I decided to be happy

It was in Dakar that I moved away from faith. My family, a practicing and fervent Catholic, lived there a few years for my father’s work. College at the time, I had to stop scouting and leave for a country where faith turns out to be so different. Add the tribulations of adolescence to that, and you have all the ingredients for a gentle exit of the church benches. Back in France, I entered a business school without conviction. Holidays, alcohol, superficial and idle friendships, girls … everything passed there, leaving me a bitter aftertaste. I was not happy.

Always living under the family roof, I was held at the Sunday Mass. One day, my girlfriend left me. Deeply sad, lost in this life that left me empty, I spent three days without sleeping. The following Sunday, at the church, I told the Blessed Virgin my distress and my misfortune. I then felt a appeasement, an intense consolation offered by Marie.

My path was progressive. Built by the ardent faith of my little brother and my mom, and resolved to become happy like them, I decided to imitate their daily lives. First by investing in the parish choir, then going to mass during the week, without having a personal life of faith. But if I was Catholic in practice during the day, I returned to my usual turpitudes in the evening. It is an office of the Good Friday and this word of the priest: “Here is the wood of the cross, which saved the world”, which put me in motion. Faced with the unfair suffering of Christ for us, I had the impression of being the one who crucified him. Tears have flowed.

A year of volunteering in Lebanon with a Christian association allowed me to step back and to live, finally, a spotless joy. Far from my deleterious environment, I made new believing friends, I developed a personal prayer life and experienced the enthusiasm of lively faith. This happiness of believers, who had attracted me so much, was finally mine.

The new bases of my life thrown, I also experienced adult faith, that of endurance, of the desert sometimes. In the Gospel, Jesus calls us to wear our cross “every day”, rather than to live a glorious martyrdom. This perseverance is now my joy.