Natasha

I’ve always had a strong belief in God, inherited from my mother, but neither my mother nor I took part in any formal religion. As I grew up I became hungrier and hungrier to know God, whoever he was. This is the story of how that hunger was satisfied.

I used to work near Russell Square, and I would spend my lunch breaks wandering into churches that I came across, hoping for some experience of God. One church that I visited was full of people praying passionately. I gazed at them, dying to know more, but I didn’t know who to ask about what was going on and eventually slipped out unnoticed.

Then I met the man who later became my husband. He is Catholic. I felt a bit suspicious of Catholicism, associating it with church scandals and hypocrisy. He put my mind at rest - he seemed very normal, and when he took me to Mass at Westminster Cathedral I liked it. He put no pressure on me at all to convert but I wanted to know more, so I decided to attend the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) course at Westminster Cathedral, an introduction to the faith.

The course was amazing. I was transfixed, drinking it all up. Different speakers would present different topics every week - the one that sticks in my mind was about the love of Christ. I’d go to Mass every Sunday and it gave me real peace as I sat there absorbing every word. At the end of the course I chose to be baptised.

Afterwards, I longed to keep learning and growing in my new faith, but following our wedding we moved house to North London, so it was harder to get to the Cathedral for their mid-week bible studies. Instead I bought lots of books from St Paul’s bookshop and read voraciously. I avoided other Christian denominations, in case they were cults or somehow dangerous. Every week we went to Mass at the local Catholic church in our new area.

My first experience of confession was very disappointing. A long queue of people was waiting to see the priest and I stood in it nervously, getting ready to expose my sins and ask advice about deepening my spiritual life. When I finally said my piece to the priest, his response was, ‘There’s nothing serious here. Twelve Hail Marys.’

It was not what I was hoping for at all, and anyway I’d just said what felt like a thousand Hail Marys in the preceding Rosary Service.

I had a copy of the Catechism, a fat book that seemed mainly to be rules and regulations of the faith. My husband glanced through it and picked out the ones we wouldn’t be obeying, like the rule not to use birth control.

It didn’t make sense to treat a religion as a collection of rules and regulations, and especially to pick and choose between them. The Bible didn’t make sense either. With no-one to help me understand what I was reading, I found it violent and frightening. I watched Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ but it left me even more confused. What was the point of all Jesus’ suffering and pain that was so graphically portrayed in the film? How was that supposed to help anyone?

I began reading Deepak Chopra, including a book called How to Know God. I remember sitting in the garden trying desperately, and failing, to follow his instructions on meditation – I had to satisfy this hunger for God and I knew there was more,

By this time we had a gorgeous baby son. I had given up work and loved my new role of full-time mother. One day in the local Boots I got talking to another mum called Clare with a baby the same age.

Before I left the shop she almost insisted on having my phone number. I went home and said to my husband, ‘Someone just picked me up in Boots!’ Clare later told me that she was overwhelmed with the feeling that she must not let me go without getting my number. At the time she thought it was just desperation for the company of another new parent, but now she believes that God gave her the impulse.

We met every so often and just enjoyed having motherhood in common. One day, though, Clare watched our children trying to pull books off the bookcase and joked, ‘My daughter tore a page out of my Bible this morning. I wouldn’t have minded if it was Leviticus but it was 1 John.’

My ears pricked up. ‘You actually read the Bible?’ I said.

Then, before I could stop myself, I told her all about my confusion with God and my abortive attempts to find him – my disappointment with church, the bible, and the books I had been reading.

Clare turned out to be a firm believer and went to a church called St Barnabas.

‘Why don’t you come to our Thursday Women’s group?’ she suggested. ‘We spend time worshipping and praying and talking about what God’s done in our lives. I find that I really meet with him in that group.’

The thought was terrifying. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being in a group exclusively for women. In my long experience of doing secretarial work in all-female offices, I knew women to be competitive, backbiting and frankly bitchy.

However, Clare did convince me to come to an event at the church called ‘Pink and Fluffy.’ This was also just for women, but it was billed as being an evening of pampering – wine, chocolate and cut-price beauty treatments. By this time I was pregnant again and definitely in need of a bit of TLC.

What I found at the church that evening took me completely by surprise. The hall was not cold and miserable as I'd expected, but welcoming and decked out as if for a wedding. There was real attention to detail: someone had put love into this event.

I had thought I would need at least three glasses of wine to be able to hold a conversation with the other women but my fears were unfounded. I discovered a roomful of women with no bitchiness. (And believe me, I was looking for it.) People were just straightforward, nice and friendly. I had never encountered an environment like this, and I felt completely relaxed.

After that experience I felt bold enough to go to the Thursday Women’s group. This was spring 2005, three years after my baptism. I was nervous the first time, but people were friendly and made me welcome. I found the worship time beautiful – by the looks on the women’s faces I could see they loved God and were connecting to him deeply. In the prayer times when we split into small groups, no-one was negative, playing games or being competitive.

The more I went, the safer I felt in that group. I was amazed by the stories people brought. They were such a mixture of genuine love for God and real, gritty life. Slowly, as I attended week by week, I began to encounter the Jesus that these women clearly knew, for myself, in a way that was tangible. Once I closed my eyes in worship and unexpectedly saw a picture in my mind’s eye of Jesus pouring water over me – an image I later understood to mean baptism in the Holy Spirit. I was prayed for to receive the gift of tongues* and I did start to speak in a new prayer language. I would leave the meetings feeling washed clean, a real peace inside me.

Jesus first became real to me in the women’s group, but I began to experience his presence at home when I prayed too. Finally, God was coming alive to me, in the way I had hoped for as long as I can remember. I also found a new line in reading and devoured books by Philip Yancey, starting with What’s So Amazing About Grace? which really began to make sense of who God is.

I still attend my local Catholic church, and I'm aware of God's presence there now. However, now I call myself a Christian instead of just a Catholic.

One example of what has changed in my life as a result is the way I relate to my children. I have two boys now, both boisterous and energetic. The oldest was always doing dangerous things like climbing the bookcase – I used to shout at him until my voice went hoarse. Since my encounter with the Holy Spirit, though, I’ve found that I’m more positive and patient towards him. When I behave calmly, he calms down a lot too. Recently, out of the blue, a couple of other mums have told me they think that I’m an amazing mother. I can only credit that to God’s work in me!

I’m aware of God’s peace in me almost all the time. The only way I can describe it is feeling anchored, not swept around by my emotions like I used to be. I have to choose to take hold of God though - if a day passes when I don’t pray, I can fall back easily into anxiety and fearfulness. I read the Bible every night and now I find it relevant and inspiring.

Finally, God is alive to me, not through rules and regulations but through the Holy Spirit and the words of the Bible. The whole thing is real. I’m finally on the path I was looking for. I might be a tiny baby in the faith, I might have an immeasurable amount to learn, but I’m going in the right direction after so many years and looking in so many wrong places. I’m not complacent, but at long last, I am satisfied.

*The 'gift of tongues', a prayer language given supernaturally to Christians, is a spiritual gift described in the Bible (for example Acts 2:4) and experienced daily by Christians in St Barnabas and elsewhere.