Through the Valley | A Protestant Pastor's Journey to the Catholic Faith

In the second part of this three-part series, Bishop Donald Hying continues his conversation with Tristan Borland, a former Protestant pastor and now the Diocese of Madison's Associate Director of Marriage and Family Ministry, as his journey toward the Catholic faith turns to a difficult chapter. Tristan speaks openly about profound personal suffering in the years before his conversion, including the loss of his daughter, and the pain, fear, and hesitation that came with the prospect of becoming Catholic. He shares honestly about a season of existential crisis, his conversations with a priest, and the events that led him to resign from the pastorate and take a genuine leap of faith.

Transcript

Bishop Donald J. Hying 0:00

Welcome to Things Visible and Invisible, a podcast that discusses life, faith, current events, culture, history, and more, all in relation to Jesus Christ and his church. I'm Bishop Don Hying, and on this show we are blessed to continue to talk with Tristan Borland. The theme of this reflection will be Personal Suffering and Crises and How Suffering Can Lead Us to the Lord. We are blessed again to have Tristan Borland with us, who works for the Diocese of Madison. In the last podcast, uh Tristan reflected beautifully on his entrance into the church and his conversion to Catholicism. We all know well that faith does not immunize us from suffering. In fact, when you study the lives of the saints, often faith will draw us even deeper into suffering. And yet we also know that it's in the power of Jesus, specifically his death and resurrection and the graces given to us in the sacraments and the gift of faith that help us not only to navigate suffering, but indeed to uh discover the Lord's presence in it and also its redemptive power. So, Tristan, thank you for coming back to the podcast. And thank you in advance just for being uh this open and vulnerable, both in terms of your conversion to the faith and all that that meant, but also you you've had some uh deep sorrows in your life. And I think reflecting on those with our listeners will resonate with them certainly, and also help all of us to see how the Lord um acts through suffering and in fact leads us to a greater place of peace and salvation.

Tristan Borland 1:50

Yeah, thank thanks, Bishop. Yeah, last week I I talked about just some of the theological background, the things that eventually like led us to the church, at least intellectually or maybe in apologetics. But I know myself, and and we can love theology and talk about interesting ideas and never be motivated to actually take steps forward. And so that was the backdrop of my life for many years of just interested in theology and philosophy and studying and learning. But uh today I'll share just uh some of the circumstances that uh led me to the point of decision when it came to the Catholic faith. If you had met me 11 years ago, uh I would have been uh a happily married man, a fairly successful pastor, uh, loved our church and our community. I have a beautiful wife, Jill. And 11 years ago, I had four daughters, and we were expecting our fifth daughter. Uh, I grew up with all boys, so I've heard all the jokes about having all these girls. And uh we we had a happy life and a good life. And uh one of the things I I always tell people is um you never know the day of your life that's gonna just turn everything upside down. Like when tragedy comes, it can come so unexpectedly. Um, and I knew this theoretically, right? Because I I had walked with many suffering people. Um, I've been in plenty of hospital rooms watching people who were entering into the last days. Um, and so I knew about the brokenness of life, but you you never know like when your worst day is going to arrive. And so uh for for Jill and I, um, again, we had a good life. We were happy. Um, my wife was about eight and eight, eight and a half half months pregnant at the time, and I had had just like just a normal day. I got up in the morning, I went to work. Um, I actually uh that morning I met with a person who was going through some suffering in the morning and just was ministering to that person. Then I went and visited a young man that I had been mentoring that he was in rehab. He was in a uh addiction recovery program. I spent some time with him. I ran some errands. I got home that evening, and it was just a typical day, just a normal day. And um we had dinner, and my wife and I were sitting down at the evening. Uh, we were playing a game with our two oldest daughters. And in the midst of playing a game, our our third daughter, Maria, uh who was almost four years old at the time, um, asked me to uh put her to bed. She had she'd been sick for a few days and uh just wasn't quite bouncing back like kids normally do. Uh, she had had just a common virus and had a fever, but her fever had broken. And so she was seemingly starting to recover. And so she asked me to put her to bed. So I picked her up. Um, I carried her to our bedroom. I was laying her in her bed and she gasped and uh her eyes rolled back. And um I I yelled for my wife, my wife's uh uh nurse, and she came in, I called 911, and um it was just a absolute chaos. And and I I will spare you all the the horrible details of that night, but just on the most ordinary of days, um about 10 years ago, uh our our little daughter Maria just um died suddenly, her heart stopped, and we were unable to resuscitate her. And so our life was just completely turned upside down, um and so broken with the loss of our daughter. And um yeah, so so you can imagine um the tragedy of of a a beautiful, happy, good life, and then on just the most ordinary day, uh everything changed.

Bishop Donald J. Hying 5:39

There's no deeper sorrow than the loss of a child. So we offer our sympathies and prayers to you, Tristan and to Jill, even though it's been ten years, there there's always a wound there, and you don't want that to go because it it's it's your beautiful memory of Maria and her spiritual presence with you. But uh the torment of that only a parent that's lost a child can fully understand.

Tristan Borland 6:05

Yeah, and it was um it was so it was so so chaotic and so difficult. Um we we lost Maria and then began to schedule her funeral for for that coming week and uh put all the plans. I had friends from really all over the United States come to join us and to to come and w grieve with us and help us. And so visitation was scheduled for the following Friday. And uh the the the we're hosting the funeral at the local high school was the only space big enough for uh for everybody that was going to attend to attend. And um that morning, the morning of visitation, the day before the funeral, my wife's water broke, and so we uh ended up having to go into the hospital. So my my first call on the way to the hospital wasn't to friends or family to celebrate the new birth. It was to our funeral director to say we had to postpone the funeral. And so so we go to the hospital, and uh my wife has had fairly short and I I mean, you're always in danger saying that your wife had easy labor and delivery, but her her labor and delivery has typically been six or seven or eight hours, something like that. And uh she labored um all morning, all into the morning hours into the afternoon. It was it was just we were just so broken. And and her her labor went for, I think, 13, 14 hours. Um, she was still in shock of you know this loss. And so actually, one week to the day of Maria's death, um, our our fifth daughter Lucy was born, and so we brought home a newborn baby um while planning planning Maria's funeral. And so just uh such such chaos, such um uh juxtaposition of death and and life and um and a complete tumult of emotion.

Bishop Donald J. Hying 7:55

You must have been feeling every possible emotion at the same time.

Tristan Borland 7:59

Yeah, it was it was all of my children's births have been very joyful, but that was very that was a very sad day. It was it was such a hard day. And so we came home and then a few days later, um, we had Maria's funeral and buried Maria. And so and this really just uh it was a season of just suffering and wrestling and um in in one way, Bishop, I I we were loved so well. Again, this is one of the one of the sorrows of of converting is feeling like a certain sense of like loss of my my friends or you know, the people that the because I I would say nothing but beautiful things about the church that walked with us, about so many friends that loved us so well. But personally, how do you reconcile why God allowed this to happen? And for me, like intellectually, I could, I could understand. I had read lots of books on the problem of evil. In seminary, I took a whole course on just the problem of evil and wrestling with why does evil happen. And I knew this intellectually, I knew this experientially, but practically, how do I pray for anything? How do I trust God? I remember for several years, like I didn't know how to make a decision. We we moved houses, I don't know, four years later after Maria died. And I remember praying, like, should we buy another house? Should we move? And I just remember thinking, I don't care. It's like the one thing I really, really desire, the one thing I would give up anything for is the one thing I can't have. And like, how do you pray about something as inconsequential as moving a house when you so my faith was really, I would say, damaged in that I don't know how to trust the Lord. I believed in his goodness, but I didn't know how to trust in that. And in our sorrow, like it wasn't, it wasn't the hope of the resurrection that was a consolation. It was actually uh the suffering of Christ. It was the incarnation, Christ coming and and living in the muck, in the mire of humanity, in the brokenness. And he entered in. And so that was my one consolation of like, I don't know how to get through this, but I know our Lord has suffered alongside of us and on our behalf. But I didn't really know how to go forward in great faith and trust. And I just I think in many ways I separated my heart from my intellect. Intellectually, I could say all the right things. I I knew that I knew that the truth of God was there, but but to really engage at a heart level, I was pretty broken.

Bishop Donald J. Hying 10:42

It speaks to the the truth of our grief. You know, that death is unnatural. It's it's not part of God's plan. And yet when we experience something as tragic as the loss of Maria, your daughter, you know, you're cut short because all of your theology in the end isn't going to assuage the the pain of a father and mother's heart that has lost a child. But I think, Tristan, you're you're putting your finger on something very central to our faith, and that is that Jesus suffers with us. So in my formation as seminarians, I would often say the hardest questions you're gonna be asked as a priest are not explain the most blessed Trinity, explain transubstantiation. Most difficult questions you're gonna be asked are why did my four-year-old girl get killed by a drunk driver? Why did my wife leave me after forty years of marriage? Why do I have terminal cancer when I'm fifty-two and have everything to live for? And they'll ask those questions, but we know there's no intellectual answer to those questions that's going to be satisfying. The only answer is Jesus on the cross. And that's why Catholicism has crucifixes rather than crosses. You know, we know that Jesus rose from the dead, but but the Lord suffers with us, suffers with his mystical body. And we think of those mysterious words in chapter one of Colossians, where Paul says, You know, I fill up in my own suffering what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for the sake of his body, the church. And first read those words sound heretical. How could anything be lacking in the suffering of Christ? And yet Paul is touching on that same mystery that in his mercy, the Lord takes our suffering into his, shares his suffering with us. And when we can live in that union of suffering and know that the Lord is walking with us through this, suffering with us through this. To your point, you know, there's there's the consolation. It's not an easy intellectual answer. It's not just, well, pray harder or believe harder. It's simply a surrender of accepting that the Lord is somehow with us in this in a very powerful, transformative way.

Tristan Borland 13:09

I I quoted that verse so many times in this like participation in Christ's suffering, right? Like we are making up what is lacking. And how are we making up? I'm like, well, there's nothing lacking in Christ's suffering. However, in our suffering, like God is witnessing to others, uh, something of Himself. And so I I I did actually hold on to that verse a lot, but still like that that gap of knowing how to trust, to yield, to, to trust in divine providence when your heart is so broken, uh, was such a difficult thing. And that was for seven, for many years, I think, for for Jill and I, just walking that difficult path. Some people would compliment us and say, You, you know, you've gone through this terrible thing and you've maintained the faith. And I never saw that as much of a compliment. My response to them, I would quote uh the Gospel of John, chapter six. And after our Lord says, Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part with me, says that many left him. And then he says to St. Peter, Are you going to leave too? And St. Peter says, Where else am I going to go? And that was the amount of faith that I had in that moment. Was like, I've looked at all the other options. I have no other option but to continue to trust. But in some ways, probably like St. Peter, I'm like, I don't understand any of this. Uh I have no, but I have no other options. You have the words of life, and so I will continue to follow the best that I can. But it was in a very wounded state. And that continued for several years. I mean, we continued to serve as faithfully as we could. Then we we ended up uh, you know, I was pastoring through, we had staffing changes, and just I just knew like anytime there was changes and stress at the church, my heart just wasn't in it like it used to be. Then we went through COVID, which was, you know, a delightful time for anybody in leadership, right? And so just dealing with the society and just like people who are hurting and struggling. And so we found ourselves about six years later, just I was stuck. I didn't know which way to go. I am so grateful. Jill, my wife, is is so uh beautiful and so uh faithful, and so she could tell like I was just struggling. So I was struggling with our sorrow, I was struggling with leadership, I was struggling with how do I really trust God. And then in the backdrop was also like wrestling with Catholic theology for a lot of years, and so we really got to a point of I couldn't see a way forward, but I was so afraid. And uh when I got to this point in my life, I I didn't know what the Lord was asking me to do, but I knew what was currently happening was not good or sustainable. And uh so so in my midlife, I I was I was trying to figure out what to do, and I had good friends, and I began to pray with a few of my friends and just say, God, what are you got what are you asking me to do? And and during that time I went to uh a parish about 30 minutes away and I said, Can I talk to a priest? Because I'm like, I've been wrestling with this Catholic thing for a long time, and I just need to talk to somebody. So I started talking to a priest, started talking to a counselor friend of mine and a couple others just about what is God calling me to do in the midst of my brokenness and wrestling. Um that was a hard season. That was a hard season.

Bishop Donald J. Hying 16:34

How did the death of your daughter, Tristan, affect like your preaching, your articulation of the gospel? You're standing up Sunday after Sunday preaching the word to your congregation, and people obviously knew of your grief. It had to give uh a di a different depth to what you were saying, but uh must have also been challenging because you can't preach something that you don't fully believe yourself, and so it just like that the kind of existential crisis. Um like how did all that play out?

Tristan Borland 17:09

I we were pretty open. Um I felt like this is the elephant in the room in my life, and so to to talk about just trivial matters didn't seem to ring true. So especially the first six months after she died, I took three months away and just um stepped away. The church graciously just gave me time. Um, but I came back during those three months and I I and I shared one time a month, and I was just like, I'm gonna speak to the truth of it, and it was it was pretty um pretty vulnerable, pretty open. Um my wife and I kept a blog up because there were so many people wanting to know what was going on in our life, and so we just said we're gonna press into being honest, like we're gonna be as as vulnerable as we can be, that is appropriate. Um, and and in that, I mean, I think God did did use that. And and and again, it's not like I lost my faith. There, I think in some ways our faith shone through clearly because we really are trying to live out what we believe in the the worst of s situations. But but in another way, Bishop, I would say that there were just so many things that just I just didn't care about as much. Like it just it changes you, it relativizes everything else.

Bishop Donald J. Hying 18:18

It really does. Like most of the stuff just doesn't matter.

Tristan Borland 18:21

If I miss anything from the the year after Maria died, it is the crystal clarity of what matters. Like eventually you get back into normal life and you worry about things that are inconsequential, but for about a year, just the trivial stuff did not matter to me at all. And uh and it did, and in some ways, it did draw me closer to the Lord's heart. It really did. Uh, in other ways, I still had a hard time trusting, but he definitely drew me closer to himself through through this whole process.

Bishop Donald J. Hying 18:50

And I think your experience, Tristan, just reminds us that sometimes when we think of faith, we think it's this intellectual uh ascent to the truths of the faith. And that's part of faith. But in the end, faith is having this radical trust in God that I can be in a dark night of the soul, I can be immersed in grief. I don't understand. I I just feel like all the windows and doors of heaven have been shut against me. God can seem very distant and silent, and to still trust in him, to trust in his goodness, to say, you know, Lord, my heart's broken, I don't understand any of this, but I I trust that you love me and that you're working good out of this. To me, that's the the crux of faith. And it can only be fully purified in that crucible of suffering. And it's easy to romanticize that or idealize it when you're not in it. But when you're on the cross, there's no glory in the cross. And that's part of the mystery of the cross, is you can't hang on the cross and say, Oh, I'm having this great experience of being on the cross. There's a depth of suffering and pain that I think needs to be honestly acknowledged. And then I think your honest grappling with all that just evidences you know how how a Christian should um do that. You know, how do we allow the Lord to lead us through suffering um to uh to a deeper faith, a deeper trust?

Tristan Borland 20:19

Well, and it led me to the point of of really great fear. And so I found myself uh six years later, struggling in the ministry, struggling to know a path forward, still dealing with our grief and not knowing which way to go. And so this began this process of do I need to step down uh from the pastorate. I had really good, godly men. Most of them are just my Protestant brothers and sisters. Uh, some of them knew of my wrestlings with Catholic Catholicism, some of them didn't, to not to a full extent, but it wasn't because I was trying to hide it, it just would have been confusing to them. But they were praying with me, and one by one, these brothers were like, Tristan, maybe it's time for you to step down from your role. And I just thought, what else am I gonna do? Like, this is my life, this is my career, this is what I'm good at. I've and I I really wrestled, Bishop, because I was like, my family is actually doing pretty well. Like I was my kids are not typical pastors' kids that are resentful toward the church. Like, we we were loved so well, and this was our home. And I thought, am I leaving everything just because I'm broken? Am I like throwing my whole family's life into chaos? What am I gonna do? And so I began to pray, Lord, just give me a job and I'll step, I'll do whatever, but I gotta take care of my family. I've I've got to have something. And my wife, who's so good, was was just saying, Tristan, we got to trust God. She was so reassuring. And I thought, man, this is like our provision. Like, how am I gonna take care of you? And she like believed in me enough and she could see my struggles that her trust was greater than mine because I was just filled with so much anxiety and fear of, I'm gonna hurt my family, I'm gonna hurt this community, I'm gonna confuse everyone. What am I gonna do? And so I went and I talked to this priest, and it was funny, Bishop. I I was like 90% convinced that Catholicism was true, but that last 10% is a pretty big percentage. And there were two priests at this parish. One, the pastor who's uh been a he had been a priest for quite a long time and very intellectual, studied Thomas. He's he's just really sharp. And if and if I had met with him, we would have had 10 more years of interesting theological conversations. But instead, I got the young priest who was just ordained three months prior, who's very charismatic and very fiery. And I went to him and I said, Father Scott, like this is my whole life. Like, I you have to convince me that Catholicism is true. And he said, I can't convince you that it's true. You have to have faith. And I said, No, you have to convince me this is true, Father. And we went back and forth. But it was such a gift because he was speaking to the truth of what was deepest in my heart. I I could have done apologetics for 10 more years and become 90 per 97 convinced, and I could I would have still remained fearful. Um, because at that point it's it's our trust ultimately in God. It's not it's not absolute certainty, it's it's trusting in Him.

Bishop Donald J. Hying 23:23

Yeah, the faith is reasonable, but in the end, faith has to take over. I would say reason is the runway. Yep. It's like the airplane of your life is going down this runway of reason, but to take off, you have to kind of leave reason behind and just make this leap of faith. So there's profound reasons to believe and practice the faith, but in the end it is about trust. And back to say Teresa of Calcutta, um somebody said to her once, I I envy your certainty. And Mother Teresa said, I I've never had clarity or certainty. What I have is faith and trust in God. And that's really what it comes down to, even in the darkest of nights. But thank you, Tristan, for being so vulnerable, so open in terms of of the grief and sorrow in your life as a father who lost a beloved a little girl. And to see God's action in all of that and how the Lord has led you and Jill, that it's just a great witness to all of us. So thank you for sharing your heart with us, your grief with us, and knowing that uh God is in the midst of it and it's something very, very sacred. Thank you. Thanks, Bishop.