My journey into Catholicism

Conversion thoughts: Part 1

Revisiting St. Bonaventure at the San Xavier del Bac Mission in Tucson, Arizona - a fun photo my sister-in-law, Amy, snapped :)

But if you wish to know how these things come about,
ask grace not instruction,
desire not understanding,
the groaning of prayer not diligent reading,
the Spouse not the teacher,
God not man,
darkness not clarity,
not light but the fire
that totally inflames and carries us into God
by ecstatic unctions and burning affections.
This fire is God,
and his furnace is in Jerusalem;¹
and Christ enkindles it
in the heat of his burning passion,
which only he truly perceives who says:
My soul chooses hanging and my bones death.²

St. Bonaventure, excerpt from Itinerarium mentis in Deum (The Soul’s Journey Into God), 13th c.

Welcome! Whether you’re a longtime friend or a new kindred spirit here (I recommend visiting the Village Green to get your bearings), I’m delighted to be a companion to you through the liturgical year.

Pax+bonum, Kristin.

Over a lifetime of searching for God, a sobering truth has slowly taken shape every time I find him (or when he finds me): that fleeting moment of clarity or conversion is when the search really begins in earnest, again and again, forever.

Because God is not an object to be grasped, turned over, and understood. He is an eternal arrival.

Let us give our mind’s best attention, and, with the Lord’s help, seek after God. The language of the divine hymn is: Seek God and your soul shall live. Let us search for that which needs to be discovered, and into that which has been discovered. He whom we need to discover is concealed, in order to be sought after; and when found, is infinite, in order still to be the object of our search.

St. Augustine, excerpt from Tractate 63 (on John 13:31-32), trans. John Gibb (1888)

When I was a teenager and my mom received a hard diagnosis, I sought God angrily, only in terms of crisp certainties that I could either rationalize or disprove. The search for God became a battleground…so unsurprising, I see now, that I couldn’t hear his clarion call in all my tumult (except for those occasional breakthroughs, despite my best efforts).

I’m thankful for every part of my journey, though - even those years of angry atheism - because they were tender parts of the formation that ultimately led me home, into God.

At different points in my relentless seeking (as my beloved spiritual director told me once, I’m like a dog with a bone), God caught me. My first conversion moments, those times when I finally unclenched my hands and relented, often had heralds - I remember St. Bonaventure completely knocking me sideways.

I’ll share more about my conversion to Christianity later, because I like to tell stories backwards - but for now, on St. Bonaventure’s feast day, I wanted share more about a conversion that surprised me more than anyone else.

This past Lent³, I entered into full communion with the Catholic Church.

I’ve always had a fiercely-held skepticism of hierarchy & institutions. I have an innately rebellious streak and tendencies toward individualism. And when I came to Christianity, I also came with a laundry list of caveats and demands for what I wanted it to look like and feel like.

The tricky thing with those tendencies was that my conversion to Christianity also dumped me right into the depths of Catholic tradition (again, that’s another story for another time). So, I rolled up my sleeves and went to work in the way I knew how…fighting my way through, reading Catholic apologetics until I earned a pair of bifocals, and also asking every Catholic I knew to defend doctrine (bless you for your patience - you know who you are). I desperately read the Catechism from front to back when our oldest was a baby, and now he’s in high school.

In other words: within these years of finding my home inside Christianity, years of both beautiful and challenging formation in a variety of church communities, I kept feeling tugged into Catholicism…but I wanted to turn over every stone, investigate every single piece of doctrine, before committing.

I had a few white whales in that journey that I kept coming back to over and over to either ‘prove’ or ‘disprove’ to my own satisfaction - doctrine and tradition that made me bristle…like the male priesthood. The Real Presence. Apostolic succession & all of its implications and hierarchies. Closed communion. The influence of Roman civic structure in church tradition and clerical hierarchy made me question what elements of Church tradition were products of men or of God (whether both, either, or neither).

Years ago, I decided to take a leap and attend RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults - an inquiry and formation process for adult converts). Our teacher was phenomenal, but I still approached it like an interview and jumped ship a few months in.

In retrospect, I wanted to be convinced - not converted.

Inside the Mission of the Sacred Heart, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho

A few years went by - years when I reckoned with relentless PTSD from losing my mom and sister, while continuing to wrestle with my home in the Church. I was fortunate to have forged some incredible bonds with lifelong friends from the churches we went in and out of over these years, connections that transcended any sort of church geography or denomination.

As I continued to heal, though, I still felt restless in faith communities…and just came to sort of accept that restlessness.

But then, God moved and all of my calculations fell by the wayside.

Milagros pinned to Mary’s dress

In the spring of 2025, I staved off my ongoing anxiety and attended an art retreat in Tucson, Arizona - the closing event of a year-long mentorship process that had been a bit world-shifting for me.

On the last day of the retreat, with an extra few hours at the airport before my flight left, I snagged an Uber and went to a close-by historic church on a whim: the San Xavier del Bac Mission. It was like stepping into another world, and though that Mission will get its own separate post, suffice it to say: as I wandered the Mission’s cruciform interior, overwhelmed by the folk-baroque artwork, the statues, everything, I rounded the corner and had St. Bonaventure sneak up on me, again.

Something about coming face to face with that statue broke a space wide open in me, and I found myself in tears. I watched as desperate people shuffled into the space, clinging to their hats, pinning milagros - and all their hopes and prayers - along with hospital bracelets onto the trailing fabric of the dress of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the mantle of San Xavier. Someone on her knees, face-down weeping, and holding the feet of the crucified Christ.

It was a place bursting with unutterable beauty and holding the most tender pains and fears right inside it - including my own.

So, I started to pick up those apologetics again, revisiting old habits…hoping that St. Augustine, from across the ages, could convince me of the Real Presence through his homilies. Convince me that this was the spiritual home I was looking for.

Mission of the Sacred Heart, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho - from a second visit.

A few months later, in July, I went on a road-trip to visit my dad (and my friend Sarah Lee) in my hometown in Montana. I caravanned with Heather, a childhood friend - winding through backroads and stopping at hole-in-the-wall places as we went.

Heather led the caravan, and knowing my love for old churches, she would pull over to visit every little small-town church we found.

At golden hour, just outside Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, Heather pulled off the freeway and led me into a state park - encompassing the historic “Cataldo” Mission, also known as the Mission of the Sacred Heart.

Arriving after closing time, the church (no longer active, but preserved alongside its rectory) was locked. Wandering up the steps to that church, glowing golden while the sun was hanging lower in the sky, the world felt thick with beauty. I don’t know quite how to describe it…but standing on that porch, I had to shut my eyes and just let it wash over me - the smell of heaven, truly.

I opened my eyes and looked around to see that we were surrounded by a grove of linden trees, all in bloom, all covered in honeybees, with flowers just seeping with that aroma. It actually did smell like heaven.

The linden was my mother’s tree - she had planted one as a sapling long before I was born, and I grew up with that tree. She carefully pruned it and delighted in it year after year, and in many ways, it felt like family to me.

Beneath the linden tree

Mom may as well have been standing there with me.

And, as it happens, our Mother has a penchant for the linden tree, too: as Our Lady of the Linden, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared in the branches of a linden. With just a little digging, I found countless hymns celebrating the linden as a touchstone for the holy, with churches, statuary, paintings, and more celebrating the Marian apparition.

Postcards, etc. from the St. Ignatius Mission

The next day, we took a detour to northwest Montana, visiting the St. Ignatius Mission - its gorgeous interior filled with murals by a Jesuit cook in the early 20th century. I’d been pining to see this church for years.

"God's House": St. Ignatius Mission

After spending some time in the nave, marveling over all of the artwork and the intersections with the local tribe (the Tabernacle was inside a small teepee), we wandered the grounds and visited one of the original cabins that predated the more ornate church. It was a makeshift museum/gift shop, and I found a rosary to take home with me.

The volunteer helping me asked me if I had come for the pilgrimage - and, a bit dumbfounded, I found that I was, indeed, on an accidental-pilgrimage. St. Ignatius was part of the Year of Jubilee pilgrimage, which I hadn’t even realized until then (our farm, coincidentally, is called Jubilee Farm - after the year of Jubilee).

We set out for more roadside stops, taking windy backroads all the way. I was listening to an episode of Fr. Mike Schmitz’s podcast, laughing at myself as he talked about the art of' ‘being here now,’ living with God in the present rather than constantly disembodying ourselves into the past, future, or tech distractions.

It felt so fitting to hear (however ironic the medium was) - there I was, solo in our car on a beautiful summer roadtrip with a friend just up ahead…yet I was filling every moment of silence with something streaming from my phone. One podcast episode after another, more music, more distractions, however edifying they were. I’d gone into the trip with the intention of really savoring some rare moments of silence, but even without my sweet kids chittering or the dog talking or all the usual chores back home, I found myself running from silence and solitude.

We stopped to fuel up, and then - my phone crashed. It just went completely blank, and no amount of charging would power it up again.

There on the Montana backroads, radio stations were too spotty to pick up…all I got was static.

So I found myself driving these beautifully familiar landscapes, with only silence - and a rosary. It almost felt as if Our Lady had lovingly taken a distraction away from me (such a mom thing to do, right?), asking me to just listen.

I lost all of the photos I’d taken at all of the Missions I’d been to over the past year, and somehow…it didn’t matter.

The Marian Chapel at San Xavier del Bac Mission

I spent the rest of the drive praying the rosary, circling over it again and again. When I arrived, I opened up my laptop and sent an email to my previous RCIA director and told her I wanted to come into the Church.

Dad & I went out to find a flip phone for me, I enrolled in OCIA (an updated translation for this process - the Order of Christian Initiation for Adults), and then a whole new process of conversion began in earnest.

Because I wasn’t convinced: I was converted.

I know these anecdotes can sound trite or saccharine at face value, but ultimately, they brought me to a whole shift of self. Not the apologetics - not the defenses of Apostolic succession, not Canon law, however valuable and crucial they may be.

In Catholicism, I found a language so resonant with my most interior experience - a living faith that held the full complexity of suffering and joy. I took a leap without all the answers - probably with even more questions than before. And I’m so grateful I did.

Standing like a proud mother hen - and a full-fledged Catholic - outside the San Xavier del Bac Mission on my return visit

Since that pilgrimage summer, I’ve revisited a few of those Missions…and getting to greet St. Bonaventure again (my confirmation saint), then celebrate the Mass as a Franciscan friar presided, was a surreally full-circle moment.

Would you like to hear a bit about my experience with OCIA? Do you have questions? I’ll be doing a follow-up post with a bit more about the whole process.

My boy St. Bonaventure, in the museum at the ruins of Arizona’s Tumacácori Mission.

I remain thankful for, and formed by, each stream of Christian tradition that I was steeped in over the years. The women’s small group at an evangelical church was my lifeline during some incredibly dark PTSD years, a local mainline Protestant church welcomed us as family (and still do), my grandmother’s Lutheran prayer book still lives on my bedside table…and I could go on.

I stand where I am thanks to all of these expressions of the faith, not in spite of them.

Sancte Bonaventura, ora pro nobis.

Pax et bonum,
Kristin

1. Isaiah 31:9

2. Job 7:15

3. A bit before Easter Vigil, since I had already been baptized.