As a young adult, I was more drawn to the Liturgy of the Word than the Liturgy of the Eucharist. I am a thinker. You can think about and analyze Scripture. 

But when I thought about the real presence, I’d hit a wall and had to make a leap of faith. I wanted to understand what I believed. It took me a woeful amount of time to learn that faith deepens with surrender, not with intellectual assent. Like with most mere humans, it took me a great deal of suffering to find the necessary openness. 

Although the grief was heavy when our son Charlie was stillborn, I was also ever grateful to have three healthy children, a loyal husband, and a supportive faith community. But one day, I woke up absolutely bewildered. Without any chain of doubts, I suddenly felt like I could not believe in God ever again. Everything seemed both vibrant and hideous, and I thought I was seeing the truth for the first time. I was horrified that I could look at my children and know that I was responsible for them but not care about them. When my OBGYN told me that what I was experiencing was not grief but depression, I was relieved. At least this depravity had a name. 

I had a pastor who had lost a brother to suicide. Although I am heartbroken by what he went through, I am grateful that because of his experience, he didn’t give me sentimental platitudes. I was lost, but despite my doubts in God, he told me, “When you don’t know what to do, keep returning to the sacraments.” I was afraid of insulting God (the one that I didn’t think that I could believe in) by receiving the Eucharist while I was unworthy, but I would throw myself upon the words of the centurion: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

I recovered from depression and rediscovered joy, and so I thought I could not be duped by it again. I would know that the hopelessness wasn’t real. But duped again I was. During my second episode, the Tantum Ergo was a lifeline. I couldn’t believe that such beauty of words and music could be a lie: 

Down in adoration falling, 
Lo! the sacred Host we hail; 
Lo! o'er ancient forms departing, 
newer rites of grace prevail; 
faith for all defects supplying, 
where the feeble senses fail. 

And then there was the third episode. In my depressive weakness, Satan convinced me that I had somehow unknowingly committed the unforgivable sin: “Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven” (Matthew 12:31). I didn’t know what that meant, and I didn’t ask because I knew I must have done it. I lived each day in fear and anguish and a hollow vacuum in my chest. Even after a stay in the hospital, I thought that I didn’t really exist anymore. So I told my husband that all I could do was to pretend to be myself – pretend to be Denise. He said that he still hoped that I really was Denise. Because he hoped, I looked online for the earliest confession in the area. This was my last-ditch effort. Again, I was blessed. I told the priest that I could never return to the Eucharist. I was beyond hope. He did not try to reason with me; he took charge. He stood up, placed his hands on my head, and prayed for me. He must have rebuked Satan because although I wasn’t immediately healed from depression, I was given enough of a pause from the obsessive and misguided thoughts to get a foothold. He also told me that I must return to the Eucharist. I stayed for Mass and received the Body and Blood of Christ in awe and thanksgiving, in fear and trembling. I came to these two sacraments in despair, but I left them with hope.