My spiritual journey began when I was baptized at 13 years old at the non-institutional church of Christ in Starkville, Mississippi. I’d felt a pulling on my heart to be baptized long before this, but the fear of walking up to the front pew to make the request while everyone watched and the feelings of unworthiness stayed my feet. Thankfully, one Sunday afternoon, my Uncle George provided an alternative. He would baptize me right then while the church building was empty with only my family there. That was a less terrifying proposition, so I took him up on his offer. He also explained to me that I didn’t have to be perfect to be baptized because that is what baptism is for — the remission of sins and the beginning of my journey towards perfection in Christ.
A Desire to Know God
From then on, a desire to know God more enveloped my heart. I tore into my Bible, learning and memorizing as much as I could and discussing the Scriptures with my grandmother, a very biblically knowledgeable woman who read her Bible every day. I garnered a strong Bible foundation at the Northside church of Christ, led by intelligent and detail-oriented Bible teachers and preachers. When I was in high school, I was very much noted as the Bible nerd. I went to a private non-denominational Christian school called French Camp Academy, where multiple Bible classes were required to graduate. There, I was a zealous Bible student challenging the Bible teacher with my marked up NKJV Bible full of notes and essential underlined verses. I know I was annoying, but my teacher, with whom I disagreed a lot, found my voraciousness a good thing and awarded me the Bible class award at the end of the year, reading Acts 17:11 out loud to the school and comparing me to the Bereans. I was very honored by that.
Although the church of Christ is known for its biblical knowledge, I often found the application of it wanting, and there were many passages that my church leaders didn’t know how to address. For instance, there were several passages about the “laying on of hands” (Acts 8:17; 6:6; 1 Timothy 4:14) for the appointment of offices or imparting of spiritual gifts. According to my Bible teachers, these ideas didn’t matter anymore. It was only necessary during that early period because Christians did not have the complete Bible then. They pointed to 1 Corinthians 13:8–10 (RSVCE), which states, “Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.” The Bible, they said, is the “perfect” that was to come. The Holy Spirit’s mission was to inspire the writers of the New Testament and convince others with miraculous signs. But now the Holy Spirit resides only in the Bible. If you want to know Him, then read your Bible, and He will speak to you through the Scriptures.
During a study of Acts, I remember asking a Bible teacher if the original churches were still there in the many cities that Paul started. My question baffled him, but I now understood what I was asking. I wanted to know if this “laying on of hands” continued and if there was a remnant still left there passed down from elder to elder, family to family. However, the church of Christ taught that the Church founded in the first century would eventually fall into dissolution because of the corruption of the truth by the Church leadership. This is an idea found in the Restoration Movement, out of which the church of Christ arose. In fact, one of the claims I was taught about the church of Christ is that it was the true Church that had been restored. We were the original New Testament Church. Before, there had been 1700 years of corruption and falsehoods, taught by what is now called the Catholic Church, which had suppressed and persecuted the true Christians, who went underground.
Regarding Martin Luther, the church of Christ did not claim him as one of their own. I was taught that he almost had the truth but fell short. It was not until Alexander Campbell came along that truth was restored. But even this history troubled me. Were there no true Christians between 100 AD and the 1800s? How could they be saved if there was only the Catholic Church? They only baptized babies with sprinkled water, which didn’t count. However, I didn’t worry too much about these holes, because I believed wholeheartedly in the teachings of the church of Christ. We were the one true Church, and every other denomination was in error. Worst of all was the Catholic Church with its many paganistic beliefs.
I believed everything — except for the one thing my grandmother disagreed with and pointed out to me regularly. Because my grandmother was so smart in the Scriptures, I believed her over the Church. The church of Christ is quite unique among other denominations in that they partake of the Lord’s Supper every Sunday. During the presentation, some of the men would read Scripture about it and then give a short talk on it. All of them would remark that these emblems were a representation of Christ’s body and blood. I could feel my grandmother bristle beside me, and I knew why. She would always say, “Jesus said, ‘This is my body.… This is my blood’ (Matthew 26:26, 28). It doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that it’s a ‘representation’!” I agreed with her and began to bristle as well when I heard someone say it wrong, which was everyone except my Uncle George.
I believe it was this one misquoting of the Bible that began the slow unraveling of my belief system. Over time, I realized the many flaws in the church of Christ’s teachings, and the more I studied the Bible, the more I realized the church of Christ really didn’t follow the Bible. Many of the inconsistencies were big issues like divorce and remarriage. They taught that one could only divorce and remarry because of adultery based upon Matthew 19:9. But the Greek word there was not actually the word for adultery, it was sexual immorality, which referred to sexual sin before marriage. Jesus was only explaining how the old Mosaic Law worked, and it seemed to refer to what a woman did before she got married (Deuteronomy 24:1). In fact, Joseph was following this law when he wanted to put Mary away quietly after he discovered she was pregnant, and they were not married yet, but only betrothed (Matthew 1:19).
Wandering in the Darkness
By the time I graduated from high school in 2007 and entered college, my zealous Bible studying had dwindled, and darkness enveloped me. I never lost my faith, but I no longer knew who God was. He was an enigma to me, and every time I opened my Bible, I became more confused. The answers of the church of Christ no longer held any weight because I could poke so many holes in their arguments.
I got to a point where I wasn’t sure anyone could know the truth. There were so many truths out there, and all that mattered was if you had a good enough argument to convince someone. I began to pray and ask God why he left us here on this earth. Jesus came and walked with His disciples and left them the Holy Spirit, but then the Holy Spirit left. Christianity was an absolute mess. Why did He make it this way? It made no sense. He should have left the Holy Spirit and the apostles to guide us. All He left us was a large collection of ancient literature on which no one agreed.
I got married and continued to go to the church of Christ with my husband, who had grown up in the same sect I had. We had met in college at Mississippi State University and attended the same childhood congregation in Starkville. We later moved to Tennessee because of his job and found a small non-institutional church of Christ close by. I no longer agreed with their teachings, but I also didn’t know what I believed anymore. They were a nice group of people, but I felt very lonely and struggled to sleep at night because of the fear that enveloped me. If I couldn’t know the truth, how could I be saved? I worried continuously about my salvation and struggled with a secret depression and anxiety.
A Renewed Desire
Eventually, I became pregnant, and suddenly the truth mattered more than anything. How could I bring my child to church and have them teach her something that I did not believe? I would constantly be forced to correct their teaching at home. This would cause a lot of disunity for my daughter. When I was younger, it always bothered me that my mother would take us to church but then grumble about what they taught. I wished she had attended a congregation that matched her beliefs, but she didn’t because she feared her family disowning her.
While I was pregnant, I decided that I had to figure out the complete truth of the gospel. There had to be a church out there that had everything right. My voracious Bible study began again, and I slowly climbed out of my darkened hole. However, this time, I expanded my study outside the Bible, researching other denominations and listening to apologetic podcasts and videos. I even looked up what the early Christians after the first century believed. I’m assuming that the Holy Spirit put this in my heart, but I decided that if there was a widely held belief in something before the completion of the biblical canon in the fourth century, and it was close to the time of the apostles, then there was some merit to it. I remember briefly researching why the Catholic Church was so different from other denominations and reading that the Catholic Church claims apostolic succession. I knew what it was talking about, since as a young adult I had seen that in the Scriptures, but I threw up my hands and said, “There is no way I could ever prove that. I would have to take their word for it.” However, I didn’t delve deeply into it, but quickly moved on. Of course, the most important doctrine to me was how the different denominations viewed the Lord’s Supper, but none of them believed it to be the actual body and blood of Jesus. It still was only a symbol. I think I may have looked into what the Catholic Church believed about it, but they were not the right Church anyway, so I disregarded them.
I also prayed a lot at this time. My prayers at first were rambling, but after reading through the Psalms and noticing David and the other writers singing to God in the imperative, I changed the way I prayed. I prayed, “Show me the true Church so that I can worship you in spirit and in truth. I will go wherever you send me.” It wasn’t long after I prayed like that, that God started giving me answers.
One topic I researched was the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts, or as the Catholic Church calls them, charisms. As I said above, I had severely neglected this topic because my church didn’t believe in any of it. However, I needed to look into it for myself. I remember reading through all the scriptural passages about the Holy Spirit and charisms. However, I kept thinking that the writers in the Bible were only addressing the Christians that lived during that time. How could I apply this to myself, living almost 2000 years later. I remember one day, frustrated at not finding any answers, I cried out to God, “How can I know the answer? Why can’t you just show me the answer?” I cried and cried about this until I eventually calmed down, resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t get an actual answer from God, and continued my daily Scripture reading.
I think I was reading in 1 Corinthians when I noticed some strange wording in the passage that I didn’t understand. I looked at the notation, and it cited another Scripture passage to turn to: John 14. I turned to the passage in question, which was about the coming of the Holy Spirit, but one of the verses caught my eye as I read it: “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him’” (John 14:23 NAB). What struck me about this verse was that previously, Jesus was addressing his apostles, but in this passage, he was not saying “you” but “whoever.” Whoever? That means not just the apostles or the ones in the first century, but anyone far off in the future. Even me. I started to cry and thank God for answering me right then. He had actually shown me the answer: there has to be a Holy Spirit today. Suddenly, I felt a warm, tingling sensation spread over me like I was being hugged by a loved one, and He spoke to me from the inside out, telling me, “I’ve always been here.”
Not long after that, the Holy Spirit bombarded me with Catholics in all my social media feeds. On my Pinterest account, it recommended Pins about the Holy Father, Pope Francis, showcasing his humility and love for the poor, and I thought, “This man is truly a Christian!” It also recommended quotes from Mother Teresa and a grizzled old man named Padre Pio, whom I absolutely loved. But when I looked him up, I was quite disappointed as he was a Catholic priest! On YouTube, Catholic apologists popped up on my feed, refuting the Protestant apologists I followed, and it scared me that they had better arguments.
The Darkness Disappears
During the last week of July, I listened to Mere Christianity on audio, agreeing with everything Lewis said; I wished I could find a church that taught like this. I knew Lewis was an Anglican and considered trying to find an Anglican Church nearby. However, at the end of the week, I watched a YouTube video of Matt Fradd, a Catholic apologist, and Cameron Bertuzzi, a Protestant apologist, discussing some of the stranger aspects of Catholicism like praying to the saints, purgatory, etc. Matt Fradd explained them so well that I really could not see what was wrong with them. It sounded biblical. I wondered if any members of the church of Christ had ever converted to Catholicism. I searched on Google, and the Coming Home Network popped up.
On their website, I devoured all the written stories of previous church of Christ members. I was in shock, especially after reading Bruce Sullivan’s story and his issue with the biblical canon. How could I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God without recognizing the authority of the Catholic Church, when it was that church which gave us the Bible? In fact, I found out that Protestants were even missing books that the early Christians accepted as inspired. Something like scales fell from my eyes, and suddenly, I could see everything. My world had been black and white, and I never knew there were so many colors until now. All the verses and passages I had read and memorized in my youth but wasn’t sure what to do with now flooded back into my head with a renewed understanding.
One passage came to mind from the prophet Daniel, who interpreted Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The king had dreamed of a statue, representing all the kingdoms of the earth, and a stone being cut with no human hands, destroying all the other kingdoms. The stone itself became a great mountain and filled the whole earth (Daniel 2:31–35). Of this stone, Daniel said “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand for ever” (Daniel 2:44). This contradicted what the Restoration Movement claims about the first century Church falling away. The Church would never fail, and it would grow to be like a mountain. The only church like this is the Catholic Church, which has been here from the beginning. It is the single largest religion in the world and covers the entire earth.
The Catholic Church is the true church of Christ! She was there all along in the backdrop of my life, prodding me, trying to get my attention, but I kept swatting her away like an annoying sibling. I rejected her out of prejudice. If I had only given her a chance sooner! Thankfully, God is patient.
I shocked my husband that Sunday afternoon when I told him that I wanted to join the Catholic Church. I went to the nearest church that Monday, which was St. Mary’s in Savannah, Tennessee. I walked in and sat down in the back row and decided to just observe and then ask someone — I guess the priest — to join. I had never seen a priest before in real life.
My first Mass was strange. I had no idea what was going on, but I was excited to learn about it. After the Mass, the priest threw a plastic rosary at me and a brochure about the Divine Mercy Chaplet and proceeded to lead everyone in prayer. I tried to keep up, but I really had no idea what was going on. I had never seen or held a rosary before. After the prayer, some of the parishioners walked up to me, and I asked them how to join the Catholic Church. They were very nice to me and told me I had to join RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) in September, and gave me the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Catholicism for Dummies. I chose to read through Catholicism for Dummies first, since it looked less daunting. It was actually a well written book, and it seemed to answer all my questions. I learned a lot about the Church even before I started RCIA that fall. The connection between the laying on of hands and the priesthood, apostolic succession, and the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist finally became clear to me. Without a bishop or priest descending from an apostle’s appointment, there can be no true presence. Even if I found another Protestant Church that preached this, it would still not be Christ’s body because they lacked apostolic succession. I had to become Catholic to receive Him.
A New Journey
Although I was elated to have finally found the true Church, I also felt lonely. I told my mother and my sister that I was going to join the Catholic Church. At first, they thought I was joking, but they soon became angry and disappointed when they realized I was serious. After a long discussion, they accepted my decision, but there remained a strangeness between us. My husband would not tell his family for the longest time, because he hoped I was just going through a phase. A few other family members asked me why I’d made this decision, and I tried to answer them as best I could, believing if I could just explain it to them the way it was explained to me, then there was no way they could reject it. But they were not convinced.
I felt like I had found the pearl of great price, but I was the only one who could see it for its true value. Everyone else only saw a lump of coal and looked at me like I was crazy. There were a few Bible teachers I knew who tried to convince me of the errors of the Catholic Church, but they only solidified my belief when they submitted very weak and uninformed arguments against the Church. I thought to myself, that once was me, so I shouldn’t take offense, but rather believe they were doing it out of love for my soul.
Despite all this, my husband was very supportive. He went to RCIA with me, though it didn’t convince him of anything. He agreed to have all three of our children baptized into the Catholic Church after I explained to him that if, later, they wanted to be baptized into the church of Christ, I would respect their decision. So, on Easter Vigil of 2022, I entered the Catholic Church without my husband. My family came to my confirmation and was supportive, but I could tell they were uncomfortable. This has probably been the hardest part for me since entering the Church — the loneliness. I try to remember Matthew 19:29: “And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.”
It was true that my family didn’t disfellowship me because of my conversion (disfellowshipping for conversion tends to happen in the church of Christ a lot) and remain very civil, but there is no longer the spiritual union with them that belonging to the same church brings. Even if my whole family had abandoned me (which I’m grateful they didn’t), I could never dream of returning to a Protestant Church, especially after finally discovering the Eucharist. I try to remember that my decision, although difficult and lonely, pleases God, and that is what is most important to me. My hope is that, over time, if I persevere, my conversion can lead the rest of my family and fellow church of Christ brethren into the fullness of the truth.
When all you have is the Bible alone, it is very difficult to grow closer to Jesus. The sacred Scriptures are an amazing, enigmatic masterpiece, but they can only bring one a certain distance toward him. It’s like standing at the gate of a magnificent cathedral, but never entering inside. The outside of the cathedral is a sublime experience, but to never enter in and explore its depths is an unknown loss. Once I entered into the true Church and was able to partake of all her sacraments, I have been able to grow closer to Christ in ways that I never thought was possible, and I can finally share the whole truth with my four children with full confidence.
Shortly after I entered the Church, my daughter, Maggie, asked me why I became Catholic. I tried to simplify it as best I could for a five-year-old, saying, “Because I want to be closer to Jesus.” All those years ago, when my grandmother first pointed out the true presence, I knew that Jesus was calling me to seek Him. “Seek and ye shall find.” Hanging on my bedroom wall is a quote from the Song of Solomon: “I have found the one whom my soul loves.” I think about the moment during the Mass when the priest holds up the Eucharist and says, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.” I have indeed found the one whom my soul loves.
