Hello everyone! Permit me to give a little spiel about myself before launching into what will be the main focus of my blog, the events of Christ the King Catholic Church and my experience within it.

My conversion to the Catholic Church as a high school senior came hit me like my car plowed into a deer a few nights back. Fast, unforeseen, and there was nothing I could have done to prevent it. Unlike the deer, however, I did not flop over, get back up, and run away like nothing happened. (Nor did the Catholic Church obtain a huge dent in its front right bumper).

In a nutshell, I grew up as a normal Christian kid, yet I fell away from going to church in high school. I did not “fall away” in the sense that I was a 14-year-old with a gambling addiction that skipped class to boil Robitussin into street drugs, but nothing held me to tangible practice of my faith. Like a lot of tweens and teenagers, I did not renounce any of my beliefs yet did not find any motive to get up on Sunday morning. If God was everywhere, I could worship him on my couch. At the time, I also considered the Catholic Church to be a full-fledged cult that idolized the saints and Mary, and was full of parishioners that went to church out of pure obligation rather than vehemence.

As a high school senior, I began to ponder my faith with more criticism, as it was a hard year for me personally. I wasn’t one prone to excessive teen angst, but I was fed up with the academic and social pressures of high school. I church surfed, so to speak, around various protestant churches and youth groups, but found nothing that “fed” me in the since that it inspired me to pursue a genuine relationship with my Creator. Thankfully, that was the year God decided to answer my one consistent prayer that I had prayed through my churchless teen years—He game me a church that very much did “feed” me and inspired me to be a better woman of God.

This occurred when a friend from high school consistently invited me to mass on Sundays, to which I dubiously accepted, having exhausted all of my other options in my small-ish suburban town. After attending a few masses, it naturally led me to investigate the faith that I had internally condemned for a long time.

There were a few common qualms with which I reconciled during my little exploration of basic Catholic theology. I found that praying to the saints was not a form of worship, it was in essence asking a friend to pray for a certain cause—except the friend was already in heaven. The sacraments, like confession, were biblically founded and extremely helpful tools in living a Christian life. Most importantly, I found that the Catholic Church was centered on Jesus, and acknowledged that He was the most high, powerful, important being in the universe. I felt then that there was nothing kooky or cultish about it. I by no means knew the answer to every question on Catholic apologetics by the end of my research before my conversion, but I knew enough to make me feel safe trusting the Church and the rest her teachings that I had not thoroughly investigated. So, I signed up for RCIA and was confirmed at St. Andrew Catholic Church in Saline on Easter, 2005.

What led me to my current parish, Christ the King Catholic Church, was another good friend of mine during my freshman year of college. She invited me to their weekly teen prayer meetings where she served as a youth leader. Well over a hundred kids would come to praise through singing, contemplative or charismatic prayer, and get a chance to hang out with each other for a couple hours. When I walked into its huge, modern sanctuary, I didn’t realize I was walking into one out of a handful of charismatic Catholic churches in the nation—and starting point of sorts to the Catholic “charismatic renewal” that in the past thirty years has traveled to Catholics across the globe.

Christ the King, as I’ll reiterate in my next entries, is a church that is the antithesis of a boorish, stogy stereotypical gathering of Papists. It’s also casually known as a very fundamental Catholic church, as it maintains a very outspoken, adamant positive outlook on embracing the Church’s teachings on topics such as birth control and abortion. All the same, it has given the impression to others as an almost progressive church in its practice of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as speaking in tongues. It holds prayer meetings that can appear, especially to a former protestant like me, reminiscent of a southern Baptist church service with the vibrant and visible worship. Although there have been some to speak out against the charismatic renewal in the Catholic Church, it has extremely biblical foundations and has been condoned by both popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI as something hands down in conjunction with Catholic theology and a helpful tool in one’s pursuit of Jesus.

This church, and my experience within it, is going to be my target of report in this blog. Personally, I love its adamant dedication and unabashed involvement in the pro-life movement, which is extremely important to me. I am very much pro-life and my constant prayer is that our nation comes to respect the validity of a life that has yet to be born. This blog, along with weaving some perspective of Christ the King Church and living a Catholic life in Ann Arbor, will hopefully serve as a voice of the most helpless yet valid lives that are ignored in this country, the victims of abortion.

Anna is a contributor to Ann Arbor.com, and can often be found sitting delightfully rapt to The O'Reilly Factor on a floral couch alongside her mother. You can reach Anna during commercials at Anna.AnnArbor.com@gmail.com