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Marie who is 35 years old, and from a town in Pennsylvania, USA, was devastated when her husband revealed to her that he was homosexual and that he would be leaving her and their three-year-old daughter and one-year-old son. Three years later, in her local Catholic church, she noticed a leaflet about the Alpha course. This is what happened...
I come from an Italian-Spanish home on Long Island and was brought up Catholic, although we didn’t go to church regularly. It was a great place to grow up. My mother was from Puerto Rico, my dad was from Italy and I have two brothers – one older and one younger. There was a big mix of people around us, including a lot of Jewish people, but I never heard of people who had real faith or knew God. I went to Cornell University and got a marketing degree, after which I went on to become a product manager with Kraft general foods. I had a boyfriend called Jim in college and we married in 1989, when I was 24 and he was 26. Everybody just thought that we were a great, great couple and our wedding was a very happy occasion. He was also a Catholic and we married in a Catholic Church in New York. It was a ‘league of all nations’ because his family was Irish and Lebanese and mine was Spanish and Italian. We married in church because that was what you were supposed to do. Girls grow up with the dream of a wedding in a church and that’s what we had. Jim also worked in marketing and to start with we lived in New York. Then we decided we wanted a better life and moved down to Pennsylvania. Our first child, was born in 1993 and then, a year and a half later, we had a boy called JP. I quit my job to stay home and be a full time mom. Jim was doing well and we didn’t mind losing the one salary because we just wanted to live on less and have the quality of life. We just kept making it our goal to have a good family life. We didn’t have any particular faith in God, but we baptized the children. After that, we went to the local church occasionally, but never on a regular basis and it gradually tailed off. But as the months passed, life started to feel a little harder and I started to feel like I was missing something. And I began to sense that Jim was feeling that way too. I didn’t know what it was, but I started feeling some anger and resentment towards Jim. We did a bit of counseling and talked – but we couldn’t determine what the problem was. Finally, on August 22 1996, I just sat him down and said something like, "Now what’s really going on here? He said, "I want to tell you but I’m not really sure and I don’t know if I will be able to take it back." And at that moment a thought just came to me. I suddenly said, "You are a homosexual, aren’t you?" And he said, "Yes." We loved each other so much that at that moment we embraced and held each other. Then I said, "I love you so much I’m going to let you go. I don’t want you to live a lie." Suddenly my whole life, which was built around my husband, our two children and our home, was revealed to be a glass house, which shattered and collapsed. I just experienced this pain of, "Now my husband’s leaving me." I wanted him to be happy and while my heart was just ripped apart, I also loved him. He had never told anyone before me – he wasn’t even really sure in his own mind. So it became a secret between us for a while. I couldn’t even tell my family. In the end, I said, "Can I go tell a priest?" And he said, "Yes, I’ll let you tell a priest." So I went along to our big Catholic Church – which I certainly did not perceive to be a warm, friendly cozy kind of place – and, with hysterical crying, I told this priest. In the end, he said, "We need to pray for your husband." And I said, "No, no, you don’t understand. We’re getting divorced. I love him and I’m letting him go. I’m here for me. What should I do? I don’t feel like this is my thing. I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know anything about God." He was a new priest and he just said, "No you don’t understand. We need to pray for your husband." He said something about him being ‘healed’. I said, "You’re nuts. I’m out of here. You obviously can’t help me." I left and swore I would never go back. Jim moved out on September 15, 1996. He found an apartment near our home in Yardley. The children were aged three and one. Before he moved out, I invited his mom and dad and other members of his family to the house and told them what had happened. Jim wasn’t there. It seemed he didn’t have the courage to be there. We all just sat and cried after I had told them the news. We agreed to love and support Jim throughout all this. I told my own parents on another occasion. After Jim had moved out, I just said to myself, "Well, I’m not going to church on Sunday mornings, but I need to go somewhere, so instead I will go to the gym and work out. I had always had a problem with being over-weight and over-eating and had a history of always dieting, then eating, then dieting. My weight used to go up and down about 40 pounds a year. Over the years, it had ranged from 120lbs to 220lbs. In 1993, I had lost 90lbs through healthy lifestyle changes – lowfat food and exercise. I had even started a little business helping women with dieting through exercise at home in a positive, nurturing loving way. Instead of going to the gym and being harsh to your body, I tried to do it in a different way. So I went to the gym and trained to be an instructor. Jim had several boyfriends until meeting the man he lives with now, in 1998. They live just 10 minutes from us and we see a lot of them. In the meantime, I had relationships of my own. I used to go to parties and meet people but they never lasted more than a couple of months. Then, on July 6, 1999, I said to myself, ‘I just can’t do this any more. I had time alone because Jim had taken the children away for a week and I was alone and depressed. I went along to a local bar at ‘Happy Hour’ and started hanging around people who were drinking and smoking. I had never smoked before, but I started smoking that week. At the end of the week, I was sitting alone on my back deck in a lounge chair with a case of beer and a pack of cigarettes, smoking and drinking. And all of a sudden I looked around me and it was all beautiful. The sun was out and the trees were beautiful. I didn’t feel like I really knew God, but I said a kind of prayer. I just said, "You know, God, it’s so beautiful what you have created. How can it be so beautiful out there and so horrible in here?" I said, "Is this how it’s all going to end? Is this is it? Is this all there is?" And then, I had this feeling which just said, ‘No.’ So I got up and threw all the beer and cigarettes away. I trashed them all in my garbage can got up and went to sleep. I woke up early the next morning and I thought, ‘Go to church.’ For around three years, I had been bad-mouthing that priest who I had spoken to in 1996 and had looked around at different types of churches. But this time I went back to that big cold Catholic Church. I went along to the 7am Mass and I started listening to the words. I had never owned a Bible or said a prayer from my heart in my whole life. But the words I heard from the Bible that day sounded like hope. I thought, ‘Ooh, I want some of that.’ During the prayer time, I just kept saying, "Just help me. Lead me. Guide me. I can’t do this any more.’ And then I felt better. After that, I went back to the 7am mass the next day – and again the day after that. After a while, I began to say to myself, ‘I think that I love Jesus but I don’t know.’ Soon afterwards, in September 1999, I was in the church one Sunday morning and saw a notice about something called the Alpha course. It said, ‘An opportunity to learn: Who is Jesus? Why did he die? How do I pray? How do I read the Bible?’ I got so excited. I thought, ‘I’m singing love songs to him and I don’t even know who he is. Now I have a chance to find out." It turned out to be the first time the church had run the course. I managed to get a baby sitter for the Thursday night and went along. I didn’t know what to expect but I rather feared it would be a collection of rather eccentric people talking about things I couldn’t understand. I walked in not knowing anyone and within a few minutes I saw two women I knew, Sue and Betty, both of whom used to come to my exercise, class. It was held in someone’s home and there were about 40 people there. The home was so beautiful and we had this wonderful dinner and the people were very nice and friendly. I said, "This is living - and this is free!" I mean I would have paid hundreds of dollars for a self help programme and this was free. We watched the first video and I loved the way it was so normal and easy to understand. After that first night, I looked forward to each Thursday night. I bought a Bible and had to force myself not to talk all the time in the group because there was so much I wanted to know. I loved the videos. I could relate to everything Nicky said and I loved his sense of humor. Our priest was the leader and he didn’t talk. He just let us talk, which was great. I was very excited about the Holy Spirit weekend and from the second I got there I started crying. I thought, "Wait a minute, something must be wrong here. I can’t stop crying." I didn’t know anything about the Holy Spirit and I was a bit confused. When they prayed the prayer inviting the Holy Spirit to come, I immediately started having memories of childhood abuse. It was something, which always haunted me, in the back of my mind, but I never let it out. I also felt again all the pain I had gone through at the end of my marriage. Some people started to pray for me and, as they did so, I had a vision of Jesus taking a sword out of my heart. Then I just started to cry again. It was wonderful and, as we prayed, Jesus kept leading me through the different areas of healing that needed to take place. Throughout Alpha, I felt myself giving my life to God. After it was finished, I went to a ‘Life in the Spirit’ program and a conference on the Holy Spirit where I received the gift of tongues. I felt myself just running after God. At that time, I had about 30 women coming to my exercise classes every day at 9.30 in the morning – and again two evenings a week and sometimes at weekends. I rented a studio in town and it was quite a business, but as time went on I felt I didn’t really want to do it any more. I decided to start playing Christian music during the sessions instead of the other kinds of music I used to play. The first time I started playing the Christian music, one of the women, Lee, came up to me afterwards and said, "You look happier. You look like you have peace." I told her about Alpha and about Jesus and about church. As we talked, I told her about my decision to live the single life without constantly looking for a relationship. And she said, "You can’t be the same person. You’re always partying till five in the morning." I said, "I know. But I’ve found something new. I’m alone, and I’m happy.’ And so she went to Alpha, where she was powerfully touched by the Holy Spirit during the weekend and became a Christian. My mother has also started going to church again. I have now turned my dining room and living room into a studio and I am continuing to run my aerobics class from home. I put all my trust in the Lord and I’ve given my life 100 per cent to him. My children are now in a Catholic school and Jesus has brought so much hope and peace and love in our life. Until recently, I think deep down I really thought Jesus was just a story – a fairy tale to tell people about God. Now Jesus is my best friend and I wake up in the morning and say, "Good morning Jesus. How are you?" I read the Bible every day and pray non-stop as if Jesus was sitting here with me. And he is. I know he is. All day long I say, "I give you my day. Where do you want me to go today?". I’m still friends with Jim and see him often. We’re still close and get together with the children as a family. I’ve changed so much that I think I would be such a better wife today than I was before. The one thing I love about Alpha is that it’s like a net. Everyone’s searching for a sense of community and Alpha gives us one that is rooted in faith. When we had our children baptized, we went into church and I felt the only thing the church could provide was a committee. It was, like, ‘Join the choir’, ‘Join this’, and 'Join that’. But it was not rooted in faith and this program is just about getting to know Jesus. Alpha is where you can get the information that you need to open yourself up to Jesus and let him change your heart in a loving, peaceful way. There have always been people who loved me as I have gone through these painful years of my life – but they were broken and hurt too. Now my life is so different because I have Jesus to help me. If you still have questions or need more information, please contact ChristLife, the North American headquarters for Alpha for Catholics. Learn more about the Alpha course!
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