Thoughts on Coming Home

Faith, Loss, and Belonging

Written on Christmas Eve, 2025. A personal reflection on faith, loss, ancestry, and finding my way home.

This Christmas, life is really different for me. Since September, I’ve been attending RCIA, or Catechism, with the aim of converting to Catholicism and joining the church. Presently, I’m about 40% of the way through, and to say it’s been eye-opening would be the boldest understatement I’ve ever made.

The process has been equally heart-opening.

As early as I can remember, my paternal grandmother instilled a belief in God in me; she prayed daily — constantly, almost. Upon parting, she always said, “God be with you.”

Growing up, Mama took me to the Baptist church. I liked Sunday school and the singing in the main service. And one Sunday, I was moved by “the altar call” at the end of the service and was baptized. By the age of fifteen, I was sleeping in on Sundays, already spending Saturday nights out late. Really late.

The takeaway I got from attending the Baptist church, at least as a young boy, is that drinking, dancing, and playing cards are bad—and will send you to hell.

There was a brief flirtation with the Episcopalians, not too long after the passing of my youngest son, and within two years, my wife. And honestly, while I loved the interior beauty of the building, I just didn’t delve into the religion very deeply. My friends told me the Episcopalians were “Catholic Lite.” Deep in bone-jarring grief, I was searching for something I still did not find.

My whole life, I professed a belief in the Trinity, and an unwavering confidence that God was with me, would lead me, and would see me through good times and tough ones. And I testify He was in fact there, every step of the way. Often there was one set of footprints in the sand, as the saying goes.

We maintained a Christian home when I was raising a family, but Sunday mornings were about sleeping late, picking up a newspaper and chocolate covered donuts more than attending a church service. I prayed, often by myself, occasionally over dinner. But I failed to instill a religion in my children, because I didn’t have one. We all believed, but no one practiced.

My oldest son gets credit for leading the family — and finally, reluctantly, me — to the Catholic Church. I’d been so ill-informed as to believe one had to be “born” into it. As were some of my cousins, and friends from Louisiana.

And now I find myself not just learning but desiring to learn what I can about the one religion started by Jesus Christ—one that can trace the lineage of its bishops and popes all the way back to 33 AD, to the Lord Himself.

And in my reading, I find history populated by Catholic influence—in language, customs, and daily life. It’s a two-thousand-year-old practice. Full of supernatural miracles, attested to by science and recorded by history. My great hero Babe Ruth was a Catholic, as are a surprising number of modern-day celebrities.

What’s more, being 50% Levantine, I’ve realized that my ancestors in the hills north of Beirut were among the earliest Catholics. Suddenly my ancestry wasn’t abstract anymore; and I have a new, profound awareness of what is meant by the communion of saints. Not the ones with halos and statues, but the living bond between the Church on earth and those who came before.

This has turned into not so much a discovery of the religion of Christ, but a homecoming to where I always should have been. In a sense, I was born into it after all.

Tonight, on Christmas Eve—the night we celebrate God coming into the world as a helpless infant, the hope of all mankind—I have hope that I make it through.

My first confession at this age is going to be something of a barnburner, as God already knows I’ve sinned horribly and fallen short of His commandments. But I have hope. Hope to be better from here on out, hope to be healed, hope to be deeply in conversation with God Himself.

Merry Christmas, 2025

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