Conversion, Chapter 3: From The Pit

3.

Buoyed from surviving my weekend solo backpacking trip in Lackawanna County, I decided to set loftier goals and hike the Appalachian Trail from Maryland to New Hampshire after graduation. I recruited a friend to come with me for two weeks across PA, after which time I would continue on solo. 

It was a great adventure, but when the time came for my friend to leave after two weeks on the trail with me, I was right back to the same isolation and loneliness that I had experienced before. One night, homesick and crying quietly in an Adirondack-style shelter where I was spending the night, I took about a small bible that a friend's mom had given me before I left. I had never really read the Bible before, but I turned to the Psalms and read:

"I waited patiently for the LORD;

And He inclined to me and heard my cry.

He brought me up out of the pit of destruction,

out of the miry clay,

And He set my feet upon a rock

making my footsteps firm." 

(Ps 40:1-2)

It was comforting to read, that the Lord would "hear my cry" and care for me, care about me and what happened to me. I didn't have much in my pack, as I was traveling light, but that little bible meant a lot to have with me.

I never made it the whole way to New Hampshire, bowing out in New York state, and spent the rest of the summer before my freshman year of college at home, embarrassed to admit to my friends that I hadn't finished what I had set out to accomplish. The friend who had hiked with me for two weeks was Catholic, he came from a family of 7 and I knew his mother was a devout person. I imagine she was praying for us on the hike, and maybe some of those prayers were for me specifically.

During this time, I was like the Ethiopian eunuch in the Book of Acts who replies to Phillip when asked if he understands what he was reading, "How can I, unless someone explains it to me?" I didn't know any people who were Christians besides my best friend Andy who I could talk to and ask questions. It wasn't until I got to Penn State that I would go to my first Mass and take the first steps to becoming Catholic.

[cont]