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.