Who am I now? (part 3)

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 Part 3: Who am I now? These are excerpts from Sharing Your Catholic Faith Story: Tools, Tips, and Testimonies by Nancy HC Ward.

Who am I now?

Part 3 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.

Part 3. Who am I now?

Now I am one of those faithful Catholics that I saw in Phil so many decades ago. I thank God and my mother for a solid Christian upbringing, which nurtured my personal relationship with Jesus. The tenets of faith that I learned and practiced in my childhood enabled me to leave that denomination but not my relationship with God. I didn’t abandon my first beliefs, but added the fullness of truth to my childhood faith.

I‘m sure that falling in love with Phil was the only way that God the Father could ever get me into the Catholic Church. He goes to any extreme to guide us into the joy he has for us. And I find great joy in belonging to the Catholic Church.

He gives us what we need and gift-wraps it in what we want. I wanted a strong Christian marriage. God wanted that for me—in the Catholic Church. So he wrapped it in an irresistible package and swept a tidal wave of love over me that was more forceful than my strong Protestant upbringing, the pressures of my family, and my resistance to marrying a Catholic.

I might have been happy as a Protestant married to a Catholic, like my father-in-law. But what joy it is to share the Eucharist and many ministries with my husband and children.

Ask Yourself: What one culminating God-moment comes to mind from this example for me to focus on in my faith story?