Things Always Happen for a Reason

Profile on: Terry LaMorte

“Things always happen for a reason.” That’s what Terry LaMorte’s mother used to tell her when she was growing up. Although Terry and her mother have sometimes had a difficult time seeing eye-to-eye, today, Terry could not agree with her mother more.

Religious background

Until around age 30, Terry would not describe herself as a particularly religious person. Although both of her parents came from strong Jewish homes, religion was not central to their lives. Nevertheless, they offered to teach Terry and her sister about the Jewish religion. But neither of the girls took them up on it.

“Religion didn’t make sense to me,” says Terry. “I didn’t like the idea of someone else telling me what I should believe, what I should do.”

Terry went on to marry at age 19 but was divorced by age 24. After that experience, Terry moved to Los Angeles and poured herself into an advertising career. Despite the failure of her first marriage, Terry still desired a mate, so the thought of finding a second husband was never far from her mind.

“I continued to have a lot of failed relationships because I wanted to settle down but during that time (the 1970s) most men didn’t,” Terry says.

A tough year leads to change

The year Terry turned 30, a number of emotional challenges led her to reconsider the direction her life was taking. First, her father nearly died from major heart surgery. Then her younger sister got married, while Terry was still single and living in Los Angeles, far removed from family. In addition, the advertising company she worked for ran into difficulties and for the first time, Terry found herself out of work. Not ready to re-enter the work force, Terry took some extended time off.

During this period, Terry attended a seminar recommended by a close associate of noted actress and New Age proponent, Shirley McLean. The seminar urged people to focus on doing what they loved and then trusting the money to follow. This seminar came at an opportune time for Terry and it helped develop a spiritual perspective on her search for fulfillment. Although the seminar leader did not go so far as to personalize or give a name to God, he urged those attending to get in touch with the “universal intelligence” that controlled the universe. This experience sparked the beginning of a significant shift in how Terry viewed life. Without realizing what she was doing, Terry set out on a spiritual quest of sorts.

“I was asking questions like, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’ ‘What needs to be changed or fixed so I can have what I want?’”

New Age healing?

In addition to some of the personal and profession hurdles Terry was struggling to overcome at the time, she was also experiencing a lot of back pain. This led her to pursue a number of other New Age concepts, particularly in the realm of healing. She read books, attended seminars and even consulted with a psychic for a time; however,

“I read about more things than I actually did,” Terry confesses.

Nevertheless, a lot of what Terry read and learned resonated with her. She also made a number of new friends who were on the same spiritual path. She felt a sense of kinship with them, like she belonged to something special. Terry even went so far as to study for a master’s degree in applied psychology, most of which was taught from a New Age perspective. This experience also had yet another unintended side-effect for Terry: slowly, she came to see God not as some sort of vague universal intelligence but as a conscious being with whom she could interact. She still did not know exactly whom God was, but she did start to pray.

Experimenting with prayer

Terry re-entered the world of business by establishing a consulting firm with a partner who shared many of her spiritual views. Although the partnership did not last long, this experience helped Terry begin to see how prayer could become an integral part of her work life.

“When we weren’t sure how to help a certain client, we would ask God to give us insights. I found that by asking for help in this way, things would come out of my mouth that had not gone through my mind. This was my first real sense that God was real and working in my life,” Terry says.

Interestingly, Terry found there was a spiritual component to nearly every situation her clients confronted. Over time she became a coach, consultant and counselor all rolled into one.

“When trying to help people understand what was in the way of success, I discovered it always came down to a spiritual issue. If we couldn’t deal with that, we couldn’t go any further.”

Despite her emphasis on prayer and her new awareness of God’s role in her life, Terry was still a long way from giving a name to this divine power or joining a particular faith. She also admits that the main focus of her spiritual pursuits was “Me, me, me.” One thing she wanted in particular was to meet the man of her dreams and have children. So Terry started praying for a husband.

A soul mate at last

The answer to her prayers came through a personal ad in LA Magazine. In response to a challenge from her master’s project group, Terry went on a serious “man hunt.” Burned out on the bar scene, she answered ten ads in LA Magazine and went out on a date with seven of the guys. Of those seven, Robert LaMorte was the only one she continued to see. Strangely enough, neither Terry nor Robert were particularly attracted to each other at first. It took about six months of regular dating before Terry finally started to realize that Robert could be “the one.” Although Robert had been raised a Catholic, for the past 25 years he had been on a spiritual journey similar to Terry’s. He was into Transcendental Meditation and other New Age practices. Their mutual dedication to spiritual searching helped the couple to bond on a deep level.

After six more months of dating, Robert came to feel the same way about Terry. A year later he asked Terry to move in with him. But Terry’s response was curt: “Not without a ring on my finger.” So they got engaged and were married a year later in what Terry describes as, “a New Agey ceremony, but one of the most beautiful, loving ceremonies I have ever seen.”

Troubling voices

Still experiencing back problems, one of Terry’s clients encouraged her to see a chiropractor in Redondo Beach. In addition to manipulating people’s spines, this chiropractor also had a strong spiritual component to his work. He claimed he could “channel” God and he used this ability to help his patients. His practice was highly successful as a result. Terry and Robert found him to be quite helpful both physically and spiritually.

“He was like a spiritual advisor, helping people to evolve their consciousness,” says Terry.

Then one day Terry and Robert noticed the chiropractor was losing weight and did not look very good. He confessed that the voices he was hearing would not stop, so he went to a Christian couple who prayed for him and discerned the voices he was consulting with to help his clients were not from God. In fact, they were evil spirits. The Christian couple delivered him from these spirits. He vowed that from then on, he would only do straight chiropractic work. Eventually, he went on to become a Christian counselor. He urged Terry and Robert to seek out this couple as well. Perhaps they could provide the answers Terry and Robert were seeking in their spiritual pursuits.

Discovering the true name of God

Terry and Robert followed his advice and saw the couple on a few occasions. Because of his Catholic background, Robert had no problem identifying with what they taught because he knew who Jesus was. Terry, however, was a different story. Try as she might, when she closed her eyes to pray, she just could not see Jesus. Things reached a critical point where the couple said if Terry could not see Jesus, they could not do much more for her. Terry was devastated by the news, but she did not remain there for long.

“That day, God must have done something,” says Terry, “because from then on, I knew I was a Christian.”

Terry and Robert could not see this couple very often, because they lived so far away. This was made increasingly difficult when Robert and Terry moved to San Diego. They started to attend church there, even though at first, this was difficult for Terry. In fact, the first time she tried to go to church, she could not get out of the car. She just sat there crying and feeling that going inside would be like blaspheming her Jewish heritage.

Nevertheless, when she and Robert did go, they really enjoyed it. Urged on by a childhood friend, Terry and Robert also attended a seminar by Bill Gothard, founder and president of The Institute in Basic Life Principles.

“This gave us a crash course in what the Bible says about how to live life. We were basically on a fast track from there,” says Terry. “God continued to bring books, studies and people into our life that taught us what we needed to know.”

Exorcise our lives

Terry and Robert also realized they needed to “exorcise” their lives of a number of habits and possessions they had acquired during their pre-Christian spiritual journey. For Terry, that meant getting rid of dozens of New Age books and materials. For Robert, it meant transforming his Transcendental Meditation times into times for prayer and mediation on God and his Word.

“Our whole focus began to change,” says Terry.

Deepening involvement

As their faith grew, Terry and Robert also got involved in Christian organizations and ministries, such as Campus Crusade for Christ. They continue to work with Campus Crusade today and have even “adopted” the country of Italy as their particular ministry focus. In addition to supporting the Italian Campus Crusade ministry financially and through prayer, Terry and Robert travel to Italy two times per year bringing their business expertise to the ministry and encouraging the staff.

“For us, the blessings have been amazing. We get to take a vacation with a purpose and we see God moving over there in big ways.”

Terry and Robert are also part of History’s Handful, a ministry that helps raise money for Campus Crusade’s ministry efforts, and Impact XXI, a group of leaders and influencers working together throughout the world to help make a lasting impact on the major issues of the twenty-first century.

“Even though I retired twelve years ago, God is using all of my knowledge, gifting and abilities in ministry. I’m working full-time again, but now it is really for the Lord.”

Faithful transformations

Terry and Robert, who run a consulting company that advises professional money managers, have been Christians for ten years now. Even so, they continue to be amazed at how faithful God has been in transforming their lives. One example is Terry’s relationship with her mother, which has never been better. Terry’s heart is filled with love and compassion for her mother, and she is even moving her to San Diego to be close to her.

All who know Terry and Robert consider this a miracle. Terry and Robert agree, considering the tense state of their relationship over the years before God changed Terry’s heart.

“Mom always said things happen for a reason. Looking back, I see God’s hand in my life in many ways. Just the whole orchestration of how I wound up in LA at the same time Rob did and how we met – it was just so unlikely, but clearly something that God had planned. I have always honored moments when I felt a strong sense about something I used to call it intuition, but now I recognize it as impressions from God.”

Have you ever felt a spiritual presence in your life but been unable to give it a face or a name? Perhaps Jesus can help. If you don’t know Jesus, we encourage you to pray the following:

Lord Jesus, I want to know You personally. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of my life. Make me be the person You want me to be.

No comments yet

Leave a Reply