Hello All Saints family! It has been a pleasure to begin to know some of you over the past week since I officially started! I gave a short version of my story a couple of bulletins ago, but Fr. Michael wanted me to write another article sharing my testimony in a bit more depth. I’m grateful for the opportunity, because there’s much more to the story than I’ve previously been able to share. This is the extended edition. The Lord saved my life when I was 21.
I was born on February 19, 1998 in Atlanta, Georgia. I was raised in a good, loving family, although I had no religious upbringing. The only times I went to church at all as a kid were a couple occasions with my grandmother on Christmas and Easter. However, I did have a sort of weekend ritual. From the time I was five to the time I went off to college, I would spend every Saturday at my grandfather’s house doing yardwork with him. These were some of the most formative times of my life. He told me many wise things, but one of the things he said most often was “this too shall pass.” That was a phrase that I associated with my grandfather above anybody else.
By the time I got to high school, I considered myself a philosophical atheist. I thought the idea of God was an outdated, unnecessary hypothesis, and I was dogmatically against the idea of dogma. However, the first crack in my armor came in 2014, when I visited Rome as a sophomore with my school’s marching band. Walking through the Vatican museums, I was awestruck left and right, but it was Saint Peter’s Basilica that undid me. It was so beautiful and otherworldly that it redefined my categories of what is good, true, and beautiful. It would take many more years for me to convert, but I believe the first true seed of the gospel was planted in my heart at Saint Peter’s.
When I was a junior in college, my life radically changed. My grandfather, who I had spent all those weekends with, died from cancer. Shortly thereafter, within the same week, my parents separated, my car broke down, my girlfriend dumped me, and my “friends” ignored me in my grief. I felt completely alone. So I prayed. That week I, thankfully for the only time, considered taking my own life — but it was also the first time I cried out to God from the depths of my heart and meant it. I asked, “God, if you’re there, I need you to show me in a way that I will clearly understand. Because if you aren’t there, I don’t know that I’ll be able to go on.”
The next day, my girlfriend and I reconciled. She was a Christian and gave me a book by Max Lucado called You’ll Get Through This to help me in my grief. As I read it over the next couple of days, I prayed, “God, if you’re there, now is the time to show me.” As I was about to put the book down one day, my eye caught the words “These days are a vapor, a passing breeze. This will eventually pass,” on page 35. Immediately I thought of my grandfather. I went to make lunch and put on a YouTube video for background noise, and its last sentence was “this too shall pass.” I thought that was an odd coincidence, but then I received a text from my girlfriend: “Hey, I felt like I needed to tell you that this too shall pass.”
I knew something else was going on. I ran to my room, got on my knees, and prayed, pouring out all the anguish of my heart and my anger at God for letting me experience it. But I acknowledged that I believed God was real and that Jesus was His Son, though I far from knew the implications of that. The Lord confirmed it directly: as soon as I said the words “Jesus Christ is the Son of God,” a supernatural wave of warmth and otherworldly peace washed over me from head to foot, almost like a vat of warm honey being poured over my head. I knew my life would never be the same.
I was baptized shortly thereafter, on May 15th, 2019, into the first church that would baptize me — the Methodist Church down the street. After a year of almost obsessive research and prayer, though, the Holy Spirit led me into Christ’s Catholic Church. I was attracted by its beauty and tradition, but ultimately I was convinced that Jesus founded the Catholic Church and gave Peter a special authority to govern it, still exercised by the Popes today. I was received into full communion on May 30th, 2020, a little over a year after I was baptized.
God has been extremely gracious to me in letting me be a part of your family this coming year. I cannot wait to hear what He has been doing in all of your lives. He is the Author of Life, and He is writing a beautiful story for each of us. I am looking forward to hearing yours!
To Jesus Through Mary,
Jack Skeean