God had been pursuing me

Michelle once asked God to prove He was real. What she did not realize then was that God had already been pursuing her.

​At last month’s Diocesan Renewal Conference "Evangelization at the Heart of Renewal," held Apr 17 and 18 at St. Michael Catholic Community, Michelle responded to the call to share her testimony after hearing Bishop Scott McCaig speak on evangelization and the importance of sharing how God has worked in our lives. 

​Michelle, a parishioner at St. Bonaventure Parish in Calgary, had grown up Catholic. Her family was prayerful, faithful, and active in the life of the Church. But as a child, she struggled to understand why any of it mattered.

“I came from a really good Catholic family, very prayerful and always talked about God,” she recalled. “I think I had a rebellious spirit when I was a kid.”

While her family loved going to Mass and taking part in “all these extra things,” Michelle often found herself asking why.

She had questions about God, the Church, and Jesus, but felt that the answers she received did not fully satisfy her.

“I didn’t understand anything about the Catholic Church,” she said. “And me being a kid, I thought I knew everything.”

Eventually, Michelle drifted from the practice of the faith. She stopped going to church regularly and began living what she described as a secular life. She explored New Age spirituality and considered herself a “spiritual person,” but something was still missing.

“At some point I realized that it was unsatisfying, not really knowing if God was real or not,” she said.

In that uncertainty, Michelle remembers praying honestly: “If you’re real, show me. Prove it to me that you’re real.”

Since Catholicism was all she had ever known, she decided to give the Church one real chance. She began going back to Mass, even if at first it was “a little bit unwillingly.” Then, during the pandemic, a friend invited her to join an online Alpha group.

“I just said yes to an invitation that my friend had given me,” Michelle said.

At the time, she was at one of the lowest points in her life. She had been laid off and felt she had very little left. But in that small online group, she encountered people who spoke to her about Jesus.

“They were talking to me about Jesus, and I really didn’t know who Jesus was,” she said. “I didn’t know if I believed in him or not.”

Then one day, someone in the group told her, “Jesus still heals today.”

Michelle had been living with persistent neck pain for eight years. When the Alpha group asked if they could pray for healing, she agreed.

“Couple days later, I realized that the pain in my neck was gone,” she said.

“That’s when I realized that God has been with me this whole time and God was pursuing me,” she said. “God had answered my request of proving it to me that he was real.”

From that moment, Michelle knew she could not simply return to the way she had been living. Her faith was no longer something inherited from her family or something she had to figure out only from a distance. It had become personal.
“Because I realized that God could see me, I was like, I can never go back to my old life,” she said.

Today, Michelle often thinks of Psalm 139, the psalm of the inescapable God who searches and knows each person completely.

“He searches me, and he knows me,” she said. “And he’s always pursuing me.”

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Based on Michelle’s video testimony recorded at the Renewal Conference, Apr 17–18, 2026.