Helen West
There were so many Sundays I would sit in mass listening to yet another young adult tell the story of how they were once a lukewarm Catholic that came to truly know the love of Christ through a radical transformation and had been on fire for their faith since. “Yeah, that will never happen to me” I thought to myself. I knew I would remain Catholic my whole life, but I didn’t think I’d ever be able to truly understand the traditions of the Church or my faith, let alone experience an encounter with God. I thought I would just continue going through the motions.
In the fall of my junior year of high school, my world was flipped upside down when one of my friends I had met at my local parish died after collapsing at a sporting event. That day, even though I didn’t even understand the true presence, I went to the adoration chapel for the first time since my Confirmation and wept at the feet of Jesus. I begged Him to understand why He had taken my friend away. The next week went by in a blur, but the successive wake, funeral, and internment the next weekend left me with one conviction: if I was going to get through this death, I needed a community. I immediately DM’d a member of the local Catholic youth group and asked when the next meeting was. By the grace of God, it was three days later.
Joining this youth group allowed me to enrich my faith by learning more about the traditions of the Mass and the incredible true meaning of the sacraments. How I viewed my previously robotic experience with the Lord was transformed into an active, loving interaction. I received a book on apologetics and was completely enthralled with learning about the beauty and truth behind practices in our faith.
Despite finding a new identity as a daughter of Christ, I still struggled to find fulfillment in that identity. I continued to go back to finding validation through attention from boys, how well I was doing in my sport, and the grades I received on tests. Time and time again, it was revealed to me that these sources of fulfillment were impossible to keep up with and only left me broken and in distress. Finally, after about two years of falling into this trap of apparent fulfillment, I had a realization. Every time I would come crawling back to the Lord, He never approached me with any thoughts of my past mistakes or how I had distanced myself from Him. He was simply glad I was there and was ready to welcome me back home with a heart full of mercy. I recognized that that type of love and mercy could never be found on earth and was what was truly going to fill the gaps in my heart.
I allowed the Lord’s love to flood into my heart and soon after, He called upon me to pour out His love onto other people as His disciple. I decided to take on a leadership role in my local youth group and began an Instagram page where I could share my reflections on my struggles and joys in my journey with Christ. Great fruits came from surrendering my life to the Lord and willfully submitting to His will, but great pain also came as the devil worked day in and day out to pull my heart back to believing the lie that I will be satisfied by the goods of the world. Presently, I am still not freed from this temptation, but I find strength daily in the fact that we have a generous and compassionate God who loves us enough to share in our sufferings, even to the point of death, and one that loves me for who I am, even in the midst of my brokenness.