Our Personal Conversion Stories

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I usually refer people to this site who have questions about Catholicism. But, I think it would be a great thread to share our stories about our walk with Christ and what we did/do that helped us feel Him in our daily lives. And how we came to meet Jesus. Many people I know seek out for these stories. I feel that personal stories tend to spark something in others. If this is something inappropriate for this forum, I am sorry.
 
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Great idea. I would absolutely love to share my story here, however there is someone I know personally who I think uses this forum. I think if I told my story I would lose the anonymity that I would like to keep.

Hope to read stories from others 🙂

What about you OP - what’s your story?
 
It was the end of the world it was, also, that makes me feel old.

I was the first generation to grow up on the internet. I am older than you, by about 12 years, so I understand. Ever use dial up?

That’s unfortunate

I was never Baptist, but I learned about Noah’s Arc in Baptist Sunday School. I remember that every time I see a rainbow. This would have been about half a decade before you were born.

I totally understand that. I pray the rosary, but I have found I REALLY like the Divine Mercy Chaplet. By the way, nice to see young Catholics.
 
I’d love to tell you my story, but I just have to figure out how to frame it, first.
 
I was baptized Catholic but my family never attended Church. God was never talked about. My parents fought all the time when we were kids. There was a lot of drinking in our family and witnessed a lot of things a child should not witness. My Father had anger problems and was always very cold toward us unless he had a good night drinking than he would come home and be loving. Growing up in this kind of childhood left me with a poor sense of right and wrong and I started at a very young age making bad decision and engaging in bad behaviors. This continued well into my twenties. I finally, in my mid twenties, came to the end of myself. I had a bad experience that was the fault of my own poor decision and I felt like I was in a hole that I could not get out of. I remember crying and thinking to myself why would God give me this life? Than it was like a small voice or push in my heart telling me to go back to Church. I started to attend mass services her and there but I had no idea what the eucharist was or what the rosary was really about. I thought it was all just symbolic. I ended up meeting my partner whom was raised in the SDA Church. In my ignorance as a new Christian I left the Catholic Church and became a member there. But, there was a small voice telling me that their Church was not right. A member suggested it was just because I had been attending Catholic services. I realized after researching why that Church is wrong and why the Catholic Church is the true Church of Christ. I can honestly say that Protestantism may have helped build my faith, but I did not recognize a true change in my heart and conscious until I came back to my Catholic faith.
 
A lost sinner here, who was brought up in a devout Catholic family. My story is too rambling to relay in a few paragraphs but these are the main events. And it’s not for those with weak stomachs.

I became a lost soul in my teen years. Coasted through a college degree smoking marijuana and drinking most nights. I retained no friends during four years at a university. Not one. I was completely self absorbed to an almost pathological degree. That self absorption may have been a spectrum issue possibly, I don’t really know. The ability to connect with people that so many take for granted was a mystery to me. The pursuit of personal pleasure was all I cared about.

With no direction or purpose in life, in my mid 20’s I entered a relationship with a woman who had 2 children. It was a Dysfunctional relationship, to say the least. I pretended that I cared for her but provided nothing she really needed. We conceived a child. Being a coward and a user, I steered her toward an abortion. I drove to the appointment and brought a check. The clinic personnel called me in because she wanted to keep the child if I would say yes. I said no. I made the choice to destroy my child’s life.
A few months later we had a daughter together. She survived by the grace of God and the will of the mother to keep her despite the evil that I was perpetrating. (This woman had six abortions in her life, that I know about.)

Our daughter was born, and Mom and I split up. If there is justice in purgatory, I will be making restitution to my daughter’s mother, as it should be. Can’t be done now unfortunately. The damage that was done to her by me and others beyond description.
Soon after our daughter was born my family fixed me up with my now wife. We married 32 years ago while my daughter was a toddler. Her family was a culture shock. A big vibrant Polish family that loved one another. And accepted me with all the baggage. The grace of that family and my wife is beyond description, and it is difficult for me to even look at that grace, it is blinding.
cont’d
 
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My personality and baggage came into the marriage of course. I was not a very good husband or father due to the self absorption. We got custody of my daughter at 2 years old and our son followed four years later. I still drank into the nights while watching Late Night. Worked minimally. We didn’t socialize because I didn’t know how. My wife and I began going to Mass but I tried to stay invisible out of shame.
Then came pornography. Adding it all up, I was in such a deep hole that I was despairing without being aware enough to realize it. I had demonic dreams that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. If you look at family videos of those days you can see the moodiness and oppression. Hard to watch.
I laid awake one night at 3am and begged God to help me. There were cheap promises made and all that.

On Divine Mercy Sunday 2001 our priest laid out the 3 ways to receive God’s mercy from St Faustina’s diary. And one of them pierced right into my heart: “get on your knees and ask for it”. I did that out of desperation.
On Dec 16 2002 I had an encounter with the living God that simply turned my life upside down. To summarize what had no words, Christ said “you are looking for many things in many ways. I am the only thing you need.” To make a long story short, it was an intensely liberating and convicting experience. And I have been crawling out of that prison for the last 20 years.
The more selfishness disappears and service for others comes out, and kindness, and helpfullness… the more Christ becomes manifest in my life and the lives of others. It’s an everyday struggle.

If anyone reading this is stuck in that pit of death please hear this: God never gives up on you. Whatever seemingly irredeemable pit you find yourself in, Jesus Christ is there with you. He followed you there and he is there with his hand out. Take that hand. Christ can make all things new. Christ will show you the way out of that pit. He will do it.
 
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Lovely story. I hope you continue to get more graces every day. Can I ask what the encounter of Christ was like on that 16th December? Do you mind sharing more? I find stories like this so amazing.
 
My mum went into a coma and was rushed to hospital, her breathing was a horrible gurgling sound, nicknamed the death rattle. The doctors said she had days to live and there was nothing they could do for her. We called a priest, although none of us had a faith at the time, we just thought it was what you should do as mum was bought up a Catholic.

As the priest prayed my mum’s breathing seemed to relax and change. About ten minutes after the priest walked out the door, mum came round and started to speak, she had no recollection of anything that happened in hospital, or that the priest had prayed for her. We thought it might have just been a temporary reprieve, but she lived another eleven years.

Having our mum back was a mixed blessing, because she had suffered with multiple sclerosis for about twenty years prior to the coma, and she had gradually lost the use of both her arms and legs. Before the coma, there were times she said she wanted to die. But after the coma my mum regarded her healing as a blessing, despite her paralysed body, and she said she was not ready to die after surviving the coma.

I really could not understand how she seemed to just accept being paralysed from the neck down, she rarely complained and often seemed more worried and concerned about our problems than her own. She had a faith in God and she sometimes used to say that she is ready to meet Jesus now. People might have said that it would have been kinder for her to have passed away in hospital. But somehow through my mum’s faith in God, I went from being agnostic to finding a greater faith myself, i was in my late forties at the time.
 
Amac1 said:
Lovely story. I hope you continue to get more graces every day. Can I ask what the encounter of Christ was like on that 16th December? Do you mind sharing more? I find stories like this so amazing.
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I had been making contributions to our local pregnancy assistance center that helps women keep their children. On the 16 Dec 2002 I was exercising at my business after hours. While working out I was inspired to walk over and write a check to the pregnancy center. As I finished writing the check, it was as if my chin was raised up slightly and I stared off into space. There were no words. It was more of a realization. I realized I had tried many things to find wholeness. And I realized that none of these would satisfy. “I am the only thing you need”. It was an intensely personal encounter cutting right to the heart.
It was as if a huge weight came off my body. My family noticed immediately that a joy was there.

This experience “stuck”. It endures to this day and is the turning point and anchor of my life. And it is not something that can be recaptured. It is living. I try to go back and recapture it and it doesn’t quite reappear. I’ve tried to explain it to people like I’m doing here, and the explanation never satisfies or makes complete sense.

I do not know why God turned my life upside down. The Christian walk has been very unpleasant at times as God asks me to do things that are outside the comfort zone, or as I am convicted of sins I hadn’t realized. I struggle with doubt and skepticism in my faith quite a bit. Through all of it, the one thing remains. I want to see Christ. He rescued me and that is the only thing I know for sure.
 
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I was born in 1988, and Baptized, Confirmed, and Received my First Holy Communion on 31 May 2009. The end.
 
I was baptized as an infant went to catholic school for the first few grades. I had behavioral problems from from poor mental health most of my childhood. I ended up leaving the catholic church due to common protestant misconceptions I heard on television that was supposed to be “bible christianity” I never fully gave up on faith in christ as savior but I had a very progressive view on God’s justice and thought I had liscence. I got into the goth and rave scenes in college and never finished school and developed a mild flirtation with addiction and stopped treating my mental health. I ended up homeless off and on for ten years being a punk. I go to burning man and end up leaving in an ambulance after trying to convey to others how I suddenly had a profound God given new sense of conviction and morality that I was on the wrong path. I walked into the open desert and that’s how I ended up in the hospital. my struggles with addiction continued for about two years until I started having dreams of the blessed Virgin Mary. I started learning everything I could about the rosary and found my root sin that I ended up confessing for the first time in a decade. I felt like a completely different person I got confirmed. I started spending a lot of time in recovery groups and church. I ended up getting trouble again a little later but with God’s providence I am a free man and recovered and have been treating my mental health. I have had a few minor waking visions in my own private revelation I see as very strong signal graces that our God is real. I now have a certification in addiction studies and the pharmacology of psychoactive drugs. I still struggle with my own humanity and sinfulness i have a long way to go. but ever since i had that dream of Mary and her rosary i am unable to find any reason to truly doubt my faith.
 
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I was baptized Catholic and completed my sacraments as a child, but everything I knew about the Catholic faith I learned in the 1 hour a week Sunday school and some tidbits of information from my grandmother. I didn’t think confession was mandatory, I didn’t know what the real presence was, I said prayers at night intermittently. When I started planning my wedding in 2015 I started the process with a Catholic parish, I learned then how involved it was. I started going back to confession and the preist took so much time to help teach me how many sins I committed unknowingly. It made me think, “why am I doing all this when I don’t even know anything about my faith?” And then I thought “I want children, I want to know more to do better than my parents did.” So I bought the catechism, read it all. Started attending adult faith formation at my church. Now I know more and do my best to teach my children.
 
Y’all, I am curious: What is the hardest part of everyone’s conversion?
 
Mine is trying to walk the truly correct path with no one else to walk it with me. It’s hard to have faith in this world because if you believe in God too much a majority of people may think you are a weirdo and avoid you. I stopped drinking, I do not curse any more, and I just try to be as good a person as we are taught to be. But, this makes me appear boring I suppose and in the area I am.from if you dont drink no one really knows what else to do with you. So it can be lonely not having a good hearted Catholic friend around.
 
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adamhovey1988 said:
Y’all, I am curious: What is the hardest part of everyone’s conversion?
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Actually doing the conversion through the practice of sacrificial love. It’s a lifelong process of shedding the old man and putting on the new (Christ). But essentially, learning to love as a natural disposition.
 
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