Conversion
We each have a story. The following one is too good not to share. Thank you to my faith-filled friend Kate Niebur for sharing her story…
For as long as I can remember, I have felt like an outsider. Like a fish out of water. I have always yearned for connection though. I care deeply about people and want to support them. As an insecure teenager, believing in God, but without good formation, I tried to make connections with others in the wrong ways. I made decisions that were denigrating and destructive.
This all started to change when God put my husband in my life. He was raised Catholic. The way that he treated me was so different from the way everyone else did. He took care of me, just because it was the right thing to do. He showed me that I had value.
After we had been married a few years we were trying to start our family. Still feeling like an outsider, at mass, I sat there when everyone else went forward to receive the Eucharist. One day, a man I didn’t know stopped and invited me to walk forward to receive a blessing, instead of sitting in the pew. That small but powerful invitation started my path towards conversion. I knew that I wanted to become Catholic for the sake of our future family, and I decided to start the RCIA process.
For months we were not successful in conceiving. I started to realize something was wrong. In the midst of my RCIA classes, I was visiting my doctor, and received my rather devastating diagnosis of stage IV severe endometriosis. Treatment would require multiple drugs and surgeries to try to restore my fertility. I was told my chances of having a biological child would be slim.
I was convinced at the time that God was punishing me. That my husband was wasting his life with me. I wasn’t good enough for him. I spent much of this time, so consumed with self pity and self loathing, that I went to bed each night, just not wanting to wake up in the morning. For years I had already listened to the enemy’s lies about my identity, and believed them, and lived them out. God allowed this, and the pain that it caused me. It changed me in the ways that I needed to change.
I clearly still had not broken free of the enemy’s lies.
I brought all of this brokenness and disordered thinking to my RCIA classes, and as I learned more about the Catholic church, everything I learned just made sense. Something in me knew I was learning the Truth about God and His church.
As I approached Easter that year, I was preparing to make my first confession. I was afraid and overwhelmed as I examined my conscience. How do you sum up years of sin and regret?
I tried my best. I closed my eyes and just said it all. I immediately felt relief. It was literally like a weight was being lifted from my soul. I remember sitting there afterwards, and smiling, and leaving the room in tears. It was my first real Divine encounter. Even though my heart and mind still needed a ton of work, I knew the truth of His forgiveness.
Prior to my second surgery, I received the sacrament of anointing of the sick. I went into that surgery at peace, not knowing what the outcome would be. We were planning to adopt if we could not have biological children. A year and a half later though, our first daughter was born. Less than two years after that, our second. And three years after that, our third.
My pregnancy with my third daughter was extremely difficult. I had a hemorrhage that took months to heal. During these months I lived in sustained fear that I would miscarry. Her delivery was very long and stressful for us both. I allowed that whole experience to plant fear in my heart, and I stopped allowing myself to open my heart to another child, for years.
I carried tremendous regret for allowing that to happen.
I took that to confession. He healed me yet again, taking my fear, and planting truth and love there. A little over a year later, a month after our 20th anniversary, our fourth daughter was born. The joy and enrichment she has brought to our lives really can’t be fully articulated.
She was born a few months before my father received a terminal cancer diagnosis. I have had so much time, in the stillness of the dark night, rocking her to sleep, or feeding her, to think, and pray. To think about my father, how much I love him, to come to terms with the reality of letting him go. My memories with my Dad simply flow through my mind and work on my heart. I know the Holy Spirit is there, in my gratitude for him. I have been given an opportunity to commit anew to be the kind of parent he was, and to walk with him through his suffering.
Our daughter is now almost two. I reach out my hand to help her, especially on stairs. Sometimes she takes it, and holds on tight. Sometimes she pushes me away. I often imagine this is a little like it is with Jesus. He is always there, waiting, with a hand outstretched to save us. All we have to do is take it. We do that by asking for reconciliation. In marriage. In being anointed. In listening and being guided by holy people who we encounter, who invite us back to Him. In choosing to forgive.
I need you Lord, guide me back to the narrow path. My sin has made me aim at the wrong things, away from Heaven. Please take it, and bring me back to You. Help me to forgive others, to help show them Your way. Again and again. I know He saved me and continues to save me through these sacraments and intercessions.
His mercy is always there.
