He Has My Heart by Victoria Beaty

“God’s beauty always shines through and every time he blesses me with a beautiful sunset, a beautiful flower, a beautiful day I fall in love with God over and over again.”

As I drove past the church, I imagined a ray pulling me to the tabernacle; I found myself saying, “I love you Lord.” This is one of the many encounters I have with God. Sometimes I ask myself, “how did I get here? How did I get so lucky to be so happy?”

Many Catholics have a wonderful story of an experience that completely changed their lives; for example, when you ask a Priest for their vocation story many times there would be a moment, a specific moment, that completely changed their lives and that moment resulted in their calling to become a priest. I don’t have a moment like that. I can not tell you an exact moment that completely changed my life. I might be able to tell you about them and how they impacted me but they alone were not the moment that changed my life. Instead, those experiences assisted in increasing my spiritual faith. In every one of those moments God called and grabbed part of my heart every time. He was drawing me nearer to him every single day regardless whether something big or small happened that day.

I grew up in the church; it’s all I’ve ever known. I would go to mass every Sunday, pray before meals, and in the mornings and before I went to bed. These prayers became a habit and as they became so I forgot the meaning behind prayer, I prayed without meaning it.

It wasn’t until I realized that I really didn’t have a relationship with God that I began to re-learn how to pray and fully mean it. I began taking every prayer personally and began to talk to God as if he was right in front of me. This developed my spiritual life and every moment after that realization, God called me deeper and deeper into the faith.

After many retreats, much reflection, and several moments in prayer, I became strong in my faith where nothing could shake me. There are many questions I continue to ask but with the right guidance it always leads me back to God. I praise the Lord with every day I have and before I go to bed I always thank Him even for the difficult moments that have happened that day.

When I look back at certain points in my life, I say that God saved me. Yes, he’s saved all of us by sending his only son to die on the cross for us and saving us from eternal damnation. But, God saved me from getting too deep into the materialistic world and if I was in it, he pulled me out of it leading me back to him. I realized that I have to fully trust the Lord with everything I have. Every thing that is given to me, every word that I say, every action is led back to God.

God’s beauty always shines through and every time he blesses me with a beautiful sunset, a beautiful flower, a beautiful day I fall in love with God over and over again. All the desires I had of wanting this or that of the materialistic world is overpowered by God's love for me and is diminished as I fully yearn for God. There’s nothing I could have done without him. “Faith, it does not make things easy, it makes them possible” (Luke 1:37).

ABOUT VICTORIA BEATY: Victoria Beaty is very outgoing, kind-hearted, and most importantly she loves her faith and God very deeply. She loves spending time in prayer, spending time with friends, spending time with family, and spending time with horses. Victoria also enjoys making music hoping she can inspire others about the faith.