I Was Always Catholic… But I Wasn’t Always Practicing

I’ve always been Catholic, like actual cradle Catholic.... Baptized, Catholic school, sacraments, knew the prayers, went to Mass… all of it, but there’s a pretty big difference between saying you’re Catholic and actually allowing your Catholic faith to dictate how you live your life, & for a really long time, I was much better at the first one. 38 years in fact.

So hi ?? I’m Bethany. I’m 40, a wife, mom of four, former therapist, 13 years sober, homeschool mom, and apparently now someone who writes about Catholicism on the internet, which would probably make several previous versions of me laugh.

I don’t have this beautiful story where I left the Church completely and then had one huge moment where I came running back. I never really stopped considering myself Catholic. I believed in God, I prayed, I would go to Mass, I loved being Catholic, but I also had plenty of areas of my life where I basically decided what worked for me and what didn’t.

Things really started changing for me in 2024, & weirdly enough, it started with 20 minutes. I decided I could give God 20 minutes a day. That didn’t feel intimidating, I wasn’t promising to become some super Catholic overnight, I wasn’t even sure where it was going... I just knew I could find 20 minutes.

And apparently God can do a lot with 20 minutes. ??

The more time I gave Him, the more I actually wanted to know my faith, not just the Catholicism I remembered from growing up, but WHY we believe what we believe. I started praying more, taking Mass more seriously, actually learning things I probably should’ve known after being Catholic my entire life ?? & things I had heard over & over again started hitting differently.  (SHOUT OUT TO JEFF CAVINS at Hallow on Daily Reflections for helping those first 10 minutes of the 20 minute prayer go by quickly in the beginning!).

Then Lent came around & I went to confession... & that’s where things started getting a little uncomfortable.

At the time, Jon & I had been together for over a decade, we had four kids, a home, & a whole entire life together... but we weren’t married. And listen, I had plenty of reasons why I could explain that away. We loved each other, we were committed, we had four freaking children together ?? we were more “married” in my mind than plenty of married people I knew.

Except we weren’t.  And I went into confession to chat about yelling at my children, not putting my husband before myself, getting constantly stuck in self, swearing, dirty novels, the works... but out came, "I'm having sex outside marriage, and have four kids".  The pastor on the otherside encouraged an appoitnment with him. LOL. (Which I went to and brought Jon.. more later). 

The closer I was getting to God, the harder it was becoming to ignore the parts of my life that weren’t actually in line with what I was saying I believed. Around that same time, I started going to Adoration, & one day I was sitting there praying about completely different things... like literally NOT marriage ?? and toward the end of Adoration I heard, very clearly, “Get married.”

Cool. ??

So I went home & told Jon what happened, & this is where you need to understand Jon wasn’t Catholic... he wasn’t Protestant, he wasn’t a Christian who just hadn’t found a church yet... Jon was an atheist. So here I was becoming more serious about being Catholic while the man I had spent more than a decade with didn’t even believe in God. Super convenient. ??

Something was happening in him too, & something was happening in us.  Have you seen my reels on how I was praying to St Paul over on @bethany.out.of.order on IG (or serve.pray.convert fb/ig).

After more than a decade together, we made the decision to live celibately until we got married, which is a sentence I NEVER thought I’d write. ?? We had four children, we had been together for 11 years, & suddenly we were choosing celibacy because we had become convicted that if we were gonna say we trusted God, maybe we should actually trust Him enough to do what He was asking us to do.  I also was getting deeper with God, and our priest had shared I couldn't receive communion the way we were going. BIG OOPS for all the times prior (also more on this later).

We did that from April- October, with one slip, & on October 5, 2025, we got married.

And I thought maybe THAT was the big story... it wasn’t.

Because while I was returning more fully to the Catholic faith I had been given my entire life, my atheist husband was becoming curious about it. He started asking questions, started learning, & eventually entered OCIA.

Six months after we got married, I sat at the Easter Vigil & watched the man I had loved for 11 years be baptized, confirmed, & receive Jesus in the Eucharist for the first time... & I don’t even really know how to explain what that felt like.

My atheist husband became Catholic... & I got to watch it happen. ??

Our story is definitely not the cute Catholic story where two people meet at Theology on Tap (we actually met on Match.com, hahaah), get married at 23, & immediately start having babies. ?? We did basically everything out of order. We had the kids, built the life, then I started taking my faith seriously, then God told me to marry the father of my four children, then we chose celibacy, then we got married, & then my atheist husband became Catholic.

Out. Of. Order.

Which is actually where the name of my Instagram, Bethany Out of Order, came from, & I think that’s probably what I wanna write about here too. Not how to be the perfect Catholic woman, because I would be wildly unqualified for that job ?? but what it looks like to try to live this faith when your story didn’t exactly start out the way you would’ve written it.

I wanna write about obedience when it’s uncomfortable, Catholic motherhood, marriage, sobriety, raising four kids in a world that feels increasingly backwards, taking iPads away from our kids, homeschooling, mental health, the Rosary, Adoration... the things the Church teaches that are easy to accept & the ones that make you go, “Wait... you want me to do WHAT?” ??

I’m still learning. I pray the Rosary daily now, I go to Adoration, I actually WANT to go to confession ?? I’m raising my kids in the Church & homeschooling them with our faith at the center of it... & none of that happened because I woke up one morning & suddenly became an amazing Catholic.

It started with 20 minutes... then another 20 minutes, then another, & somewhere along the way I stopped asking God to fit into the life I had already built & started asking Him what He wanted me to do with it.

Turns out those are two VERY different things. ??

So if you’re a cradle Catholic who has always technically been Catholic but knows there’s a difference between checking the Catholic box & actually living it... hi. If you’re coming back after years away, hi. If your husband isn’t Catholic, hi. If your family story is messy, hi. If there are things in your life that you know aren’t exactly in the right order yet... hiiiii. ??

I don’t think God is scared of our mess, & I definitely don’t think we have to get everything perfectly in order before we start moving closer to Him. I think sometimes He just wants us to give Him enough room to start working in it.

For me, that room started with 20 minutes a day... & apparently He had plans.