Sharing faith: Story, trust and the work of God

Do you find it easy to talk about your faith with people who may not share it, or even with those that do? It may require an act of courage to begin the conversation, but telling other people about your relationship with God can let them know not just who you are, but who God is. Lauren has discovered that in many different situations and places, and she tells the Things I Wish I Knew podcast about the rewards of faith-sharing.

In Christian tradition, faith is rarely communicated first through argument. Instead, faith is shared through encounter, witness and through the slow telling of what God has done in a person’s life. The Acts of the Apostles, Augustine’s Confessions and countless quieter stories all point to the same truth. Faith grows when people speak honestly about their experience and when others listen with attention.

This theme was a central in a recent conversation with Lauren Heithaus, founder of Hidden Catholic, on the latest episode of Things I Wish I Knew with host Julia Corcoran. While the discussion ranged across pilgrimage, work and conversion, at its heart lay a simple yet demanding question: what does it mean to speak openly about faith in ordinary life?

Lauren’s own journey begins outside the Catholic Church. Raised in the United States, she entered the Church in 2015 after a gradual and searching path. Her conversion was not marked by sudden certainty, but by a growing sense of being drawn, intellectually and spiritually, towards something larger than herself. She speaks of learning to trust that attraction, even when it led her away from familiar ground.

Travel played a significant role in that formation. Time spent visiting churches, shrines and places shaped by centuries of prayer helped her to encounter Catholicism not as an abstract system, but as a living, historical body. These experiences deepened her affection for the Church and awakened a desire to help others encounter its richness in similar ways. What mattered most was not information alone, but presence – being somewhere, walking and praying, noticing how faith is embedded in a place.

Yet faith does not develop in isolation from the pressures of work and responsibility. Before founding Hidden Catholic, Lauren worked in the tech industry, a setting characterised by rapid pace, high performance and measurable outcomes. Leaving that world brought both freedom and cost. She describes the emotional strain of stepping away from a secure career, alongside feelings of guilt about financial stability and the expectations of raising a family. These tensions will be familiar to many who attempt to align their work more closely with their values.

What emerges here is not a romantic picture of vocation, but a realistic one. Discernment often unfolds amid uncertainty, second-guessing and compromise. Trusting God does not remove these difficulties, but it can reframe them. Lauren’s story highlights how vocation is rarely a clean break. It is more often a slow reorientation, marked by small acts of courage and ongoing cooperation with grace.

A particularly striking aspect of the conversation is Lauren’s insistence that faith-sharing does not require eloquence or expertise. She challenges the assumption that speaking about belief must be dramatic or confrontational. Often, it begins with something very ordinary. Mentioning attendance at Mass, explaining why a particular place is special, or speaking honestly about doubt can open space for genuine exchange.

This approach resists both defensiveness and performance. It treats faith not as something to defend at all costs, but as a lived reality you can name without anxiety. Such openness invites curiosity rather than argument. It also acknowledges that many people carry complex relationships with religion, shaped by disappointment, distance or longing.

Within Ignatian spirituality, attention to experience is key. God is encountered not only in formal prayer, but in memory, emotion and daily choice. Lauren’s reflections echo this insight. She speaks of learning to notice where joy and restlessness appear, and of allowing those movements to guide her decisions. Sharing faith, in this sense, becomes an extension of discernment. It is another way of paying attention to where God is already at work.

Importantly, this kind of witness does not seek to control outcomes. Telling one’s story does not guarantee understanding or agreement. It simply offers something true, entrusted to God’s care. In a culture often marked by polarisation and noise, such restraint can itself be a form of generosity.

The conversation also invites reflection on whose stories we hear within the Church. Lauren’s emphasis on personal narrative affirms that faith is not the preserve of specialists or public figures. Every life shaped by grace carries meaning. When those stories are shared, carefully and humbly, they can strengthen community and make room for others to speak.

Near the end of the discussion, Julia and Lauren return to the idea of courage. Not the courage of certainty, but the courage to begin, to speak imperfectly and to remain open to what God might do through that offering. In this sense, faith-sharing is less about success and more about availability.

Ultimately, the invitation is simple but demanding. To trust that our experiences, with all their complexity, are worth offering. To believe that God can work through honesty more readily than through polish. And to remember that faith, at its heart, is passed on person to person, story by story, in ways that are often quieter than we expect.

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