The Crazy Catholic

When I converted to Catholicism in 2024, I really believed my problems would miraculously disappear. I thought the depression I’d carried since childhood would melt away. Jesus performed healing miracles in the first century. He could still do them today, right?

What came next deepened my understanding of healing in a way I didn’t think possible. No sooner had I enrolled in OCIA than I experienced spiritual attacks unlike anything before. Intrusive, obscene thoughts. Accusations. A darkness that felt external and relentless. It became so intense that, like Elijah in the desert, I begged God to take me away (1 Kings 19:4).

And then, through the noise, I sensed His voice. Firm, steady, and loving: “I’m not done with you yet.”

By grace, I made it through what felt like a spiritual war zone. But the depression didn’t vanish. It changed. Less dramatic, more persistent. A low-grade ache. A lingering sense that something isn’t quite right.

And it isn’t.

In my previous post, I wrote about how Catholicism ruined music and movies for me—how faith stripped the shine off things I once loved. Ecclesiastes puts it bluntly: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” (Eccl. 1:2). When your heart begins to orient toward the eternal, the temporary loses its glamour.

The hardest part isn’t learning that God is real or that His design for life is good. The hardest part is seeing how many people haven’t yet realized it. “For in much wisdom, there is much sorrow, and he who stores up knowledge stores up grief.” (Eccl. 1:18).

Once your eyes adjust to the light, you cannot unsee the shadows. But I’m just one person. I can’t heal the culture. I can’t argue the world into conversion. Thank God, the weight of redemption does not rest on my shoulders—it rests on Christ’s.

The Church teaches that the desire for God is written on the human heart (CCC 27). That longing doesn’t disappear at baptism; if anything, it sharpens. Depression has taught me this much: sometimes the ache isn’t proof that God is absent. Sometimes it’s proof that we were made for more.

God did not erase my suffering when I converted. He gave it meaning. All I can do—all any of us can do—is take the next step He is asking of us today.

He wasn’t done with me in the desert. He isn’t done with you either. So what is He asking of you right now?