I grew up in a Protestant family, attending an evangelical Quaker church and maintaining a fairly strong belief in the existence and goodness of God. However, during my senior year in high
school, the church (and the larger group of churches) I had spent most of my life going to ended up going through a messy split, and it prompted a lot of questions about what the Church really is, how to interpret the Bible, and how to distinguish God’s prompting from one’s own thoughts, opinions, and doubts. Throughout college, I visited many different Protestant churches and went to mass several times.
I was drawn to the hierarchy and stability of the Catholic Church, but I also had several qualms with Catholicism. Because of a particular program I was a part of through my university, I ended up reading a lot of the Church Fathers, and a couple of friends, who were going through the process of conversion, introduced Orthodoxy to me. Right away, I felt my heart settling into the groundedness of the Church and the fullness within the Orthodox faith. The acknowledgement of the sacredness and effectiveness of communion started to heal wounds that I didn’t know I had. It took me a couple of years to start attending St. John’s regularly, but then after asking many, many questions (thank you, Father Matthew!) I decided to get baptized into the Church.
God has been so kind to me in bringing me to Orthodoxy, and it has been such a blessing to have some of my family convert around the same time. Glory to Him!
