I gave my heart to Jesus, as the Protestants say, for the first time when I was 8 years old. It didn’t take. I spent the next 15 years in the world finding academic and career success on the outside but emptiness on the inside. I had a huge conversion experience when I was 23 coming to the Evangelical Protestant church. It was like coming home to a family. I thought I would be with my Protestant family forever.
But God had other plans for my life. I fell in love with a Catholic man. Not just any Catholic man, but a super conservative adult convert who was extremely dedicated and serious about his faith. There was no budging this man. And I thank God for putting in my heart to marry this wonderful guy because he is the one who led me to the truth.
I converted to Catholicism on April 21, 2010. But where I expected to find my new faith family, instead I found a community that lacked passion, theological knowledge and was missing the great joy of Jesus! It took me another two years to realize you don’t have to be a boring, lukewarm Catholic. That the Catholic faith is deep and rich and full of joy, most people were just never taught that. I finally realized it’s just the Catholic culture in America today that is so empty, not the teachings of the Church. But realizing this gave me great hope!
I believe that if the 77 million Catholics in America were to truly understand and embrace their Catholic faith, we could change the world. I feel like the tide is rising and the New Evangelization movement in the U.S. is about to shake-up Catholicism in a very major way! I want to spend my life speaking about the great joy that my Catholic faith gives me in the hopes that other Catholics don’t go through the same passionless desert that I found after converting. It doesn’t have to be that way!
Let’s Dare to be Catholic. Let’s change the world.