My Journey to the Catholic Faith

On September 27th, 2009 I was baptized, confirmed, and received first communion, therefore being an official catholic; however, I had been practicing on my own, unable to recieve communion for 9 months! Each weekend I went to mass how I wished I could receive Jesus! I knew how glorious it would be, what great strength I would get from it. Oh and how glorious that day was, but that story is for another time. How did I come from hardly believing in God to becoming Catholic? Well, all by the grace of God of course! :) It was through youth ministry provided by Dan DeMatte, Jaime Eblin, and Tim Vines. Every Christmas Dan's youth group does a mission trip and my friend Jaime invited me to go one year where I met Tim. I went and had a blast. A year later I decided to go again, however things went differently afterwards. I had a strong tug on my heart that could only come from God. I had also fallen in love with a boy who was a strong and faithful Catholic. Every Sunday he went to mass with his family and shortly into our relationship he also had me going. He taught me the rosary and if you think of it like a metaphor I was a baby and he was the father of this baby to the faith and raised me until I could walk on my own. However, when the time came to walk on my own I didn't like it. I liked just being lead and was content with being with Tim as well. I loved him with all my heart and truly wanted to marry him, however this was not what God had in store. We broke up three months prior to my baptism and at first it made me question why I was even becoming Catholic. It made me strong too. So we broke up three months prior to my baptism which really did make me question what I was doing, one could only question though and have a panic moment especially when the main reason for the decision was because your boyfriend has been leading you and then he leaves you, which was only God's will, but that's not how it felt. I was heartbroken and lost, I had no idea what to do or where to go, luckily I had wonderful girls who took me into their hearts and "nursed" me back to normal and were able to get me way beyond. I fell in love with someone so much better than Tim, though nothing is wrong with him, Jesus is just like 600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times better than any human ever could be, it's just a known fact! My friends edged me along the way encouraging me to keep praying. They showed me new ways to pray and guided me along the way. They helped me up when I fell and "slapped" me when necessary. Something I learned through this that really hit me hard recently is that attitude is everything. As I was struggling to move forward with my life I had the attitude that I was unable to overcome this and it was impossible, basically very negative. However, if I had carried the attitude that everything will be okay because it's God's will and God knows what's best for me it would have been so much easier. Lessons I learned through this: Carry a positive attitude and everything will be better. If you think that you can't do something, change your attitude and remember that no matter what happens or where you end up it will be okay because God is in control and He knows us better than we know ourselves. Lesson number two: Never ever ever give up and always keep praying! Praying is talking to God and spending time with Him. Talking to people and spending time with them is how we get to know people. Therefore, prayer is important because it's how we get to know God so we are better able to recognize Him.

God bless!
In Jesus & Mary,
Amber