Three components of your faith story
Editor’s Note: This new three-part series, Three components of your faith story, answers three questions: Part 1: Who was I? Part 2: What happened? and P art 3: Who am I now? These are excerpts from Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies by Nancy HC Ward.
Who was I?
Part 1 of three components of your faith story series
Your faith story, as with every conversion, reversion, renewal, healing, and miracle story, has three components that answer these questions:
- Who were you before your conversion, reversion, renewal, healing, or miracle happened?
- What God-moment—or Galilee moment, as Pope Francis called it—changed you? Was it a tidal wave of love sweeping over you or an undercurrent of God’s love swelling in your heart?
- Who are you now? How has your life changed?
I’ll take you through my longer conversion story, using these three elements and answering these questions.
- Who was I before my conversion?
I was baptized when I was one year old in my grandmother’s Protestant church and grew up going to Sunday School, Vacation Bible School, and youth group. I sang in the choir and helped out in the nursery.
At fifteen, I quietly committed my life to Jesus at a mountaintop youth retreat. I remember still the smoky campfire, the prayers and songs we shared around it, and the youth minister directing us to spread out into the trees and think about our relationship with God. As I walked through the woods, I quietly sang the words William Young Fullerton wrote to the tune of Danny Boy, “I Cannot Tell.” I found a grassy spot and sat down under a tree. The verses tell the story of Jesus’ birth and death for our salvation and the jubilation of his returning as the Savior of the world. For the first time, I recognized that the undercurrents within me signaled the presence of Jesus living in my heart. Speechless, I stopped singing my favorite hymn to focus on him.
He gently made known his life in me through the gift of unexplainable joy that gushed from deep within me and filled me up. At that moment I knew God was real and loved me personally as my Savior.
As his love swept through me, I knew he was the only one who loved me like no one else ever could. In that life-changing God-moment of joy, I was overwhelmed with love for Jesus and committed my life to him.
I returned to the campfire, holding in my heart this glorious secret between Jesus and me. When the youth minister asked us to share what we had experienced, no one said a word. Not even me. I sat stone still, my eyes down, waiting for the rush of emotion coloring my face to subside. I kept silent at the most important moment of my spiritual life, and for decades afterward—not because I didn’t believe my experience of Jesus’ love was real but because I wasn’t ready to share it. I didn’t know how.
A major test of our relationship came three years later when my father died suddenly. My mother was too heartbroken, my older sister too distraught, and my younger sister too shut-down emotionally to comfort me. Jesus alone comforted me, and I knew he would never fail me.
Just before my opportunity for conversion, I was nineteen years old, living at home, and studying at the university across town. When my father died, our family’s relationship with the pastor and staff of our church, where I had volunteered all during high school and worked in the summer, grew closer.
Read Part 2:What happened? next week.
