My first Steps.

So I was a Christian once more, but not, I hasten to say, a Catholic. I believed in God, I believed in Jesus. That was all.

The first thing I did was read the Bible. Why did an atheist and an agnostic have a Bible in their home? It was by the grace of God of course, but the apparent reason was that my husband, who loves old things and collects them, had found this Bible in an antique shop. It was printed in 1850 and was quite inexpensive so he bought it. We'd enjoyed having it, not because it was a Bible but because it was old.

So I got out this old Bible and read one of the Gospels the next afternoon. (I am an avid and very fast reader). I closed the Bible when I'd finished and thought, with something like despair "No one could live up to that!" But gradually, I grew more familiar with the gospels and grew to love them. I had never read the bible before. And I prayed. Just little, hesitant prayers. I read books about Christianity. The one thing I didn't do, was tell anyone.

I didn't tell my husband or my sisters or my friends. I'm not sure why that was. For a start I was so awed. How could I tell anyone that I had felt the presence of Jesus in the room? They would thnk I was mad. Yet I never lost my certainty that it had happened. So I just read a few books, prayed a little and read my Bible. It was a precious womb-like time. It lasted about two years.