Katie Warner
God is good. That’s basically my life’s story – one of testament to God’s abundant grace.
When I was young, my dad left his lucrative, secular advertising career to work in pro-life and evangelization ministry full time, so I was always involved in ministry somehow myself, from passing out donation envelopes in the back of churches, to helping on television commercial shoots, to years later managing email communication for our apostolate, Catholics Come Home. This is something I still do (though very part-time), which has allowed me to dialogue with literally thousands of fallen-away Catholics and others who have questions about Catholicism or returning to the Church over the past 10+ years.
I also was blessed to witness my parents’ transformation after their own reversion to the faith – they were always Sunday Mass-going Catholics, but their faith was really ignited in my childhood and that obviously impacted my own spiritual life. When I was in middle school, I had a powerful encounter with Our Lord in front of the Eucharist where I felt Him speak very clearly to my heart that He wanted me to serve Him with my whole life, and specifically to share and teach the faith.
That desire kept growing, and by my middle and high school years, I honestly just looked for any and all opportunities to share and live my faith every day. I was never really lured by a lot of the typical youth temptations; I cared more about going to daily Mass and adoration and learning about the saints, hoping to study theology and make that my career. It was a very Holy Spirit-driven time in my life –in a more outwardly obvious way, whereas now the Spirit moves in a much subtler way in the atmosphere of home life.
I did get that graduate degree in Catholic theology and my plan was then to get my PhD and teach at the graduate level, but God had better plans, leading me to what now is unquestionably my greatest dream: not high degrees and academic prestige, but being a wife and mom, staying home with my kids, changing diapers, homeschooling, and then being blessed by the beautiful opportunities the Holy Spirit continuously provides to do some other ministry work in my free time, too…which these days means writing Catholic children’s books (@firstfaithtreasury)! It’s all such a joy and a gift!