No Signal

Seeking God But Never Finding Him Is a Complicated Quest

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I was 17 when my cousin Jimmy was born, and that was the age I left home in Upstate New York to finish high school with the Legionaries of Christ in Texas.

As a consequence, I never knew Jimmy as a kid. I remember seeing him a few times when he was 3 or 4, probably during breaks from college. I have this one memory fragment of him as a little boy, standing outside his home in the Town of Binghamton, staring at me in silence. He was a cute kid, but I was busy with my young adult life, so I can’t say I ever really knew him.

Fast forward to 2015 or so, and Jimmy, now an adult himself and attending Franciscan University of Steubenville, my own alma mater, began to make contact. Although we didn’t have an existing relationship, I was family, and he’s extremely extroverted, so he didn’t hesitate to comment on my articles about Catholicism. He would message me on Facebook to agree with or challenge me on certain things I’d written.

Sometime in mid-to-late 2017, he told me he was moving to Phoenix, where we had also just relocated the previous year. He was discerning the priesthood with a religious order there, and was excited about the new adventure.

Again, he was family, so we invited him to come and spend Christmas with us, since we knew he wasn’t going home and didn’t have anyone in town. He played NERF with my kids and ate like a horse and talked to me about big ideas. What began as an act of polite hospitality turned quickly to friendship, and Jimmy became a regular cast member at our place. For several years, our home was his second home. He was there for almost every holiday, and lots of other occasions besides. Despite our age difference, and a lifetime spent as strangers, we became close. We got together regularly to smoke cigars and talk about philosophy and religion and politics and the like. Jimmy pushed me to read Jordan Peterson even before

Kale Zelden

did. When I lost my faith, he remained steadfast, despite his own deep religious convictions. He was going through his own struggles, and he was one of the only friends I had at the time who I felt really understood what I was going through. He didn’t let it affect our relationship.

When we left Phoenix for New Hampshire in 2021, Jimmy was, in the parlance of our Upstate New York/Lower New England family, “wicked bummed.” He told me he felt that he had no good reason to stay in Arizona with us gone. But as someone who had spent a lot of time in Boston growing up, he had zero interest in following us there. Instead, he decided to move to Nashville, where some of his college buddies lived. There was a solid and growing Catholic community there he could be a part of, and he had decided at that point that the priesthood was not for him after all. He was ready to find a wife and settle down.

New Hampshire turned out to be a mistake for us, and less than a year later, we were back in Phoenix. But it’s a good thing we went, because he Jimmy might never have left if we hadn’t. His absence was palpable for the final two years we stayed there, but he was so happy in Tennessee that I couldn’t help being happy for him.

Nashville turned out very much not to be a mistake for Jimmy. He got a good job, fell in with this great community of young men, and although it took a while, he actually did find himself the girl of his dreams.

When we met his lovely future bride back in August, he asked me to be a groomsman. I was honored to accept the invitation. This past Saturday, Jimmy got married. I was by far the oldest member of the wedding party, a grandfather with more white hair than brown, drinking and laughing and hanging out with guys many years my junior — some of whom are the same age as my oldest daughter. It took me no time at all to see the treasure that Jimmy had found. These men immediately treated me as a friend, and I had the best time hanging out with them that I can remember having since the days I lived in a house with my own college buddies back in the early 2000s. A number of Jimmy’s friends were recently married with young children themselves, and just starting out their lives. It was a beautiful thing to see and experience.

If I’m being brutally honest, though, at first I was dragging my heels about going. Here’s why: