When Candace Owens announced she "made the decision to go home" on April 22, 2024, my first thought was "how could someone so smart and intelligent make a choice like that?" Then the following answer came right back to me, "maybe you should look into it too and find out for yourself."
Then soon after, social media must have either read my mind (lol), or the algorithms picked up on this new interest of mine because I started seeing various clips and posts in my feeds on the topic of Catholicism.
Early on, the one discovery that stood out the most and motivated me to continue testing the waters, is the fact that the traditions, Sacraments, and Holy Order of the Catholic Church can be traced all the way back to the earliest Church Fathers who had firsthand contact with the Apostles of Christ. These traditions, Sacraments, and the Holy Order have been carried all the way down until now in a straight line.
I ordered my first cheap set of rosaries on July 9th, 2024. I passed them out to my mom, my daughter, son-in-law, my husband, and myself.
My husband and I were married by his friend who happened to be ordained on January 1st, 2000, and we were baptized together April 17th, 2005, as Southern Baptist. Since then, we always chose nondenominational churches and became unchurched off and on most of the years.
Regardless of our unchurched history, people in general always seemed to gravitate towards me for spiritual advice, trust my biblical knowledge, and believe in my prayers. This has meant so much to me and has encouraged me to take my faith seriously (besides going to church on a regular basis). I have been labeled by many as the Jesus fanatic over the years and I have probably almost handwritten the entire Bible due to journaling the scriptures so much for meditaion purposes, lol. I am saying all this to point out that my husband of 26 years, who is usually open to my choices, thought I was insane for attempting to give the Rosary a try.
My husband fully rejected the rosary and doubled down that he would NEVER become Catholic, and he emphasized that if I ever became Catholic it would cause horrifying marriage problems because we would become far too unevenly yoked. I'm telling you, if I brought up anything I learned about Catholicism, he would become angry to the point I was waiting for him to threaten divorce.
September of 2024, I ended up sensing the nudge from the Holy Spirit to shut my mouth to my husband. So I told God in prayer that I would never bring up Catholicism to my husband anymore, and that I would trust God himself to open up my husband's mind and heart to learn about it with me. In continuing to privately learn about Catholicism, it kept making more and more sense. I kept practicing praying the Rosary over my marriage and over my family.
About a year later in September of 2025, my family suffered the loss of my precious baby nephew to a freak accident. He was only in his 20s and it devastated our entire family. As I was at the hospital by my nephew's side with my husband, my husband looked at me and said, "I want to get a rosary and I want you to teach me how to do it."
This is a miracle. I kept my mouth shut for a whole year and look what God did. Now we're both in OCIA classes together and my husband is already Catholic in his own mind and we haven't even been confirmed yet.
Wow, the journey has been amazing
