From the beginning, church was my safe place. I started going to Church with my grandparents when I was young and it became the place I wasn’t being judged, or looked at. God was going to be there and he wasn’t going to leave me alone. That peace in knowing that, even if I didn’t feel that all the time.

As I got older, I got really involved in my faith. My friends and I started a youth group. I was teaching catechism. I was part of the choir. We would have praise and worship nights. We would have reach out to the homeless nights. We were living out our faith.

I was doing a lot. My family used to laugh at me and asked if I should take my bed to the church because I was there so much. Name a position, I had done it. 

During the pandemic though, everything crumbled fast. It was a scary time, and everything just got very real. I had to move out of my grandparents house, and ended up moving parishes to closer to where I was living. I had a really bad breakup. I was in a transition phase where I was substituting and long term substituting. I felt alone and unsteady. 

A lot of it happened because I was isolated and I wasn’t staying in community. I wasn’t inviting God to be with me. God was over there on one side, and I was on another side. We’d connect here and there but it wasn’t together. 

I stepped back from doing all the things I had been doing before. I continued to “practice” Catholicism but I was just checking off the boxes. I was going to mass—great. I was saying a nightly prayer—great. And I thought I was okay just being lukewarm with Jesus.

I didn’t realize but the start of the pandemic was a point where I finally stopped and realized I was burnt out. When I took a step back from “doing”, I found I was kind of empty. 

I didn’t know but before, when I was super involved, I was striving for God’s love. I felt like the more I did, the more He would see me. If I did enough, He would be able to acknowledge me. In that sense, the pandemic beame pivotal to change in my life.

But at this point, I was stripped back to just me and Jesus, and it was revealing. 

I was angry during that time. I was disappointed and lonely. I felt a deep sense of loss. I started seeing who I was becoming, and I felt like I could barely recognize myself. All of a sudden something small and minor would happen, but it would have a really big impact on me. Choices I was making were what I thought was best, which was an actuality not the best. I started to settle for the bare minimum and the status quo.

Things felt very difficult, and I felt like I was crumbling. I was falling apart, and didn’t know what to do, where to turn or where to start, but I just knew that this is not what God had planned for me or where God wanted me to be. I felt like I needed something, but I didn’t know what it was, how to get it or where to get it from. I just knew there was more.

I knew I couldn't do it on my own anymore. 

I think this is why one of the most significant moments started at an XLT event at St Marry Bless Help of Christian Churches. We were praying and they brought the monstrous out and it was like Jesus coming towards me. It was like He held out his hand and asked me to take him with me - it was like he wanted to do life with me, and do it together. 

After this, I started praying for a spiritual director, a way to slowly start getting involved again and a community to walk with me.

After that, XLT night, I was invited to go to a conference with Encounter School of Ministry which is where I had that profound experience in Adoration.

It was a moment that is hard to describe—like an internal explosion. The Eucharist was there and we were just praying and I just knelt down and it was coming into reality. I encountered Jesus like I had never encountered Him before. It was more than just, I believe you exist; it was, I believe you are with me and we are going to do this together. 

It was in that moment that all of the hurt and anger that I had held up inside came out. I was crying and it felt like a release of all the striving and anger that I’d experienced. I was able to truly surrender it all over to God. It was like letting it out, all of it, and I received an infusion of joy and peace after and security. 

It felt like He was saying, “Come, the brokenhearted and I will give you rest, joy, everything you need. But come.” 

In this moment I was discovering Agape love: I don’t love you because of what you’re doing. His self giving love for me. It’s pure love. You don’t have to earn it or keep it. His love is always open. 

This is what I was experiencing with the Eucharist. That agape love, that “I got you love; that, “despite everything kind of love.” 

It sounds so cliche, but this was the moment where I realized I was really not alone. He had me and I believed it and felt it. It didn’t change the circumstance and situations or life being hard, but it started to change how I approach life. 

This started the journey that I’m in right now. I guess I finally started trusting and surrendering everything back to God. I got connected with community again and started talking to people about my relationship with Jesus. I stopped thinking about it as having an end point, and started to think there is always more. 

I learned it’s okay to not be okay. I had to learn because I was struggling to accept where I was because it wasn’t where I wanted to be.

When I felt like I was doing too much, it was an escape. It was an escape from family, expectations, and life. I could do what I needed to do and get stuff done. But I had to allow God to love me, give myself over to Him, and because of that… He sees me in my imperfections, and He loves me. 

It was this point that I knew I wanted more—more community and more of Him in a different way. I wanted formation and have others who were building up the faith. I wanted to find another parish like that, where it felt like home. It’s familiar faces and having conversations outside of just mass. 

Following that conference, wanted to learn more about how to evangelize to others around me which led me to register for the Encounter School of Ministry online classes. Throughout this program, I started to dive more into the topic of intimacy with God the father.

During that same time was when I was invited to a worship night on a rooftop where my friend Dalia both and attended, and she invited me to Shalom. She had invited me before, and had told me about this group of young adults at Shalom Ministry. I finally said yes, it was an answer to prayer. I knew I needed something more… community. But I didn’t know how or where to do go. Shalom was an answered prayer.

My relationship with God has been ever-evolving. At first, I knew about God but didn’t fully have a relationship with him. And now that I have encountered the person of Jesus, I am motivated again to to live out my faith, but out of His love for me first. 

Now, when I have hard days, I still know the Lord is with me. It becomes an offering. I don’t know what to do in a moment, but I’ll choose to depend. 

And there’s so much more with life with Jesus. During the pandiemic, I felt okay being in the world. I’m just going to do the bear minimum and that’s it. And then realizing no, Jesus is inviting me to so much more than bare minimum of just going to Church. 

I’m learning my uniqueness now. I feel different from what others would want me to be, but accept myself with all my little quirks. And asking God, why did you make me the way I am? He created me a certain way where people need that part of you. 

He loves me because this is the me He created me to be.