September 4, 2023 • 38 mins
Alana starts college and thrives in her new community, which creates conflict with her old friends. Alana is rushed to the ER after a suicide scare.
This episode contains references to suicide. If you or someone you know is in need of help, please contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988. Listener discretion is advised.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Deerlana is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free.
But if you want to binge the whole season right now,
subscribe to tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com or on
Apple Podcasts. You also get exclusive bonus episodes throughout the season.
For more information, check out the show notes enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The following episode contains references to suicide. If you or
someone you know is in need of help, please contact
the Suicide in Crisis Lifeline by dialing nine eight eight.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
It's twenty thirteen, school starting at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
and everything's happening on the hill, new people, new classes, parties,
the cl fair. There's frisbee on Farrin Field, the CU
Buffalo's football season is just getting started, and there are
mounds of pizza boxes and beer cups piling up outside
the frat houses. CU Boulder wasn't Alana's first choice. In
(01:14):
her senior year of high school, she begged her mother
to let her go to Wyoming Catholic College, a traditional
leading school with an outdoor leadership program. Father Dave even
wrote her recommendation letter, but at the last minute, Alana
decided to stay local. She was already really involved with
Saint Thom's, which happened to be the center of all
things Catholic at CU Boulder, and Saint Thom's was in
(01:37):
full bloom. They host a welcome barbecue for all the
new students, and there are all these really nice, good
looking college grads hanging out and getting to know all
the freshmen. Everyone's talking about this conference that's happening in
the winter called Seek. Alana signs up.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Welcome to see this.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Z.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
You're ten thousand Catholic students from across the country convening
in Nashville for a week.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Take out people from.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
All over the big class in places like Nebraska.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
In Colorado, there are giant stadium messes, men's and women's sessions. Women,
you have to have a posse of women.
Speaker 7 (02:18):
Women need a possey Why because women hate each other.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
As a guy, you want the lord and you want
the lady. So I want to lay a foundation of
top ten tips you can do to date your soulmate.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Incredible music, dozens of young priests ready to hear your confession.
Nuns walking around arousing call to change the world.
Speaker 8 (02:39):
Would you please consider the world is waiting for you,
is waiting for you to live in divine intimacy, authentic friendship,
and this ability to live in the little way and
the talks. I began a career in fashion and in modeling.
Speaker 7 (02:53):
I was on America's Next Top Model.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Stories of wandering through the empty promises of modern culture
into a life of real fulfillment.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
And yet I was completely not at peace.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I wanted more, and the only person who could give
me more was Christ.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
But the highlight of the week is an evening of worship,
music and prayer. The priest, in his gold vestments, burns
incense around the altar, and the worship team builds up.
The emotion Isn's And in this crowd of scared and
(03:32):
excited young people, all kneeling, eyes closed, tonight offers a
glimpse of what life could be like with thousands of
others who believe what you believe, who found the answers
to the confusion and uncertainty about the future that you've
secretly felt, And you begin to wonder if maybe Heaven
feels something like this from Tenderfoot TV. I'm Simon kent
(03:56):
Fung and this is Dear Alana. Part five piece of
the pie.
Speaker 9 (04:10):
I answered the door. I should have probably put two
and two together, but I know that she was in
trouble and that it wasn't good. So I remember she left,
and I was crying, crying, crying, and just really confused.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
When the police and nun first arrived at their door,
Alana's younger sister, Sophia had no clue why they were there.
She didn't know that Alana had told a friend about
her plans to die by suicide, But how did she
get here? These plans didn't come from nowhere? What else
was going on while she was in college besides her therapy?
(04:45):
I decided to extend my trip in Boulder. Before I
can go forward in the story, I have to go
back to her college years, those pivotal years that led
up to this breaking point. Today, I'm walking through Alana's
old neighborho by the CU Boulder campus. I want to
see for myself the places where Alana would have spent
(05:05):
most of her time. On this weekday, students are recovering
from last night's party, walking home from their frat houses.
My introverted self couldn't imagine living here, and then I
see it. Saint Thoma's, the church that Alana would sneak
out to, where she first met Father Dave, where she
(05:28):
found her therapist, and when she went to college, this
church became her home away from home. I walk a
little further and find myself in front of a building
that says Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center. There are students
coming in and out of the building, one of whom
holds the door for me, and as I walk in,
I'm expecting to see some sort of worship space, but
(05:50):
instead I enter what looks like a full fledged coffee shop.
It's got a kind of target decor with a woodpaneled
accent wall and geometric wallpaper. I look up at a framed,
hand lettered quote that says all I need today is
a little bit of coffee and a whole lot of Jesus. Yeah,
(06:14):
so what kind of sandwiches?
Speaker 10 (06:16):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
There we are? So how did all this come to be?
This religious haven on a secular campus. The man behind
all of this, who's been leading Saint Thom's for the
past twelve years, is a priest named Father Peter Mussett.
He's in his mid forties, which is young for a
Catholic priest. He's affable and enthusiastic, and you can hear
(06:38):
the joy in his voice when he talks about his work,
like in this interview with the campus newspaper.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I love being a priest and bowler.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Like I cannot tell you.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
I've talked to somebody in there like, oh, you're a
Catholic in They're like, oh, my cathedral is the woods,
And you know what's great is it's wonderful. Then talk
to me about how you experience God within the woods,
Like there's all these really cool starting places that you
can have within Boulder.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
You get the picture, an outgoing guy who seems engaged
with students. Joyce remembers the first time she saw Father
Peter when Alana brought her to Mass at Saint Thom's.
Speaker 6 (07:15):
I'd never seen a priest look like him. Sometimes he
had have a man bun. Sometimes he'd just have curly,
curly hair, long birkenstocks. He just was cool.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
In the articles I read, that cool man bun look
earned Father Peter the nickname the Hipster Priest. But it
wasn't just his appearance that was appealing.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
When I first heard him give a homily, I couldn't
believe it like it was so funny dream and he
made the homily understandable and then he brought humor into it.
So I loved it, and I had friends come and
hear him like I just was like, this is the best.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
In so many ways. Father Peter is exactly the kind
of priest I dreamt of becoming young, dynamic orthodox. He's
appointed as administrator for Saint Thom's in twenty eleven when
Alana is still in high school, just as Father Dave,
Alana's spiritual director, gets reassigned from Saint Thom's. Joyce remembers
wondering about the reassignment, and.
Speaker 6 (08:20):
That's when I met and met with Father Peter because
I just trusted him so many times I met with
him and I was like, do I have anything to
be worried about? Why is he made to leave?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
She recalls Father Peter reassuring her that Father Dave's leaving
is not a big deal, how they were both roommates
and seminary and she had nothing to worry about, and
that Father Dave was leaving for other personal reasons.
Speaker 9 (08:42):
And I was like, why are.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
They getting him many help? And he said, no, he's
just going to go to another parish because the prishioner's
here got upset with some things, and I was concerned,
but I trusted Father Peter, and then I thought, thank God,
he's leaving.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
With Father Dave out of the picture and Father Peter,
the hipster priest as the new sheriff in town. Joyce
was relieved. She felt like Alana was now in good hands.
What she didn't know was that Alana had a different
idea of what would be good for her. Back at
(09:32):
the University of Colorado, Alana is thriving. She's joined the
collegiate for his bee team, and she makes a ton
of new friends At Saint Thom's. She's become close with
Father Peter, who she calls FP, and kind of dives
into it all at the Catholic Center, she's volunteering at
the Saint Thom's Adoration Chapel, becoming a leader for their
fall retreat, and organizing students every week to give sandwiches
(09:55):
out to the homeless. What she seems most excited about
is moving off campus into an apartment with four other
Catholic girls, where they do weekly rosaries and Bible studies together.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Freshman year Zeal Martyrdom sainthood. Here are all the things
I'm grateful for. The missionary disciples, talking to Laura and Carissa,
sending up the emails mass this morning, signing the lease goal,
make disciples win, build send through missionary service to the homeless.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
A lot is clearly in her element. I feel like
I'm starting to get a pretty good picture of what
her college experience was like. Saint Thom's seems to provide
a kind of alternative to the mainstream activities found at
a party school like CU. It's like, instead of going
to the bar crawl on Friday, let's hang out at
the Saint Tom's coffee shop and talk about our walk
(10:49):
with God. I would have totally signed up. Up until college,
my faith was very private and devotional, but I soon
stumbled into a more intellectual side of Catholicism, aside that
equipped me with debate level knowledge so that I could
defend the church and win arguments. I discovered an entire
(11:09):
industry of books and conferences dedicated to this ALTA gets
a good dose of this at the Nashville conference you
heard at the beginning, where Father Peter brings a contingent
of ninety CU students after a reverend stadium mass. The
music dies down and everyone settles in. The speaker takes
(11:30):
the stage.
Speaker 11 (11:31):
The worldview that we're going to attack today is relativism.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So the word with me. Relativism a philosophical concept that
most of the students have probably never heard of.
Speaker 11 (11:42):
It's the idea that there is no truth. The truth
is relative to what each person believes. So it does
away with this idea that there's objective truth.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
You can think of relativism as license to do whatever
you want.
Speaker 11 (11:55):
Now, most people are not relativists when it comes to
things that are scientifically verifiable, and no one's going to say,
you know, two plus two is five for me, that's
my truth. Don't impose you four in my five, You
closed minded Catholics.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
He's ripping on his critics.
Speaker 11 (12:12):
But we're relativists when it comes to everything else. So
how do I make a moral decision? Definis is a marriage?
Anything like that? We think that's stuff that people make
up for themselves. There is no such thing as truth.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Hitler said that even Hitler was a relativist. That puts
it into perspective.
Speaker 11 (12:30):
See, if your God lets you do whatever you want,
your god is you If there's no objective truth out
there about morals. Where is your moral compass? Point?
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It points to the all powerful question what feels right?
I remember hearing talks like this and feeling like I
couldn't trust myself. Only God was objective, and it was
my duty to defend him against a wider culture that
was dead set on attacking us for our beliefs.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
We know there is persecution that is occurring against.
Speaker 11 (13:00):
Christians surrounded by this culture that has so much craziness
in it.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
How do we live in a culture like this? You
a culture of moral relativism? I want to talk about that.
With the culture against us, what were we to do?
The answer was to fight back with objective truth. And
the way to discover that objective truth was through the
superpowers of the Church, which Catholics believe has a direct
and historical line to God, kind of giving us the
(13:27):
cheat codes to the video game of life, and it
seems to have worked. Some of the most famous scientific discoveries,
like the Big Bang were discovered by Catholic priests. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights was kickstarted by a Catholic philosopher,
and you know who else is Catholic? Six of the
nine US Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 11 (13:47):
We started the hospital system, started the university system. Maybe
you know large social service breader on the planet.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Heck, even Stephen Colbert teaches Catholic Sunday School. God must
be backing this right, so you can understand how drawn
I was to this church and why young college students
like Alana would also be captivated. The talk ends with
a call to be a saint.
Speaker 11 (14:11):
You see, you, Becoming holy is not just about you.
We live in a world that's forgotten its way. It's
forgotten that life has any purpose, and the answer God
sends is you.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
I picture Alana hearing this and feeling like He's talking
directly to her. She too wanted to be holy and
perfectly united with God, a saint to save those around her,
and by her sophomore year, Alana was well known throughout
the Saint Tom's community. With her quiet devotion and commitment
to the homeless, it was obvious she was on a
(14:46):
fast track to becoming a saint. Even younger students had
heard of Alana Chen's religious reputation before meeting her. But
what really got everyone talking was her friendship with a
boy named Micah. Here's Alana describing him on her timeline.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Micah met at Saint Thom's first guy to be close
to gentlemen, adventurous, sensitive, joyful, vulnerable, healthy boundaries, soulmate, partner
in sainthood.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Micah's tall, dark, and handsome. He goes with Alana to
visit the homeless under the bridge on Sundays. They both
love hiking the flatirons by the campus together. And what
makes Micah special is that, like Alana wanting to become
a nun, Micah wants to become a priest. This gets
everyone talking and the are they aren't they? Speculation of
(15:39):
these two good looking saints in the making makes them
a kind of Catholic power couple. But Micah and Alana
are both figuring out their vocations how God is calling
them to serve the church, which means picking from one
of three options marriage, becoming a priest or a nun,
or staying single.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
In the fall, the Dominican sisters visited our campus. It's
hard to describe, but after hearing their vocation stories, my
heart was burning. The sister said, even though she wanted
to be married and have children, it was okay. That
made her vocation even more pure. I asked Jesus to
make my vocation pure, so I asked for the desire
(16:19):
to be married and have kids. In the next couple
of weeks, my best male friend asked me on a date.
We both liked each other, and even though I was
asserting to be a sister and he a priest, I
said yes.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Alana's older sister, Carrissa, remembers that first date.
Speaker 12 (16:36):
It was like a big deal at the ten house
that she was going on this date.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
And he picked her up and we had all met him.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
He's super nice, he's handsome.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
They finished their date that evening at the chapel at
Saint Thom's praying together.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
I liked him a lot.
Speaker 9 (16:52):
He was very holy.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
This increased my desire for marriage, but also my desire
to be a sister. As we dated, I constantly felt torn.
I asked many people for advice, but no one would
tell me what to do. Then I understood that Jesus
was leaving me the free choice.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Alanna's facing the dilemma of whether to become a nun
or to marry. This might seem like she's getting ahead
of herself with Micah, like they're only going on dates.
Why she's thinking about marriage. But for Catholics, when it
comes to discerning your vocation, it's really important to get
it right. Picking the wrong one is like missing out
on what God wanted you to be, so the stakes
(17:36):
are high. I remember the many journals I wrote asking
God to help me discover my vocation. There was nothing
more I wanted than to follow God's will perfectly, and
everything in me was pointing to the priesthood. For me,
marriage wasn't something that had ever crossed my mind, but
the thought of becoming a priest, not having a family
(17:57):
of my own, and serving God's family full time filled
me with a deep sense of peace and joy. Father William,
my spiritual director, told me that these were all signs
of a vocation to the priesthood. Not every young Catholic
man feels this way. Alana takes her vocational discernment very seriously.
(18:19):
She dates Micah and also attends retreats with Mother Teresa's
nuns in New York to see which one speaks to
her more.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Please answer me, God, hear my cry when I call
to you. Father told me not to even think about
my vocation until the last day of my retreat with
the sisters already, it's all I think about, should I
listen to Father Dave my spiritual director? Or should I
look and ask you in prayer about my vocation.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
It's been nearly three years since Father Dave has left
Saint Thom's, so why is Alana still referring to him
as her spiritual director? What no one knows is that
Allnna has been in touch with Father Dave behind her
mother's back this entire time. Alana's mother had forbidden her
(19:12):
from meeting with Father Dave unsupervised when she was a
young teen, but by college, it's clear that Alana has
been ignoring her mom.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Well, who are you on the phone with Alana? And
then she'd finally tell me. She wouldn't tell me right away,
and then I was really mad because you're not supposed
to be talking to him anymore. And she's like, it's
on the phone, it's not in person. She'd get upset.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
While other teenagers might rebel by drinking and breaking curfew,
Alana's form of rebellion is talking to her priest on
the phone. I managed to get a hold of the
phone they're talking about. Her family was able to unlock it,
but Joyce has never been able to look through it
in any depth. It's too painful. I ask her if
(20:00):
she would be okay if I did, Please guard it
with your life. She says, there's a lot on the phone,
and it takes me nearly two weeks to comb through it.
I discover that Alana and Father Dave were communicating even
more than what Joyce was aware of, especially by text.
They text almost weekly, sometimes several times a week, and
(20:21):
as I read through their conversations, I discover more layers
to their relationship. They joke about their Meyers Briggs personality types.
Alana is an infp and Father Dave shares how hard
it's been with all of his reassignments. He sends her selfies,
shares the occasional food pic, and they schedule times to
talk on the phone. He asks her how bad her
(20:43):
temptations are on a scale of one to ten. She
replies eight. Then, at the end of her junior year
at cu Alana texts him Happy Father's Day. You are
a good father. I love you. He replies, thank you.
I love you too. I was looking for you on
Facebook since I joined. You're very smart for not being
(21:04):
on it. Father Dave and Alana's text messages look more
like two friends talking rather than an older man and
a young woman seeking spiritual direction. While there are no
hard and fast rules to spiritual direction, I'm not sure
where the line is. And even though I was close
with my spiritual director, it never looked quite like this
(21:34):
With a new community of religious peers, people like Micah
and others at Saint Thom's who are as invested in
their faith as Alana is. Alana tries hard to keep
up with her old friends, but mixing friend groups would
prove to be complicated. Here's me again, the Frisbee Captain.
Speaker 12 (21:51):
One of the more defining things that year was my
friend Kelsey, who was dating this other girl at the time.
There was a holiday party that Alana had invited, myself, Kelsey,
and Kelsey's partner too. It happened to be at Peter
(22:11):
Mussett's house.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Peter Musset is father Peter, you know, the hipster priest.
After the party, ME picked up on something Kelsey and
their partner were really uncomfortable.
Speaker 12 (22:23):
At that point, I had realized, like, maybe it's best
to not be in the same spaces as like Alana's
church friends, because of the way that like, you know,
Kelsey feels uncomfortable and Kelsey feels judged. And at that point,
I think neither of us had known that Alana was gay.
So I really don't know if Alana, you know, brought
(22:45):
the three of us there to just like make those
spaces a little bit safer, I'd like to think. So
I'd like to think that Alana wanted us there.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
I asked joy Alana's best friends in kindergarten, what she
remembers about Alana's new church friends.
Speaker 10 (23:00):
So.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
I remember one time this girl said to me, like, yeah, yeah,
it's great that you go to church, you know, but
it's just kind of like you have one piece of
the pie as a Protestant and Catholics.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
We have the whole pie.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
And I just I like knew. I was like, what
that's no. So she never did.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Did she ever try to convert eat it?
Speaker 4 (23:23):
No?
Speaker 7 (23:23):
She did not. People that she was friends with did.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
While Alanna never tried to convert Joy or any of
her old friends for that matter, her new friends weren't
making a great impression on her old friends or her mom.
Here's Joyce recalling a time when Alana had her church friends.
Speaker 6 (23:40):
Over There was that one time when I was in
my house and I overheard them talking about abortion should
be murder one. And I remember going in the dining
room and I didn't want to embarrass alone or anything,
but I was, like, you really think that? Like I
was like murder one. I said, do you know how
some people suffer for after they have an abortion? For years?
(24:02):
They feel bad, especially if they can't have children. And
it's not an easy thing, but murder one.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
First degree murder, punishable in some states by death. A
lot OF's new friends become yet another source of conflict
between her and her mom.
Speaker 6 (24:19):
I remember one day dropping her off to that apartment
complex and we had a discussion and it turned into
a debate, which and she started crying and told me,
you think I'm weird And I don't know if it
was about a Republican Democrat thing or again with the abortion,
and she was crying and she ran on my car,
and I remember and I thought, I can't I can't
lose my daughter. I have to stop.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Joyce rationalizes her decision to back off.
Speaker 6 (24:45):
She loves these friends, and she's good. She looked what
she does like, she's so good. She helps the poor,
the homeless. She loves God. I didn't know though, this
other thing.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
I didn't know, this other thing, the secret.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Sunday once to practice, should not have gone, need to
let go of Ultimate, so many desires and temptations. It
made me regret choosing this college. Sophomore year, core leader
at Saint Thom's, but lonely, unsure, burning out, overworked, dishonest
(25:29):
with God, ashamed, struggling with same sex.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Attraction, Alana's clearly having a hard time with her SSA.
In an email she writes to Father Dave during her
sophomore year, she tries to distance herself from these temptations. Remember,
up until now, she hasn't told her friends or her
family about any of this.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
This week has been filled with grace, but it was
also kind of rough. Two of my girlfriends from high
school Ultimate recently came out and our inner relationship together.
Then today I'm told that another girl, a friend at
Saint Thom's, is struggling with homosexuality. Although she remains chaste,
she deals with the loneliness by drinking and partying, and
(26:14):
she's growing further and further away from God.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And in the midst of this, she journals about her
relationship with Micah.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
One day, I was reading a book about Saint Terrez,
but I was so distracted by the situation I was
not paying attention to the words. I stopped reading and
began to pray, Lord, if you are giving me the
free choice, then, searching the depths of my soul, I
cannot date Micah anymore. I choose to give my heart
(26:44):
to you. I ended my prayer and began to read
where I had left off. The words read Here on earth,
love proves itself by free choice. Jesus wants to be chosen,
he wants to be preferred. Then I knew I had
made the right choice. We stopped dating. He was fine
(27:05):
since he wanted to be a priest.
Speaker 10 (27:11):
It's so funny the parallels, you know, like I always
thought that, you know, I used I tried dating girls too,
you know. I always felt like there was moments where
I was like, but the vocation to the priesthood is
what my calling is, and so I can't And so
I kind of I kind of tricked myself into being like,
I'm choosing this other thing that's you know, that's my calling,
(27:34):
and I can't date those girls. But you know, really,
I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Into it, into it.
Speaker 6 (27:39):
Yeah, it's tortuous.
Speaker 13 (27:44):
It's tortuous.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Interspersed between scholarship applications and writing assignments are a bunch
of her notes titled Healthy Sexuality. It's a kind of
summary of the Catholic teaching on sex.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Healthy sexuality. Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person
in the unity of his body and soul. Sex is
designed for both union and procreation. Sex as God intended
is for one man and one wife in a committed,
lifelong marriage relationship. Masturbation turns his energy in on oneself.
(28:21):
Masturbation is a symbol of selfishness and loneliness. Masturbation, fornication, adultery,
contraception do not image God's free, total, faithful, and fruitful love.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
For a lot of people, these restrictions seem out of date,
But for many Catholics, the church's job is precisely to
not change, because God's truth doesn't change. He's not a relativist. Remember,
as we learned from the conference speaker. By the time
I get to Alana's notes on homosexuality, it's not surprising
(28:57):
what I find with.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Same sex attraction who act out sexually can never become
one body with their partner, since their sexual organs cannot
be united and there is no possibility of creating another
person through a one flesh union, This could only amount
to mutual masturbation. Same sex attraction is disordered and not
(29:20):
according to God's plan.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
For young people trying desperately to follow God's plan, this
characterization of homosexual relationships as physiologically incompatible with this plan
is impossible to ignore. It burrows deep into our souls,
feeling the belief that how we experience relationship is from
God's perspective broken, and so we hide these feelings behind
(29:46):
a red line we must never cross because we can't
afford to lose God. We return to the speaker stage.
This is from another Catholic conference Alana attended organized by
the Franciscan University of Stupenville.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
When when people hear this, they think, well, well, what
does this?
Speaker 13 (30:02):
Where does this leave me? Though?
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Like I have these attractions?
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Like what does this mean?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Like I can I can never have a family, Like
I can never get married. Do you trust God's love
for you to the extent that you will abandon your
own will in order to follow him? Or do you
trust your own will for yourself more than you trust
in God? And you'd rather abandon him than your own will.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Alana takes all of this to heart. It's as if
she has to do everything possible to prove that she's
not abandoning God.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
My Jesus, there is a lot to do. Marry in
Consecration started yesterday, So here comes the Renunciation of the World.
Five to Sick scholarship essays to finished by Thursday. Five
page paper due soon. Buffalo awakening. I need to make
name tags and buy snacks, decorate boxes. I need to
continue fundraising. Lord, I need your help. Confession consent to
(30:58):
impure thoughts and same sex attraction. I let my weakness
scare me and forget to trust in God her protection.
Always neglecting homework, always eating too much, always picking at skin,
always thinking about how others will think of me, not
sleeping enough, fall asleep, praying. I have haunting, impure dreams.
(31:19):
They lead to despair and fear. Junior year, moved back
home to save money. Overworked, still two jobs, not doing
well in school, compulsive masturbation, attracted to every woman I
lay eyes on. My life is in shamples. I just
want to be clean and free and pure.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Midway through her junior year, Alana tears her acl during
a frisbee tournament and needs surgery. It's as if her
body is giving out under all the pressure. She moves
back home to recover.
Speaker 6 (31:59):
When she got home, they had told me to get
an ice machine, that you should put ice around the clock.
So I decided I'm gonna stay on the couch with her,
and like we had a big ice bucket thing on
the porch, so you know, I could refill the ice machine.
And I just stayed up all night with her. I
probably dozed off, but she didn't seem good.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
A lot of seems really down. Recovering from surgery is
no fun. So her friends stopped by to cheer her up.
Speaker 6 (32:25):
I remember her friends kept visiting. Micah came and he
cleaned all like he was cleaning and bringing her food,
and I remember thinking, oh, he's so nice. And Katie,
her friend from Frisbee, came in joy and everybody would
visit her.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
But one evening while her mother is with her on
the couch, A lot of share is what's really been
going on.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
I just kept staying a sleeping on the couch with her,
and then she told me she was attracted to women,
and she told the priest, and she told me, you
know about a masturbation was immortal sin, and it was
lifted all those years and it was back and that
school was round the clock with the environmental design. And
(33:06):
then she couldn't keep it up with the church hours
and the homeless hours, and she was like falling apart.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
The stress from everything was too much and Alana couldn't
keep it in anymore. Joyce isn't sure what to make
of any of it. This completely blindsides her.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
You know, And I was just shocked, like I was,
you know, I was just in shock.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Joyce describes how horrified she felt that Alana had been
carrying the secret all on her own, and she tries
her best to comfort her daughter. But as much as
Alana seems to be opening up by finally coming out
to her mom, she's not sharing the whole picture. She
doesn't tell her about what she's been learning in therapy.
From this next passage, I find it looks like the
(33:52):
wedge between Alana and her parents that began with father
Dave had been continuing long after he'd left.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Peter told me that I should not identify by my temptations,
for the cause is much deeper than I could imagine.
The cause was the doubt and isolation from a young age.
I did not know God. From a young age. I
was isolated because of my sexual addiction. I felt so
much shame and hopelessness because of my parents. I could
(34:21):
not relate to them or be known by them. They
were too strong.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
And I was weak. The hipster priest, the one who
ironically Joyce trusted, was the person who'd been reinforcing these
parental theories. And as I look at Alana's therapy dates
with Kate, I realized that it was under Father Peter's
leadership that Saint Thom's was referring this kind of therapy
to the students. The stress leading up to Alana's acl
(34:50):
tair would be compounded with another year of therapy where
Alana tries desperately to fix herself in order to become
a nun or a wife, to get to the root
of her mother wound that she's told made her gay.
By now, it's becoming clear that this intoxicating sense of
belonging to a community with shared black and white values,
(35:10):
while comforting, might have drove Alana into me, deeper into
a profound shame, A shame that's all over Alana's journals,
a shame eating away at her sense of self and
mental health, A shame that no one else could see.
Perhaps it's this shame that led to Alana's suicide scare
in her senior year at CU. As her younger sister,
(35:33):
Sophia explained, a police officer and a nun came to
the Chen home and rushed Alana to the hospital. Sophia
was left confused and crying after learning that Alana had
threatened to kill herself. When Joyce finds out, she races
to the er.
Speaker 6 (35:49):
I get there to the emergency room, there's a couple
of nuns, and then there's father Peter on his knees
praying over Alana. She's crying, and I'm just stunned. I'm like,
what the hell is going on here?
Speaker 13 (36:08):
I will follow you, follow you where I find you.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Mine next time on dear Alana.
Speaker 7 (36:18):
So she said, When I think of home, I realize
I have very few people left. I'm so grateful to
have you and that you never gave up on me.
I'm finally learning that to give up on.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Myself how Alana's struggle is interrupted by a friendship that
develops into something more.
Speaker 13 (36:35):
I will follow You ever since you touched on? Thank You.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Dear Alana was created, hosted, and written by me Simon
Kentfung and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association
with a Slept Audio and the Center for Independent Documentary.
It was produced by Lauri Puliski, who also composed the music.
Executive producer are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. Our
supervising producer is Tracy leeds Kaplan. Additional music by Makeup
(37:07):
and Vanity Set, Sales and distribution by iHeartMedia. Our voice
actor is Alana Rabor and our credit song I Will
Follow You is Bye to Loose. Show notes and resources
can be found on our website Dearlana dot com. If
you enjoyed this episode, please take time to follow the show,
rate and review various.
Speaker 13 (37:26):
In notion suit Monton So High, Keep Me Away Away
from Long.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Dear Alana is an eight part series released weekly. If
you can't wait until next week, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus
so you can binge the entire higher series right now.
Add free head to Apple Podcasts or tenorfoot plus dot
com to subscribe now.
Deerlana is released weekly and brought to you absolutely free.
But if you want to binge the whole season right now,
subscribe to tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com or on
Apple Podcasts. You also get exclusive bonus episodes throughout the season.
For more information, check out the show notes enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
The following episode contains references to suicide. If you or
someone you know is in need of help, please contact
the Suicide in Crisis Lifeline by dialing nine eight eight.
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
It's twenty thirteen, school starting at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
and everything's happening on the hill, new people, new classes, parties,
the cl fair. There's frisbee on Farrin Field, the CU
Buffalo's football season is just getting started, and there are
mounds of pizza boxes and beer cups piling up outside
the frat houses. CU Boulder wasn't Alana's first choice. In
(01:14):
her senior year of high school, she begged her mother
to let her go to Wyoming Catholic College, a traditional
leading school with an outdoor leadership program. Father Dave even
wrote her recommendation letter, but at the last minute, Alana
decided to stay local. She was already really involved with
Saint Thom's, which happened to be the center of all
things Catholic at CU Boulder, and Saint Thom's was in
(01:37):
full bloom. They host a welcome barbecue for all the
new students, and there are all these really nice, good
looking college grads hanging out and getting to know all
the freshmen. Everyone's talking about this conference that's happening in
the winter called Seek. Alana signs up.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Welcome to see this.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Z.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
You're ten thousand Catholic students from across the country convening
in Nashville for a week.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Take out people from.
Speaker 6 (02:06):
All over the big class in places like Nebraska.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
In Colorado, there are giant stadium messes, men's and women's sessions. Women,
you have to have a posse of women.
Speaker 7 (02:18):
Women need a possey Why because women hate each other.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
As a guy, you want the lord and you want
the lady. So I want to lay a foundation of
top ten tips you can do to date your soulmate.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Incredible music, dozens of young priests ready to hear your confession.
Nuns walking around arousing call to change the world.
Speaker 8 (02:39):
Would you please consider the world is waiting for you,
is waiting for you to live in divine intimacy, authentic friendship,
and this ability to live in the little way and
the talks. I began a career in fashion and in modeling.
Speaker 7 (02:53):
I was on America's Next Top Model.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Stories of wandering through the empty promises of modern culture
into a life of real fulfillment.
Speaker 6 (03:01):
And yet I was completely not at peace.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
I wanted more, and the only person who could give
me more was Christ.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
But the highlight of the week is an evening of worship,
music and prayer. The priest, in his gold vestments, burns
incense around the altar, and the worship team builds up.
The emotion Isn's And in this crowd of scared and
(03:32):
excited young people, all kneeling, eyes closed, tonight offers a
glimpse of what life could be like with thousands of
others who believe what you believe, who found the answers
to the confusion and uncertainty about the future that you've
secretly felt, And you begin to wonder if maybe Heaven
feels something like this from Tenderfoot TV. I'm Simon kent
(03:56):
Fung and this is Dear Alana. Part five piece of
the pie.
Speaker 9 (04:10):
I answered the door. I should have probably put two
and two together, but I know that she was in
trouble and that it wasn't good. So I remember she left,
and I was crying, crying, crying, and just really confused.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
When the police and nun first arrived at their door,
Alana's younger sister, Sophia had no clue why they were there.
She didn't know that Alana had told a friend about
her plans to die by suicide, But how did she
get here? These plans didn't come from nowhere? What else
was going on while she was in college besides her therapy?
(04:45):
I decided to extend my trip in Boulder. Before I
can go forward in the story, I have to go
back to her college years, those pivotal years that led
up to this breaking point. Today, I'm walking through Alana's
old neighborho by the CU Boulder campus. I want to
see for myself the places where Alana would have spent
(05:05):
most of her time. On this weekday, students are recovering
from last night's party, walking home from their frat houses.
My introverted self couldn't imagine living here, and then I
see it. Saint Thoma's, the church that Alana would sneak
out to, where she first met Father Dave, where she
(05:28):
found her therapist, and when she went to college, this
church became her home away from home. I walk a
little further and find myself in front of a building
that says Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Center. There are students
coming in and out of the building, one of whom
holds the door for me, and as I walk in,
I'm expecting to see some sort of worship space, but
(05:50):
instead I enter what looks like a full fledged coffee shop.
It's got a kind of target decor with a woodpaneled
accent wall and geometric wallpaper. I look up at a framed,
hand lettered quote that says all I need today is
a little bit of coffee and a whole lot of Jesus. Yeah,
(06:14):
so what kind of sandwiches?
Speaker 10 (06:16):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
There we are? So how did all this come to be?
This religious haven on a secular campus. The man behind
all of this, who's been leading Saint Thom's for the
past twelve years, is a priest named Father Peter Mussett.
He's in his mid forties, which is young for a
Catholic priest. He's affable and enthusiastic, and you can hear
(06:38):
the joy in his voice when he talks about his work,
like in this interview with the campus newspaper.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
I love being a priest and bowler.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Like I cannot tell you.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
I've talked to somebody in there like, oh, you're a
Catholic in They're like, oh, my cathedral is the woods,
And you know what's great is it's wonderful. Then talk
to me about how you experience God within the woods,
Like there's all these really cool starting places that you
can have within Boulder.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
You get the picture, an outgoing guy who seems engaged
with students. Joyce remembers the first time she saw Father
Peter when Alana brought her to Mass at Saint Thom's.
Speaker 6 (07:15):
I'd never seen a priest look like him. Sometimes he
had have a man bun. Sometimes he'd just have curly,
curly hair, long birkenstocks. He just was cool.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
In the articles I read, that cool man bun look
earned Father Peter the nickname the Hipster Priest. But it
wasn't just his appearance that was appealing.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
When I first heard him give a homily, I couldn't
believe it like it was so funny dream and he
made the homily understandable and then he brought humor into it.
So I loved it, and I had friends come and
hear him like I just was like, this is the best.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
In so many ways. Father Peter is exactly the kind
of priest I dreamt of becoming young, dynamic orthodox. He's
appointed as administrator for Saint Thom's in twenty eleven when
Alana is still in high school, just as Father Dave,
Alana's spiritual director, gets reassigned from Saint Thom's. Joyce remembers
wondering about the reassignment, and.
Speaker 6 (08:20):
That's when I met and met with Father Peter because
I just trusted him so many times I met with
him and I was like, do I have anything to
be worried about? Why is he made to leave?
Speaker 1 (08:29):
She recalls Father Peter reassuring her that Father Dave's leaving
is not a big deal, how they were both roommates
and seminary and she had nothing to worry about, and
that Father Dave was leaving for other personal reasons.
Speaker 9 (08:42):
And I was like, why are.
Speaker 6 (08:43):
They getting him many help? And he said, no, he's
just going to go to another parish because the prishioner's
here got upset with some things, and I was concerned,
but I trusted Father Peter, and then I thought, thank God,
he's leaving.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
With Father Dave out of the picture and Father Peter,
the hipster priest as the new sheriff in town. Joyce
was relieved. She felt like Alana was now in good hands.
What she didn't know was that Alana had a different
idea of what would be good for her. Back at
(09:32):
the University of Colorado, Alana is thriving. She's joined the
collegiate for his bee team, and she makes a ton
of new friends At Saint Thom's. She's become close with
Father Peter, who she calls FP, and kind of dives
into it all at the Catholic Center, she's volunteering at
the Saint Thom's Adoration Chapel, becoming a leader for their
fall retreat, and organizing students every week to give sandwiches
(09:55):
out to the homeless. What she seems most excited about
is moving off campus into an apartment with four other
Catholic girls, where they do weekly rosaries and Bible studies together.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
Freshman year Zeal Martyrdom sainthood. Here are all the things
I'm grateful for. The missionary disciples, talking to Laura and Carissa,
sending up the emails mass this morning, signing the lease goal,
make disciples win, build send through missionary service to the homeless.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
A lot is clearly in her element. I feel like
I'm starting to get a pretty good picture of what
her college experience was like. Saint Thom's seems to provide
a kind of alternative to the mainstream activities found at
a party school like CU. It's like, instead of going
to the bar crawl on Friday, let's hang out at
the Saint Tom's coffee shop and talk about our walk
(10:49):
with God. I would have totally signed up. Up until college,
my faith was very private and devotional, but I soon
stumbled into a more intellectual side of Catholicism, aside that
equipped me with debate level knowledge so that I could
defend the church and win arguments. I discovered an entire
(11:09):
industry of books and conferences dedicated to this ALTA gets
a good dose of this at the Nashville conference you
heard at the beginning, where Father Peter brings a contingent
of ninety CU students after a reverend stadium mass. The
music dies down and everyone settles in. The speaker takes
(11:30):
the stage.
Speaker 11 (11:31):
The worldview that we're going to attack today is relativism.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
So the word with me. Relativism a philosophical concept that
most of the students have probably never heard of.
Speaker 11 (11:42):
It's the idea that there is no truth. The truth
is relative to what each person believes. So it does
away with this idea that there's objective truth.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
You can think of relativism as license to do whatever
you want.
Speaker 11 (11:55):
Now, most people are not relativists when it comes to
things that are scientifically verifiable, and no one's going to say,
you know, two plus two is five for me, that's
my truth. Don't impose you four in my five, You
closed minded Catholics.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
He's ripping on his critics.
Speaker 11 (12:12):
But we're relativists when it comes to everything else. So
how do I make a moral decision? Definis is a marriage?
Anything like that? We think that's stuff that people make
up for themselves. There is no such thing as truth.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Hitler said that even Hitler was a relativist. That puts
it into perspective.
Speaker 11 (12:30):
See, if your God lets you do whatever you want,
your god is you If there's no objective truth out
there about morals. Where is your moral compass? Point?
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It points to the all powerful question what feels right?
I remember hearing talks like this and feeling like I
couldn't trust myself. Only God was objective, and it was
my duty to defend him against a wider culture that
was dead set on attacking us for our beliefs.
Speaker 4 (12:56):
We know there is persecution that is occurring against.
Speaker 11 (13:00):
Christians surrounded by this culture that has so much craziness
in it.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
How do we live in a culture like this? You
a culture of moral relativism? I want to talk about that.
With the culture against us, what were we to do?
The answer was to fight back with objective truth. And
the way to discover that objective truth was through the
superpowers of the Church, which Catholics believe has a direct
and historical line to God, kind of giving us the
(13:27):
cheat codes to the video game of life, and it
seems to have worked. Some of the most famous scientific discoveries,
like the Big Bang were discovered by Catholic priests. The
Universal Declaration of Human Rights was kickstarted by a Catholic philosopher,
and you know who else is Catholic? Six of the
nine US Supreme Court justices.
Speaker 11 (13:47):
We started the hospital system, started the university system. Maybe
you know large social service breader on the planet.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Heck, even Stephen Colbert teaches Catholic Sunday School. God must
be backing this right, so you can understand how drawn
I was to this church and why young college students
like Alana would also be captivated. The talk ends with
a call to be a saint.
Speaker 11 (14:11):
You see, you, Becoming holy is not just about you.
We live in a world that's forgotten its way. It's
forgotten that life has any purpose, and the answer God
sends is you.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
I picture Alana hearing this and feeling like He's talking
directly to her. She too wanted to be holy and
perfectly united with God, a saint to save those around her,
and by her sophomore year, Alana was well known throughout
the Saint Tom's community. With her quiet devotion and commitment
to the homeless, it was obvious she was on a
(14:46):
fast track to becoming a saint. Even younger students had
heard of Alana Chen's religious reputation before meeting her. But
what really got everyone talking was her friendship with a
boy named Micah. Here's Alana describing him on her timeline.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
Micah met at Saint Thom's first guy to be close
to gentlemen, adventurous, sensitive, joyful, vulnerable, healthy boundaries, soulmate, partner
in sainthood.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Micah's tall, dark, and handsome. He goes with Alana to
visit the homeless under the bridge on Sundays. They both
love hiking the flatirons by the campus together. And what
makes Micah special is that, like Alana wanting to become
a nun, Micah wants to become a priest. This gets
everyone talking and the are they aren't they? Speculation of
(15:39):
these two good looking saints in the making makes them
a kind of Catholic power couple. But Micah and Alana
are both figuring out their vocations how God is calling
them to serve the church, which means picking from one
of three options marriage, becoming a priest or a nun,
or staying single.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
In the fall, the Dominican sisters visited our campus. It's
hard to describe, but after hearing their vocation stories, my
heart was burning. The sister said, even though she wanted
to be married and have children, it was okay. That
made her vocation even more pure. I asked Jesus to
make my vocation pure, so I asked for the desire
(16:19):
to be married and have kids. In the next couple
of weeks, my best male friend asked me on a date.
We both liked each other, and even though I was
asserting to be a sister and he a priest, I
said yes.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Alana's older sister, Carrissa, remembers that first date.
Speaker 12 (16:36):
It was like a big deal at the ten house
that she was going on this date.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
And he picked her up and we had all met him.
Speaker 9 (16:44):
He's super nice, he's handsome.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
They finished their date that evening at the chapel at
Saint Thom's praying together.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
I liked him a lot.
Speaker 9 (16:52):
He was very holy.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
This increased my desire for marriage, but also my desire
to be a sister. As we dated, I constantly felt torn.
I asked many people for advice, but no one would
tell me what to do. Then I understood that Jesus
was leaving me the free choice.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Alanna's facing the dilemma of whether to become a nun
or to marry. This might seem like she's getting ahead
of herself with Micah, like they're only going on dates.
Why she's thinking about marriage. But for Catholics, when it
comes to discerning your vocation, it's really important to get
it right. Picking the wrong one is like missing out
on what God wanted you to be, so the stakes
(17:36):
are high. I remember the many journals I wrote asking
God to help me discover my vocation. There was nothing
more I wanted than to follow God's will perfectly, and
everything in me was pointing to the priesthood. For me,
marriage wasn't something that had ever crossed my mind, but
the thought of becoming a priest, not having a family
(17:57):
of my own, and serving God's family full time filled
me with a deep sense of peace and joy. Father William,
my spiritual director, told me that these were all signs
of a vocation to the priesthood. Not every young Catholic
man feels this way. Alana takes her vocational discernment very seriously.
(18:19):
She dates Micah and also attends retreats with Mother Teresa's
nuns in New York to see which one speaks to
her more.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
Please answer me, God, hear my cry when I call
to you. Father told me not to even think about
my vocation until the last day of my retreat with
the sisters already, it's all I think about, should I
listen to Father Dave my spiritual director? Or should I
look and ask you in prayer about my vocation.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
It's been nearly three years since Father Dave has left
Saint Thom's, so why is Alana still referring to him
as her spiritual director? What no one knows is that
Allnna has been in touch with Father Dave behind her
mother's back this entire time. Alana's mother had forbidden her
(19:12):
from meeting with Father Dave unsupervised when she was a
young teen, but by college, it's clear that Alana has
been ignoring her mom.
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Well, who are you on the phone with Alana? And
then she'd finally tell me. She wouldn't tell me right away,
and then I was really mad because you're not supposed
to be talking to him anymore. And she's like, it's
on the phone, it's not in person. She'd get upset.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
While other teenagers might rebel by drinking and breaking curfew,
Alana's form of rebellion is talking to her priest on
the phone. I managed to get a hold of the
phone they're talking about. Her family was able to unlock it,
but Joyce has never been able to look through it
in any depth. It's too painful. I ask her if
(20:00):
she would be okay if I did, Please guard it
with your life. She says, there's a lot on the phone,
and it takes me nearly two weeks to comb through it.
I discover that Alana and Father Dave were communicating even
more than what Joyce was aware of, especially by text.
They text almost weekly, sometimes several times a week, and
(20:21):
as I read through their conversations, I discover more layers
to their relationship. They joke about their Meyers Briggs personality types.
Alana is an infp and Father Dave shares how hard
it's been with all of his reassignments. He sends her selfies,
shares the occasional food pic, and they schedule times to
talk on the phone. He asks her how bad her
(20:43):
temptations are on a scale of one to ten. She
replies eight. Then, at the end of her junior year
at cu Alana texts him Happy Father's Day. You are
a good father. I love you. He replies, thank you.
I love you too. I was looking for you on
Facebook since I joined. You're very smart for not being
(21:04):
on it. Father Dave and Alana's text messages look more
like two friends talking rather than an older man and
a young woman seeking spiritual direction. While there are no
hard and fast rules to spiritual direction, I'm not sure
where the line is. And even though I was close
with my spiritual director, it never looked quite like this
(21:34):
With a new community of religious peers, people like Micah
and others at Saint Thom's who are as invested in
their faith as Alana is. Alana tries hard to keep
up with her old friends, but mixing friend groups would
prove to be complicated. Here's me again, the Frisbee Captain.
Speaker 12 (21:51):
One of the more defining things that year was my
friend Kelsey, who was dating this other girl at the time.
There was a holiday party that Alana had invited, myself, Kelsey,
and Kelsey's partner too. It happened to be at Peter
(22:11):
Mussett's house.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Peter Musset is father Peter, you know, the hipster priest.
After the party, ME picked up on something Kelsey and
their partner were really uncomfortable.
Speaker 12 (22:23):
At that point, I had realized, like, maybe it's best
to not be in the same spaces as like Alana's
church friends, because of the way that like, you know,
Kelsey feels uncomfortable and Kelsey feels judged. And at that point,
I think neither of us had known that Alana was gay.
So I really don't know if Alana, you know, brought
(22:45):
the three of us there to just like make those
spaces a little bit safer, I'd like to think. So
I'd like to think that Alana wanted us there.
Speaker 1 (22:54):
I asked joy Alana's best friends in kindergarten, what she
remembers about Alana's new church friends.
Speaker 10 (23:00):
So.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
I remember one time this girl said to me, like, yeah, yeah,
it's great that you go to church, you know, but
it's just kind of like you have one piece of
the pie as a Protestant and Catholics.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
We have the whole pie.
Speaker 7 (23:14):
And I just I like knew. I was like, what
that's no. So she never did.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Did she ever try to convert eat it?
Speaker 4 (23:23):
No?
Speaker 7 (23:23):
She did not. People that she was friends with did.
Speaker 1 (23:27):
While Alanna never tried to convert Joy or any of
her old friends for that matter, her new friends weren't
making a great impression on her old friends or her mom.
Here's Joyce recalling a time when Alana had her church friends.
Speaker 6 (23:40):
Over There was that one time when I was in
my house and I overheard them talking about abortion should
be murder one. And I remember going in the dining
room and I didn't want to embarrass alone or anything,
but I was, like, you really think that? Like I
was like murder one. I said, do you know how
some people suffer for after they have an abortion? For years?
(24:02):
They feel bad, especially if they can't have children. And
it's not an easy thing, but murder one.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
First degree murder, punishable in some states by death. A
lot OF's new friends become yet another source of conflict
between her and her mom.
Speaker 6 (24:19):
I remember one day dropping her off to that apartment
complex and we had a discussion and it turned into
a debate, which and she started crying and told me,
you think I'm weird And I don't know if it
was about a Republican Democrat thing or again with the abortion,
and she was crying and she ran on my car,
and I remember and I thought, I can't I can't
lose my daughter. I have to stop.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Joyce rationalizes her decision to back off.
Speaker 6 (24:45):
She loves these friends, and she's good. She looked what
she does like, she's so good. She helps the poor,
the homeless. She loves God. I didn't know though, this
other thing.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
I didn't know, this other thing, the secret.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Sunday once to practice, should not have gone, need to
let go of Ultimate, so many desires and temptations. It
made me regret choosing this college. Sophomore year, core leader
at Saint Thom's, but lonely, unsure, burning out, overworked, dishonest
(25:29):
with God, ashamed, struggling with same sex.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Attraction, Alana's clearly having a hard time with her SSA.
In an email she writes to Father Dave during her
sophomore year, she tries to distance herself from these temptations. Remember,
up until now, she hasn't told her friends or her
family about any of this.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
This week has been filled with grace, but it was
also kind of rough. Two of my girlfriends from high
school Ultimate recently came out and our inner relationship together.
Then today I'm told that another girl, a friend at
Saint Thom's, is struggling with homosexuality. Although she remains chaste,
she deals with the loneliness by drinking and partying, and
(26:14):
she's growing further and further away from God.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And in the midst of this, she journals about her
relationship with Micah.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
One day, I was reading a book about Saint Terrez,
but I was so distracted by the situation I was
not paying attention to the words. I stopped reading and
began to pray, Lord, if you are giving me the
free choice, then, searching the depths of my soul, I
cannot date Micah anymore. I choose to give my heart
(26:44):
to you. I ended my prayer and began to read
where I had left off. The words read Here on earth,
love proves itself by free choice. Jesus wants to be chosen,
he wants to be preferred. Then I knew I had
made the right choice. We stopped dating. He was fine
(27:05):
since he wanted to be a priest.
Speaker 10 (27:11):
It's so funny the parallels, you know, like I always
thought that, you know, I used I tried dating girls too,
you know. I always felt like there was moments where
I was like, but the vocation to the priesthood is
what my calling is, and so I can't And so
I kind of I kind of tricked myself into being like,
I'm choosing this other thing that's you know, that's my calling,
(27:34):
and I can't date those girls. But you know, really,
I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Into it, into it.
Speaker 6 (27:39):
Yeah, it's tortuous.
Speaker 13 (27:44):
It's tortuous.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Interspersed between scholarship applications and writing assignments are a bunch
of her notes titled Healthy Sexuality. It's a kind of
summary of the Catholic teaching on sex.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
Healthy sexuality. Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person
in the unity of his body and soul. Sex is
designed for both union and procreation. Sex as God intended
is for one man and one wife in a committed,
lifelong marriage relationship. Masturbation turns his energy in on oneself.
(28:21):
Masturbation is a symbol of selfishness and loneliness. Masturbation, fornication, adultery,
contraception do not image God's free, total, faithful, and fruitful love.
Speaker 1 (28:37):
For a lot of people, these restrictions seem out of date,
But for many Catholics, the church's job is precisely to
not change, because God's truth doesn't change. He's not a relativist. Remember,
as we learned from the conference speaker. By the time
I get to Alana's notes on homosexuality, it's not surprising
(28:57):
what I find with.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Same sex attraction who act out sexually can never become
one body with their partner, since their sexual organs cannot
be united and there is no possibility of creating another
person through a one flesh union, This could only amount
to mutual masturbation. Same sex attraction is disordered and not
(29:20):
according to God's plan.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
For young people trying desperately to follow God's plan, this
characterization of homosexual relationships as physiologically incompatible with this plan
is impossible to ignore. It burrows deep into our souls,
feeling the belief that how we experience relationship is from
God's perspective broken, and so we hide these feelings behind
(29:46):
a red line we must never cross because we can't
afford to lose God. We return to the speaker stage.
This is from another Catholic conference Alana attended organized by
the Franciscan University of Stupenville.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
When when people hear this, they think, well, well, what
does this?
Speaker 13 (30:02):
Where does this leave me? Though?
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Like I have these attractions?
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Like what does this mean?
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Like I can I can never have a family, Like
I can never get married. Do you trust God's love
for you to the extent that you will abandon your
own will in order to follow him? Or do you
trust your own will for yourself more than you trust
in God? And you'd rather abandon him than your own will.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Alana takes all of this to heart. It's as if
she has to do everything possible to prove that she's
not abandoning God.
Speaker 4 (30:32):
My Jesus, there is a lot to do. Marry in
Consecration started yesterday, So here comes the Renunciation of the World.
Five to Sick scholarship essays to finished by Thursday. Five
page paper due soon. Buffalo awakening. I need to make
name tags and buy snacks, decorate boxes. I need to
continue fundraising. Lord, I need your help. Confession consent to
(30:58):
impure thoughts and same sex attraction. I let my weakness
scare me and forget to trust in God her protection.
Always neglecting homework, always eating too much, always picking at skin,
always thinking about how others will think of me, not
sleeping enough, fall asleep, praying. I have haunting, impure dreams.
(31:19):
They lead to despair and fear. Junior year, moved back
home to save money. Overworked, still two jobs, not doing
well in school, compulsive masturbation, attracted to every woman I
lay eyes on. My life is in shamples. I just
want to be clean and free and pure.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Midway through her junior year, Alana tears her acl during
a frisbee tournament and needs surgery. It's as if her
body is giving out under all the pressure. She moves
back home to recover.
Speaker 6 (31:59):
When she got home, they had told me to get
an ice machine, that you should put ice around the clock.
So I decided I'm gonna stay on the couch with her,
and like we had a big ice bucket thing on
the porch, so you know, I could refill the ice machine.
And I just stayed up all night with her. I
probably dozed off, but she didn't seem good.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
A lot of seems really down. Recovering from surgery is
no fun. So her friends stopped by to cheer her up.
Speaker 6 (32:25):
I remember her friends kept visiting. Micah came and he
cleaned all like he was cleaning and bringing her food,
and I remember thinking, oh, he's so nice. And Katie,
her friend from Frisbee, came in joy and everybody would
visit her.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
But one evening while her mother is with her on
the couch, A lot of share is what's really been
going on.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
I just kept staying a sleeping on the couch with her,
and then she told me she was attracted to women,
and she told the priest, and she told me, you
know about a masturbation was immortal sin, and it was
lifted all those years and it was back and that
school was round the clock with the environmental design. And
(33:06):
then she couldn't keep it up with the church hours
and the homeless hours, and she was like falling apart.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
The stress from everything was too much and Alana couldn't
keep it in anymore. Joyce isn't sure what to make
of any of it. This completely blindsides her.
Speaker 6 (33:24):
You know, And I was just shocked, like I was,
you know, I was just in shock.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Joyce describes how horrified she felt that Alana had been
carrying the secret all on her own, and she tries
her best to comfort her daughter. But as much as
Alana seems to be opening up by finally coming out
to her mom, she's not sharing the whole picture. She
doesn't tell her about what she's been learning in therapy.
From this next passage, I find it looks like the
(33:52):
wedge between Alana and her parents that began with father
Dave had been continuing long after he'd left.
Speaker 4 (34:00):
Peter told me that I should not identify by my temptations,
for the cause is much deeper than I could imagine.
The cause was the doubt and isolation from a young age.
I did not know God. From a young age. I
was isolated because of my sexual addiction. I felt so
much shame and hopelessness because of my parents. I could
(34:21):
not relate to them or be known by them. They
were too strong.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
And I was weak. The hipster priest, the one who
ironically Joyce trusted, was the person who'd been reinforcing these
parental theories. And as I look at Alana's therapy dates
with Kate, I realized that it was under Father Peter's
leadership that Saint Thom's was referring this kind of therapy
to the students. The stress leading up to Alana's acl
(34:50):
tair would be compounded with another year of therapy where
Alana tries desperately to fix herself in order to become
a nun or a wife, to get to the root
of her mother wound that she's told made her gay.
By now, it's becoming clear that this intoxicating sense of
belonging to a community with shared black and white values,
(35:10):
while comforting, might have drove Alana into me, deeper into
a profound shame, A shame that's all over Alana's journals,
a shame eating away at her sense of self and
mental health, A shame that no one else could see.
Perhaps it's this shame that led to Alana's suicide scare
in her senior year at CU. As her younger sister,
(35:33):
Sophia explained, a police officer and a nun came to
the Chen home and rushed Alana to the hospital. Sophia
was left confused and crying after learning that Alana had
threatened to kill herself. When Joyce finds out, she races
to the er.
Speaker 6 (35:49):
I get there to the emergency room, there's a couple
of nuns, and then there's father Peter on his knees
praying over Alana. She's crying, and I'm just stunned. I'm like,
what the hell is going on here?
Speaker 13 (36:08):
I will follow you, follow you where I find you.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
Mine next time on dear Alana.
Speaker 7 (36:18):
So she said, When I think of home, I realize
I have very few people left. I'm so grateful to
have you and that you never gave up on me.
I'm finally learning that to give up on.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Myself how Alana's struggle is interrupted by a friendship that
develops into something more.
Speaker 13 (36:35):
I will follow You ever since you touched on? Thank You.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Dear Alana was created, hosted, and written by me Simon
Kentfung and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association
with a Slept Audio and the Center for Independent Documentary.
It was produced by Lauri Puliski, who also composed the music.
Executive producer are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. Our
supervising producer is Tracy leeds Kaplan. Additional music by Makeup
(37:07):
and Vanity Set, Sales and distribution by iHeartMedia. Our voice
actor is Alana Rabor and our credit song I Will
Follow You is Bye to Loose. Show notes and resources
can be found on our website Dearlana dot com. If
you enjoyed this episode, please take time to follow the show,
rate and review various.
Speaker 13 (37:26):
In notion suit Monton So High, Keep Me Away Away
from Long.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
Dear Alana is an eight part series released weekly. If
you can't wait until next week, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus
so you can binge the entire higher series right now.
Add free head to Apple Podcasts or tenorfoot plus dot
com to subscribe now.
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