I was raised atheist but I heard of Jesus in odd, random, occasional, bewildering ways. At ten I learned that some people say he is God and can live in a personâs heart. Visiting relatives out of town, I was invited to say the prayer of salvation, and tried but was uncertain whether I believed it. On the way home family members hounded me not to believe in God, and I struggled with whether I actually secretly did or not. By the end of sixth grade, I had decided I certainly did not. At 12 and 13, I was into feminist-goddess spirituality, and white magic, as long as I could stick to it. But the absence of evidence for any primeval goddess-culture of female utopia, and the physical illness I eventually realized was aggravated by the stress of my way of life, and missing the normal world, moved my interest elsewhere.
In my early teens I went around trying to talk people out of believing any religion, but when I was 15 my mother said she was considering finding a religion. I researched paganism for her and myself. I suggested either Celtic or Norse paganism. More study showed me the real paganism, very far away from neo-paganism in a lot of ways, and I was less attracted. I examined Rastafarianism but found no one to tell me any reason to believe that Ras Tafari was God, so, I went back and forth about whether I could really be an atheist again. The NSA people picked me up off the street and took me to a meeting. I didnât like it. They just laid the interest in me on too thick for me and I saw no evidence that chanting at the box really brought them the things they wanted. I was almost 18 by then.
I got into the New Age Movement in my late teens, but by 20 was more interested in occult study, because the New Age scene was so self-contradictory and made predictive test-claims it failed to meet day after day; besides, I was getting burned out on the people in it I knew, for the most part. I decided to try out Neo-Paganism, but just wasnât capable of believing ideas I knew were made up, and I knew who had made them up. It wasnât the discovery of existing facts by explorers, it was the invention of theories based on emotion and wishes by people whose information was on a level with mine â a student myself.
I studied occult art and science, got into really scary stuff, got hurt really badly, hurt others worse in some cases. Scared, sorry, and baffled, I tried to get out. I explored the folklore of nature and the little people in order to find out what is real. Hypnagogic/hypnopompic and REM dreams about Christian themes and discussions of religion with many people of different faiths led to a second attempt to discover whether Christianity was right âfor meâ.
I was 25. I actually thought if I were a Christian I would have to be Catholic but never really knew why.
I flitted around the circle of atheism, Buddhism (mostly Zen), Catholicism, agnosticism, neo-Paganism, faerie-faith (a subset of Neo-Paganism really, a romantic vision of folklore as more than it ever was), Reconstructionist Paganism⌠I never knew what to get into, so I supposed I was a die-hard agnostic. At 27, I had more supernatural experiences, and it occurred to me that the theme that bound these events was that they tended to save me from sudden death, making it likely that they were the actions of someone who cares about me.
Slowly, over the next three-and-a-half years, I put that and other evidence together into a conclusion I just wasnât happy with: The Bible is true. There isnât room here for what all that evidence was, but Iâve gone into it elsewhere. I had a job over the following five years: get rid of New Age boyfriend who vehemently resisted all conversion attempts, alienate friends and deal with it lovingly, learn the rules, join a church, appall most of my family, on and on. I wanted to join some kind of church as fast as I could, so I got into an easy one, where they asked only that I believe âthe whole Bibleâ and âkeep the main thing (the Gospel story and the need for salvation through Christ) the main thing.â Well, I was sad when I learned that they didnât have much opportunity for sevice or expert teaching in Bible studies, and then I realized Jesus commanded baptism, and the church I was in didnât. I got baptized at a church I knew nothing about and went to look for another church.
I was 35. I found a church known for huge missions and street outreach, working on a prison outreach, doing huge things for the homeless, where everyone cited Scriptures and got baptized. The music was cool and the people were eager to extend themselves.
Before long it started to change. It got into G12, which is sweeping this region now. Itâs a story unto itself how strange it became. I was listening to the pastor go on about authority when I remembered the sites of denominations who didnât see the pastor as legitimate authority, and I wondered. It was a mental roller-coaster for months, as I tried to figure out what to believe without letting my thoughts show.
I found Catholic Answers on June 1, 2007. I almost clicked âbackâ to avoid reading anything but my cursor wouldnât move. I prayed quickly, felt guided to stay, and found that a lot of my questions had answers. I sat there in tears. I walked around in a fog, investigated, got thrown out of my church on an ultimatum for asking questions about why we believed what we did, and last year I entered RCIA. By December I knew I was going to convert. In March I was confirmed. A middle-aged convert, I was really converting by learning and being curious all my life since late-mid-childhood, so I voted under 20.
