In my experience, it's not very often that someone shares to others on the Internet just why they are Christian or Catholic and why they came to be the person they are today. Many people who call themselves Christian may not even say that it makes that big of a difference in their lives.

I guess, perhaps, that I am a bit different.

There is one reason why this story of my life is the first part that I am sharing. This is because it is the most important.

The reason why I am a Catholic Christian is much of the reason why I am who I am today. Everything that I have experienced in my life, at least on a large scale, is influenced by my religious beliefs. It wouldn't make sense to talk about my romance life or my Internet life without talking about the most fundamental and foundational aspect of myself.

Before I go on, I want to make this very clear: I chose this religion for myself. Yes, most of my family is Catholic too, but I'm not the type of person to believe something just because I was raised to believe it. I'm no theologian, but I have independently studied more about Catholicism than most. I would love to get a master's in theology, but that's for another stage in life.

Now I begin my story.

I am the fourth of six children in my family. I have 3 older brothers and 2 younger brothers, making me the only girl out of all my siblings. As you can probably tell, growing up was quite the adventure. We had a wild household, but thanks to the disciplinary measures of my parents, the house was not uncontrollable. It helps that my dad can put on a scary face when he wants to.

We went to Mass every Sunday. At Mass, we would sing songs, as you probably know. My mom has a lovely singing voice. I admired it as a child. I wanted to sing just like my mom. so I started singing church songs as much as I could as soon as I could. That got me participating in Mass early in life. For the most part, I didn't even see Mass as boring like a lot of children do.

The church that I grew up in however was not a normal Catholic Church. This church is called a Charismatic Catholic Church, meaning that we would have Mass, but within it, we would have something called Charismatic worship, which involves the raising of hands, shouting praises to God, and even speaking in tongues. I know that that sort of thing can scare people, but trust me when I say that my church was nothing like Jesus Camp. Anyways, I suppose that also kept Mass from being too boring, too.

But not only did I grow up in this church, my parents and much of my dad's side of the family were also involved with another Christian group - an interdenominational, charismatic Christian group where Christians from multiple denominations can come together and praise God. Not only were there prayer meetings every other Sunday, but the adults were part of small sharing groups separated by men and women where they would share their lives with one another, and, in general, they agree to uphold good Christian standards for one another. In this Christian group's view - a community, rather - it is not good enough to just be a Christian who goes to church on Sundays and then does whatever they want during the rest of the week. We need to be Christians every day.

That's basically my background as a Christian child. I went to Christian summer camps between the ages of 9 and 14, I received First Communion and Confirmation in the Catholic Church, and I attended Christian/Catholic school from 3rd grade until I graduated high school. I went on several retreats during high school, was part of a high school youth group and small group in the charismatic Christian group, and my senior year I got to be a retreat leader for my senior class retreat. I gave 2 talks and lead a small group full of my classmates. As I got older, I wasn't just somebody who cruised through Christianity and never thought of it as having no real effect on my life. I didn't always remember to have personal prayer, but I went to church, went to youth group, and learned more about God in school and in my personal life. And as I continued to grow into that way of life, I felt more security and satisfaction in who I was.

After I graduated high school, I attended Eastern Michigan University, a public university in southeastern Michigan. This was my first time attending a public school since 2nd grade. I still lived with my parents for my first 2 years there because I was poor, but I was still learning to live in a non-Christian - and sometimes anti-Christian - environment.

This begins the chapter of me learning to become an adult Christian. Because eventually, if you want to follow a religion without feeling like a miserable robot, you have to figure out why you are in it and why you believe what you believe. It's a part of growing up.

I suppose that I will start this part of the story with my sophomore year in college. At this point in my life, I had been:

-Talking to people on the Internet for 4 and a half years

-Dating an old friend from high school for 2 and a half years

-Participating on the official Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series forum for 10 months

-Living with my parents, not going to move out for another year

-A part of a Christian group in college related to the interdenominational Christian community for a year

The first 3 things on the list were decisions that I made completely on my own. The last 2 things on the list were decisions that my parents either made me choose (living with them) or encouraged me to choose (the Christian group). It's not that I didn't enjoy being part of the Christian group, in fact I liked it a lot. But I was still pretty new with it, and I knew that my parents wouldn't like it much if I decided to stop going to their prayer meetings.

At any rate, the Christian group was holding a weekend retreat at the beginning of October. The theme of the retreat was about learning more about the Holy Spirit and learning about how to take beginners' steps into how to be an adult Christian. I enjoy retreats and I really wanted to go to it, but the retreat costed $110. Back then, that was a pretty steep price for me. I had a less-than part-time job and I had to pay for some of my classes. There wasn't any way that I could just pull $110 out of my bank account. They offered scholarships, but the maximum amount that they could give to an individual was $30. That helped, but I was still $80 short. It was getting much closer to the date of the retreat, and people were still begging me to go and they prayed for my finances, but it wasn't until a couple of weeks before the retreat that I discovered that I could make it work to go. I babysat one weekend and made $40. It was much easier for me to scrounge up another $40 than it was to try to scrounge up $110. God helped provide the money that I needed to attend the retreat.

So I went.

On Saturday night, we were encouraged to ask God for a gift of the Holy Spirit that we thought that God may want to give us, and that the people in our small groups are to pray over each other for that gift.

Now, I had been prayed over several times in my life for several gifts, and I knew about the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The year of my Catholic Confirmation, I began to pray every day for Wisdom, Knowledge, and Understanding. I've asked for prayer for things like patience, peace, joy, etc. I had received the gift of tongues ages ago. What do I ask for?

Then I remembered something four years ago. I was one of maybe 4-5 people on a high school retreat who was bold enough to admit that God wanted me to receive the gift of healing, and I was selected to pray over someone who wanted healing from being afraid of the dark. Since then, I hadn't used the gift of healing at all.

So I asked for it again.

I was one of the first people in my group to be prayed over, so after my prayer session was over, someone in my group not only wanted to pray for a gift of the Holy Spirit, but she also wanted prayer for her ankle to heal because she had hurt it while running. I laid my hand on her ankle and started praying.

I prayed and I prayed, and at first I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to help, and that there was no way that I would even have the power to heal this person's ankle. It's not possible for a mere person like me to perform a miracle.

Then I thought, "Of course I don't have the power to heal people!" The point of me PRAYING for someone's ankle to heal is that I am asking God to answer our prayers, and that the gift that I have been given by God is for Him to use me as a vessel of His power. So I surrendered myself to God and let Him take over - knowing that it is not me who heals people, but God.

And then something really, really weird happened.

I swear on my life that I am not making this up.

I could feel parts of the inside of her ankle move.

I don't know what it was exactly - bone, muscle, whatever - but I could feel it all move into wherever it is supposed to go.

The funny thing is that, at first, I didn't really think anything of it. I don't remember exactly what I thought of it initially, but it was probably something along the lines of, "I wonder what that's all about...". It wasn't until the next morning that the person whose ankle I was praying over was able to approach me and say that her ankle was healed during her prayer session. Then I was able to put two and two together (I mean, how was I supposed to know what a healing feels like? lol).

Now, something like this doesn't usually happen to anyone, let alone more than once... but it happened again a couple of months after the retreat.

I know a young woman who suffers from chronic pain in her joints. She was a dancer, but she was at her senior year in college and she was suffering from severe knee pain. She was told by her doctors that she could never dance again, and she had a degree in dancing to finish up. Most of her professors, unfortunately, were not very understanding and were suspecting her of faking her pain to get free credit. That distrust from her professors, her constant pain, and her dreams of being a dancer being squashed, things were not going very well for her.

Our Christian group has something called the Advent Vigil in early December, where the usual prayer meeting is extended for 3 hours and, at the end, involves praying over one another. The girl with the knee injury was in my group. I can't remember everything that she asked for prayer for, but I laid my hand on her injured knee and started praying.

And it happened again. The insides of her knee began to shift back to where they were supposed to go.

Because I knew what was happening as the inside of her knee began to shift around, I became much more fascinated with the process. I could feel a difference between the way her knee was before and after, and after felt a bit more like my knee, a healthy and uninjured knee - the way it should be.

The difference between this healing and the one from before, however, was that it wasn't a complete healing - the time for healing did not heal her from her pain completely. But what it did was it made her much more comfortable, and her knee became much more movable, at least in the moment. I am unsure of how the healing made a difference in the long run - although she is doing much better now - but I know that it was something for at least a short while.

Recently, I studied the Bible passage about having faith the size of a mustard seed.

And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

Basically, this passage means that even with a little faith, you can do great things. There is a faith greater still to have - like faith that can move mountains - but you can do things in God's name and with God's strength even if you only have a little bit of faith. I would know - I don't consider my faith to be all that strong, even on my best days.

Now, that is not the end of my story, because the story only answers the questions, "Why do I believe in God?", "Why do I believe in a God who works through people to perform His miracles?", "Why do I believe in the God of the New Testament," and "Why am I a Christian?" But any Christian who calls upon the name of the Lord can heal like that. Why am I specifically Catholic, aside from the fact that I grew up Catholic?

Because, honestly, when someone asks why you are a Catholic, your primary answer should not be, "Because I was raised Catholic." Catholicism gets criticized for being an "impersonal" religion that only involves going through the motions and repeating memorized prayers without putting any heart into it. But here's the thing... there is supposed to be heart while you are "going through the motions" and saying your prayers. Some people just don't put any heart into it because they're lazy, and that is sad.

So I did not want to be lazy. In Catholic school, I took Theology class seriously and learned everything that I could, even if the teacher was bad. I always wanted to know more about the Catholic Church and what it taught and why it taught what it did. I learned from Jason Evert, a Catholic who has written several books and traveled to many many churches and schools across the United States about sexual purity, that there are practical reasons to save sex for marriage, and it is not just one of those "because I told you so" sorts of teachings that you are used to hearing as children. I know that there are reasons for everything that the Catholic Church teaches. I want to know it all.

I have done lots of independent study as well. I have lurked the Catholic Answers Forums for the answers to all sorts of questions, engaging my thoughts in all sorts of discussions, figuring out whether or not what each particular person says is true based on what I know about the Catholic Church and my own personal experiences. Especially concerning moral theology - is this situation always right, always wrong, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, or too dependent on circumstances?

But it wasn't just Church Teaching that I wanted to know about. I wanted to know God Himself.

In college, I found that I actually enjoyed going to Mass during the weekday. I made it a point to go at least twice a week to Mass. I would have liked to go every day, but class made that pretty impossible. I also liked to take my prayer time in the Catholic chapel near campus. During one of the most difficult times of my life, I spent hours each week praying, reading my Bible, ranting at God, moping, and sleeping in that chapel. It was during one of my prayer times in that chapel that it was challenged upon me to break up with my boyfriend of 3 and a half years - something that I knew that I had to do but never had the courage to bring up. A month later God was telling me to see one of the counselors at my university to talk about the mess that was my emotional life.

God's presence in that chapel changed my life. And by God's presence, I mean that literally. Because as a Catholic, I believe in the Eucharist, which is God's presence in bread and wine that Catholics receive at Holy Communion at the end of Mass. The tabernacle keeps the Eucharist safe inside the church, where people can pray and literally be in God's presence. I couldn't be more grateful for that chapel's presence on the campus of my school.

Two Bible passages have become my favorites. I will share them.

Psalm 37: 4, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."

Proverbs 3: 5-8, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing for your flesh and refreshment for your bones."

God is my rock. Jesus is the purpose of my life. The Mass and the Eucharist keep me going, joyful and strong.

But my walk with God is not over until the moment I die. I still have much to learn.

And that is why I am Catholic.