Carolina G. de Souza
I was raised Catholic. REALLY Catholic. As a miracle baby, I grew up hearing how blessed I was to have God at work in my life before I was even born. But the truth was, I didn’t actually know Him. My parents were deeply involved in the Church, so to the outside world, I was the ideal Catholic kid. I knew God loved me. But He felt distant; more like a Teacher that I respected, rather than a Friend I truly knew.
That changed when my grandmother Maria passed away during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As grief set in, my parents encouraged me to pray, but for the first time, my religious education felt insufficient. In the silence, the only thing that came to mind was a Brazilian lullaby my grandmother used to sing to me, which said: “I don’t know how to pray; I only know how to say that I want to love You.” That moment opened my eyes to what prayer truly is: an invitation to love and be loved by Jesus. That sparked in me a desire to get to know Him personally.
Over the next few years, my relationship with God deepened. But so did something else: a growing fear of loss. I became terrified that surrendering my life to God meant becoming like Job, just waiting for the next tragedy to strike. I couldn't shake the irrational fear that if I gave Him everything, He would test me by taking away another person I loved. Then, during a Eucharistic Adoration at a retreat Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO) organized, God met me in that fear. I thought of Peter walking on water, so focused on the waves and the “what-ifs” that he couldn’t move forward. I realized I was doing the same thing by letting this irrational fear dictate my faith. At that moment, I finally understood that trust isn’t the absence of fear, but the presence of faith.
And that truth was put to the test this past year when my mom (my first love on earth) underwent life-threatening open-heart surgery. From then on, every single day became a conscious choice to surrender. I cried, but even my sorrow became prayer. Now, watching my mom slowly recover, I see that just as her heart had to be opened to be healed, mine had to be surrendered to be strengthened.
I don’t trust God because I know I’ll never lose anything. I trust Him because I know He will never leave me.
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