I'm an accountant.

I like rules.

I like spreadsheets, checklists, and knowing exactly what's coming next.

So when I was received into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil at forty-two years old, I had a plan.

I had read the Catechism cover to cover.

I had memorized the prayers.

I had a list of saints to read about and a schedule for daily Mass.

I was going to be the most organized Catholic my parish had ever seen.

God, it turns out, had other plans.

Here's what my first year really looked like.

Spring: The Honeymoon

The Easter Vigil was the most beautiful night of my life, apart from my wedding.

I was confirmed with oil that smelled like balsam.

I received the Eucharist for the first time with my wife, Karen, crying in the pew behind me.

For weeks afterward, I floated.

I went to daily Mass before work.

I prayed the rosary on my lunch break.

I told anyone who would listen that I had become Catholic.

My coworkers started avoiding the break room.

Older converts in my parish just smiled at me and said, Enjoy it.

I didn't understand what they meant yet.

The Awkward Parts Nobody Warns You About

I'll be honest.

Being a new Catholic is a little bit like moving to a foreign country where everyone else grew up speaking the language.

I genuflected toward the wrong side of the church for a month before someone gently pointed out the tabernacle had been moved.

I dipped my whole hand in the holy water font like I was washing up for dinner.

I said the old words of the Creed at full volume after the whole parish had already finished.

Once, at a Mass in another town, I tried to go up for a blessing and accidentally got in the line for the chalice.

Cradle Catholics have no idea how many tiny things they do without thinking.

But here's the thing.

Nobody ever laughed at me.

An older man named Gus started saving me a seat and quietly elbowing me when it was time to kneel.

By summer, I knew most of the choreography.

Summer: The Dry Season

Then came the long stretch the Church calls Ordinary Time.

Green vestments.

No big feasts.

Just week after week of regular Sundays.

And somewhere in July, the glow wore off.

I'd go to Mass and feel nothing.

I'd pray and feel like I was leaving voicemails for someone who never called back.

I started wondering if I had made a mistake.

Maybe all those feelings in the spring had just been excitement.

Maybe I had joined a club instead of finding God.

I finally admitted all of this to our parish priest over coffee.

I expected him to be worried.

Instead, he looked relieved.

He told me that what I was feeling was normal, and that the saints had written about it for centuries.

He told me about Mother Teresa, who after her death was revealed to have felt God's absence for decades, and still served Him every single day.

He said feelings come and go, but faith is a decision you make again every morning.

Then he said something that rearranged my whole spreadsheet.

He said God sometimes takes away the sweetness so we'll learn to love Him for Himself, not for the way He makes us feel.

That was the day I stopped measuring my faith by my emotions.

Fall: Learning the Calendar

By fall, I started to see something I had missed.

The Church doesn't just have a calendar.

It lives inside one.

Every season has a color, a mood, and a lesson.

Feast days for saints I'd never heard of popped up and introduced themselves one by one.

All Saints' Day, followed by All Souls' Day, when I prayed for my Methodist grandparents for the first time as a Catholic.

Then Advent arrived, purple and quiet, and the whole Church started waiting together.

I had always celebrated Christmas.

I had never really waited for it.

When we sang at Midnight Mass that year, I understood for the first time why the waiting mattered.

Winter: My First Lent

Then came Ash Wednesday.

I went to work with a smudge of ashes on my forehead, and three different coworkers told me I had dirt on my face.

I fasted that day the way the Church asks, one regular meal and two small ones.

By three in the afternoon, I was ready to eat my stapler.

Fridays without meat sounded easy until the office ordered barbecue for a client lunch.

I also gave up something harder.

I gave up my habit of complaining.

I lasted about four hours.

Lent showed me exactly how weak I was.

And that turned out to be the point.

I went to confession more that Lent than in the rest of the year combined.

Every time, I walked out a little lighter.

I started to understand that being Catholic isn't about being good enough.

It's about coming back, again and again, to the One who is.

Full Circle

Exactly one year after I came into the Church, I went back to the Easter Vigil.

This time, I wasn't the one being baptized.

I was a sponsor.

A young guy named Jake, twenty-four, nervous, standing in the same spot where I'd stood twelve months before.

I put my hand on his shoulder as he was confirmed.

And after Mass, he told me he was afraid he'd mess everything up.

I smiled and told him to enjoy it.

Now I knew exactly what those older converts meant.

What I Learned

My first year as a Catholic didn't go by the book.

It went by the calendar.

Feast and fast.

Joy and dryness.

Falling down and getting back up.

I learned the Church is not a club for people who have it figured out.

It's a family that walks the same road every year, together, toward the same empty tomb.

If you're a new convert, here's my advice from one year in.

Don't panic when the feelings fade.

Find a Gus who will elbow you when it's time to kneel.

And keep showing up.

He always does.

David is a composite character, and this story is illustrative, inspired by the real experiences of many people in their first year as Catholics.

Your turn: If you're a convert, what surprised you most about your first year as a Catholic? Share your story in the comments below.