After a heart-wrenching encounter with a priest, devout Catholic Paul Lambert fell into a deep depression of sin, alcoholism, and godlessness. After incarceration and much suffering, he discovered the wound he had kept from the Lord and made his way into full communion with the Church of his youth.
Steven Lawson, son of Catholic parents, grew up in Buffalo, NY. A regular attender of weekly mass and youth group events, Steven began to have questions about his faith. His
http://www.drawntolifeministries.com Leighton Drake grew up, first in Oklahoma, then Phoenix after age nine, in a family with very little Christian engagement. His mother’s quiet faith was overshadowed by his father’s
Caroline Burt was born in England into an atheist family and, later in life, delved deep into the New Age Movement. One day, she was unexpectedly drawn into a Catholic church as she was passing by and her life has never been the same.
Frank Cronin spent his life through his first year in college in Catholic educational institutions, though, for the most part, it was a cultural rather than spiritual endeavor. Working and
Kelly Nieto grew up in a home where God and religion had no place. As a result, for the first 35 years of her life, Kelly battled with an emptiness
Even as a sophomore I knew that I wanted to attend Notre Dame. Its Catholic identity wasn’t really a factor at all; its academic reputation, quality of student life (as reported by Princeton Review), and the memories of my first visit there drove my decision. I didn’t know what to make of Catholicism at all. One of the essays on the Notre Dame application dealt with a “spiritual topic” of our choosing. I chose to write about my impressions of Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.
Trevor Lipscombe was born in London and lived in England through his scholastic studies at Oxford University where he received his doctorate in theoretical physics. His parents’ divorce and his
Kenneth Cramer, grandson to Italian immigrants, grew up in Chicago. Though nominally Catholic, there was not much offered as foundation in the faith. In fact, an abusive father directly attributed
I started out defending my faith, but gradually I felt I had nothing to fall back on. I knew what I had been taught, but when challenged, I could only refer vaguely to the Bible… When I would mention the Bible, my best friend would say, “I gave up believing in fairy tales when I was a child.” Those words struck me hard in my youth.
I was born in the ghettoes of Chicago’s South Side in 1961. My first memories are of dilapidated apartments, window frames without windows, trash strewn on the streets, urine-soaked alleys, and a neglected-derived independence. As a three-, four-, and five-year-old, I remember many times coming and going from the apartment my mother, siblings and I shared while my mother, an active alcoholic at that time, had friends over from morning till night — days filled with card games, cigarette smoke and all the beer and vodka they could want. When I was about seven years old, my father, whom I had only met once, came to the apartment announcing that my six siblings and I were going with him. It was the last time I would see my mother for years. Much later, my father told us my mother told him she was moving and leaving us at the apartment, and warned him that if he didn’t come get us, we would be abandoned.
Kevin O’Brien returns to the Journey Home program but in a rather different capacity – as himself. As an actor, he has portrayed various Christian personalities as a guest. But