A priest noticed her tears and invited her to talk in another room

The B.C. Catholic
COQUITLAM



A member of Our Lady of Fatima Parish is reflecting on her conversion as the Year of Mercy draws to a close.

Diane Lebrun said she faced a near-death experience and sexual and physical abuse before she returned to the Catholic faith. “I knew God existed,” but “had a very horrible childhood,” she said.

Lebrun was sexually abused at a young age. Her feelings of guilt kept her in fear of telling anyone or seeking help.

Even after the abuse stopped at age 10, her feelings of loneliness and isolation did not. “When I was 17, I was paying for an apartment, working two jobs so my sister could go to university, and I felt very alone. Again, there was nobody to love me.”

Lebrun, a Catholic, lost any interest in church during those years.

“You miss one week, and it kind of bothers you, and then you miss a second week and it doesn’t feel that bad, and the next thing I knew, I wasn’t going,” she said.

“I really did not see, at the time, the damage that it was doing to me. By not going to church, I became fairly wild.”

Lebrun would hop from one boyfriend to the next, looking for love and fulfillment, and not finding it. Years later, she randomly met a former classmate of hers. “We both had a little crush on one another,” even in Grade 9, she laughed.

He asked her out and they began dating in 1965. He was a Catholic, and would often invite her to church and confession. “To please him I would go to church. Physically, I was there, but spiritually and mentally, I wasn’t.”

They married and had been married for 11 years when he suggested she go on a women’s retreat. She took him up on it, grateful for a weekend-long break from raising their children and foster children.

When the retreat began, Lebrun had second thoughts. “They were all praying and on their knees and I’m looking at these women and I’m thinking: ‘They’ve got to be joking!’ I made fun of them in my mind.”

In the mid-afternoon, her disposition suddenly changed. Lebrun said it was like she was “hit on the head” with the realization that these women really loved God and were willing to dedicate their lives to Him.

“I just started bawling!” As the tears ran down her cheeks, a priest noticed and invited her to talk in another room. She agreed, and all of her past struggles came to the surface. For the first time, she told someone about the abuse.

The priest “made me realize that in my wild days, when I would go from one guy to the next, what I was searching for was love, and all of a sudden it was there, in my husband, in him, and most of all, from God,” she said. “His mercy for me, his understanding, was overwhelming.”

A part of the childhood that she had tried to forget, a near-death experience, also resurfaced. Lebrun was 12 years old and swimming with her cousins when, after diving into a very deep pool, found herself suddenly drowning.

“I tried to stay afloat but kept sinking,” she recalled. “My cousins thought I was fooling around and ignored my pleas for help.”

As she drowned, she said moments in her life began appearing before her as if on posters, moving from right to left, reminding her of sinful actions and good deeds she’d done. None of them showed the sexual abuse. “It wasn’t a sin! That was comforting.”

At the last poster, she felt a sudden urge to ask God for forgiveness. “Once I asked for that, the peace, the overwhelming peace! When I left the faith, I had forgotten how good that peace was,” she said.

“God was so merciful that He let me get a taste of what it would be like to be in His arms.”

When she returned to consciousness, she was lying on a rock surrounded by people trying to save her life. Now, a committed Catholic and a dedicated pro-lifer, Lebrun shares her story of God’s mercy with children and grandchildren.

“I don’t fear death,” she said. “I fear maybe the type of death I will have, and I think everybody fears that, but at the same time, I know that through it, you are being comforted.”