Falling in Love

My journey up to this point has been gradual. I’ve been cautiously stepping out of the boat. This is the part of the story when I’m finding my footing now. I’m about to start a steady pace towards Jesus. That’s not to say that I haven’t still stumbled through some hard lessons. Whenever I reflect on this time in my life I’m reminded of the John Green quote from his book The Fault in Our Stars, “I fell in love the way you fall asleep; slowly, and then all at once."

I am what we Catholics call a “Cradle Catholic.” That is to say, I was born and immediately baptized into the Catholic faith. But any Christian raised in the faith needs to go through a transformation of sorts. They need to individually choose to take the faith that was given to them and make it theirs.

Unfortunately, a lot of Cradle Catholics miss the beauty of the catholic faith and walk away. Whether it be the mundane of mass, the rules of the church, or the pull of the secular world; the results all stem from a lack of understanding.

Before we can step forward in my journey closer to catholicism, we need to take a glance at the past. I always considered myself Catholic. But I held onto that title more as a part of my identity rather than a faith I practiced. I continued to live my life the way I pleased, keeping God in a box in the back of my mind. I still said my prayers before every meal, before bed, and even before driving. My prayer life was frequent but lacking. I spent a whole lot of time talking to God and not a whole lot of time listening. To look too much into that time in my life is alarming, yet, comforting to know God never left me. The Holy Spirit remained in me and kept even a thin thread tying me to Jesus. It took the waters getting deep to finally turn my attention to He who had been there all along. But because of God’s claim over me, I was able to follow that one thin thread back home.

As I said, I always considered myself Catholic but now came the time to start acting like it. I was forming some very special friendships with friends who were non-denominational and learning a lot about what that meant. I was getting questions about things I never knew were uniquely catholic beliefs. I was also introduced to the negative connotation of the word “religion.”

While I did not have the answers to these questions at the time, I am so grateful for them. Realizing I did not have the answers to why I believe what I claim to believe led me down a very enlightening path. When it comes to the aforementioned quote, this was the “all at once” part of this love story.

Since this was still during the time of Lent, I directed my attention to podcasts, books, YouTube videos, live radio shows, audiobooks, and anything else I could use to feed my new fixation. I found that worship music struck me in a way it never did before and quickly became all I wanted to listen to.

I went to confession for the first time in 7 years and felt the weight of all my sins being washed away. I began attending Mass every single week. I felt called to start praying the Rosary, a day here and there at first. then suddenly it became daily.

I couldn’t help but talk about my new love. From that love came this blog.

But with a new light in your life, sometimes you see things you weren’t ready to see.