  in my head going, Jesus is in there.
• 41:25
  And that's when I thought. Well, this this whole next part
• 41:27
  is what I like to refer to as the reckoning because she came
• 41:31
  back to the house and now she like had the receipts.
• 41:34
  The Wrecking Ball or the reckoning?
• 41:36
  And she said, you Catholics say that you have Jesus.
• 41:40
  And she said, I just met him and I want to see him again.
• 41:45
  So let's go. Let's go to your mouse to.
• 41:46
  Be with him again. Right.
• 41:48
  And I mean, talk about, you know, first of all, like, she
• 41:52
  was like a wrecking crew in the house, like pulling all this
• 41:54
  stuff off the walls and so. Rocks and my crystal.
• 41:57
  And like, where is where is the crucifix?
• 41:59
  And you know, here I am this very just lazy, flaccid
• 42:04
  Catholic, right? It's like, just like the worst
• 42:06
  kind of guy, right? And I'm like watching her like a
• 42:09
  tornado whip through this house. What was on?
• 42:12
  What was on my heart was a crucifix.
• 42:14
  Yeah, she wanted a crucifix, the image that God put on me.
• 42:16
  Like put up the crucifix. The cross.
• 42:19
  It wasn't just, you know it. Wasn't just a cross, it was a
• 42:21
  crucifix. It was just crosses.
• 42:22
  I think we had, yeah. Wow, crosses.
• 42:24
  We had. I I was running around the house
• 42:27
  going I need to find a crucifix. And that means Jesus's body on
• 42:30
  the cross, not just the crosses on the cross.
• 42:32
  See Jesus on the Cross. Absolutely.
• 42:34
  And then we started going to Mass, and then she would
• 42:38
  incessantly barrage me with questions about the faith, which
• 42:42
  of course I couldn't answer. And so then the idea was, OK,
• 42:45
  now I have to answer her questions.
• 42:47
  Extremely competitive, you know this, Lila.
• 42:50
  And so I was just trying to figure everything out.
• 42:52
  And that's what God used to draw me back.
• 42:54
  So she's converting. I'm reverting at the same time.
• 42:57
  I'm sitting in Mass for the first time, actually paying
• 42:59
  attention. Mind you, I got married in a
• 43:01
  Catholic Church, not paying attention to anything in the
• 43:04
  building. And I'm sitting in mass and I'm
• 43:06
  like, I'm looking at the stained glass one.
• 43:08
  I'm like, there's somebody holding somebody's head in the
• 43:12
  actual stained glass and look at him.
• 43:15
  I was like, what? What is that?
• 43:17
  And then like why? Is there decapitated people on
• 43:19
  your windows? On your windows like what is
• 43:21
  that I mean. Very reasonable.
• 43:23
  Question reasonable. Question.
• 43:24
  And then it was like the guys in a dress.
• 43:27
  Why are they all in dresses? And why are the colors
• 43:29
  different? Every week the colors change.
• 43:31
  What is that about? And and they're in different
• 43:32
  colored dresses. And then the cookie, for me, I
• 43:36
  thought it was a cookie. So it was like, well, if you can
• 43:38
  have the cookie, why can't I have the cookie?
• 43:41
  Like what's the cookie? On that, the Eucharist, the.
• 43:42
  Eucharist. So it was like I, I just, I
• 43:45
  wanted to know everything because I was trying to meet
• 43:50
  Jesus again. And that powerful statement so
• 43:55
  many times said to me or a few times said to me by his mom is
• 43:59
  what God was using to to draw me into learning that truth.
• 44:05
  So yeah, and encounter him again.
• 44:09
  So this was your reversion process, Jess's road to Damascus
• 44:15
  drag dragging you down the road with her.
• 44:18
  And again, grace builds on nature because naturally I
• 44:21
  wasn't very inquisitive. I'm competitive.
• 44:23
  I want to. I can't say I don't know.
• 44:26
  Like God knows that. And so he's like, OK, so I'm
• 44:28
  going to make the woman who you lie down with every night in
• 44:31
  bed, I'm going to turn her into a incessant question and asking
• 44:36
  machine. And so because you're going to
• 44:38
  go and research everything, which is exactly what happened.
• 44:42
  Then I became just blown away by this Pearl of great price that
• 44:46
  is the faith. And I was like, I cannot believe
• 44:48
  it's been right in front of me the entire time.
• 44:50
  And I'd come home all excited to tell her about the answers to
• 44:52
  her question. She's like, oh, OK, cool, you
• 44:54
  know, but the whole time it's God talking to me.
• 44:57
  This is a really important dynamic that we often times
• 45:00
  forget in ministry is the principle of the two way St.
• 45:03
  Even when we're going out to help somebody, homelessness,
• 45:06
  whatever it may be, we have this sense of it's you doing
• 45:09
  something for another and it is and that's good.
• 45:12
  And God, you know, rejoices in that.
• 45:14
  But God is frugal. He wastes nothing.
• 45:17
  And so when you're interacting with somebody, helping the guy
• 45:19
  with the sign that needs a dollar, God is forming you in
• 45:23
  that exchange. He's he's not wasting that
• 45:26
  opportunity. And that's the part that I
• 45:28
  learned during that time. What did your mother think of
• 45:31
  all of this? The moment she came back and
• 45:34
  said like, oh, you know, the the whole side of the cross thing
• 45:37
  worked. Believe me, it's like her stock
• 45:38
  went up dramatically. My mom.
• 45:40
  Because I'm sure she was praying for you.
• 45:42
  Mom, look, the intercessors are some that I've never met her
• 45:45
  grandmother Nana that's been reference to pizza 100% major
• 45:49
  intercessor in all of this. There's no question about it.
• 45:51
  Well, and it, it's clearly that Jess, I mean, the story's so
• 45:55
  incredible because it's like Jess brought you back to Jesus,
• 45:58
  even though you were the 1 to kind of bring her to Jesus
• 46:01
  initially, right? You were the Catholic guy and
• 46:04
  she had the rough past and you get married and you're like the,
• 46:06
  the knight on shining armor kind of thing.
• 46:08
  But she was really ended up God used her to really bring you
• 46:12
  back to your faith in in the real way because you weren't
• 46:14
  even practicing it. I'm curious if your mom had any
• 46:18
  of her any comment on that when she saw that happening.
• 46:21
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• 48:01
  My mom and and my dad before he passed my my dad passed in 2015.
• 48:05
  Both of them also, I think went through a pretty dramatic
• 48:09
  spiritual evolution and relational evolution.
• 48:11
  Has our relationship changed? My brother throughout all of
• 48:15
  this, my, my blood brother, my biological brother, 2 years
• 48:17
  older, was going through the sermon period that led him from
• 48:21
  being a, you know, hippies and Buddhists living in Venice to
• 48:25
  being a Catholic priest who is a trained exorcist, right?
• 48:28
  So or trained in exorcism, I should say, is not the mandated
• 48:31
  exorcist and a monk, right? A monk and a priest in a
• 48:33
  Benedictine, like all of this stuff happening like
• 48:36
  simultaneously. We were ordained 2 weeks apart.
• 48:40
  Yeah, I mean, we, we live thousands of miles apart like at
• 48:43
  one point and. Did it start with Jess's?
• 48:46
  Yes, I mean all of it is related, so.
• 48:48
  Your whole family started a reversion experience, a
• 48:51
  conversion experience, and in many ways, it sounds like after
• 48:54
  Jess's, yeah, mystical experience.
• 48:57
  Yeah, and she's had all kinds of crazy, you know, Jesus mystical
• 49:00
  stuff where like even my brother's priesthood was
• 49:03
  something that she like, got a prop like a word, the prophetic
• 49:06
  word years before that happened. Like, I mean, so yeah, but I
• 49:11
  think. It's the sacrament.
• 49:13
  It's the sacrament, but it's but I think it's also, you know,
• 49:18
  sort of defying the odds or defying the rational and really
• 49:23
  trusting in God right. Again, the relationship
• 49:26
  irrational the things that happened to her radically wrong.
• 49:30
  Like there's no way to look at it, but you know, I guess me
• 49:35
  sort of crossing over and and, you know.
• 49:38
  Yeah, but, you know, and I even struggled with that.
• 49:40
  So, so I had this mythical experience.
• 49:43
  It takes me a few years to actually go, oh, I should be
• 49:45
  Catholic, you know, and I actually took a director of
• 49:49
  religious education in the parish group at to actually look
• 49:52
  at me and say, hey, why aren't you Catholic for me to.
• 49:55
  And then it was a great question.
• 49:56
  Nobody had ever asked me that before.
• 49:59
  And I realized my husband was Catholic.
• 50:01
  My kids are all Catholic. I'm the only person in our
• 50:04
  household who's not Catholic. And I didn't know anything.
• 50:08
  I didn't know anything about the Catholic Church, about the
• 50:10
  Catholic faith. I really didn't.
• 50:12
  And I did have the things that I've heard along the way in my
• 50:16
  life and beliefs that I thought I believed that the Catholic
• 50:19
  Church taught. And that kind of kept me and
• 50:22
  him, you know, away from it. Then I was like, you know what
• 50:26
  my, my sponsor said, do you love Jesus?
• 50:29
  I said, I love him so much. I just want to be close to him.
• 50:33
  And she was like, well, then he's this is, this is how you
• 50:37
  get close to him. You come into the church, that's
• 50:39
  all you need to come in. And so I was like, OK, then
• 50:42
  let's do it. And so that's how I actually
• 50:45
  became. It wasn't through a proper our
• 50:47
  CIA program or any like it's always been.
• 50:50
  An important principle, I know we have this in Scripture and
• 50:52
  otherwise about the sort of the way that God uses imperfect
• 50:57
  vessels and imperfect tools to transmit things.
• 51:00
  That is also a big part of our story.
• 51:02
  Even the woman that she just referenced who said, you know,
• 51:05
  she ended up teaching three to five year old kids in little
• 51:10
  church, it was called on during Sunday Mass.
• 51:12
  And the Dre, the director of religious education at the time
• 51:16
  said, I need you to teach these kids.
• 51:17
  And she said I'm not even Catholic.
• 51:19
  And the lady said, well, don't worry about it, you love Jesus,
• 51:22
  that a Catholic person who's well formed hears that and goes
• 51:24
  like, Oh my gosh, what are you doing?
• 51:25
  What are you talking about? Sending somebody who's not
• 51:28
  Catholic to go teach during these incredibly formative
• 51:31
  years? And.
• 51:31
  And yet God made good of that terrible advice in a way, right?
• 51:36
  But like, really baptized that. And so we have to.
• 51:39
  Yeah. No, I thought, well, if I, if
• 51:41
  I'm responsible for teaching Catholic kids about Jesus and
• 51:44
  then I need to learn what you're supposed to teach a Catholic kid
• 51:47
  about Jesus. And so I went on the Internet
• 51:50
  and was like, what do I teach these kids?
• 51:52
  So God uses that to teach me because.
• 51:55
  She was a child. Yeah, because I was a child.
• 51:58
  It's just crazy, all things nuts.
• 52:00
  So. So it sounds like there are lots
• 52:02
  of iterations. There are lots of steps on the
• 52:06
  path to the fullness of your relationship with God and what
• 52:11
  you're living now. What was it for you?
• 52:14
  Just, I know there's a lot that you wrestled with to find
• 52:16
  healing from everything you had gone through.
• 52:19
  You made a comment earlier about how you didn't want anything to
• 52:23
  do with this God if he basically allowed and allows the
• 52:27
  suffering, the evil to happen that does happen in this world.
• 52:32
  How did you deal with that and the pain of what you went
• 52:36
  through and how you were wronged as a little kid when you were
• 52:41
  rediscovering or discovering for the first time this new
• 52:44
  relationship with God? Yeah.
• 52:46
  And I started hearing for the first time, human dignity.
• 52:50
  Those two words I've never encountered before, ever in my
• 52:53
  whole life. And now that I was a Catholic, I
• 52:55
  was hearing human dignity here and human dignity here and the
• 52:58
  dignity of the human person here.
• 53:00
  And I was drawn into what that meant.
• 53:02
  And so I studied it, and I learned it.
• 53:04
  And I realized that's where I learned my identity from was the
• 53:10
  Catholic teaching of the dignity of the human person, where it's
• 53:12
  like I am made in the image of God.
• 53:14
  And then my husband would kind of back me up and kind of fill
• 53:18
  that in with, yeah, you're like a great idea of God, like.
• 53:21
  And then I would imagine I was like this little piece of God,
• 53:24
  right? And so all of those things
• 53:26
  helped me to learn who I who I am and to whom I belong and the
• 53:33
  perfectness of my identity in that.
• 53:37
  But then after a little while of living and resting and really
• 53:41
  loving being in that identity, I realized, well, I'm not any more
• 53:46
  special than the next person, right?
• 53:49
  And so. Including the people who.
• 53:51
  Had including the people. That's the part that really blew
• 53:53
  her away. It was like, wait a minute, if
• 53:55
  I've got this dignity of a human person and God sees me that way
• 53:59
  and I'm his child, then the people who did that to me too,
• 54:05
  like it was, yeah, that, that is true.
• 54:09
  But then now you got to live with that.
• 54:11
  They have to act on that, right? They have to pray that way.
• 54:15
  And then that's where. Well, I, I had, I needed to
• 54:17
  reconcile that. I needed to reconcile my past
• 54:21
  and the harm that had been done to me and the woundedness that I
• 54:24
  was carrying with that teaching, with that truth.
• 54:30
  And that was hard. I, I struggled a lot with it.
• 54:34
  I was in and I went to, we were at a homeschool conference one
• 54:37
  time and we were listening to somebody talk and they had a
• 54:40
  confession in the back wall just right there.
• 54:42
  And I was like, you know what, I'm going to go to confession
• 54:45
  because I struggled a lot with just the hatred that I still
• 54:49
  felt like, you know, like I literally imagined setting
• 54:53
  people on fire and like kicking them into their grave and
• 54:56
  spitting on them and then laughing, like my hatred was
• 55:01
  deep because my woundedness was so severe.
• 55:04
  And, and I carried that. And so I'm in confession and,
• 55:08
  and I share all of it. I share all of this hatred.
• 55:12
  I share everything that had happened that hurt me to this,
• 55:17
  to this priest. And he looked at me and he said,
• 55:21
  but do you love them? And I, I like, I was shocked.
• 55:27
  You didn't get smacked. Right, because I would have, but
• 55:31
  but I looked into his eyes and I literally saw Jesus.
• 55:34
  I saw Jesus asking me that question and I knew it was from
• 55:38
  Jesus. And I was like, and I knew that
• 55:40
  the answer was supposed to be yes, but that the truth was that
• 55:44
  I was at a no right now. And I said no Father, no, I
• 55:49
  don't. I felt sorry that I didn't, but
• 55:52
  he didn't stop. He looked at me after that and
• 55:54
  said, do you want to see them in heaven?
• 55:56
  And I'm just like, Oh my gosh, can this get any more deep and
• 56:01
  hard? Like, do I want to say I don't
• 56:04
  even love them? Why would I want them to be in
• 56:06
  heaven with me, you know? And so it was very powerful.
• 56:11
  And then I just I said, I said, Father, I don't know how to to
• 56:15
  do that. How do I do that?
• 56:18
  And he said, you pray. And of course, in my mind, my
• 56:22
  human right, you think as humans think I'm like, pray, come on,
• 56:26
  give me like some 5 Hail Marys, some rocks under the knees,
• 56:29
  kneeling. It's like something tangible
• 56:32
  that I can do to make me feel like I'm getting something
• 56:34
  accomplished. He's like, no, you pray every
• 56:37
  time you have a flashback, every time you desire harm to them,
• 56:41
  every time you think about, you know, you're triggered and
• 56:44
  you're and you're going back into your woundedness.
• 56:47
  You know, you pray for them. You pray for them, for God to
• 56:50
  forgive them, for them to be healed from their own
• 56:53
  woundedness, you know, and forgot to give you that love for
• 56:57
  them. And he did it.
• 56:58
  About three years later, I was in Mass, I received communion.
• 57:02
  I got on my knees and and I started praying for them because
• 57:06
  I made it a point to pray. For him, every time I was in
• 57:09
  Mass and I. Felt this interior of sorrow
• 57:13
  come over me where I wanted to cry and I just started crying.
• 57:18
  And it was because I was thinking about them as if
• 57:21
  something bad had happened to them or I was too late to
• 57:26
  forgive them and really love them.
• 57:30
  And it's like I just felt like it was too late, you know, Like
• 57:33
  these people aren't going to make it to happen because I was,
• 57:36
  you know, I was too stubborn. I held on to this too long.
• 57:39
  And that sorrow really overtook me.
• 57:41
  And that's how. And then I was elated because I
• 57:44
  realized what was happening in my heart.
• 57:47
  I was like, wait, Oh my gosh, you did it.
• 57:49
  Like this is love. Like I love them.
• 57:52
  This is perfect forgiveness and it's only achievable through
• 57:56
  Jesus Christ. And but I have to cooperate with
• 57:59
  him. I would, I have to say, OK, God
• 58:01
  take me there, which is what I did after that confession.
• 58:04
  And he did. And you know what, sometimes I
• 58:07
  admit I wake up in the morning and kind of check myself.
• 58:10
  Like, do I really still feel the same way?
• 58:12
  You know, and, and I do like deep, profound love for these
• 58:19
  people who gave me the worst moments of my life.
• 58:24
  And. Yeah, and.
• 58:26
  Then you understand difference between love and like right and
• 58:29
  doesn't because you love someone doesn't mean you need to have a
• 58:32
  relationship with that doesn't need you need to interact with
• 58:36
  them, seek them out necessarily, but love as in desiring their
• 58:40
  good for that for their own sake.
• 58:42
  That is what she, you know, got to.
• 58:45
  And also just the idea that God showed me and he like in a way
• 58:49
  he was, he was asking me questions like, well, who do you
• 58:52
  think is the most powerful among you to do this?
• 58:56
  Like if you think about it right, if I'm the one who was
• 58:59
  harmed, who here has the most power with God in a sense like.
• 59:05
  Who's the best intercessor? Who's the best?
• 59:06
  I never even thought about for that.
• 59:08
  Person. Of course it's me.
• 59:10
  It's the wounded. So you have the wounder and you
• 59:14
  have the wounded, and then God wants both of them to be
• 59:17
  reconciled to him, not just the wounded.
• 59:20
  Because really, truthfully, the wounder probably has wounded
• 59:24
  himself too and is categorized in the wounded as well.
• 59:29
  You know, I'm sure in my woundedness I wounded others.
• 59:32
  I know I have. So it's like it's that idea that
• 59:36
  the best person to help the wounder is a fully reconciled
• 59:42
  heart of forgiveness with God the wounded, right?
• 59:45
  And that's what I think makes God the happiest.
• 59:50
  I mean, thank you. That's just, I can imagine that
• 59:55
  people who have been through the worst things and hearing you say
• 59:58
  that you love you, love the people who hurt you.
• 1:00:01
  I think it does sort of defy reason.
• 1:00:04
  How can we have that kind of love?
• 1:00:06
  But you prayed for it. For how long did you pray for
• 1:00:09
  until you experience it in your heart like that?
• 1:00:10
  Yeah, it. Was about three years.
• 1:00:12
  So you were faithfully obeying this priest and praying for your
• 1:00:15
  abusers for three years without the feeling, the loving feeling.
• 1:00:19
  There was not love. There was still that extreme
• 1:00:23
  pain and hurt that you had felt, and hatred even.
• 1:00:25
  And then after three years of faithful praying, you felt free
• 1:00:30
  from the hatred, and you only felt love.
• 1:00:32
  Well, yeah. And I think what people, what's
• 1:00:34
  good for people to understand is that it doesn't take the the
• 1:00:38
  pain and the trauma away because that's a reality.
• 1:00:42
  Just like I can look back on my wedding day and remember the
• 1:00:44
  beauty of that day, right? Our memories, we go back, we
• 1:00:48
  remember the good and we remember the bad.
• 1:00:50
  So it doesn't remove it, it just bring it redeems it in a sense,
• 1:00:55
  right? It allows it to no longer have.
• 1:00:58
  In a contextual control. Of you.
• 1:01:01
  I always think about just scripturally, we talk about the
• 1:01:03
  Scripture all the time about, you know, Jesus when he heals
• 1:01:06
  the man born blind, that episode when he heals the man born
• 1:01:11
  blind, the disciples say, well, why was he born blind?
• 1:01:14
  Was it something that he did or some of his parents did?
• 1:01:17
  Like seems really unfair. And then Jesus says neither it
• 1:01:22
  was so that God's glory can be made manifest and which makes no
• 1:01:26
  sense until a second later when he heals the guy and you realize
• 1:01:29
  he wouldn't have healed them. There would have been a miracle
• 1:01:32
  had he not been blind, right? And so this like that's what I
• 1:01:37
  see a lot in my wife's story, right?
• 1:01:40
  It's like all of these things, but so that this greater glory
• 1:01:43
  may have been made manifest, which I see now in the countless
• 1:01:47
  women when she talks and she tells a story, like there's like
• 1:01:51
  queues of women and inevitably every time, and not just women,
• 1:01:54
  by the way, but mostly women, inevitably there's somebody who
• 1:01:56
  says, you know, that like, I've never told anybody, but this is
• 1:01:59
  what happened. And it's like, wow, maybe the
• 1:02:01
  entire thing was for, you know what I mean?
• 1:02:03
  Like that's how extravagant God is.
• 1:02:06
  Yeah. The the we're, we're you're
• 1:02:07
  bounded by that woundedness, you know, and, and when we share, it
• 1:02:13
  helps others to break that being bound up in that woundedness
• 1:02:17
  where. Yeah, I that's what I get all
• 1:02:20
  the time. I've never, they'll come in for
• 1:02:23
  a hug and in my ear. I've never told anybody this,
• 1:02:26
  but it happened to me. I was 7, you know and but
• 1:02:30
  they've spoken it. They're reclaiming their
• 1:02:33
  motherhood, too. That's another one from the
• 1:02:35
  abortion, reclaiming your motherhood.
• 1:02:38
  But I've seen women literally say that to her.
• 1:02:40
  It's like just today is the first time I said that's my
• 1:02:43
  child and I want to know them. And it's like, wow, you know?
• 1:02:49
  How did your marriage? How was your marriage changed
• 1:02:52
  after you had your conversion experience?
• 1:02:57
  It happened over time and then you're having your reversion
• 1:02:59
  experience. How did that impact your
• 1:03:01
  marriage? I think that what we're really
• 1:03:03
  coming into right now is, is a is a big new phase.
• 1:03:07
  When I think about what we're a new era, a new season, maybe
• 1:03:11
  thinking about it that way, and certainly started with
• 1:03:14
  conversion reversion, but now is kind of coming into a different
• 1:03:18
  stage that is really all about trying to understand what it
• 1:03:21
  means to have A1 flesh faith. What is what does it mean to be
• 1:03:26
  married and faithful at the same time?
• 1:03:29
  And, and you know, I know that not everybody who listens to
• 1:03:31
  your show may be Catholic, but from a Catholic standpoint,
• 1:03:34
  Sacramento theology indicates that, you know, all the
• 1:03:37
  sacraments, they signify that which they actually achieve.
• 1:03:43
  So the washing of baptism signifies purification, but
• 1:03:47
  actually achieves purification, right.
• 1:03:50
  Holy orders symbolizes setting a man apart actually achieves a
• 1:03:55
  configuration to Jesus Christ that's unique and the person is
• 1:03:58
  literally, you know, set apart. And so we've been thinking a lot
• 1:04:02
  and meditating a lot on the idea of what happens at matrimony.
• 1:04:06
  We get the symbol. The symbol is man and woman come
• 1:04:09
  together in a couple form a new union.
• 1:04:12
  But the Lord says in the Old Testament and the new that
• 1:04:15
  there's a one flesh that is created.
• 1:04:17
  What is that actually like really, what is that not the
• 1:04:21
  symbol, but what's the real thing, right?
• 1:04:24
  We know that the Eucharist symbolizes a meal of
• 1:04:26
  remembrance, but achieves an encounter with Jesus Christ for
• 1:04:30
  real. So if this symbolizes the one
• 1:04:32
  flesh, what is the one flesh for real?
• 1:04:34
  How does the one flesh worship? How does the one flesh minister?
• 1:04:38
  How does the one flesh pray? Like it's not me praying, it's
• 1:04:42
  not her praying, it's the one flesh praying.
• 1:04:45
  This is the new season we're in is trying to discover that.
• 1:04:49
  And that's what's happened like from conversion reversion in my
• 1:04:52
  mind. And we're still discovering it.
• 1:04:54
  It's not like we've got like, oh, it's all figured out.
• 1:04:57
  But that is a real area of development that I think is like
• 1:05:02
  continues to deepen every day and something that I think a lot
• 1:05:04
  of people who are married need to, you know, reflect on.
• 1:05:08
  I also think that it's what the world needs right now too, is
• 1:05:12
  just more people who are married, who can speak about
• 1:05:15
  marriage to help encourage, you know, this generation in
• 1:05:24
  marriage, right? I think the past few decades,
• 1:05:28
  maybe the past five decades have been kind of we don't need
• 1:05:32
  marriage, but it really is, you know, the so important just even
• 1:05:38
  at a societal level that if our marriage and we know that it has
• 1:05:44
  so far and thanks be to God can help another couple or another
• 1:05:49
  person find the person that they're searching for and then
• 1:05:55
  commit to that one flesh union, then, you know, that's that's
• 1:06:01
  what we're hoping for. And our own children, you know,
• 1:06:04
  our son just got married a few weeks ago, you know, and you
• 1:06:07
  know, our son just got married a few weeks ago.
• 1:06:09
  And him and his fiance have been dating for about four or five
• 1:06:13
  years. And when they announced that
• 1:06:15
  they were engaged, the world told him they were too young.
• 1:06:19
  And so they were so stressed by the constant comments and the
• 1:06:26
  end that just the messages they were getting from the world.
• 1:06:30
  And they would come and they would seek our counsel and be
• 1:06:32
  like, you know, well, we're not sure how to feel about this.
• 1:06:35
  And it's really hard because we're constantly hearing this.
• 1:06:37
  Are we really making the right decision?
• 1:06:39
  It's like, I know that young people want to have a one person
• 1:06:47
  lifelong relationship. It's in our nature to have that,
• 1:06:50
  I believe. And so we need more couples to
• 1:06:56
  be there for our young people to say no, no, no, it's OK, right.
• 1:07:00
  And to kind of help walk them through just marriage in
• 1:07:05
  general, you know, to yeah, this is what we've gone through.
• 1:07:10
  You know, these are the highs and lows.
• 1:07:11
  We've had lows in our marriage, lots of lows.
• 1:07:15
  I mean, I come from a family of divorce.
• 1:07:17
  So when we were first marriage, for the first first married, the
• 1:07:20
  first few years, every time we fought, I was ready to divorce
• 1:07:23
  him. You know, I was like, that's it.
• 1:07:25
  I'm leaving. And he's looking at me like
• 1:07:27
  what? Like you can't do that.
• 1:07:30
  And he literally grabbed me and pulled me to him one time and
• 1:07:34
  said, woman, we are one flesh. Don't you understand?
• 1:07:40
  If you leave, you RIP half of me off.
• 1:07:44
  And I was like, I had never heard anybody speak like that
• 1:07:49
  about marriage. I've only seen marriage used as
• 1:07:51
  an abuse. It seemed ridiculous to me, the
• 1:07:53
  idea of her leaving. I was like, you know, you know,
• 1:07:54
  there's going to be a moment where you're not mad anymore,
• 1:07:56
  right? Like we're going to.
• 1:07:57
  There are things it's just we're not getting.
• 1:07:59
  Not there's no unmarrying. Like it's just, again, the
• 1:08:03
  rules, right? It's the rules God makes.
• 1:08:07
  That's right. Yeah.
• 1:08:09
  And to give that encouragement to the young people is, is what
• 1:08:11
  I'm trying to say, you know, because we go off where we come
• 1:08:15
  from and the experience we've had, but we also, when you're
• 1:08:18
  younger, go off what the world is kind of telling you you need
• 1:08:22
  to do. And I just think that we need
• 1:08:24
  more married voices to speak and share on it.
• 1:08:30
  And about real things, too. Like real stuff.
• 1:08:32
  Not just like, beautiful things, but like the challenges and the
• 1:08:35
  realities, yeah. Intimacy.
• 1:08:37
  Sexual intimacy. Do you know how hard it is to be
• 1:08:39
  sexually intimate when you come from molestation and rape and
• 1:08:43
  abuse of your physical body as it are?
• 1:08:47
  We've been through so many, so many phases of ups and downs as
• 1:08:54
  far as sexual intimacy. At one point when I was going
• 1:08:56
  through my therapy, I stopped having sex, period.
• 1:09:00
  I told him I sat him down and I said I don't know what's going
• 1:09:03
  on, but I can't do this. This was not a good day.
• 1:09:07
  For me, no. And it was a very rough three
• 1:09:10
  months, yeah. What we're going to do is we've
• 1:09:14
  got to do this. Actually, now that we're talking
• 1:09:16
  about this, we have to do an episode where we do marriage
• 1:09:20
  advice with a married couple. Because I've been actually
• 1:09:23
  praying about wanting to do this on the show.
• 1:09:25
  And but I need to find the couple, right?
• 1:09:27
  It's so hard to know who the right couple is.
• 1:09:30
  And I'm inspired now. And if you guys are willing to
• 1:09:33
  do this again, because I think you're exactly right, I hear
• 1:09:37
  this all the time. Where are the guides for dealing
• 1:09:39
  with this messy stuff? And when is this struggle?
• 1:09:42
  We're having so much of A struggle that maybe we should be
• 1:09:44
  parting ways because maybe there's abuse, right?
• 1:09:47
  Or maybe there's some other serious issue, or maybe there's
• 1:09:49
  an addiction here. And there's so much confusion
• 1:09:52
  even among good Christian relationships about what is the
• 1:09:56
  right path and how to show up in the relationship.
• 1:09:59
  So will you guys do that for us? Yes.
• 1:10:01
  Absolutely. Not too far away from the
• 1:10:03
  studio. Happy to amazing Jess, where can
• 1:10:07
  people find your book? And then, Deacon, where can
• 1:10:09
  people find you and your work? Yeah, I'm my book is on Amazon,
• 1:10:12
  Dazzled, Finding the Key to Perfect Forgiveness.
• 1:10:17
  And they can find it on my website as well.
• 1:10:20
  Momaltics MOMMALET. ics.com, momaltics.com.
• 1:10:26
  Yeah, and for me it's real easy. It's just Deacon charlie.com and
• 1:10:30
  you can find out about my ministry, you can find out about
• 1:10:32
  my show. I do a show every week called
• 1:10:33
  Living the Call, which is fun, but yeah, everything's there.
• 1:10:36
  Deacon charlie.com. Thank you so much for your
• 1:10:38
  ministry. You guys are the best.
• 1:10:40
  Thank you for a gift to the church and so many people thank
• 1:10:43
  you It's. A privilege to be our Lila.
• 1:10:44
  Thank you very much and God bless your audience too.
• 1:10:47
  Thank you, a huge thank you to our partner.
• 1:10:50
  EWTNEWTN is the world's leading Catholic network, reaching
• 1:10:55
  millions with the truth about the faith, entertainment and
• 1:10:57
  news. Check them out at ewtn.com.