A Reversion story

My long and winding path back to Jesus Christ and his bride, the Church, began in earnest several years ago with a presentation I saw on the Shroud of Turin, though my restless heart had been unknowingly seeking him for over twenty years.

In the year following the breakdown of the world as we knew it (2020), I actively sought connection with people who did not fall for the lies. I regularly attended a meeting with people who discussed various aspects of the news, conspiracies, politics, religion, health, and whatever topics came up. One evening, in the winter of 2021, I listened to an impassioned lecture on the science of the Shroud of Turin, believed to be the burial shroud of Jesus Christ. Up until that point I had only heard the misinformation that this cloth was a medieval forgery, based on faulty carbon dating. This lecture lit a fire in me and I proceeded to read extensive amounts of research on the topic, and it continues to be one of my top research interests. After committing 100s of hours to study, I came to the conclusion that it in no way is a forgery, it’s production appears to be supernatural, and I believe it is the burial shroud of the risen Son of God. Though I held this unshakable belief, returning to the church was anathema to me - I continued to view it as an opiate of the masses, a den of vipers intent on control and abuse. The dominant culture had all the ammo I needed to defend my stance.

In January 2025 I joined with a group of women wanting to grow our priestess presence and power (whatever that means). In service to these aims, we looked to Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene, falsely claimed to be ancient priestesses in secret mystery schools, and Mary Magdalene being the wife and equal to Jesus, with some actually saying she was the more powerful of the pair (I shudder at the blasphemy). I say “falsely claimed” because while there are countless people all over the internet saying these things, there is absolutely zero actual evidence that this is who these women were. Our minds are shamefully manipulable, and people so often prefer tantalizing lies over difficult truths. During the 9 month exploration with this group, we sought connection with the Marys in multiple ways, one of them being the Rosary. I resurrected this practice learned in my youth, and began to pray semi-regularly. I had profound connections in my meditation and prayer time with the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Jesus, each of them coming to me with different sensations in my body, almost always bringing me to tears with their gentle loving power.

In late Spring, a friend who had walked a similar path to mine - raised Catholic, vehemently and angrily rejecting the church by late teens/early twenties, embracing atheism, secular liberalism, and looking to any spiritual path except Christ - shared with me that she had attended a retreat sponsored by a Catholic organization to help heal grief and guilt over mistakes she’d made in her past, and she had such a profound experience of love and forgiveness that she had returned to the Church. My first thought was “oh dear, they got her, she has fallen to the dark side” (oh, the irony). But my love and respect for this friend kept my mind and heart open to hearing more. And I continued to pray the Rosary now and then.

In July this friend came to visit me for a few days. We had long and intense conversations about Jesus, the Blessed Mother, the Church and her many faults as well as her beautiful strengths, and all the wrong turns we had taken in seeking Truth, the many places where lies seemed true because they were so damn attractive. At one point I said to her, “I can’t wait until all the lies and evil inside the church are exposed so I can be a part of it again.” Time stood still for a moment. I realized that I had said the quiet part out loud. I wanted to once again be a part of this ancient body of Christ.

The next morning I was sitting down to meditate and I had an overwhelming urge to pray the Rosary. I picked up my beads and a feeling of deep, soul deep, grief filled me to overflowing, and a sense of longing from the fathomless depths of my being took over. It made no sense. I began to pray and simultaneously began to cry. Weep. Body wracking sobs. For the first three whole decades I wept. In the last two decades of the Hail Mary prayers the crying stopped, but it picked up again with each Our Father. It was a Friday, which is the day the Sorrowful Mysteries are prayed, but I was not yet regularly praying the mysteries, so that is not the source of my tears. It was an ineffable hunger so deep within that it didn’t reside anywhere in the physical, and didn’t relate to anything happening in my normal life. I didn’t want to admit that I might know what it meant, so I prayed to Mary to make it make sense - give me a sign of some sort. I had already planned to go to Mass on Sunday with my friend, so I asked Mary to show me something while at Mass. I concluded my prayers and went about my day as if it were any other, but the peace and joy I felt was otherworldly. I felt a joy that was of the quality I felt during my near death experience, the kind of joy that doesn't actually exist in this world, and I hadn't felt it since that moment I almost died, many years ago.

Sunday came and we went to Mass. On the drive into town, my friend was quoting some of her new favorite Bible passages, and laughing about how she never saw this coming, and in fact fought it off - this return to the Church of our youth - commenting that she was drawn into it, as if against her will, yet willing and wanting the nourishment it gave her. In church, I sat with rapt attention, absorbing with unquenchable thirst all the beauty in the words. I was transfixed as the sun came in the windows, shining directly, completely, and only on the statue of Mother Mary behind the altar. During the Eucharist I stayed in my seat, kneeling in prayer as everyone returned after receiving communion, and then letting the tears silently fall as the communion song described in vivid and exacting detail what I had felt just two days prior while praying the Rosary:

There is a longing in our hearts, o Lord for you to reveal yourself to us

There is a longing in our hearts for love we only find in you, our God

For justice, for freedom, for mercy, hear our prayer

In sorrow, in grief, be near, hear our prayer, o God

There is a longing in our hearts, o Lord for you to reveal yourself to us

There is a longing in our hearts for love we only find in you, our God

For wisdom, for courage, for comfort, hear our prayer

In weakness, in fear, be near, hear our prayer, o God

There is a longing in our hearts, o Lord for you to reveal yourself to us

There is a longing in our hearts for love we only find in you, our God

Lord, save us, take pity, light in our darkness

We call you (we call you) we wait (we wait)

Be near, hear our prayer, o God

And there it was, the sign I had requested. I'd never heard this hymn before, and I was stunned at the lyrics and how accurately they described my experience. Later that day I related to Dave, my husband, what had happened, and said I didn't know what this meant, but I was following it as if being led, and we would see. Many times over the next few weeks I would question my sanity, my choice of going to Mass each week, and each time I would refer back to that unmistakable feeling of joy that I couldn't argue with or explain away.

I began to listen to Catholic podcasts, read the writings of ancient and current Church fathers, consuming exclusively Catholic material, trying to sate this unquenchable hunger for more Christ. I went to confession, feeling unutterable guilt and shame for having rejected God for so long. I confessed multiple times, not allowing myself to absorb the forgiveness at first. The more I threw myself into the mysteries of the faith, the more I realized that all the things I had thought about the Church and her history were 99% lies. In my conversations with my friend in faith about how I had seen and felt things at the Vatican that seemed evil, I'll never forget what she said: "what better place for the devil to infiltrate, than the one institution that is trying to save us from him?"

I kept my reversion to myself for many weeks, not knowing how my friends and people I'd known for so long would react - I had spoken only ill of the church and organized religion in general. And while there were kernels of truth in things I had said, I was mostly wrong. When I mustered the courage to tell my closest friends who I'd known for years as our kids grew up together, I learned that one of them had also recently returned to her church, and we now call each other sisters in Christ, rejoicing at the good it has brought into our lives.

I can say without a doubt that the Holy Spirit is moving in my life like never before. It's always been there, but I had been actively rejecting it, looking anywhere but towards Jesus. I can see my prayers being answered. I can feel myself being guided towards what is best for my family, toward truth and away from the lies of this world. We live in a fallen realm where evil reigns, often masquerading as something fun, tantalizing, mysterious, and better than what Jesus taught. I see so many ways in which the lies had me completely hooked, but the proof is in the pudding. Looking away from God, I was constantly hungry, searching, any feeling of satisfaction fleeting, addicted to finding the next thing.

The peace I feel now is deep in that place of longing, so deep inside it is not actually in me, but touching into the abyss of infinity, the place where only God lives.