I grew up Catholic, went to Catholic school, and knew some things about God, but I didn’t really know God. I thought of God more as some kind of nice old man in the sky who watches us but doesn’t really get too involved in our lives. I never considered that God might have a plan for me, and so I lived my whole young life making my own plans.

Those plans led me to study virology in Texas, where I had BIG dreams about curing deadly, contagious diseases like Ebola…there was no COVID 19 then…and becoming a famous researcher. However, following some catastrophic changes in the relationship I had with my supervisor, I experienced debilitating depression and had to leave Texas abruptly. I came back to Canada very broken and lost, and with no idea where my life was headed.

Literally the ONLY people I knew in town were the ones I had met at church since my parents had moved there after I left for university, so I started hanging out with them and they invited me to help out with the youth group. I started to learn about all of the things that the Church teaches, and I felt like it was the first time I was really hearing them, despite growing up Catholic— and they made sense. It also made me realize that the places I had been looking for happiness— relationships, parties, grades, success, fame— would never be able to provide what I was looking for, which was a joy that would last.

We had one youth group night on confession, and I very quickly realized that I needed to go. I was so nervous, because I had really started to realize the gravity and weight of the sins that I was carrying, and I had no idea what the priest would say, or if I could even get the words out. But I managed to get into the confessional, and by the grace of God, I confessed everything. As the priest prayed the words of absolution, I felt an actual weight lift off of my shoulders that I didn’t even know I had been carrying. In that moment, God went from being some abstract being in the sky to a Father who was with me, and who forgave me completely and without reserve.

In that confession, I felt a love so deep and a presence so profound that it changed everything for me. I MET the God I had always heard about. And I stopped making my own plans and started asking, “Lord, what are your plans for me?” I started praying and going regularly going to confession, and the Lord gave me a new goal, which was not fame or fortune, but holiness. He changed my heart profoundly in that confession, and has been reworking it ever since. I’ll end with a beautiful quote from John Paul II that resonated with me then and continues, even to this day: 

“We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.”