“This is the Bible that made her Catholic.”

This is how Heather Colyer’s husband described the Protestant Bible that led her to Catholicism.

The situation was ironic, Colyer said, to find the Catholic Church through various books, one of which was a Protestant Bible.

“My husband looks at my Protestant Bible and says, ‘This is the Bible that made her Catholic,’ and then he looks at my Catholic Bible and says, ‘And now this is her Bible,’” Colyer said. “It’s funny, and I’ll never get rid of my Protestant Bible because I have notes all over it, and it’s true, … it was a part of what pulled me in.”

Colyer’s journey in the Protestant faith will end at Marysville Our Lady of Lourdes Church. She plans to become Catholic there this Easter.

Colyer said the Gospel of John in her Protestant Bible was particularly influential for her conversion.

“One of my driving forces was John 17:21-23 where Jesus is praying for unity in the Church, and I was like, ‘We should not have this many denominations,’” she said. “It just bothers me that it’s so broken. The same Holy Spirit can’t be telling completely opposite things to people. It just doesn’t make sense.

“And so, (John 17) was kind of one of my things, which is ironic because … I am splitting my own family in a desire for Church unity.”

Colyer spent years in many church denominations before deciding to enter the Catholic Church.

She was baptized at an Assembly of God church at age 7, but her family moved around and attended various churches during her childhood. 

Colyer said she never officially belonged to any church denomination.

“I’ve been sort of against church membership,” she said. “I’ve never been a member of any church because I want to be a member of Christ’s church. So, joining the Catholic Church doesn’t bother me because this is the original. I’ve been very at peace about that.”

Looking back, Colyer recognized “pricks” of the Catholic faith throughout her life.

“I feel like there’s been little pricks that I didn’t realize were pricks my whole life,” she said. “When I was a kid, my favorite place was the cloister at the Toledo Museum of Art. It was beautiful. It always felt like a sacred space, and they had a lot of sacred art in one of their wings.

“My favorite movie as a kid was Joan of Arc with Leelee Sobieski. I loved (it) and just little things along life that were there.”

Colyer said she and her husband became more active in their Protestant faith after getting married.

“We picked one of the churches in our town, and they were very Bible based, … so I got very involved in Bible study,” she said. “I really started digging into Scripture. Then about four years ago I started really getting interested in church history, so I kept studying.”

Colyer began reading books on the Catholic faith to “see how the other side thinks” but had no intention of converting.

One of the first books Colyer read was Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary by Brant Pitre.

“I (thought) this is really interesting; this is not at all like I thought,” she said. “I hadn’t thought a lot about the Catholic Church, other than that it was a historical church and had been around for a while, and so I (thought) I should figure out what the Church actually teaches.”

Colyer said it led to a “three- or four-year deep dive,” which consisted of her reading more than 50 books on Catholicism and the teachings of the Catholic Church.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, Colyer said it gave her additional time to read, think and pray.

She began listening to Father Mike Schmitz’s The Bible in a Year podcast when it debuted in 2021, she said, to read more books of the Bible and get insight from a priest.

“Father Mike also had his Masses online, and so I started watching Mass at home,” she said. “The way that he was so careful with the Body and Blood, (I) was like, ‘There’s something to this.’”

Colyer said she came across the quote “What are you Protesting?” and it made her reconsider Protestantism.

“I never thought about it (before),” she said. “I didn’t choose to be a Protestant; I just grew up that way. I was like, ‘What am I protesting?’ I guess I should I figure that out. And then eventually it was like, well, I guess I’m not protesting, … so I really sat with that one for a while.”

Colyer began RCIA instruction at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in fall 2022.

“I reached the point where I was like, if I don’t at least take the next step of going into RCIA, it’s coming down to I am rejecting Christ because I believed at that point He was truly (present) in the Eucharist,” she said. “Where else do (I) go? I’ve got to move forward.”

Colyer decided to sit in on an RCIA class.

“I just showed up the first night at RCIA,” she said. “I had never been at (the) parish other than a garage sale four or five years ago. I didn’t call ahead or anything. I said, ‘I’m just going to show up and see how they teach it.’”

Colyer said she had a pleasant experience, but she was against converting at the time and glad she had months to decide.

“The deacon was amazing, and everybody was super welcoming and not pushy, which was great because I just wanted to hear it from their own mouths in the beginning,” Colyer said. “Of course, in my heart, I was like, ‘I’m going to probably have to do this.’”

The decision to convert would be monumental for her family.

“I will be the first Catholic in my family for generations,” she said. “I don’t have any idea when the last Catholic existed in my family – far beyond any family history I know.”

Colyer said this made her resistant to convert, but the Eucharist gave her the confidence that it was the right decision. She said she realized how worship at Mass connected to the Bible.

“Looking at the Old Testament, it was always sacrifice,” she said. “In the New Testament, I think it is Christ’s sacrifice. That’s what I like about (the Mass) – it’s our own hearts, our own prayers uniting with that, and then we can still praise through music, and we can still communicate through prayer.”  

She said this differed from her experience of worship at Protestant churches.

“For a lot of the Protestant churches, their singing is their worship band,” Colyer said. “You go to praise and worship, and it is really just singing and prayer, which I think can be acts of worship, but at the same time, I really think they’re more acts of praise.

“We have the worship of the Mass and the sacrifice. There’s that special, unique act of worship that trumps everything else.”