When my father was younger, he experimented with a lot of occultic and new age practices, and immersed me in that from a pretty young age growing up. My grandmother taught me how to read tarot cards, and I bought in to all of this wholeheartedly.
As I got older, I started asking questions, as we are all apt to do. I eventually became a Slavic Reconstructionist, thinking this was a way to honour my families heritage and the gods I believed in. I remember wandering for hours on end in the bush behind my house by myself, so in love with what I perceived to be divinity, praying.
So it was until I was about 16. My life got bad. Fast. Things had always been rough as a child... my mother drank too much, and life at home wasn't always pretty, but at this point in my life, everything I knew just fell apart. I fell into a deep depression, and began a battle with self-injury. It was also at this point in my life that I really began questioning what I believed. It wasn't so much a matter of being bitter towards evil in the world... like my father, I was always a moral relativist in a big way. Ultimately, it came to a point that I realized that what I had believed was wrong, and so I walked away.
... Into an immature and desperate form of atheism. I just kept searching and searching for truth, but I'm not so sure, in hindsight, that I wanted to find it, if I could. When I was 18, and had just been accepted to university, I tried to kill myself. I remember feeling such utter terror as I started to lose consciousness... and crawling to try to get help. I couldn't make it, and ended up curled up in a little ball, praying desperately for the first time in years; to a God I didn't know, to live.
The next morning I woke up. Everything I know about biology and human physiology indicates that I shouldn't have, but I did. Still, it took me another year before I could seriously consider the existence of God. After studying philosophy in my first year of university, and dialoguing with some amazing and patient people, my heart started to soften considerably. In June of this year, I accepted Christ, along the lines of the Sinner's Prayer.
It was also in June of this year that I made it to Mass (in fact, a church service of any sort) for the first time in my life. My parents had long since divorced, and both are living with someone new. My father goes to Mass occasionally with his girlfriend, and I went with them one week. I couldn't understand why they mocked it so much... I felt like I had finally come home, but had no clue how to go about becoming Catholic. I just knew that I needed to be.
I had been in some difficulties finding housing for the second year of my degree, and ended up living with two girls who were strangers to me at the time. After I had moved in with them, I learned that they were both very strong Catholics. All year, we went to Mass together weekly (and later, came to the Easter Vigil). I got involved with the RCIA in September, and it has been one long, incredibly journey filled with so many graces. I was almost in tears the first time I prayed the rosary.... and could barely contain my awe at the power of the Eucharist.
Mind you... I am typically lacking in spiritual consolations, but that really doesn't mean anything. The peace that entered into my life is more than I can describe. It's all been so incredibly worth it.
-Veronica
