From Scrupulosity to Surrender: A Journey of Faith, Struggle and Self-Gift

Inspired by her grandmother’s example, Alexis Carstensen lives her faith boldly.

(Photo provided)

What do you choose to do amid times of struggle?

For Alexis Carstensen, you PUSH, or “pray until something happens,” a lesson she learned from her grandmother and has returned to throughout her walk with Christ.

Born in Indianapolis, IN, Carstensen is an African-American woman who grew up in a Catholic household. With her father being a cradle Catholic and her mother coming into the Church around the time Carstensen was in Kindergarten, she and her younger sister were steeped in faith during their early years. But many of Carstensen’s earliest Catholic memories were with her grandma, Carole Finnell, whom she described as an emblem of steadfastness in her walk with Christ.

“She was my reference point for Catholicism,” Carstensen said. “Hearing some of her stories that weren’t always great and seeing how strong she remained in her faith was something I always recognized.”

Finnell and her brother were some of the few Black students chosen to help integrate Catholic elementary schools in Indianapolis in the late 1930s. That process strengthened her, despite the racism she experienced, like one day when Finnell was deliberately locked in the classroom by her teacher while the class was led out of the classroom to their next activity.

“She said she just started praying and at some point, the door unlocked,” Carstensen said. “She was able to get out and walk into the hallway, where she didn’t see anyone. She was like ‘I think it was my guardian angel.’”

The anecdote stuck with a young Carstensen — and lives with her today, years after Finnell’s passing. With her grandmother’s example of fortitude before her, Carstensen seemed to lean on her faith as a mainstay in her life despite her struggles with anxiety and scrupulosity, said Deandra Finnell, Carstensen’s mother and Carole’s daughter.

“It was always important to her,” Finnell said. “It guided her in terms of her values, morals and the way she lived her life.”

That faith only deepened during her time in Catholic schools, from Kindergarten to high school graduation. In fact, one of her first meaningful and personal encounters with Christ took place in middle school, when she attended Eucharistic Adoration for the first time with her class.

“I don’t know if I had much of an understanding of what it was, but I did know that it was peaceful and I liked it,’ Carstensen said.

Within the same middle school class that she attended Adoration with, Carstensen had the opportunity to visit a nursing home across the street from the school, helping her make the connection between faith and service at a young age.

“We each got assigned ‘grandparents’ and we would go to the nursing home and just sit and spend time with [them],” Carstensen said, explaining that the home served many individuals with low income, whose family members were not able to visit them.

“There was something about that experience connected to Catholicism that I think kind of plays out through the rest of my faith journey,” Carstensen said.

Rooted in faith, Carstensen went on to attend Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN — her first time attending a non-Catholic school — and found herself stunned by the increased diversity, both in race and faith.

“For a lot of Black students there, there were way more white students than they were used to,” Carstensen said. “But for me, it felt like there were way more Black students. I was struggling with feeling like the Black students on campus might think I’m a fraud.”

These same anxieties inspired some questions surrounding her faith.

“Starting college and being in this new city, I was wrestling with these questions of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What does it mean that I’m Black and Catholic?’ and ‘How do those things go together?’” Carstensen shared. “That wrestling and identity stuff felt isolating because I didn’t have as many people around me who were wrestling with the same types of questions.”

That wrestling — coupled with the four-hour driving distance from her family — led Carsensen to feel intensely homesick for the first few months of college.

“That was a stressful time for all of us,” Finnell said. “She struggled with perfectionism, asking things like ‘Am I good enough?’ ‘Am I worthy enough?’ I got lots of phone calls in tears during that first year.”

Falling back on the legacy of faith left her by her grandmother and family, Carstensen made it a point to attend student Mass and Adoration every week — practices that helped pull her out of her rut through their profound reverence.

“Growing up, I saw a lot of people who were nominally Catholic,” Carstensen said. “But to see this level of devotion that I’d never really seen before, especially from someone my age, really caught me off guard.”

Open to the Lord in a new way and delving deeper in devotion, Carstensen encountered Jesus in a profound, personal way during Adoration at a college retreat.

“People talk about those types of moments,” Carstensen said. “It was realizing, ‘Oh, he’s real, and he loves me, and I don’t have anything to prove.”

While the eye-opening moment she had with the Lord feels cliche to her, it was an honest interaction that has influenced her active choice to pursue the Catholic faith and to accept God’s love day in and day out.

“I still am tempted to earn his love,” Carstensen said. “But ultimately recalling Jesus' presence and time in prayer reminds me that I can't earn it at all, and actually, Jesus' ask of me is to open my heart wide and receive his love. That vulnerability can be scary and painful, but it is also thrilling and so deeply satisfying.”

This thrill that she experienced in her sacred time with Christ called her to seek a different way for her faith to flourish as her time at Vanderbilt came to a close. She landed on Christ in the City.

“Christ in the City is a formation program,” Carstensen said. “The intention behind it is to combine the Catholics who are really focused on social justice and really care about the poor with not as much knowledge or desire for the Church teachings with those on the opposite side where there’s so much tradition and reverence and a lack of serving the poor. Christ in the City wants to bring those together.”

Carstensen explained that she was unsure of what to expect but was overtaken by a sense of transformation during her time at Christ in the City — an experience she had not had since middle school, when she visited the nursing home across the street from her campus.

“We were visiting these people who were lonely and didn't have people to come see them, and all we did was sit with them,” Carstensen said. “Our presence was the biggest gift, and the consistency of it. That’s the same thing I was doing, being a Christ in the City missionary.”

Carstensen said that Christ in the City offered her the opportunity to love many people on the streets at the end of their lives, which was very similar to what she gave to her “grandparents” at the nursing home. That unique sense of accompaniment had a profound impact on her.

Now, post-mission, two years married to her husband, Jude, and mom to one-year-old Lola, Carstensen said her faith only continues to grow in this brand-new chapter in her faith journey, but she makes sure to carry forward the lessons she’s learned along the way.

“I have a better understanding of ‘This is who you created me to be,’” Carstensen said. “There is so much surrender in both parenthood and marriage. Surrender has been a big theme throughout my faith, and watching him take care of things when I do, even if it’s not painless.”

Even through the blessings and the challenges of newlywed and new mom life, Carstensen has continued to find solace in her relationship with the Lord — though it looks quite different these days.

“My prayer felt lacking in depth and more sporadic, but I was eventually able to recognize that the brief, exasperated prayers I shot up to Heaven each day were me holding onto Jesus for dear life,” Carstensen said. “It ultimately reminded me that the point of prayer is not to have earth-shattering spiritual revelations every day but to recall his presence and remember that Jesus is with me always, even if it feels like my external circumstances aren't changing in the ways I would want.”

For Carstensen, the tangible experiences of connection with Christ help maintain her daily efforts to follow him and open her heart to his love. This, along with a robust prayer life, regular time in Adoration and a disposition of surrender to God’s will, is why she’s Catholic.

“I have seen the Holy Spirit at work and felt loved by Jesus and God the Father not only in those silent moments of prayer but also in my day-to-day life,” Carstensen concluded. “When I remain attentive to God, even in the things that maybe feel insignificant, I can see him everywhere.”