To Whom Shall I Go?: Why I Laid Down My Protest

“I was taught to convert Catholics—then I became one.” Ellie Hiller grew up in the heart of the Protestant Bible Belt, immersed in a faith she believed was unshakable. Her faith shaped everything—her worldview, her family, her friendships, her marriage. Raised in the Church of Christ yet educated K-12th grade at the flagship school of the Presbyterian Church in America, Ellie lived within two traditions divided on many points of doctrine but united in one conviction: Catholicism had perverted the simple, saving Gospel and turned it into “traditions of men.” Over time, however, subtle contradictions between the two traditions began to emerge. Tensions between what she was taught at home and what she learned at school unsettled her, taking root in her mind and refusing to let go. Where had these two traditions split, and why? Which should she believe when both were reading the same Bible? As an athlete, those theological tensions became physical. Ellie wrestled with the disconnect between a faith largely lived in the mind and a life powerfully experienced through the body. Why was the body—through which she encountered so much of God’s world—so often treated as secondary in the spiritual life? Where did the tangible and the incarnational belong in worship? Confident she would find these answers in her Protestant tradition, she set out to uncover a biblical theology of the body. But when her husband of four years told her he wanted to become Catholic, her unshakeable faith began to crumble, and her worldview unraveled. In her grief and desperation to stop his conversion, God began a work in her heart—using her very questions about the place of the body in His plan for salvation to lead her toward a sacramental faith. Her story is one of struggle and surrender–an unlikely journey that led her, step by step, into the arms of the Church she once sought to save others from.