Searching for God
What do you look for and Where Do you Look?
There are different answers to that question and they may change over a lifetime — as they did in mine. Here is a brief account of my search and how I view it today.
Linda K Saxton, OCDS
In childhood, my image of God was shaped by Bible stories — an imposing figure in the clouds, powerful and distant. In part, I formed this image of God from the picture to the left found in a family book of Bible Stories. Many years later it was suggested that it was not of God, but rather the prophet Elijah carried up to heaven in a chariot of fire. Regardless, my early sense of God was marked more by awe, distance, and fear than by loving relationship.
As a young adult in the 1970s, I encountered what I believed to be God during a group meditation. I experienced radiant warmth, light, and a profound sense of home within the core of my being, my soul. Over the next fifteen years, I devoted myself to a contemplative practice and life. My understanding of God during that time was expansive but impersonal — more like a universal consciousness than a relational presence.
Those years were sincere, lived with discipline and devotion to my spiritual practices and challenged to grow in my professional life. I was searching deeply, unceasingly with as little distraction from the world as possible. Yet something essential was missing: I did not yet know God as Someone who loved me personally.
Decades later, during a period of emotional healing, I encountered Jesus Christ in a new way. What began as curiosity became relationship. I came to know God not as distant or impersonal but as One who entered human life fully and loved me within it. I found God speaking directly to me through scripture, His Son, and impassioned believers.
In time, I found myself entering a Catholic church, where I experienced a quiet, steady sense of God’s presence. I did not yet understand the Eucharist, but I sensed that something — or rather Someone — was truly there. Though I hesitated at first, the desire to deepen that relationship led me eventually to begin the conversion process in Catholicism.
I was confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church four years later in 2019 at the age of 68.
Through the sacraments, Scripture, and the living tradition of the Church, my understanding of God became more embodied and relational. What I once sought through effort and interior practice, I began to receive through Grace. Catholic spirituality gave structure and depth to a relationship that had once felt abstract.
While viewing the statue to the right of St. Therese of Lisieux, I felt an inner calling so I read her autobiography,Story of a Soul to help understand why. That sparked my interest in writings by other Carmelites, such as St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross founders of a reformed branch known as the Discalced Carmelites. Their teachings of contemplative prayer and divine love felt familiar but not the same as the Eastern Spiritual practices I'd experienced. I have since joined the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites to continue learning how to live that prayer life in the world in contrast to a reclusive monastic life lived by the nuns and friars of the order.
Looking back, I do not regret the years of searching. They formed my capacity for silence and attention. But, they were preparation, not fulfillment. Fulfillment came in discovering that the sacred Presence I had long sought was not impersonal consciousness of the Eastern Spiritual traditions but the living, relational Christ - aware of me, loving me, and inviting me into deeper intimacy through the Eucharist and Prayer.
Wherever you are in your own spiritual search — whether questioning, practicing, doubting, believing, healing, or beginning again — know this:
God is already here.
You do not have to become spiritually advanced to find Him.
You only need to be willing to be found.