Rachel Wong
I grew up in a Catholic home that was very similar to many. We went to mass on Sundays, and early on we adopted the practice of praying the Rosary together every Sunday. We went to Catholic elementary and high school, and received our First Communion and Confirmation. All of this led me to having a great ‘head knowledge’ of who God was. I knew many Bible stories inside and out and had no trouble listing off different names of saints or the mysteries of the Rosary. But more importantly, I came to internalize a truth that my parents, teachers, and priests continue to instill in me: Jesus loves you, and He has a plan for you.
However, I found that this simply wasn’t my experience. While I was taught this and heard this week after week at mass, I couldn’t reconcile it with the suffering that I experienced, beginning with the death of my grandmother two months before my First Communion. From a young age, I was bullied for my ethnicity and weight. The bullies followed me to high school, where I was bullied for heavier faults of being unfaithful to a boyfriend, being mentally unstable, and being promiscuous with men. When I couldn’t run away from the external voices telling me that I didn’t matter, the ‘truth’ of God’s love fell on my deaf ears. I quickly spiraled into depression and anxiety. I hoarded prescription drugs in hopes of one day following through with many suicide attempts that I had dreamt up in my head. The fact that I hadn’t harmed myself in the latter part of my time in high school truly was Divine Intervention.
When I graduated from high school and arrived at university, I saw it as an opportunity to rid myself of my faith, move on and leave behind the God who said He loved me but had nothing to show for it. I adopted a sense of indifference even though I was still forced to go to mass with my family. But in the first week of my undergraduate degree, I encountered a group called Catholic Christian Outreach – a university student movement dedicated to evangelizing the Gospel to students and helping to build them up as leaders for the renewal of the world. I saw these Catholics as happy Catholics, and while I was annoyed at the site of them, I was also intrigued. Why were they happy and Catholic, while I was sad and Catholic? I was invited to take a faith study, which I saw as a Bible study. I felt challenged in a way, like I needed to prove myself the way I did many times before. I saw it as an opportunity to further my ‘head knowledge’ of God and show how I could intellectually wrangle the faith – my faith – and show that God had no plan.
I took a few of the studies and continued to grow my knowledge of God, but I stayed away from the social aspects of the group like board game nights and pizza socials. I certainly didn’t go to Adoration, because that seemed counter to what I was feeling towards God. But all along, there were many missionaries that really pursued me and continued to invite me to events even though I came up with lame excuses to avoid going. It was a wonder that they didn’t give up on me.
One day in the summer of 2016, I finally gave in and registered for Catholic Christian Outreach’s annual conference that is held over New Year’s Eve. It was in Vancouver that year, my hometown, and I figured that I had nothing to lose. But as the Fall semester started, I began to realize that it was probably a bad idea to go to a conference that typically brought together about 1000 people. I knew absolutely no one in the club, and my crippling anxiety would probably turn it into the worst experience of my life. But I had already paid the money, and I didn’t want to waste it.
Worst still, Fall 2016 turned out to be the most horrible semester of my entire degree. I ran into a crisis of what I wanted to study, and I struggled to come to terms with the fact that the degree I was working towards was not what I wanted. To start over in a new program would set me back two years, and the guilt of the money and time wasted started to eat away at me. My mental health took a toll, and I would go into lecture halls and have panic attacks as I thought about how my life was falling apart and that I probably wouldn’t graduate. All throughout, I continued to ask God where He was in my life.
The final bit of salt in the wound came at Christmas. After the semester was over, I felt incredibly run down. Eventually I got sick on Christmas Eve, and I ended up sleeping through Christmas and missing it all together. When I woke up, it was two days before I had to leave for the CCO conference, and I continued to feel panicked and anxious about it.
My family had their own vacation plans that didn’t include me since I was going to the conference. They left on December 27, and the conference started on December 28. That left me with one whole day to myself. I saw it as God’s invitation to end my life once and for all, and at every point where I tried, there was an undeniable force that told me to pause and wait.
When I arrived at the conference, I was ready to spend time alone, awkward, and get judged. Since nobody knew me, I assumed that they probably saw me as the ultimate sinner since they never saw me at an event. I tried to blend into the background so that I wouldn’t get called out for the fact that I had no Crucifix around my neck or that I had no friends to talk to. But suddenly, a few people came over to introduce themselves to me. I cautiously opened up to them, and I was surprised in spite of myself that they were so friendly and warm.
As the conference continued, I felt my hardened and cold heart towards God melt as I cried through every single talk that was given. But the most profound encounter – when I encountered Christ Himself – was in the Blessed Sacrament during Eucharistic Adoration. I had never done Adoration prior to this moment, and as I started at the monstrance, I felt God speaking directly to me. He spoke into every hurt, struggle, and wound that I carried with me, and I heard Him ask me to give it all to Him. This came to be a clear sign to go to confession, something I hadn’t seriously done in about two years.
I knew that the desire to commit suicide was something that the Church looked down on. I wasn’t sure if this was something that I should share with the priest, and I struggled as I waited my turn. When I arrived and sat down before the priest, I shared all the stock sins that I usually confessed. After I did so, I paused, and the priest waited. “There’s more,” the priest said to me, Nothing seemed to matter any more. I broke down and told him my sins, the ways I had wandered away from God, and how I wanted to end my life because I thought there was nothing left for me to live for.
I thought that this would be my excommunication moment. But instead of a rebuke or a raised, angry voice, the priest looked at me with love. As if it was Jesus speaking, He spoke into every wound that I carried in my heart. At the end of my confession, the priest stopped me before I got up. “Welcome home,” he said softly.
The moment I walked back into the doors into the main room where Adoration was happening, I knew that I would never be the same again. A lot of my physical ailments from my anxiety melted away in the months following the conference. While I still worried about my future or various aspects of my life, the anxiety wasn’t as crippling as it was prior to my encounter. But most of all, I felt seen, known, and loved. It was so fitting that the theme for the conference was from the prophet Isaiah, ‘Called by Name’ (Isaiah 43:1).
As I reflect on this experience, I’ve come to see that it was never Jesus that abandoned me. I was the one that, through my pride and arrogance, forged a trail that deviated far away from the path He had from me. But most importantly, I have come to see the redemptive nature of suffering. For so much of my life, I asked what good would come out of suffering. It was through the encounter with the Lord that He showed me my dependence and my need to trust in Him. When we trust our whole lives to Him, we become more free. We become more of who He made us to be. But most importantly, He showed me that His love and mercy are infinite and will never run out. No matter how far away I go, He will always run after me and welcome me home. Even when I’ve despised Him and locked Him out, He still loves me. He has a plan for me, and He always will, even when I make a mistake.