Hi, my name is Ysabel Agaton and I’m currently an MV applicant for the GTA Area. We’re currently being tasked with posting up a reflection once a week and this will be my first official one, in a long while so please bear with me. I think to start these series of reflections I want to share with everyone my conversion story. I first got this idea from our Area core shout, Ate Ellish (our Full-Time Pastoral Worker) had asked us to write down what we consider to be our moment of conversion or our own ‘conversion stories’. She told us that these stories are the ways Christ has touched our lives but most importantly she reminded us that when people read our stories it will be a way for them to see how Christ has loved us.
When I was younger, I was very much your typical scene kid. Angry at the world, angry at my parents, angry at myself. If it ever affected my life in some way I was angry at it. Religion has always been a big part of my life since my parents had raised me Catholic. Going to Mass every Sunday, praying before every meal, and praying before going to bed had all been routine to me. I was honestly fine with the religion that was passed down to me. I didn’t take any particular interest and put more effort than necessary into Catholicism. This all changed when my older sister, someone who I looked up to, started being very vocal about questioning her faith, at the moment she was going through a lot personally and she was sometimes lashing it out on our parents and on us. Her questions led to my own questions. Questions, that I think were still too big for my brain to fathom back then and since I couldn’t understand it fully, it just made me angry. I started to hold these doubts and these questions very tightly to myself. I felt like if I asked them out loud everything I was raised on, and everything I thought I believed would come crashing down. At the same time, I was battling with what I now know as my anxiety/depression, and struggling with my own sexuality. This goes on through grade 7 and all the way to 1st-year university. I went in and out of relationships, I started vices and fell into addictions that I’m still struggling with today. All those things just added to the cloud of doubt that was surrounding my heart. I gave and I changed so much of myself away that even till now I’m still trying to find what I lost. In other words, I was a mess. I had created these knots inside me with my doubts, my anger, my resentments and it seemed impossible to untangle it.
There wasn’t a moment that I felt instantaneously changed. But, in all my doubts and in all the challenges that I was facing I can honestly say that the Lord has never once stopped calling me by name and asking me to come to Him. He has this way of taking me from where I am and literally moving me to a different country just so He can speak to me directly. That is where my own conversion story starts. When I was 18 I got the chance to go to World Youth Day in Spain and it really changed my faith. It was then that I got to chance to travel to three different countries and to be able to see and witness the love of God everywhere and in everyone. He took me on a journey just to show me how much His love can fill not just one person but a whole country of people, by surrounding me with people who live out His will every day. On this trip, I was blessed to be able to go to Fatima, to Lourdes and to Spain where we got the chance to visit many important places to certain saints and to our own faith. During those moments, I didn’t get to appreciate what I was able to experience and what I was able to see in those holy places. But, the Lord never gave up on me and He still won’t give up on me. He was showing me, future me, that a life lived in His love and glory is a life fulfilling its potential. When He showed me those places, when He whispered to me the stories of those saints. He was showing just how grand and beautiful His love can be if only I let Him in my life but most importantly my heart. He was promising me a life filled with love, passion, and beauty if only I chose to live in Him.
I guess you can say that my conversion story is ‘grand’ but that’s just how the Lord talked to me at that moment in time. Everyone’s conversion story is different. Some are instant, some are long standing, other can be momentous and other can be slight. What matters is in that moment, that is when God has spoken to you. He has chosen to speak to you in a way that is meant for just you and only you. I’ve learned to cherish those moments in my heart, even if at the time I haven’t quite yet understood what He was trying to tell me. God truly has a plan for us, and it’s in our own stories that it can be revealed to the world.
Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for creating me and calling me to loved by You.
Ysabel