People often tell me I’m the most intense convert they’ve ever met. I can’t tell you how many times my friends have told me, “Sami, remember that you have to walk before you can run.”
My conversion started where many do, at one of the lowest points of my life. I had just gone through a really bad break-up, and I had lost all perspective on my life. I felt like I was suffering the kind of pain that no one had ever suffered before—dramatic, I know.
During this difficult time when I felt so lost, I found myself drawn to a particular coworker. Maddie was different from the others. She wasn’t giving me worldly advice like so many others were. She actually didn’t tell me to do anything in particular. She just radiated peace, joy, and security in a world that to me felt upside down.
It was this peace that drew me to her.
Watching her made me wonder what it was that made her so peaceful. I can see now, although I missed it completely at the time, that it was not a matter of what but a matter of Who was the source of her peace.
Maddie and I were casually conversing about Easter plans one day when I expressed disappointment that my family no longer did anything special for Easter. That’s when she invited me to Mass with her and her husband. I attended Easter Mass in 2023 and found myself confronted with the true presence of God.
After that experience at Mass, I devoted all my free time to learning about the Catholic Church and its history, but especially the person of Jesus, our Lord. I began to realize that this was the truth I had always sought. The search started with my curiosity, but quickly my innate intensity kicked into high gear. Just about every single morning I found myself approaching my friend’s desk with some new question or confusion. I was trying to learn about the faith mostly through searching on YouTube and Google, so you can imagine my confusion as I tried to put together the pieces of information I was coming across. Maddie was immensely patient and kind, even as I threw her way some of the most insane internet “truths” I had learned.
Once I had decided that I was serious about my conversion, I had to wait almost three months to begin OCIA classes. During that time, my desire to be a Catholic only grew more intense: I longed more and more to receive Jesus in the Eucharist; I began to get serious about emulating those around me who were living the Christian virtues; and I kept on thirsting for deeper knowledge. I now understand that having to wait to begin OCIA, as hard as it was for me back then, enabled those three desires to root themselves irrevocably in my heart.
Looking back, I realize that it wasn’t any one single conversation that drew me into communion with the Church. Instead, through conversations with religious sisters, my friends, other Catholics I had grown close to, and priests, God confronted me again and again with his personal love for me.
It was as if God was whispering to me: “Sami, I know exactly what you need to fall more in love with me, and I will provide it.”
This incredible journey on which God—and so many others—have walked with me continues still. At the Easter Vigil in 2024, I was received fully into the Church, receiving Holy Communion for the first time. Since then my thirst for understanding, holiness, and the Eucharist has only increased in intensity.
“We need to walk before we can run.” I get it. But it was only because I wanted to run, and because others willingly invested their attentive patience and encouragement in me, believing I could run, that I am Jesus’ intense disciple today.
My response, then, would be, “You need to want to run, to sense the thrill of running, before you will ever take the first steps!” That’s often the gift of a conversation, a seed planted at just the right moment, that transforms everything! It did for me.