My Faith Journey

I know that Easter is the time to celebrate the sacrifice that Jesus made for me....for you....for everyone. But tonight, instead of elaborating on what that means for me and my family, I wanted to share with you my conversion story from Protestantism to Catholicism, and how Jesus has not only saved me from my sins, but has gotten my life back on track and has called me back to him.

On the night of April 7th, 2012, I feel as if I officially "came home" with my Confirmation into the Catholic Church!! I grew up in a household where we went to the Church of Christ (not LDS) when I was younger, and were pretty active until I was about 4 1/2 and we moved. After that we
really did not go to church much until we moved to my main childhood home, and
began attending the Baptist Church, where I was baptized. I never really felt a very strong connection to that church, or even others I attended in the area, and just sort of fell
away from church-going for several years. In 2009 my husband, Nick, and I got married in a Lutheran church, and became members there as our beliefs seemed to align with
theirs. Now, he had grown up Catholic and has been confirmed years earlier, but for whatever reason, he too had fallen away from the church. We half-heartedly tried to continue to go to church after our wedding, but seemedto feel no connection at that parish (noticing a trend here? ;))

On August 6th, 2010 we welcomed out daughter, Emma, into the world, and I began to think about how I wanted to raise her in a Christian home with strong values and morals, but it wasn't until December of 2010 that I even considered the Catholic church, as it was a topic brought up
to me by my brother, who was struggling to find where he felt he belonged as well. His thoughts gave me some fuel for though, and in August of 2011 my husband and I began to talk about our
daughter's religious future, and how we wanted the best for her and for our family.
It was then that he asked if I had ever considered Catholicism, to which I replied "Not really, but I would like to learn more about it because religion fascinates me." Lucky for me, he had found a parish that was preparing to start up Rcia classes, and so I signed up. Well, the more classes I attended, and the more I learned, the more I felt that I had a gross misunderstanding of the
Church and their ways, and the more I felt that their views totally made sense :)

So after 7-8 months of classes, retreats, scrutinies, and numerous other things, I finally made it to the Easter Vigil, and was confirmed last night :) I feel an incredible amount of support and community from this parish, and am amazed and how the Holy Spirit has worked in my life. If I had found what I thought I was looking for in the other churches, I never would have "returned" home :)