Episode Thirteen: The Interview- Pastor Campos-MacDonald

Cazandra relates how a visit from her mother-in-law after she had died cemented her belief that even death cannot separate us, especially when love is involved. Also, in this episode, find out what "welcoming the stranger" means to this Pastor from the desert Southwest.

Transcript

I think what really gets me is these crazy Christians,

These crazy Christians who are so judgmental and so literal and so painfully conservative that they can't see the gray.

It's all black and white.

And it puts people like me in a bad light that make us all look nuts.

You know,

It's like,

I just,

I don't believe in the judgmental stuff.

That's not my job.

Gosh,

I guess I'd say I am a Christian,

Heterosexual,

All-inclusive kind of gal.

I don't think you are different because of who you love.

I think I'm just about inclusion.

Yeah.

I mean,

I grew up Catholic,

So there's the big,

Big one there.

Sorry,

Catholics.

I call myself a recovering Catholic.

Because once you've grown up in that tradition,

You know,

It's ingrained in you.

I think any tradition,

But there's something about the liturgy,

The sitting and kneeling and standing up and the missalette that you get when you walk in the church and when you're a kid and you don't really know what all this is.

And in my home,

I don't know how this happened,

But I never went to like CCE classes,

Sunday school stuff.

I think my church,

We just didn't have a lot of it.

I don't know.

It was kind of bizarre when I think back on it.

My dad was very devout.

He went every week,

No matter what.

My mom just depended and then we would go,

But it wasn't hardcore when the church was open.

We were there,

But we were Catholic.

Damn it.

And there you had it,

You know,

And that was the way it was.

And so,

Yeah,

It's interesting when I look back because I was very,

Very drawn to the church as a kid.

I went to the Catholic school for a couple of years when I was little and man,

There was just something that just grabbed a hold of me.

And I never really understood because we didn't talk about faith because it was very personal.

You know,

You just didn't talk about those things.

And so it's very different in my home now because we're very open in talking about faith and sexuality and things and with our kids because we don't have secrets in our house.

And it was very different when I grew up.

So yeah,

It was a different kind of growing up with religion and my mother would never let me go to church with friends.

My friend Regina always wanted me to come to church or go to youth.

And mom was like,

No,

We don't do that.

Yeah,

Because you know,

We're Catholic.

You didn't do those things,

You know?

And I was always kind of like,

Well,

What's church camp?

You know,

What's all that?

I didn't know what all that was,

You know?

So I'm sure I would have loved it.

So that's probably a good thing because she would have had a family and I would have been a good friend.

And so I was always like,

Well,

I'm gonna go to church and I'm gonna go to church.

That's a good thing because she would have had a fit.

My mother got a restroom so,

You know,

But,

So anyway,

Yeah,

That was kind of the growing up that I had with that.

And then when I graduated high school and went to college,

I went to Houston Baptist University because I had the best scholarship to play music.

So that's where I went.

And my eyes about popped out of my head when I was around all them badness.

And I was like,

What in the world?

Where am I,

You know?

But it was great.

It was a wonderful experience.

Kind of funny,

You know,

Good little Catholic girl going to this Protestant university I didn't have a clue about other religions or faiths.

I just did it.

And I was just very naive.

God bless them.

Some of them were just like way over the top.

Jesus saves,

Have a Jesus day,

Cas.

I was like,

What does that mean?

You know,

I mean,

I didn't know.

I mean,

People were just like crazy,

But I admired them because they were like all about,

I'm a Christian and here I am.

And Jesus loves me and you too.

And I was like,

I don't even know how to talk like that.

You know?

And so I admired it because they were very like,

I knew who they were in their faith,

Even though it was completely made my head spin and not where I ever was.

But then it made me start thinking about,

Well,

So what does it mean when I say I'm a Christian,

You know,

And I'm Catholic?

So it was sort of a different chapter in how I looked at faith and religion.

But then I started questioning,

Cause it's like,

Hmm,

You know,

There's no women,

You know,

In leadership,

You know,

There's the nuns,

But I mean,

There's no,

You know,

There's this birth control thing.

It's like,

Yeah,

I don't get that.

I don't believe,

You know,

So there was Mary,

I didn't get the Mary thing.

And I'm like,

But I'm Catholic,

I'm supposed to.

So as I,

You know,

Came into my own as a young woman,

I started thinking,

So what does this really mean?

I guess it's okay if I believe part of it,

Not all of it.

It was a phenomenal place to start discovering more about my faith and what it was that really drew me.

Like when I was a kid,

Like I said,

And going to mass in school,

I'm like,

Man,

What,

There's just something.

And I just didn't know what it was,

But I started to figure it out then.

It's like,

As a child,

It's kind of a mystery,

Right?

That feeling,

And it's,

I think the mystery is so intriguing.

It's like,

It's attractive.

Oh yeah,

It was just like the statues,

You know,

When you go and have all the candles and you get a lot of candle to pray.

And it was like,

I was just enamored by it.

There was just something about the incense and the candles and just that mysterious something that just kind of gets you.

And I realized all these years later,

I'm 51,

And it's taken me all these years to realize that that was God calling me.

He was calling me then.

I didn't know that's what it was,

But yeah,

That's,

It's amazing how you put these things together and you start to see things.

I have two sons,

Okay?

One is 24 and one is 14.

So it's like I had kids in two different time periods,

Big difference.

And both of them have a rare genetic bleeding disorder called hemophilia.

And the short story is,

It's carried by the mom.

It was me,

I didn't know.

It was a bit,

Again,

There was a secret in my family.

My older brother,

Who is,

Would have been five years older than me,

Died from a head bleed from complications at birth.

He died at five days of age.

But the secret was that he died from jaundice,

But my parents would never talk about it.

And I always realized it was probably just too painful.

But all these years later when my second child was born and I'm like,

He has hemophilia,

Are you freaking kidding me?

That means I carry it.

That means,

And we put things together after my parents had both passed away,

That it was in the family,

Okay?

And so that is a whole other shift in my life.

When I gave birth to a child who had a chronic illness,

And it's like,

Okay,

What does that mean?

And talk about having to rely on my faith.

And even when I just couldn't even see in front of me.

But one of the things that I remember,

Because my oldest son,

With his hemophilia,

I call him the easy one.

He didn't have nearly the problems as my youngest.

My youngest had just nightmare problems.

I could go on for days about the stuff he experienced.

But he's doing really well now.

He suffers from chronic pain.

But looking at him,

He's 5'9",

He's a moose,

He's taller than me,

He's doing really good.

And it's like,

If you would have seen him in second grade,

First grade,

Second grade,

You wouldn't have believed it.

Because he was in a wheelchair for a whole year.

He couldn't walk,

He was as white as a sheet.

I mean,

Lots of complications.

So it was bad.

But during that year,

My mother-in-law suddenly passed away.

It was absolutely devastating,

Because it was just terrible.

And we were living in a small town,

Truth or Consequences,

New Mexico.

We lived there for a while,

For three years.

My husband was pastoring there.

And my husband at the time,

He was going back and forth to Ileth.

Once a week,

He would fly.

And so anyway,

He was back and forth.

I was home with the kids a lot.

Caleb Start,

My youngest,

Had this horrible bleed.

And we were in the hospital.

And we got the call that Joe's mom died.

And Caleb couldn't travel.

So I said,

Joe,

You need to go.

We will follow you.

You know,

The three of us will come.

We got to get the okay.

And I mean,

Several days,

Several days,

Every day the doctors like Cassandra,

I just don't know.

It's just,

You can't go.

And I was just devastated.

And so finally,

My oldest son,

We put him on a plane to meet my husband in Houston.

And I was so upset that I couldn't be there,

But I had to stay with Caleb,

Because he just couldn't travel.

The next morning,

The morning of the funeral,

Okay,

The morning of the funeral,

I woke up,

I was sitting in the chair,

I woke up,

It was like five o'clock,

It was really early.

And for some reason,

I just woke up,

And I looked at the bed,

And Caleb,

He was fast asleep,

And he raised his arms in the air,

Granny,

Granny.

And he was grasping for the air,

Like trying to grab her.

And I'm getting chills just thinking about it.

And I looked at that,

And he put his arms down and went back to sleep.

And it was that moment that I'm like,

I felt like the Holy Spirit came into our life and said,

Ruby came to say goodbye,

And that you're doing the right thing,

And that she's okay.

And when I saw that,

I'm like,

All this stuff we had been through with Caleb that was been so hard,

And here was this little reminder that God said,

You know what,

Yeah,

Ruby's gone.

She was our champion of my boys,

And it was just so unexpected.

But it was that moment,

I'll never forget,

That it's like that whole room just filled with that presence.

And whew,

Yeah,

Even now,

It just makes me tear up,

And this was years ago.

But that's one of those moments that you get,

If you're lucky,

You get one of those moments,

Or maybe a couple,

When you know that,

Okay,

I'm doing the right things,

And God is saying you're okay.

It's gonna be okay.

But you know,

For me,

Just waking up and seeing that,

And it's just overwhelming to know that,

Okay,

So we've been through hell and back with this boy and his health,

And what are we gonna do without Ruby?

And here we are,

And God's like,

It's okay.

You know,

I've got you.

Just like in Isaiah,

You know,

It says that I'm always with you,

I will never leave you.

And it's that moment sometimes when things just don't go right,

I think about that moment and how amazing it was,

And how awesome,

You know,

Truly the word awesome,

Awestruck I was when that happened.

That is a hard thing to top when I think about all of these different things that have happened in my life,

And these moments when God has made himself present to me.

And that was truly,

You know,

One of those moments.

The other thing that I still can't believe happened was when we moved from Houston to New Mexico in 06,

My little one was just not,

He was like six months old,

He was little.

And my husband had been called to ministry.

I knew this forever,

But he finally figured it out.

He said,

I need to leave teaching.

I'm gonna do this.

I'm gonna go work as a music director in Deming,

Deming,

New Mexico.

And I'm like,

Okay,

Let's go.

He got the job,

And in two weeks,

We packed the house and hit the road.

We didn't even have a house to live in yet,

And we left.

And talk about stepping out in faith.

And everything we needed,

Everything happened.

Everything did.

And so I believe that from that moment to now,

You know,

Because we're back in New Mexico,

We had a little two-year stint over the border in Texas.

But now we're back,

And it's like,

We have always called New Mexico home.

So it's been,

You know,

14 years.

And I truly think that if God led us there to the desert,

To the desert,

There is a reason for all of these things.

I know it's that everything happens for a reason.

It's like,

Ah,

That makes me crazy.

I don't mean that.

But there has truly been this reason for the way our lives have been laid out with hemophilia,

With the loss of our parents,

You know,

All of these things.

But even with the different congregations my husband has served at,

And now the one that I'm serving,

It all started with that.

You know,

It started with that big leap of faith that we took and said,

We're going.

Here we are,

Send us,

Lord,

And sure enough,

There we are.

I have to say that while you were telling that story about your son raising his arms up and calling out for his grandmother,

I got goosebumps too.

And I've had a similar experience.

And what I think is so overwhelming and profound about it is for me,

I could feel how the room that I was in was trying to contain that soul,

If that makes any sense.

And you can feel just almost the unbridled joy and light inside that person.

And it's trying to make itself small to be in that room.

It's so overwhelming and so powerful,

But at the same time,

You can feel how infinite it is.

And that is the most profound,

That's what I took from that experience.

It also,

I was blissed out the rest of the day.

Yeah,

Everything else was like,

Okay,

Whatever.

Did I tell you what happened?

And it's almost like there was this,

I don't want to say glow,

But this warmth that you sort of felt in that moment.

And I wish it would have lasted longer.

You know,

It's like,

Gosh,

I just wanted to revel in it for longer,

But yeah.

You know,

And here I am again,

And I'm goose bumping again.

["The Dream of God"] With one of my interviews,

We talked about invitations,

Right?

And that God or the universe,

However you define that,

Presents you with invitations.

And you can say no,

You can decline,

But it's usually in your best interest to accept.

And it's not compulsory,

But if you accept the invitation,

Many times your road is smooth for you.

Everything happens to get you where you need to be.

And I think that's part of the magic and the awesomeness and the blessedness that is what's going on in this reality.

And it's that whole,

You know,

It goes back to that,

The scripture and the Psalms,

You know,

Be still and know that I am God.

You know,

It's yeah,

So easy,

Right?

You know,

Just to be still and to listen.

And,

But if we don't,

We might miss something.

We might miss the biggest moment,

That invitation,

Like you said.

And so that's why I try,

It's really easy for me to preach it,

But I got to turn it around and do it for myself.

So I do,

I struggle with that.

It's like,

You know,

Just when you're whatever your God looks like,

Higher power,

Okay,

Whatever she looks like,

If you stop long enough,

And I always say,

If you can stop long enough,

You can listen for your heartbeat,

Not just silence.

If you listen for your heartbeat,

That's the hard part.

That is hard.

You know,

It's in those moments that we can hear those different invitations come.

And like you said,

You know,

We can discern and say,

Yeah,

Maybe not now,

But boy,

I tell you,

When you accept it and you go,

And then you see,

Holy cow,

I made the right decision and everything's been laid out.

The things I was worried about,

Not even an issue.

Man,

Talk about feeling like you're one with your creator big time.

Talk about cemented,

Especially dealing with a sick kid.

All right,

I don't know that there's anything worse except losing a child,

You know,

Is having a child that is sick.

And it just takes over your world,

Which it should.

You know,

That's all you can think of.

It's all you can see.

But it even gets to the point where sometimes your faith,

You're like,

Do I even have any?

You know,

Do I?

Because you're so focused on the next thing for your child to happen.

And I remember that during the times when Caleb would be in the hospital down there at University of New Mexico,

Even on Sundays,

Because,

You know,

My husband was sort of busy on Sundays as a pastor,

I would try to sneak out and go to service like at one of the Methodist churches close by.

And sometimes it was not just,

It wasn't about hearing a message.

It was just sort of about being somewhere,

You know,

Where you knew other people believe the way you do.

It was in those moments that when I felt like I was letting God down,

Because we do that all the time,

Right?

Every day,

You know,

In those moments where I felt like,

Okay,

I know I haven't been here,

God,

But I'm trying.

You know,

I'm connecting,

I'm here.

Through all of those moments,

Every time we would,

You know,

Turn a corner and something good would happen,

You know,

Or something bad,

I knew that that was there.

You know,

My faith never left me,

Even though I wasn't maybe very outwardly showing it or,

You know,

Saying something about,

You know,

Faith or whatever.

The older I have gotten,

The more that my belief is core to who I am.

And the move to New Mexico those years ago wasn't only for,

You know,

My husband and his calling,

Because it helped me uncover mine that I had all those years ago when I was wearing my little black and white check dress in Catholic school,

To where I'm now pastoring a church.

And it's just funny,

Because sometimes I think back and look at where I was or where,

If I hadn't listened,

If Joe and I hadn't listened to that invitation to move,

Where would I be?

But,

You know,

I think the older I've gotten,

All the experiences I've been through,

I have no doubt that there is a God.

It hurts me when I hear someone say,

I just don't believe in anything,

You know,

Because I think there's something.

One of the things that I've contemplated is that,

You know,

As human beings,

Each of us is so very different and so singular.

And so God or the energy or the universe,

However you define that presence,

Knows that one size doesn't fit all,

But also yearns for connectedness and relationship.

And so,

You know,

We'll use Buddhism.

We'll,

You know,

As long as you approach with or want to connect with authenticity and truth and with the goal for true communion,

It doesn't matter what faith you,

You can be pagan.

You can be Methodist,

You can be Lutheran.

As long as the end result is a conversation between that energy and ourselves,

Then Joker's wild.

I just want to share this last thing with you is that one time this couple took us to lunch and they were basically,

I've never been one to like not eat or stop like with a lot of food left on my plate,

But I literally could not eat after this happened.

So we're at lunch and basically this man was saying,

But Joe,

Right here in the Bible,

It says John 3.

16,

For God so loved,

All that,

And said,

This is the only way.

And if you are not a Christian and don't believe this,

You're going to hell,

Right?

And I was just kind of like,

I've heard of these conversations.

I can't believe this is happening in front of me.

And that's when I put my fork down and Joe would never agree with him.

And he just did not appreciate that.

And so I think what really gets me is these crazy Christians,

These crazy Christians who are so judgmental and so literal and so painfully conservative that they can't see the gray.

It's all black and white.

And it puts people like me in a bad light that make us all look nuts.

And it's like,

I don't believe in the judgmental stuff.

That's not my job.

Our job in this world is not to judge others.

And we do it,

We're human.

Okay,

We look at people at Walmart and go,

Are you kidding?

But still,

We are not here to judge and say,

Well,

You're going to hell because you don't believe like me and that right there is a big problem.

My job,

My role as a woman of faith,

As a pastor,

As a mother,

As an advocate in the healthcare field is to love other people.

And if I can do something to help someone feel loved,

Then I think that is what I'm fulfilling my mission.

So if you're Buddhist,

I'm going to love you.

If you're a Wiccan,

I'm going to love you.

Okay,

It doesn't matter.

I really appreciate you using the imagery of the black and white,

As far as just how some people see the world or see,

You know,

Well,

Anything.

But because I've always thought that God's grace,

The universe's grace is in the gray area.

Amen,

Sista.

It's not in the black and white.

You'll find it in the gray area where things are like uncertain and still not formed yet.

That's right.

This has been episode 13 of Bite-Sized Blessings,

A podcast all about the magic and spirit that surrounds us,

If only we open our eyes to it.

And whether you choose to listen to our bite-sized offerings for that five to 10 minutes of freedom in your day or the longer interviews,

We're grateful you're here.

I need to thank Cassandra Campos-McDonald for sharing her story today,

As well as the creators of the music used,

Alexander Nakarada,

Clos Papel,

Sasha End,

Philip Rice,

Frank Schroeter,

And Agnies Falmagia.

For complete attribution,

Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website and remember that's bite spelled B-Y-T-E.

On the website,

You'll find links to other books,

Music,

And change makers I think will lift and inspire you.

Thank you for listening,

And here's my one request.

Be like Cassandra and keep your mind and heart eternally open and full of love.

And I'll see you next time.