Recently, someone asked me what I would do if I was given permission to build the life I wanted.
That question stayed with me.
For most of my life I felt like I needed permission to live.
Since becoming Catholic, life has taken a turn for me. Like anything new, I started with a noticeable zeal. I wanted to tell everyone. I wanted my Protestant friends to see what I saw.
That feeling didn’t last.
I moved across town. I was still going to Mass, but I couldn’t get to my parish anymore or worship with the priest I had grown accustomed to. The friendships I was beginning to build started to fade. Life got busy. Different schedules, different seasons, different responsibilities. What once felt easy suddenly required effort we didn’t have.
Even adoration changed. I had been used to 24-hour access. On this side of town, that wasn’t available.
It felt like everything that connected me to the Catholic Church had been stripped away.
And I started to wonder if I had made the wrong decision.
I had walked away from a belief system that, yes, left me hurt in some ways, but it was familiar. It was what I knew. There was structure there. There were voices guiding me.
That part is true.
But what is also true is this.
For years, I lived with the idea that someone else was over my life. That in order to move forward, I needed approval. A pastor’s blessing. Agreement from leadership. Permission before I could take a step.
And a lot of that guidance was not always biblical instruction. Many times, it was personal advice about my life. Who I should marry. How I should live. What I should be doing for God.
Somewhere along the way, I learned that I needed permission to live.
But I also grew up hearing about freedom in Christ.
I knew the language. I understood the scriptures. Jesus came to break chains. To bring liberty. To remove the veil so nothing stood between us and God. I knew all of that.
And yet, I still felt bound.
So here I am. Converted. Catholic. Excited. And then suddenly everything external falls away.
And I am left with a question.
How do I live now?
How do I make decisions?
What does my life look like without someone telling me what to do?
It was in that space that the Gospel became real to me in a different way.
There is a kind of freedom that exists outside of structure.
A freedom that is not tied to a specific church building, a personality, or a system of constant direction.
A freedom that comes directly from Christ.
The kind that says, “It is for freedom that you have been set free.”
Not a freedom filled with pressure.
Not a freedom that feels like a hidden weight.
Not a life of endless obligation, meetings, or striving to prove yourself.
But a real freedom.
A life given as a gift.
Do with it what you will.
That kind of freedom is almost unsettling at first.
Because now, the responsibility is yours.
You are not being micromanaged.
You are not being told every step.
You are standing before God, and your life is your offering back to Him.
And that is where accountability begins.
Not the kind that is imposed by people.
The kind that is personal.
The kind that says, my choices matter because they are mine, and I will answer for them.
Strangely, that kind of accountability feels more like freedom than anything I have ever experienced.
It reminds me of when we go off to college.
No one is standing over you anymore. No one is checking your every move. And yet, for the first time, your life is truly yours.
You can waste it.
Or you can build something meaningful.
That is what this faith feels like to me now.
Not restriction.
Not control.
But invitation.
There is something else I didn’t expect.
This may sound simple, and maybe I just didn’t have the language for it before, but for the first time I feel like a daughter of God.
Life is still hard. That hasn’t changed.
But I am not alone in it.
And without the weight I used to carry, I find myself more open. More curious. More willing to learn, not out of fear, but from a place of security.
Not because I have to.
But because I am His.
“You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”
— Romans 8:15
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Martina Griffin is a Catholic convert, writer, wife, and mother of four. She writes about faith, motherhood, beauty, books, and the quiet ache of transformation. A lover of popcorn, deep questions, and old classics, she shares her heart at Big Bowl of Popcorn—one post at a time.
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