My Happiest Experience
The Day that Changed My Life All Around Forever
I was sixteen. My friend and I were walking up the stairs to his service flat. We have been preparing for this meeting for weeks.
For about four years, I searched for the answer to the great question: Does God exist? After finding that the answer was yes, I walked into the nearest Catholic church to talk to a “professional” about God.
The Catholic priest and I became good friends. In the following months, I was visiting him and listening eagerly to his words of faith and wisdom.
Although I enjoyed our meetings and the fellowship of the young teenagers in the church, I felt that something was still missing. One evening, when I left the parish, I told the priest, “I know God exists, but I cannot feel Him.”
He said to me, “You don’t know how near you are to Him.”
It was May 1981, and the time of the first Holy Communion was coming up. To participate, I had to confess the sins I had committed in my previous sixteen years.
I remembered the worst wrongs I had done. I felt somewhat ashamed. But I also felt that when I would confess my sins, God would forgive me.
So we met on a Friday. We sat down, prayed, and I began my list. As I was confessing my sins, I felt like big rocks or sandbags falling off my shoulders. Until then, I never knew that my sins had any impact on my emotions.
I think people have no idea how heavy a burden they carry because of their past actions.
At the end of my confession, we talked a little more, and I left. I stepped out onto the street, and… words are not adequate to describe my feelings. I’ve never felt such love and joy in my life before. Nothing even came close to it.
I felt God’s presence and was overwhelmed with such euphoric joy that I could never have imagined before that it was possible.
Since then, if anyone would try to convince me that God does not exist, I would only smile. I met Him. He is the greatest, and anyone who misses Him misses the absolute best.
Later, the words of the psalmist rang in my ear often:
“Blessed (that is, blissful, blissfully happy) is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the LORD imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.” (Psalm 32:1–2)
That evening, everything changed. “Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
It was over forty years ago, but I can never picture myself returning to the life I had before I came to know God. He has been the best in my life ever since, and He is my blessed (yes, blissfully happy) hope that I will spend eternity with Him in unspeakable joy.
If you don’t know God yet, do not miss Him. Find Him as long as you can. You will be forever happy (blissfully) that you did.
