The Roman Catholic Church.

It probably brings a myriad of images to mind. Anything from a shriveled old nun, equipped with rosary beads and an oversized crucifix around her neck, to some sort of building closer resembling Hogwarts School than a place of worship.

For me, it has been one of the foundations of my youth. 10 years of my life were spent attending a Catholic grade school. Every week since I've been born has been the once dreaded Sunday Mass. My mother even used to host a Rosary prayer circle with all of the other women from church in my living room on Thursday's. I'm fairly convinced that I could be the poster child for the "Cradle Catholic" (those brought up in the faith), especially thinking back to the way she would make my older sister and I reluctantly wear matching dresses to Mass when we were younger.

One of things about being brought up this way is that despite the schooling, weekly church, and the crucifix I currently have staring down at me from above my bed as I write this; I genuinely knew very little about my faith for the first 16 years of my life, and up until about six months ago, I didn’t really care to. You might say I'm on a different end of the spectrum now however, to the point where some may even consider me some type of "Jesus freak" (i.e., my older sister). All it took was a now ex-boyfriend, my stubbornness for being right, and a whole lot of research on the internet.

The best place to start the story is with the previous boyfriend whom we will name "Travis" for the sake of anonymity. Travis is a very tall, handsome, and musically talented boy, who is also a devout Pentecostal Christian. We got along really well for the most part as we were both Christians with the same foundation of beliefs, and I even began attending the youth group at his church. Every so often he would mention things about my faith he didn't like, or disagreed with, and we would have healthy discussions about these things. The only problem was that I really struggled to defend a faith that I lacked a lot of knowledge in. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I was completely clueless in my own faith, but I didn't know why I was so sure it was correct; and I definitely didn't know how to articulate these things.

From here, my inner stubborn self began clawing its way out of me, so I hit the first place every teenager these days goes for life's answers: the internet. I dug through just about every corner of the world wide web from Catholic answer forums, to a very cute old nun's blog site, and so on and so forth. Eventually, I even started reading books my mother suggested to me, and really started paying attention to the priest at Sunday Mass.

Somewhere in this search for being right, something more began sparking in me. I began to truly fall in love with scripture, Jesus, and Christianity as a whole. God became a very real part of my life, and He ended up becoming the center of it. I finally figured out many of the reasons as to why I am a member of the Catholic faith and will continue practicing as a Catholic. However, I am always actively attempting to further my understanding of my beliefs as well as those around me. As for Travis and I, that relationship was short lived, but I still owe a slightly over-due thank you to him for being a huge part of the reason I've become so strong in my own faith. He was a very inspiring person to say the least. Although the relationship with Travis didn't last, I am grateful that it strengthened my relationship with Christ.