Rachel Smith

Wow, where to begin?!

Well, I was raised Catholic, in a very “culturally-Catholic” environment. We went to Mass (mostly) every Sunday, prayed the Rosary together every now and then, prayed before meals and before bed. Sometimes my Dad would even read us Gospel stories before bed. Looking back, these are some of my fondest family memories together. It’s crazy, because I can still feel the warmth of the memories and how close I was to God during those special moments. For a long time, I loved going to Mass and praying to God. My family is and always has been super loving and super close, with really beautiful moral standards that were passed on to us as children.

I also attended CCD at my parish. Unfortunately, my parish was not very vibrant or alive with the Holy Spirit. To give you an idea, I left CCD without fully understanding the Eucharist or why we believed that it was truly Jesus in the Host, thinking that the ‘saints’ were people who never in their life had sinned, no idea what Adoration was and the impressions that Scripture was mostly something you only heard at Mass on Sundays and that Confession was something you did once as a requirement in CCD and then never really again throughout your life.

Unfortunately, we did not have any sort of Youth Group or any form of community gathering outside of the more formal “classroom” setting. As a result, to my heart and mind as a child, it seemed to me that Church was an extension of School: More things to memorize, more rules to follow, more things to know and to do. Checking off a box. From what I can remember, no one really ever explained the deeper ‘why’ behind what it is that we were doing. No one, from what I could tell, was truly living for Jesus, in a daily, living relationship that fueled all they did, the decisions they made and a mission they were fulfilling. It seemed to me that “if you are a good person” then you’ll go to Heaven, and that’s all you really needed to know. The Sacraments were more of a suggestion, rather than an essential.

Now I should note: This was my limited and very skewed perception as an adolescent.

There very well could have been adults who were passing on the deeper why’s, or that truly were living for Jesus, it just didn’t sink in for me at the time. I knew my parents loved God and the Church, and to the best of their knowledge and ability, passed that on to us. My Grandparents also loved God and His Church. My Grandpa loved them so much, he had monthly Catechism classes for his grandchildren. What a gift! He is someone that even from a young age, I could tell truly loved Jesus with everything in him. I can vaguely remember getting into the deeper why’s and intellectually stimulating Truths of the faith during this time together, even though most of it was way over my head, and my interest level in hearing it was pretty dang low. Much of what I absorbed was only what I was willing to absorb, which was definitely not a lot and became less and less the older I grew.

By the time I reached Middle School I cared much more about my friends, social status, boys, dating, fitting in, being “cool”, popularity and the ways of the world than I did about attending CCD, my Grandpa’s classes or going to Mass every Sunday. The opinions of my peers weighed way more heavily than checking off a box on Sunday.

As I journeyed into High School, the ways of the world just became even louder. I was going to Mass less and less and going out with friends more and more. I only ever prayed when I did go to Mass, and I think I started to believe that was the only time you could really talk to God, even though no one ever directly said that to me. When I did talk to God, it was mostly asking for things for others.

It was also in High School that I got into a life-threatening car accident driving way too fast on a windy back road. This dramatically changed the way I viewed my life and the world. While not quite connecting it to the God we talked about at Mass on Sunday, I can vividly remember waking up from the accident in the hospital with a deep and profound sense that I had almost thrown away the greatest gift I would ever receive: life. I somehow knew that I was meant to do much more than I had, and that if I had lost my life at that time it would have been detrimental to… something bigger than myself. It was deeper than grief, or personal regret, it was this deep and visceral knowing that something horrid would have happened by my life ending earlier than it should. The only reason I survived the accident is because at the exact time that we crashed, a stranger was driving by. He pulled over and held my head together, keeping me from losing too much blood until the ambulance got there. The doctor later told me that if he had not been driving by at that exact moment, I likely would have died from blood loss.

This, to me, blew my mind. It opened my eyes to faith in fate, destiny, and that everything that happened on earth somehow had some sort of a larger plan to it. However, I did not directly connect this to organized religion or the Church or even my idea of “God” at the time.

When it came time to choose a college, I naturally decided to go to a school that had the best Journalism program, as at the time I thought I one day wanted to become a Journalist. I got into my top choice at Syracuse University and was blown away. I remember the first year I was going to Syracuse University it topped Arizona State as the #1 Party School in the country. Maybe you can see where this is heading?

The next four years I dove hard into Greek life, frat parties, making friends, fitting in, Instagram-culture, and heavily drinking – sometimes multiple days a week. This was (largely) the culture at Syracuse and honestly, I feel in so many ways I just kind of fell into it. It was what was right in front of me, the easy option, and what seemed to be making everyone around me happy - so it’s what I did too. But there were glimpses of the shell beginning to crack in college. I remember nights, getting ready and looking into the mirror saying to myself “I just… don’t want to go.” It frustrated me because I couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to go, but something in me just didn’t want to continue this lifestyle. I wanted something more. I think deep down I knew it wasn’t making me a better person, and I woke up feeling emptier rather than full, but I was very far off from realizing this or identifying it and knowing what it was that I was feeling.

It wasn’t until I was out of college, living and working in the city, that I had my moment where I allowed God into my heart. The next few years had brought me more confusion, as I continued to live for the ways of world and kept coming up empty. My friends were good, my boyfriend was good, my family was good, I had graduated college, got the good job, was living in the city, and yet deep down I felt more restless than ever. It all came to head one day when I was sitting on on my way to work. I hated my commute – everyone was always on edge, it was always packed to the brim, and everyone seemed to be in such a rush. I was sitting there and I was thinking in my head, “Is there anything more to life than this?”, “What is the purpose of life?”, “Why are we even here?”, “If I have to wake up, go to work, come home and do it again for the next 50 years, I am just going to be so…. bored.”, “Is there anything else out there?” Little did I know, this was a prayer. Yes, there is something else out there, and when we talk out loud in our heads to Him, He will answer. I see this now as the tiny little crack in the door of my heart that I opened for the Lord to enter. And wow, DID HE!

It wasn’t long after that I began to have thoughts about God, the Church, religion, the world. I started having so many questions fill my head. One of the biggest ones was about women in the Church. I had so many wounds about being a woman from what I had absorbed from the ways of the world. I had internalized so much insecurity, hurt, confusion and even rejection, and I believed that, somehow, the Church was at the pinnacle of it. A classic male patriarchy that does not value women. Ohhhh, how very wrong I was. It was the stirring of my heart on these issues that got me to one day Google, “Catholicism” and “Feminism” in one search. Can these two things co-exist? And The Catholic Feminist Podcast popped up. (Thank you, Holy Spirit!) I clicked it and had never felt so seen, so known. She was responding to the deepest insecurities I had about the Church, answering so many questions I had about what it meant to be a woman, our mission, how much the Church values women, why God created women, how Jesus interacted with women, and more! I was fascinated but very, very far from being sold.

For the sake of time, I will fast forward through the next few years. Basically, I became a sponge. My least favorite part of my day (my commute) had turned into my favorite part of the day, as I began bingeing on episodes. I didn’t agree with most of what these women were saying, and yet, I couldn’t stop listening. Reminds me of Mark 6:20, “When [Herod] heard [John the Baptist], he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.” The more I listened, the more my soul yearned for more. Of course, over time, the Holy Spirit continued to take any little crack He could to draw me deeper. The episodes always linked to what they mentioned, and so eventually I started clicking them. This led me to Abiding Together, Blessed Is She, Letters to Women, Fr. Mike Schmitz, Bishop Robert Barron, FOCUS-The Fellowship of Catholic University Students and more. It was so gradual and so slow, and I didn’t even realize it was God, but He was leading me deeper into relationship with Him, feeding me exactly what it was that I needed next.

There were so many times that I would think a question in my head, and the next day, clicking a three-year-old podcast episode at random on a totally separate topic, the people in the episode would just HAPPEN to mention the answer to the very question I had asked in my head the day before. That is how good our God is, friends - Matthew 6:8, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” This is real. At first I didn’t even notice, then I would think “funny coincidence” and, finally, it got to the point where it was happening so often I began to realize there was something actually RESPONDING to me and the thoughts in my head!!

Eventually it started to stand out to me that these people in these episodes kept mentioning a daily prayer life, reading Scripture, soaking in the Sacraments and hearing from God on a regular basis. It started to tug at my heart, “Maybe I should try that?”. Well friends, eventually I did. I cracked open a dusty old kids’ version of the Bible I somehow had in my apartment and began to read one Scripture verse a day before I left to go to work in the morning. And what I found was simply blowing my mind and completely changing my world, my heart, and my very self. Did other people realize what this book said?! How did it know my very thoughts?! How did it answer my deepest longings?! Not only that, the Scripture I would read started to directly connect to the episodes that I would happen to listen to, or an event that would happen that week. I would read a verse in the morning and hear it three more times throughout my day. And these were not the daily readings! I began in Matthew because I had seen on a Tumblr page back in college the phrase “learn from the way the wildflowers grow” (Matthew 6:28) and loved it. It wasn’t until years later, when listening to this Catholic content, that someone mentioned that verse and I realized it was from the Bible! So, when I decided to read Scripture on my own, I started there in Matthew 6 and just began working my way.

It wasn’t long after this that I began to have a desire to want to go to Mass. I went to Confession for the first time in years, which was amazing. Then started going to daily Mass, and Adoration. There were days I felt physically drawn to the Chapel, like I simply had to get up and go. It wasn’t long after this that I started to crave community. I wanted to speak to other women specifically about Scripture. Did something like that even exist? I looked up my local parish to see whether something like that existed, and they didn’t have it. Eventually I got the thought out of (seemingly) nowhere to see if the Church in the town where I worked offered one. Sure enough – they had a Walking With Purpose: A Catholic women’s Bible Study. Exactly what I was looking for! When I walked in cold without knowing anyone one night, the first woman I met was someone my age, who lived in my town and had also traveled to the next town over in search of the same thing. Wow. I was BLOWN away! This was the first time the Lord actually brought me to a person – and so deliberately. “He can even answer with people?! Incredible!!” I remember thinking.

Shortly after attending this group I started to feel a desire to see if my local parish would want to start something similar. It took me weeks to build up the courage to email. Many doubts swirled through my head, “Who am I to lead a Bible Study? What do I know?” but I fought through it and emailed cold one day. They responded within a minute, saying, “I was just praying in Adoration asking for the Lord to bring people to begin a ministry like that here.” WHAT!? Wow! He really wanted me to know that He is real. He is alive. He is working. He hears me. Sees me. Knows me. And will provide.

Long story short, we now have over 70 women on our email list, and we’ve been meeting at my own parish for over a year. The woman I had met at the next town over, is the one that started the group with me. We got our name, Women At The Well, after two separate people who didn’t know each other in my life suggested that be the name. (Thank you, Lord!)

It wasn’t long after starting this group that the Lord put another call on my heart. For so long I had been listening to so many amazing Catholics totally on fire for the Lord and His Church. I always would wonder, “How did they get there? What is their story?” I would search on YouTube, Podcasts, websites to find stories in a bunch of different places, but there was no one source I could go and just listen – as I had been for so many years - to how they each came to know the Lord and what He did in their lives to develop this trust, this fire and this conviction.

I was in Adoration one day after the Lord had done so many incredible things in my life. Just thanking Him, for showing me so much, for bringing me so much, for doing so much. For picking me up out of the world and bringing me into the fullness of life. I asked Him, “What can I do for you?” He pulled together all the memories of listening to these people and communicated to me that there was a reason I had those longings to hear those stories. He was asking me to share them. And in what better way than a podcast? The very way I first began to know Him. The podcast could be a place to share how each guest came to know the Lord, what He has done in their lives, and how He led them into His Church. A place to share encounters with this true and living God, who loves us more than we can even imagine. And so, to grow good was born.

I would love to have you listen along with us, as the Lord leads this mission to share these incredible stories of encounter and conversion with the world. You can find it on togrowgood.com, @togrowgood on Instagram, Apple, Google, Spotify or YouTube.

Cannot wait to see what the Lord does – both in my life, and in yours – next!