I never imagined that a journey through anxiety, atheism, and a search for meaning would lead my family to the ancient and sacred doors of the Orthodox Church.
I grew up in a home where religion wasn’t a part of life, while my husband was raised in a deeply religious Mormon household.
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The Beliefs We Started With
My journey to Orthodoxy didn’t start with religion at all. I wouldn’t say my parents didn’t believe in God. It definitely seemed like they did. There were a few times when I was young that they took us to church.
If I remember correctly, there were a few different churches they tried. But it was only a few times. After that, they didn’t really speak about religion much. When I was a teenager, it was clear that they didn’t like organized religion.
I took on this view as well. I thought Christianity was to blame for all the horrible things done in the past. I thought people should be able to believe what they want but do it on their own time and keep it to themselves.
My husband was very disillusioned with Christianity as a teenager. Even though his family were devoted members of the Mormon church, he was having a hard time with it. He wasn’t satisfied with the answers he was getting to his questions.
Atheism, Our First Faith
Despite these different beginnings, we both found ourselves rejecting faith entirely by the time we reached our twenties. We lived together for a couple of years before finally getting married.
With a lack of purpose and meaning in our lives, we both turned to partying, alcohol, etc. Those days are honestly a haze to me now and was well before our journey to Orthodoxy.
We finally decided to start trying for a baby. At 25 years old, we had a baby girl. From that point on, the partying died down.
We started trying to provide for our daughter and to find a better and more successful venture in life.
A few years into this, I started suffering from horrible panic attacks. They would come on almost daily and would leave me feeling sick, exhausted, and constantly fearing the next one.
I was so tired after an attack subsided. I also couldn’t eat much because I felt so sick to my stomach all the time. I couldn’t for the life of me, understand why I was having these attacks.
I had plenty of people ask what was bothering me that would cause this. Each time, I racked my brain and came to the conclusion that nothing was bothering me. That may have been true on the surface, but there were things at play in my subconscious that I wasn’t aware of.
Eventually, I went on an SSRI. This did help for a couple of years, but my doctor reminded me that these meds were not something you should be on forever. I slowly started to taper them off, and finally, I was able to go medication-free.
After a while, I did start to see my anxiety come back, although I was not having debilitating panic attacks. I also realized that the whole time I was on the meds, I had lost my drive and motivation to be better.
I was just going through the motions of life, being numb. I hadn’t been fostering my relationships with my daughter or my husband. I would just go to work, come home, and binge-watch TV shows while my husband went to work.
My husband started to take an interest in my anxiety. He truly could not understand it. His classic response when I was feeling anxious was to say, “Well, why don’t you just calm down?”
I tried explaining the negative spirals that I would find myself in, and he would try to listen, but he was honestly confused. He started researching psychology in an attempt to help me.
While researching, he stumbled across Jordan Peterson and his online lectures. He noticed that Jordan had a whole section of videos on the Bible, but he quickly scrolled past and ignored them.
Jordan Peterson seems to be a controversial person in today’s political climate, but he was the person that really set the stage for the beginning of our journey to Orthodoxy.
He jumped into all of Jordan’s other content and quickly started reading his books. I believe the information Jordan was giving him was really something he had been quietly craving but had not realized what he was craving or why.
Jordan Peterson wasn’t the only person he listened to. He dove into all kinds of psychological expertise and started discussing what he learned with me.
I found myself listening to Jordan and being amazed at his ability to describe the things going on in my head, but he did it in such a clear and concise manner that I understood what was happening to me.
’12 Rules for Life’ by Jordan Peterson
And just to give you some perspective, I had always been interested in psychology too. I took AP Psychology in high school and received a 5 on the AP test at the end of the year.
That’s the highest score you can receive on those tests. But nothing I learned in that class came close to being helpful in my situation.
My husband and I started putting Jordan’s advice into practice. I understood that I had grown up thinking very negatively about the whole world. My first response to anything new was to be afraid and to not want to take risks.
I judged everyone around me and thought the world was full of stupid, ignorant people. I didn’t like socializing unless it was with a few of my close friends. I considered myself an introvert.
I was a helicopter mom that didn’t let my daughter do anything remotely dangerous. I was also terrified of the worst possible thing that could happen in any given situation.
I considered my knowledge and intelligence to be above that of everyone else I met in my life. My go-to defense mechanism was extreme sarcasm.
The only way I knew how to communicate with people was to complain. I would complain about anything, everything, and everyone. It was basically the only way I knew how to have a conversation.
I was always angry: angry about work, angry about our home not being clean, angry about my husband not doing things how I wanted them done, or angry about my daughter not listening.
The First Step in My Journey
My first task in my journey was to break the negative cycle. My brain had basically created these neural pathways that knew how to worry, how to put me in fight-or-flight mode, and to do it quickly and efficiently.
Because I had practiced these negative habits my whole life, my brain got extremely good at riding these pathways.
Not being negative is a pretty hard habit to break. We started with meditation, which did help a lot. We would listen to Sam Harris’s guided meditations on his app.
Why did we like Sam Harris? Well, because he was a fellow atheist, and at the time I found his voice very soothing, which made it easier to quiet my thoughts. Unbeknownst to Sam Harris, he actualy helped us along our journey to Orthodoxy.
My husband started pushing me to try new things and to allow myself to feel discomfort. Taking my daughter on hikes, for example, was extremely uncomfortable for me. I was terrified of her falling down and getting hurt, or rolling down the side of the mountain.
But the more I did these things (of my own volition), the more I saw how Jordan Peterson knew what he was talking about. My daughter was extremely cautious about any activity she engaged in, and it was because I had always been hesitant to let her do anything fun for fear of her getting hurt.
RULE 11: “Don’t bother children when they are skateboarding.” – Jordan Peterson
I’m not saying that being cautious is a bad thing. But there’s cautiousness, and then there is severe cautiousness. The more I loosened my grip on her, the more she started to gain confidence in herself.
Now, I won’t lie, I still have a lot of work to do with her. We’re still trying to build our relationship after years of me being locked in my own turmoil.
My battle with negativity went on for a few years (and still goes on to this day, honestly), but I was seeing a slow, gradual improvement, with no panic attacks in sight.
In the background, my husband had finished listening to all of Jordan Peterson’s content on youtube, minus the Biblical ones. He had been trying his hardest to avoid it.
He was the type of atheist that rolled his eyes anytime someone mentioned God. He would willingly debate with anyone on the subject.
He even complained when I listened to country music because “they always sing about God,” even though I told him repeatedly that all music had a habit of mentioning God, even metal and rap.
Well , as he didn’t have any new content from Jordan to listen to, he finally jumped into the biblical series. Coming from a Mormon family he already knew all the stories (although he didn’t really understand them, he found them ridiculous and unimportant), but he found himself fascinated by the meaning coming from Jordan’s examinations of these ancient stories.
He actually understood the significance of the stories for the first time in his life. This happened to be a major step in our journey to Orthodoxy.
Then Covid happened and my daughter was sent home from her elementary school with a laptop. My job sent everyone home with a computer. That same week, my city and county had a large earthquake.
For reference, I had never experienced an earthquake before in my life. Then violent protests started occurring in the cities. I legit felt like the world was ready to fall apart. I was terrified of getting sick, or my daughter getting sick.
As the months passed, we watched as people around us caught COVID—and then, to our surprise, recovered. The fear that had gripped me so tightly began to loosen, little by little.
Conquering Fear on our Journey to Orthodoxy
The world still felt chaotic, but for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t letting fear dictate my every thought. I don’t know what gave me the courage but that was the point my husband and I decided to have another kid… in the middle of a pandemic.
Little old paranoid, scared me, decided the pandemic would be a good time to have another baby. This may have been the turning point in mine and my husband’s belief system.
Somehow we were discovering how to have faith in the future. Learning to have faith was another major milestone in our journey to Orthodoxy.
As I was pregnant, my husband and I would stay up late having deep conversations relating to psychology and other philosophical topics. Then one night, he started talking about the possibility of there being a ‘creator.’
I was pretty shocked that something like that had come out of my husband’s mouth, but I asked him straight up, “Are you saying you want to start going to church?” and he said hesitantly…. “I think so.”
We started researching Christian churches. At first, I was thinking of a Baptist or Lutheran church. To be honest, I didn’t know much about Christianity other than what I’d seen in movies and TV shows.
I knew there was the Bible, but I’d never actually read it. I knew I did not want the Mormon church. I had grown up in Utah and pretty much everyone around me was Mormon.
I won’t go into detail here, but the experience I had with the Mormon faith left a bad taste in my mouth. I just knew it wasn’t right for me.
My husband, having grown up Mormon, explained his hold ups with most of the Americanized churches and expressed a desire to get back to the original Christianity. We were still listening to Jordan Peterson and he started having conversations with a man named Jonathan Pageau.
He was a Canadian Orthodox Icon Carver. At this point, we had never heard of the Orthodox Church, but his explanation of symbolism in the world and the Bible had us very intrigued.
I believe the Pageau was basically the nail in the coffin for our previous atheistic beliefs. He continued leading us to the the finish line on our journey to Orthodoxy.
Check out his website: TheSymbolicWorld.com
We started looking into the Orthodox Church and the history of it. Come to find out, this was the original church we had been looking for. I had previously thought it was Roman Catholicism but I had some qualms about the Pope and a few other things.
The Eastern Orthodox Church (Eastern Catholic) is the church founded by Christ.
“Orthodoxy is what Christ taught, the Apostles preached and the Fathers kept.”
-St. Athanasious
In our research, we discovered that Orthodoxy had once included the Roman Catholic Church. The original Christian church was composed of five Patriarchates (Pentarchy: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem).
Contrary to popular belief, the Pope was not the head of the Christian Church. The title Pope (from the Greek pappas, meaning “father”) was a term of endearment.
The Pope was recognized as a first among equals. Often, if a dispute came up between jurisdictions, they would look to the Pope for a resolution. But, this by no means made him the head of the church. The Orthodox Church does not believe in papal infallibility.
Finding this information helped us see that the Orthodox Church did in fact align with our thoughts that had developed throughout our church history research.
I could go on and on about the church’s history, but I’m still learning and I may leave that for another blog post.
For right now, I will mention the Great Schism of 1054. This is when the Pope of Rome tried to assert himself as head of the church which the other Bishops did not agree to.
There were many other disagreements that came up which had been going on in the background for a while. This caused Rome to break away from the church and have since become known as the Roman Catholic Church.
The Roman church has had many serious problems happen after that which I will not get into for this post.
So we had found the Church we were looking for. I was still pregnant at the time but nearing the end of my pregnancy.
We hadn’t yet started going to church yet but we both knew what church we were looking for now. We were just focused on my pregnancy and doctor’s appointments at the time.
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Journey to an Orthodox Church
Fast forward a couple months, it’s been roughly 4 weeks since I had the baby. We decided to finally visit a parish. The parish we chose for our first visit was Saints Peter and Paul in Salt Lake City. It was an Antiochian Orthodox Church.
When we stepped in we were greeted by a very kind older woman. We explained this was our first time. She was very helpful and explained all the different parts of the liturgy and the proper etiquette.
If I’m being honest, when we walked into the church it was a complete culture shock. I was having second thoughts about it. I was thinking, “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Come to find out later, we had stumbled into our first Divine Liturgy on Palm Sunday. There were palm leaves everywhere, no pews to sit in, everyone was just standing here and there.
The priest was chanting and his voice was reverberating throughout the church. There was incense being burned and I could see the smoke floating through the room. It almost felt like a weird ritual was going on.
My husband must have felt the same way. After the service, walking to the car, he said, “I don’t know….that was different.”
I quickly decided that we needed to check out a few more parishes before we made our decision. So I went online and found Prophet Elias Greek Orthodox Church. We attended their Divine Liturgy the next Sunday.
When we walked into the Narthex at Prophet Elias, it had the same feeling as the other church. Icons were displayed and we could hear chanting coming from the nave of the church.
However, there were pews and it felt like a little less of a culture shock. We quickly made friends while coming each week. The people there were extremely welcoming and I finally felt more comfortable coming to church.
After a couple months of attending, we just knew that we had finally come home. Did I have doubts? Yes. But doubts are normal and I was able to work through them.
Now I’m not totally opposed to not having pews. Now that we’re accustomed to the liturgy and the Orthodox ways, I would be okay to visit Sts. Peter and Paul again.
But Prophet Elias has become our home. I enjoy hearing part of the liturgy in Greek. It really is a beautiful language and just listening to it every Sunday has helped me learn some phrases such as ‘Kyrie eleison’ which means ‘Lord have mercy.’
We continued to learn about the Orthodox Church even after becoming regular parishioners. There is an immense amount of knowledge that I don’t think we will ever have enough time to learn it all (about 2,000 years worth).
One book I am still working on is ‘The Orthodox Church’ by Timothy Ware. The first half of the book is very heavy in Church history but is an excellent read.
‘The Orthodox Church‘ by Timothy Ware
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Everything we have learned continues to cement our belief that the Orthodox Church is the true church. We were baptized (us and our kids) about a year later on Holy Saturday.
After starting our journey to Orthodoxy and turning our aim towards God we have come to see that God does love us, and we do need Him.
I wake up and say my prayers in the morning and I find myself being extremely grateful to Him for allowing me to wake again, for not turning me away even though I am a sinner and I fall short of the mark time and time again.
I see now why having a higher ultimate good to point our attention, love, and worship to is good for our mind, body, and soul. Knowing that I am in God’s hands makes it much easier to not always think “what if,” and go down a negative spiral.
Whatever happens, He will be there and we can figure it out.
“God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, Even though the earth be removed, And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;“
– Psalm 46: 1-2
I go to Liturgy and feel His presence and the presence of everyone worshipping together and I feel welcomed, like I have a place in this world that matters.
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My kids have a community they are thriving in now, a community with godparents and role models that will help them in their journey toward salvation and theosis.
My Husband’s Journey
My husband’s journey to Orthodoxy was shaped a bit different from mine. As an Atheist, he was convinced that the only way to know reality was through scientific, empirical measurement.
To him, belief in God seemed like a faulty way to arrive at truth. But as he examined life more deeply, he realized there were essential aspects of human existence that could not be empirically measured—things like love, meaning, and purpose.
At first, he assumed that science simply hadn’t developed the tools to measure these things yet, but over time, he wanted to ensure he was using the most accurate methods to understand the world.
This led him to a kind of trial-and-error approach. As he observed and tested different ways of living, he noticed that some methods and traditions clearly worked better than others.
This realization led him to see that tradition itself was a form of empirical measurement—one that had been refined over thousands of years. The practices he had once dismissed as unscientific were, in fact, time-tested ways of ordering life effectively.
With this understanding, he was able to reassess the wisdom of these older beliefs and traditions, granting them validity he had previously denied.
His knowledge and research into psychology played a key role in his thinking. He saw how the ancient Greek idea of wisdom being the highest good connected to what theologians called ‘God.’
If wisdom is real, and if it points to better and worse ways of living, then that truth must exist beyond subjective human experience. This realization solidified for him that God was not merely an abstract concept but a reality.
As he continued exploring, he was drawn to the original Christian church. Having been raised Christian, he had always been interested in Greek philosophy, and as he traced its lineage, he found that the early Church Fathers carried forward much of this intellectual tradition.
They took the philosophical understanding of wisdom and connected it to the divine—creating not just a belief system, but a unified vision of truth and meaning.
What ultimately convinced him of Orthodoxy, in particular, was its ability to unify people. The original Church sought to bring all tribes together, something he saw as increasingly necessary in a world full of division and conflict.
While other religions might also attempt this, the Orthodox Church’s method stood out to him as the right way.
Unlike later Christian movements, which splintered into countless denominations, Orthodoxy maintained a built-in self-correcting mechanism, ensuring that unity was preserved rather than fragmented.
For unity to be real, there had to be a willingness to sacrifice individual identities for the greater body. This deep connection between tradition, wisdom, and unity was what ultimately led him to believe the Orthodox Church is the true Church, finalizing his journey to Orthodoxy.
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Grace for the Road Ahead
Looking back, it’s hard to believe how much has changed. What started as a quiet curiosity became a path we couldn’t turn away from, no matter how uncertain or unqualified we felt.
Orthodoxy wasn’t just something we discovered—it was something that slowly, steadily, and undeniably reshaped us. There are still moments of doubt, of wrestling with old habits and ideas, but the difference now is that we don’t face them alone.
We’ve been given the Church, the sacraments, the prayers of the saints, and the grace to keep moving forward. I don’t think our journey to Orthodoxy will every be quite over. We will be continuing our education in theology and church history for the rest of our lives.
It’s not the ending of our story, just the beginning of a much longer one. Glory to God!
QUESTION: What is the biggest, life-changing decision you’ve made?
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