# my catholic reversion story

An episode of [AfterMass](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1823710125), 3 Feb 2026, 17 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO9083808239.mp3

People ask all the time how I came back to the Catholic faith, and this episode is the full answer. In this reversion story, I share the honest journey of coming back to the Catholic Church, what slowly broke down my resistance, and why returning to the faith wasn’t emotional hype but real conviction. If you’ve ever wrestled with doubt, distance from the Church, or questions about truth, this episode is for you. 💌 Contact me: theaftermasspodcast@gmail.com ⚡ Powered by Truthly 👉 Download the app: bit.ly/anaXtruthly Get a free 30 day trial with code AFTERMASS #Catholic #CatholicPodcast #AfterMass #CatholicFaith #CatholicChurch #ReversionStory #ComingHome #AnaMunley #TruthlyAI

## Transcript

[0:00] Hi friends. So today I want to tell you my
[0:03] reversion story. Not my Catholic comeback, not a
[0:07] glow up, not a moment where everything suddenly clicked and
[0:10] I became a different person overnight.
[0:12] But this is really the story of how I came back to the church
[0:15] that I never actually stopped belonging to.
[0:18] Because that's what I think a reversion really is.
[0:21] It's not finding God for the first time, it's remembering who
[0:25] you are and returning to where you actually belong.
[0:28] So I grew up Catholic. I was ties, I knew the prayers,
[0:31] I went to Catholic school my whole life and I knew what Mass
[0:34] looked like. I believed in God, but believing
[0:36] in God and living in communion with him are not the same thing.
[0:39] And for a long time I was doing the first without the second.
[0:43] I was never angry at God. I wasn't shaking my fist at the
[0:46] church. I wasn't trying to deconstruct
[0:48] anything. I was just tired and distracted
[0:51] and busy and slowly spiritually indifferent.
[0:55] Mass became optional pretty early on.
[0:57] Prayer became something that I never, ever did.
[1:00] Sin became normal. And it wasn't shocking sin, it
[1:04] was comfortable sin, the kind that our society justifies and
[1:09] manages instead of confronts. And I was living in it.
[1:12] And the scary part is that nothing felt wrong at first.
[1:15] My life looked fine. It was stable, it was put
[1:18] together. I was working or I was in school
[1:20] or, you know, I was productive. But on the inside, something was
[1:24] hollow and quiet, but in the wrong way.
[1:27] To go back a little bit and give you guys some context, I was, I
[1:30] was married when I was like 22 or so and I had my son when I
[1:35] was 24. And then by the time I was 26, I
[1:39] was divorced. And then when my husband and I,
[1:42] my now husband Joe, when we met, I had to go through the process
[1:45] of an annulment and I was able to get that granted.
[1:49] If you have any questions about annulments, feel free to leave
[1:51] them below. I've I've made a couple videos
[1:53] on them. But anyways, moving on.
[1:54] So when I met my now husband, everything was fine.
[1:57] He was Catholic. He had had fallen away just as I
[2:01] had and we decided to get married.
[2:04] And when my husband began his reversion, it was, it was quiet.
[2:07] He, you know, again, like I mentioned, he grew up Catholic
[2:10] and had fallen away. But when he started coming back,
[2:13] he didn't announce it. He didn't pressure me.
[2:15] He didn't lecture, debate. He just changed.
[2:17] I just saw a change in him. He had started praying and
[2:21] asking questions. He was taking Sunday Mass
[2:23] seriously, like it wasn't optional or negotiable.
[2:26] And I went along with it. I admired it, but I we didn't
[2:30] realize yet how much it would matter.
[2:33] And then one very ordinary day changed everything.
[2:36] We were driving somewhere completely forgettable, running
[2:38] errands, and it was nothing spiritual, nothing intentional.
[2:42] And sitting in the cup holder in his car was this tiny Catholic
[2:45] booklet. It was thin, boring, no design,
[2:48] no catchy title, the kind of thing you just grab from the
[2:50] back of a church and forget about.
[2:52] And it was about sin, purgatory, and preparing your soul for
[2:56] eternity. And out of boredom or grace or
[2:58] maybe both, I picked, stood up, and started flipping through it.
[3:01] I wasn't searching or seeking, just mindlessly reading.
[3:05] And then something started to happen.
[3:07] Page after page, it listed sin plainly.
[3:10] Mortal sin, venial sin, skipping mass without serious reason,
[3:13] receiving communion in a state of mortal sin, sexual sin,
[3:16] gossip, pride, sloth, taking the Lord's name in vain.
[3:20] None of these things were dramatic or standing out.
[3:22] But it was devastating. Every word felt like a mirror.
[3:26] My heart started racing and my stomach dropped.
[3:29] And it wasn't because as I was, Oh no, I'm going to get
[3:31] punished, but I recognized myself.
[3:34] I saw myself in all of these sins.
[3:37] And these weren't arbitrary rules.
[3:39] They weren't Catholic technicalities.
[3:41] They were soul level realities, eternal realities.
[3:45] And for the first time in a very long time, I felt conviction.
[3:50] Not shame, not panic, conviction.
[3:53] That quiet, steady ache in your chest that says you are not OK
[3:58] and you need to come home. I stared out that window
[4:01] pretending everything was normal while inside something woke up.
[4:05] The Holy Spirit was turning the lights on, realized I hadn't
[4:08] been choosing evil out of malice.
[4:10] I had been drifting through indifference, and indifference
[4:13] is one of the most dangerous spiritual states that there is.
[4:17] Questions started flooding in that I had avoided for years.
[4:20] What if I died today? What if we got into a car
[4:23] accident right now? Would I be ready to stand before
[4:25] God? What am I clinging to in this
[4:27] life that I cannot take with me? What about my children?
[4:30] I had planned my life, but I had not planned my eternity.
[4:33] That little forgotten booklet was the first crack in the
[4:35] armor, the first spark of my reversion.
[4:38] Because sin doesn't show up looking evil.
[4:41] If it did, none of us would choose it.
[4:43] Sin shows up as comfort, as pleasure, as ease and control,
[4:47] as approval. Gossip feels like connection
[4:50] between people. Lust feels like intimacy with
[4:52] your partner. Skipping mass feels like
[4:55] freedom. Materialism feels like success.
[4:58] Until it doesn't. Sin excites and then numbs.
[5:02] And then it empties. And I had been empty for a long
[5:05] time without knowing why. When I finally woke up, it
[5:08] wasn't because I suddenly felt holy.
[5:11] It was because the absence of God became unbearable.
[5:15] The silence was so loud and that disconnection really hurt.
[5:19] And I realized something that changed everything.
[5:22] Sin doesn't just make you bad, it makes you blind.
[5:26] Blind to God's presence, blind to the truth, and blind blinds
[5:30] to the wounds. I did not want to be blind
[5:32] anymore. That book also forced me to
[5:35] confront something that I had ignored for years, which is
[5:38] purgatory. I used to think purgatory was
[5:40] outdated or scary or like a back of punishment for people who
[5:44] almost made it to heaven, but once I actually understood it,
[5:48] it changed my entire spiritual life.
[5:50] Purgatory is not punishment, it is mercy.
[5:53] Confession forgives sin completely, but sin leaves
[5:56] wounds and attachments and disorder.
[5:59] Just how like saying sorry doesn't magically fix broken
[6:02] glass, Scripture tells us nothing unclean enters heaven,
[6:06] and purgatory is where God finishes what he has already
[6:09] began. And I realized I didn't want to
[6:12] barely make it to heaven. I wanted to be ready.
[6:15] Free. Whole holiness stopped looking
[6:17] like perfection and started looking like surrender.
[6:20] That realization led me to the scariest step in my reversion
[6:24] confession. I hadn't been in years.
[6:26] I didn't even remember the prayers.
[6:27] I didn't know how to start. So I just wrote everything down.
[6:30] Every sin, every attachment, every compromise.
[6:33] I cried through most of my confession and my voice shook.
[6:37] My face was beet red, I'm sure full of snot.
[6:40] But when the priest said the words of absolution, I promise
[6:44] you I felt the chains that I didn't even know I was carrying
[6:48] fall off. And that's when my reversion
[6:50] truly began. But here's the caveat.
[6:53] Coming back to the church was only the first movement.
[6:56] Infertility was the second because even after returning to
[7:01] confession and Mass and prayer and learning my faith, I still
[7:05] believed deep down that if I did everything right, my life would
[7:08] go according to plan. And then infertility stripped
[7:12] that illusion away because when we started trying to grow our
[7:15] family, at the time we had two kids while we still only have
[7:19] two kids. But moving on, when we tried to
[7:21] grow our family, I didn't just pray, I performed prayer.
[7:25] I did all of the right things. Now, this was probably a year
[7:30] after my reversion, after I started going to Mass every
[7:34] Sunday, after I started praying, after I did all of the things.
[7:37] That was the first half of my reversion, and so this is the
[7:40] second-half now. So I did all of the right
[7:42] things, or at least what looked like the right things from the
[7:45] outside. I was praying novenas, I said
[7:48] the rosary, I lit candles, I showed up to Mass, I asked for
[7:51] intercession. I used all the Catholic
[7:54] language, all the Catholic tools.
[7:55] And if I'm being honest, a lot of it was fake it till you make
[7:59] it mentality. Not fake it in the sense that I
[8:01] didn't believe in God, but fake it in the sense that my prayer
[8:05] life was transactional, it was calculated, and it was selfish.
[8:09] One of my very first prayers in that season of infertility was a
[8:12] simple sentence. Lord, fulfill my heart's
[8:15] desires. So remember that, because we're
[8:17] going to come back to it. But I thought I knew exactly
[8:20] what that meant. Month after month, I prayed even
[8:24] harder. I tried more things.
[8:26] I convinced myself that surely this will be the month that it
[8:30] happens. Surely God sees my effort.
[8:33] Surely my obedience is going to pay off.
[8:36] And every month that passed without a pregnancy felt like
[8:39] betrayal. I didn't say it out loud, but I
[8:42] felt it. I watched other people announce
[8:44] pregnancies effortlessly, People who didn't pray like I prayed,
[8:48] people who didn't try like I tried, people who didn't seem to
[8:51] care the way that I cared, people who didn't even practice
[8:54] their faith like I did. And something ugly started
[8:57] growing in me. It was anger and jealousy
[9:00] comparison, self pity. And I told myself I was being
[9:03] faithful. But internally I was spiraling
[9:05] constantly asking why her not me, why them and not us, Why
[9:10] does he get that job? Why does she get those kids?
[9:12] Why do they get that life I'm praying for?
[9:14] And I fell into this pit of self pity that was absolutely
[9:18] exhausting. It consumed my thoughts.
[9:21] It colored my prayer. It distorted how I saw God.
[9:24] I was not suffering well, I was suffering resentfully.
[9:28] And then one day I was in confession again, confessing the
[9:31] same sins, anger, jealousy, bitterness, comparison,
[9:35] distrust. And I remember feeling
[9:36] embarrassed, like why am I still here confessing the same thing
[9:40] over and over again. And the priest said something
[9:43] that absolutely changed everything.
[9:45] He said surrender is a choice, not a feeling.
[9:48] And I remember sitting in that confessional thinking it is a
[9:51] choice. I am not in charge of my
[9:53] circumstances, but I am in charge of my choices.
[9:56] And in that moment, something shifted in me because I realized
[9:59] that I had been waiting to feel surrendered before I actually
[10:02] surrendered. Waiting to feel peaceful, before
[10:05] I trusted, waiting for God to change my situation before I
[10:08] changed my posture. But surrender doesn't work that
[10:11] way. So I chose it.
[10:13] Not emotionally, not dramatically, but
[10:15] intellectually, deliberately. I chose to stop playing the
[10:18] victim of my circumstances. I chose to stop letting
[10:22] infertility to find my interior life.
[10:24] I chose to honor God, even if He never gave me what I wanted.
[10:28] And that choice demanded action. Almost immediately after that
[10:31] confession, I felt this quiet but persistent pull to stop
[10:35] isolating myself and start showing up.
[10:38] To stop obsessing inward and start pouring outward.
[10:41] And I felt called to join a Bible study.
[10:44] There wasn't one that I could join near me that was already
[10:46] established. So I started one at my parish.
[10:49] And it's weird because I wanted to, but I didn't want to.
[10:51] Everything in me wanted to not do this yet everything in me
[10:56] also needed me to start this. I didn't feel holy enough.
[10:59] I didn't feel qualified enough. I didn't feel healed enough.
[11:02] I didn't feel any of the things that I should have probably felt
[11:07] or that I thought I should have felt.
[11:08] But I started the Bible study anyways.
[11:11] And I said yes. And that yes mattered more than
[11:13] I realized at the time. Because suffering isolates you
[11:17] and fertility isolates you. Self pity isolates you, and the
[11:20] enemy thrives in isolation. Starting that Bible study forced
[11:24] me into fellowship. Real fellowship.
[11:27] Not surface level Catholic small talk, but surrounding myself
[11:31] with devout women. Women who prayed honestly, women
[11:34] who suffered faithfully, women who were not performing holiness
[11:37] but living it instead. Women who didn't indulge
[11:40] victimhood, who didn't feed bitterness, who didn't reduce
[11:44] faith to feelings. Being around them changed me.
[11:48] Because who you surround yourself with will either
[11:50] reinforce your wounds or call you higher.
[11:53] And I had been unknowingly surrounding myself with my own
[11:56] misery. That Bible study became a
[11:58] lifeline. Not because it fixed my
[12:00] infertility. Because hello, I'm still only
[12:02] two kids in haven't had my third maybe never will.
[12:06] But that Bible study became my lifeline because it reoriented
[12:10] my soul. I stopped waking up every day
[12:13] asking why me and I started waking up asking how can I be
[12:18] faithful today? And I don't want to paint this
[12:20] picture of perfection because I still have my freaking days.
[12:24] Let me tell you where I do have anger and jealousy and doubt,
[12:28] but it no longer rules my life. So I don't want to paint this
[12:31] perfect picture of look at me. I overcame this adverse city.
[12:36] I carried this cross. No, I still carry it.
[12:38] It is a heavy cross, but nothing compares to the cross that
[12:42] Christ carried for us. And when I've surrounded myself
[12:45] with people who also believe that and who truly suffer
[12:48] faithfully, who love devoutly, it's much easier to get through
[12:53] my bad days when I have people, faithful, devout, beautiful
[12:58] people to lean on. And when I have learned to lean
[13:01] on Jesus to help me get through the bad days, not in a
[13:04] performative way, but in a true, honest, faithful way.
[13:08] So Fast forward a couple years, couple years of prayer, a couple
[13:12] years of waiting, a couple years of learning how to trust God
[13:15] without guarantee. And this is where I want to come
[13:17] back to that prayer that I mentioned earlier.
[13:19] Lord, fulfill my heart's desires.
[13:21] For a long time I thought that prayer meant to give me what I
[13:24] want. Lord, fulfill my heart's
[13:26] desires. What are my heart's desires?
[13:28] Another child, more children, growing our family.
[13:31] But the truth that I learned the hard way is that your heart's
[13:34] desires are not what you want for yourself.
[13:37] Your heart's desires are what God wants for you.
[13:39] And without realizing it, I had been asking the Lord to change
[13:43] my heart, and He did. The desire to grow our family is
[13:47] still here. It's still present.
[13:49] It hasn't vanished, but it no longer controls me.
[13:52] It no longer debilitates me. It no longer defines my joy or
[13:56] my faith. God fulfilled my heart's desires
[13:58] by reordering them, by giving me peace where there used to be
[14:02] desperation, by giving me trust where they're used to to be
[14:05] bargaining, by giving me faith that does not depend on
[14:09] outcomes. And I can say this honestly
[14:11] without hesitation. If you asked me today if I would
[14:14] trade the faith God gave me through the suffering for
[14:17] another baby, I would not. And that sentence would have
[14:21] shocked the earlier version of me a couple years ago.
[14:23] Because faith like that cannot be manufactured.
[14:26] It cannot be optimized. It can't be prayed into
[14:29] existence selfishly. It is forged.
[14:32] There is a scene from The Chosen with little James where little
[14:36] James asks Jesus why he hasn't been healed, and Jesus tells him
[14:40] plainly that he could heal him, but that many people need
[14:43] healing in order to believe. And then Jesus says something
[14:47] devastatingly beautiful. That James will proclaim God not
[14:50] because he was healed, but in spite of not being healed.
[14:54] That his witness will last for generations because he trusted
[14:57] without getting what he wanted, that his suffering would not be
[15:01] wasted. That not many are trusted with
[15:03] that kind of faith. And I realized, realized
[15:06] unanswered prayers are not evidence of God's absence.
[15:10] Sometimes they are evidence of his trust.
[15:13] Not everyone is asked to carry that, but those who do are
[15:16] formed deeply by it. When we look at others and say,
[15:20] why does she get kids and I don't, why does he get that job
[15:23] and I don't, why do they get the life that we're praying for?
[15:26] We're missing the deeper invitation, the invitation to
[15:29] trust God without needing proof to praise Him, without
[15:33] prerequisites, to believe without guarantees.
[15:36] My reversion did not end when I came back to the church.
[15:39] It was sealed when I learned how to trust God even when He said
[15:43] no, even when he stayed silent, even when the story didn't
[15:46] unfold the way I imagined. God did fulfill my heart's
[15:49] desires, just not the way I would have written the story.
[15:53] But I wouldn't change it because I didn't need a rebrand.
[15:56] I needed redemption. And God was never withholding
[15:59] from me. He was forming me.
[16:01] I asked God to fulfill my heart's desires, and He did.
[16:05] Not by giving me everything I wanted, but by teaching me how
[16:09] to want what He gives. That is what returning home for
[16:12] me really looked like. Not the end of the struggle, but
[16:16] the beginning of peace. If you're in a season where God
[16:19] feels quiet, distant, or slow, I want you to make sure that you
[16:23] hear this. Unanswered prayers are not the
[16:26] absence of God. Sometimes they are the place
[16:29] where He's doing His deepest work.
[16:31] My reversion didn't end my suffering, but it taught me how
[16:35] to remain faithful inside of it. And if God can do that with me,
[16:40] he can do it with you too. So I hope you can understand a
[16:43] little bit as to why I am so passionate about sharing about
[16:47] our beautiful faith and about our Lord and Savior Jesus
[16:50] Christ. Thank you for listening and
[16:52] thank you for being here. Bye.

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