The Road to Texas That Led Me to the Eucharist

In 2024, my oldest son left for college in Texas. We drove him there as a family, with miles of open road stretching through the heart of summer. The sky was so wide it felt as though God could speak through it if He wished.

While driving, I put on a podcast by Scott Hahn as part of my ongoing research into the Roman Catholic side of Christianity. He, too, had once been a Protestant, and he spoke with a calm conviction that caught my attention. At some point during the trip, he mentioned a book: The Jewish Roots of the Eucharist by Brant Pitre. The words “Jewish roots” stirred my curiosity. I downloaded the Audible version immediately and pressed play.

By the time we reached our destination, my understanding of myself and my faith had been turned upside down.

I was in mental and spiritual chaos. I felt betrayed by my upbringing and by every reformer I had once defended. I would have died on the hill of what I once believed to be truth. Now I felt as though remaining on that hill was no longer the right place. In fact, I feared I might lose something essential if I refused to come down from it.

That book changed everything. It was not anything new. The facts had been in plain sight. I was just missing pieces to understand the full picture of what Christ was doing at the Last Supper.

All my life I had been taught that the Lord’s Supper was symbolic - a simple act of remembrance observed once or twice a year. It was not necessary, just bread and grape juice. I could give a wonderful explanation as to why it was only symbolic. But as I listened to this scholarly book, I heard something deeper: that from the earliest days of the Church, believers had understood the Eucharist as the true Body and Blood of Christ. This was a fact I had never entertained.

This was not a metaphor or a suggestion. It was a mystery.

It was a commandment and a covenant.

Transubstantiation was not a lie.

It was truth.

I had been on the wrong side of the argument.

When I pulled into the parking lot of the dorms, I sat in the car with my insides trembling. The sun was setting, and the air felt heavy, as if creation itself had tilted. I was so disturbed by this revelation that on the way home I listened to the entire book again, just to be sure I had heard correctly.

The truth was too clear to misunderstand. I could not refute any of it.

I felt betrayed, undone, angry, and amazed all at once. Everything I had been taught about communion seemed incomplete. I could see now that I had been living in the shadows of a fuller story.

In the months before that drive, I had already begun testing the idea of intercession. I had prayed to Saint Francis, shyly and awkwardly, asking him to pray for me to understand communion. I asked him to intercede on my behalf for clarity. At the time, I had not even considered the idea of transubstantiation.

But the following Sunday at church, communion was scheduled - something I did not know in advance. The timing startled me. It felt like an answer.

I believed then that Saint Francis had interceded - not to prove anything, but to guide me toward truth.

Communion was not only meaningful. It was commanded.

It was only later, when the dust of that summer began to settle, that I remembered the dream that had shaken me just a few months before the drive to Texas.

Weeks before the trip, I had a dream. In it, an old man sat high in a tree. His hair was white like winter branches, and his hand reached down toward me. I could not see his face clearly - it was blurred. He said only one thing:

“Don’t leave me.”

As I reached up to take his hand, I woke in a panic, gasping for air. My heart racing with the shock.

I knew it was God. I still believe it was God. If it was not God Himself, it was a divine presence sent by Him.

At the time, I thought the dream meant I should not leave my teaching position at the Christian school where I worked. I had been praying for clarity. I stayed for a while longer because of that dream, and when I eventually left, I felt guilty - as if I had disobeyed a direct command. My coworkers probably thought I was a little unbalanced when I tried to explain it. But now, looking back, I question my interpretation.

That dream was not about a job.

It was about faith.

I was wrestling with choices and history. The man in the tree, I believe, was God was reaching and pleading with me not to cut myself off from the living story He was revealing.

I think of Zacchaeus in the tree, longing to see Christ.
I think of the Cross - the Tree of Life.
I think of the saints watching from branches we cannot yet climb.

The dream and the drive were part of the same story: a hand reaching down, a word spoken across time, the saints interceding, and God gathering every fragment of my understanding into something whole.

I thought I was gathering facts.

But all along, I was the one being gathered.

After the drive to Texas, and after listening to The Jewish Roots of the Eucharist twice, I let the matter rest. I stopped studying. I needed time for my heart to catch up with my mind. I grieved the years I believed had been spent in misunderstanding. I did not know how to process it.

Nine months passed.

I did not read, research, or argue. I simply lived with what I had heard, letting it settle like seed in the soil. I wrestled quietly with the truth God had placed before me.

What do you do with the truth?

What do you do when the truth you were taught to reject begins to feel undeniable?

Nearly a year later, I picked up the book again. This time I was ready.

Instead of listening to it, I read it slowly and carefully. I highlighted passages. I wrote notes in the margins. I chased every Scripture reference and every historical citation. I wanted to confirm, or refute, what I had learned on that highway.

But I could not refute it.

The truth had taken root.

The evidence was everywhere: in the Bible I loved, in the Church Fathers I had begun reading, and in the very structure of Christian worship from the beginning.

This was why I had always sensed Catholic echoes within Protestant communities. This time, the truth did not just surprise me - it anchored me.

I realized I could no longer run from it.

If transubstantiation was true, and I now believed it was, then the entire foundation of the Church rested upon it. Jesus Himself had established it. The Mass was not an invention. It was the fulfillment of the Passover, the Bread of the Presence, the Manna from heaven.

Only priests had been given the authority to consecrate it - to make present what Jesus had promised.

The realization overwhelmed me.

Jesus Himself was the manna from heaven, the true Bread of the Presence. The Eucharist was not a symbol I had misunderstood.

It was a mystery I had been missing.

In that moment, I began to see the Protestant Reformation differently. If the early reformers, and their followers, had truly understood this history, the Reformation might never have taken place outside the Church. They might have realized how necessary it was to pursue reform from within, joining those already working to correct corruption.

The division that had shaped my whole life might have looked very different. I sat there with the book in my lap, pages marked and highlighted. Quietly, I whispered to myself:

“I have been a fool for so long.”

Yet even in that shame, I felt an unexpected peace. The truth was no longer something I was chasing.

It had found me.

A few months later, I made my decision silently. I did not announce it. I simply knew. The truth had settled, and I could no longer pretend I had not seen it.

One evening over dinner, I finally told my husband.

“I am going to join the Catholic Church,” I said, the words feeling heavier than I had imagined.

I had rehearsed every possible argument and every defense. I expected resistance. He had always been as wary of Catholicism as I once was. He looked at me for a long moment and set down his fork. To my surprise, he was not angry. He did not argue. Instead, he said quietly that he, too, had been feeling restless and uneasy about what he saw in the modern church. He was troubled by how closely it had begun to mirror the world it was meant to redeem.

“I understand,” he said.

I asked him to read The Jewish Roots of the Eucharist. My intention was not to persuade him, but to help him understand why I felt compelled to take such a drastic step.

“You don’t have to agree,” I told him. “Just read it, and you’ll see what I see. Once you understand the history, everything else begins to make sense - Mary, the saints, the Pope. It all fits together once you see the foundation.”

He promised to be open. To listen.

He did.

When he finished the book, he came to me with the same expression I must have worn months earlier - a quiet mixture of shock and recognition. Being the quiet man he is, he did not show the same fiery intensity I had.

“I can’t refute it either,” he said.

From that moment forward, we began the journey together. What had started as my private wrestling became our shared conversion - not a leap into something foreign, but a homecoming we had both longed for without realizing it.

My first Mass was the first time I truly felt at home. From the opening procession to the final blessing, something deep within me knew I had arrived. My soul, restless for so many years, finally settled. The fullness I had chased through books, sermons, and centuries was suddenly here - tangible and complete.

When the line formed for communion, I did not hesitate. I could not yet receive the Eucharist, but I walked forward anyway, crossing my arms for a blessing. When the priest lifted his hand over me, I felt a heaviness leave my chest. It was as if something I had carried for years quietly fell away. I felt dizzy, unsure whether it was relief or joy, but I knew something holy had happened; I felt lighter.

The same sunlight that had streamed through revival tents in my childhood now filtered through the glass, wrapping the sanctuary in warmth.

I had never cried during communion before. Not once had I ever felt emotional during communion.

But that day, I wept.

Even though I could not yet partake, I wept. This was the fullness and joy of Christ- being home.

It felt as though all the years between had folded into one sacred moment.

In that moment, I understood why God had brought me to Montana.

In His mercy, He would not allow me to fall into the pit I feared. I was not a spider dangling in His hand.

Instead, He reached down, lifted me up, and placed me where I could find Him.

He had told me to seek Him, and that I would find Him.

And I did.

If I had never left Appalachia, if I had not wandered so far from what was familiar, I might never have begun this journey. It took the wide skies and quiet spaces of this place to make room for the questions that would lead me home.

The search was over.

I am restless no more.

To be continued...