From Noise to Grace: A Couple’s Journey Home to the Catholic Church, Right Before Their Wedding
- Guest Contributor
- 9 hours ago
- 6 min read
In a love story rooted in the Church, the Nelsons found their way home through silence, sacraments and saints.
By Gennie O'Gara
Printed above Anna Nelson’s desk is the passage from 1 Kings 19, describing the still, small voice of God speaking to Elijah. It’s a verse that’s resonated with her, and that describes her own journey of faith.
“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,” Anna said. “If your life is too noisy, you can't hear God.”
All too familiar to Anna and her husband, Taylor, the noise of the world kept the couple distracted for years, even as they continuously searched for peace.
They met at a choir rehearsal years ago and clicked right away. Both “spiritual” people, they were committed to retaining that spirituality, though what form it would take remained unclear.
Taylor grew up attending Mass every Saturday night with his parents but stopped in young adulthood because of relationships with non-Catholic partners and the busyness of life. He was away for about eight years.
“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.”
A firm believer in therapy, Taylor sought peace in counseling.
“My quest when I wasn't going to church was seeking answers for my inner turmoil through therapy,” Taylor said. “I was going to therapy; I was doing the right things, but I didn't ever reach that peace.”
For Anna, faith was a bit more varied. Her father is Jewish, and her mother was raised Methodist, but practiced Unitarian Universalism when Anna was a teenager.
Anna loved the tradition of the Jewish faith but “collided with Christianity in a way that was very unavoidable” during her sophomore year of college at the University of Greeley.
“I was sitting in the student center on my campus when two students sat down near me and started talking about the Bible,” she recalled. “I found myself unable to stop listening and was so drawn in by the way they talked about God that they noticed how much I was paying attention and ended up inviting me to join them for their campus ministry's weekly session.”
She was baptized into a nondenominational church two months later.
Anna’s faith continued to evolve, but in 2020, she decided to stop attending church. The still, small voice of God seemed to be drowned out by the church itself.
“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,” Anna 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?”
Away from faith for three years, the still, small voice of God reached Anna again when one of Taylor’s two devoutly Catholic godfathers passed away. The couple was struck by his funeral Mass, and heard God’s voice anew.
“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.
For her part, Anna was especially impacted by the funeral’s solemnity.
“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.”
Though she had only attended a few Masses in her life she was so struck by the funeral that she and Taylor decided to take some new friends up on their invitation to tag along to Mass at Light of the World Parish in Littleton.
“I remember that first Mass at Light of the World because as I was praying, it was the first time in years where I felt like I was quiet enough to talk to God again, and I could hear him back,” Anna said.
Anna and Taylor continued to go to Mass, enjoying the community and quiet prayer, but still wasn’t sure about taking the next step and becoming Catholic. When they got engaged in October 2023, they even considered doing a simple marriage rite instead of a full Mass.
Then, one Sunday, as Anna watched everyone else receive Communion, a thought struck her in the stillness.
“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 pondered. “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.”
“That moment hit us, and we were like, ‘Oh no. Well, wait, we want to actually get fully married in the Catholic Church,” Taylor added.
But the couple had already set a date and booked the venues for the wedding. Wasting no time, they contacted Melanie Gross, the parish’s then-OCIA director, and explained their situation. Taylor had been baptized and received Communion but needed to be confirmed. Anna’s Baptism was valid, but she needed First Communion and Confirmation.
Because their wedding date was before Easter, Melanie provided the couple with several private preparation sessions and arranged for them to fully enter the church on November 24, 2024, the Feast of Christ the King.
“It was very intense, but in the most incredible way,” Taylor said of the instruction they received. “Melanie lit a fire to really fall in love with the Gospels, the Catechism, the sacraments, being a Catholic in its entirety.”
Anna still struggled to understand certain teachings of the Church, like the saints, transubstantiation (the belief that the bread and wine at Mass really become the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ) and Confession.
But when it came time to choose a patron saint, she found in St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) a heavenly friend and a clarification that God was indeed calling her to be Catholic.
“I might still have questions. I might still have things that feel unanswered, about the mysteries of the Eucharist, the mysteries of the saints, the mysteries of Confession and all of these things, but it was a moment of confirmation that the path I'm walking is where God is truly wanting me to walk,” Anna said.
After entering the Church in November, the Nelsons continued their regularly scheduled OCIA classes and married in March at the Mother Cabrini Shrine in Golden.
They have seen many graces from their journey and have found the sacrament of Reconciliation to be a particularly beautiful experience, especially when they prepare in the adoration chapel.
“I’ve found that you can't really experience shame during your examination of conscience when you're in the physical presence of Jesus,” Anna said. “It’s so comforting and beautiful.”
During her first Confession, Anna wrote down all her sins in a notebook and read them to the priest. After she was done confessing, he took the notebook and turned it to a fresh page, representing the cleansing of her soul.
For Taylor, life has been punctuated by a sense of peace since entering the Church. An elementary school music teacher, he found himself praying throughout the day during the hardest part of the year, spring testing.
“I just would say the Rosary in my head,” Taylor said. “The difference in how I was able to show up for the students and also come home and show up for my wife is remarkable.”
After experiencing initial conversion, the Nelsons are intentional about continuing their ongoing conversion by learning more about the faith and prayer.
“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.”
To help them towards that goal of deeper conversion and prayer, the couple chooses to routinely read Scripture and participate in the Liturgy of the Hours, specifically Compline or Night Prayer, together.
“I'm discovering that there is so much more of God in silence,” Anna said.
