Path to Faith

God speaks but we must listen. This hit me hard over the past several years. I was working a demanding job then got married and had a child. During this time I was searching for something to keep me grounded and tethered to the things that were most important to me.

Sitting in my office one day after a particularly emotionally challenging day I felt like I was just drifting through space. People were speaking to me but the words seemed to gloss over my ears. Once I was home, my wife (then girlfriend) was telling me about her day and I failed to muster the energy to focus. These were two of several small moments where I knew I needed something bigger in my life.

But the journey began years before this. I was working the same job and in the dating pool trying to find my way. This is where I started feeling that listlessness that would hang over me for years. I was never very religious growing up but was baptized in a Christian faith. So, I started looking for a Church. I tried a couple different non-denominational churches; went with family and friends. But I still did not feel like I had found the anchor I needed to keep me focused.

Remembering that most of my family are Catholic, and my late grandmother was a very devout Catholic, I tried a local parish near where I lived. Immediately I felt something. But, I was neither baptized nor confirmed as a member of the Catholic Church. I attended mass fairly regularly but still was feeling out of place. So, I stopped attending.

A couple of years after that, still working the same job, I was faced with more small moments of listlessness and, after a time, hopelessness. Destined to sit behind the same desk with similar daily tasks that sapped the emotional energy from my body. Driving home with a blank stare and barely being able to concentrate on the audio books or music I was listening to. I would mask this, of course, around my friends and family until I hit a point where I never truly felt like talking to anyone; just enough to keep up appearances.

Single, living alone, working in a demanding environment was catching up to me. Not to mention, that during this period I was trying to manage the end of an almost ten year relationship with someone. Over the years all of this was catching up with me and the tether had snapped. I was watching my spaceship as I tumbled through space away from any sense what to do.

And yet I continued on in the same job, with the same dating apps, and the same masking of how I was truly feeling. Looking back on it, there was a tether that I just was unable to feel. I had spent so long wondering when things would change, or what was wrong with me that I did not feel what is turned out to be the most important tether I would ever have: faith.

I reconnected with my wife and we decided to become Catholic and the journey for me was one filled with hope and realizing that it was there along; I just had to listen for it. All those days where I thought things could not get more difficult or that I could not get more distant from people, something was keeping me from laying down and accepting defeat. In studying the Gospels and working with our priest I looked back at all the times I could have quit but something was keeping me from doing that. At the time I did not fully appreciate the presence of the Holy Spirit. The more I read the Bible and listened to the priests I realized that was with me the whole time. Staring over a canyon of failure and pulling back only to be on the brink of it days later – I knew there was something but could not explain it.

Taking the path to faith opened my eyes to the incredible power of His spirit and the power of prayer. Watching our child be born made me even more aware of this power and how special it is. God is there, we just have to listen.