A fallen-away Catholic and a non-practicing Christian had been together for years when in 2023, they decided to fully join the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Denver, just five months before they were married. Anna Nelson told Denver Catholic that she encountered God in the quiet stillness of Catholicism. Her husband, Taylor, said he found the peace he had been seeking for years in therapy in the Church of his youth. 

Anna referenced 1 Kings 19:12-13, where Elijah encounters God in silence.

“That verse, since I can remember, has been a verse that has come up for me – the still small voice challenging me to quiet my heart, quiet my mind, to listen for God,” she said. “If your life is too noisy, you can't hear God.”

Anna grew up with a Jewish father and Christian mother, who practiced Unitarianism when Anna was a teenager. While she loved the tradition of her Jewish faith, she was drawn to Christianity in college at the University of Greeley and joined a nondenominational church. She was disillusioned after attending and stopped practicing the faith in 2020.

“I was really struggling with the politicization of Jesus. I always had this deep, deep desire to know Jesus as well as I possibly could, and I felt like what I was seeing was just a lot of not Jesus in the world and a lot of using God's name to excuse hatred and division,” she said. “It was really hard to show up to church and to hear God's voice because it felt like everybody was doing stuff in God's name, but where was God in it?"

Meanwhile, as a young adult, Taylor had fallen away from his childhood Catholicism.

“I wasn't against [Catholicism] or anything. I wasn't turned off by it. I was very much kind of feeling like I need to get back into it, but I don't know what that's gonna look like,” Taylor said. “At the time, it felt like it was really easy to justify that I was too busy.”

He looked for peace in therapy, but said that he never found it there.

The two would only find the peace and stillness they were seeking when they re-encountered Catholicism at the funeral mass of Taylor’s godfather.

“I remember kind of praying and thinking about Bob in that moment, my godfather, and just thinking, ‘I want that when I die. I can't imagine not having a funeral Mass, but if I don't participate in being a Catholic, then I don't get to have that,’” Taylor said.

Anna noted the quietness of the liturgy.

“Something I had also grown weary of in the evangelical church, in my experience, was how noisy it was,” Anna said. “The funeral Mass was so quiet and contemplative and reflective and sacred in a way that I hadn't really ever experienced in church before.”

After that, the couple decided to start attending Mass at Light of the World Parish in Littleton, Colorado, where friends had invited them before. Anna said it was the first time in years she felt quiet enough to speak with God. 

Taylor proposed to Anna in 2023, and initially they were going to have a simple marriage rite without a Mass. Although they were still attending Light of the World, they were unsure about fully joining the Church, until an experience Anna had during Mass.

“I want to be able to take Communion with our kids. What happens someday when our kids say, ‘Well, why doesn't mommy go up and get Communion?’” Anna said. “I want to be able to be involved with my kids someday, and their Baptism and their Communion, and I want to be able to participate in those things as well.”

They had already scheduled the wedding and the vendors for March 2025, before Easter, so they contacted their parish’s OCIA director, Melanie Gross, and explained that they wanted to join the Church before the wedding. Taylor still needed the sacrament of Confirmation, and Anna needed Reconciliation, First Communion, and Confirmation. 

Gross provided private sessions in catechesis so that the couple could receive the sacraments before their wedding. On November 24, 2024, the Feast of Christ the King, they were confirmed, and Anna received First Holy Communion.

“It was very intense, but in the most incredible way,” Taylor said. “Melanie lit a fire to really fall in love with the Gospels, the Catechism, the sacraments, being a Catholic in its entirety.”

The couple continued OCIA before their wedding, and they have embraced their faith. They incorporate the Liturgy of the Hours into their daily routine. 

“All of us modern Catholics have to face the distractions of the world,” Taylor said. “There are a million choices for how to spend your time and what to give your energy to.”

Anna concluded, “I'm discovering that there is so much more of God in silence.”