The sign that made me believe

Hi everyone, I wanted to share something that has impacted me over the last few months. I was raised in an agnostic household, never went to church as a kid but was taught about Christianity through an atheist lens (both parents left their churches, one RCC and the other Lutheran). Definitely had Christian morals/values but was never pushed towards the faith itself, if anything I grew up with a lot of criticism of Christianity in the background. I always considered myself agnostic growing up.

Fast forward to this year, I’m 20 and have been going through a rough patch mentally. Self hatred, thoughts of ending my life, personal crisis, you get the idea. I’m studying philosophy at a western university so the Christian idea of God hasn’t been foreign to me at all for several years. When my depressive spiral hit me earlier this year, the first place I turned to was religious philosophy and theology.

I’m never going to forget the day it happened. In around mid-February, I was on the bus on my way home after a horrible day. One of those where all I could do was just make it through each hour to the next. I was sitting there wondering what was so wrong with me, how could I be such a horrible person? The self hatred was so terrible, I kept asking myself how anyone could ever forgive me for all the things I had done wrong. I found myself crying out silently, asking how could this make any sense, what was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to live with this pain?

Then suddenly it was like a wave of incredible love and peace came over me and the words “God loves me unconditionally” appeared in my head. This feeling was so antithetical to what I had felt just a second before, I’m convinced it didn’t come from me. Immediate warmth and joy so strong that I started crying the second I heard those words. My next thought was that I need to start going to church. From then on I have been attending mass at my local Catholic parish every Sunday, and the immense peace and warmth always returns.

Since then I have been working on my mental health and exploring my faith. I’ve had my ups and downs over the months but praying, reading the Gospels, and going to mass always centres me and calms me down. I’m starting to realize that I really do believe in God and in Christ, and Christianity makes a lot of sense to me. I still have a long ways to go and might not join a church for several years, but I am so thankful to have found this truth. My family disagrees, but they’re slowly warming up to the idea of me being Christian. Things are looking up 🙂