maryanne’s testimony

i have known the name of Jesus for as long as i can remember.

i am a cradle Catholic. i grew up in the Catholic school system from kindergarten all the way through high school. i was baptized, made my First Confession, received my First Communion, and eventually received the Sacrament of Confirmation.

Catholicism was always around me.

but for a long time, that was exactly what it was.

around me.

God felt almost like another subject in school. i learned about Him, learned the prayers, received the Sacraments, and knew what a “good Catholic girl” was supposed to look like. by the time Confirmation came around, i think i cared more about being seen as that good Catholic girl than i did about understanding what it actually meant to belong to Christ.

faith was present at home too, especially through my Filipino family. my grandparents and parents showed me from an early age that God was good. He was never this terrifying figure in the sky waiting for us to mess up. He was someone who loved us, someone we thanked, someone whose presence was simply woven into our family. we prayed before meals, and we still do. but that was mostly the extent of it.

God was always present in my life. 
i knew He knew me.
i knew He loved me.
but if i am being truthful, He still felt distant.

i knew about Him.
i did not really know Him.

that began to change in high school.

i joined a Catholic youth community, and suddenly faith looked completely different from the religion classes and sacramental checkboxes i had grown up with. i was introduced to praise and worship, keynote sessions, youth camps, assemblies, and young people who spoke about Jesus as though He were actually part of their lives.

because He was.

i remember being drawn to that.

our involvement in the community even encouraged our parents to become more involved and deepen their own faith, which is something i am still grateful for.

but if i am being completely honest, in the beginning, my reasons for staying were not entirely about Jesus.

i loved the community.
i loved leadership.
i loved having somewhere to belong.
i loved having another place where i could contribute, create, and be useful.

so i did what i have always known how to do.

i said yes.

i served through music ministry. i sang, played, danced, created, helped organize programs, worked with creative teams, supported youth camps and assemblies, and eventually became a chapter servant.
i poured so much of myself into ministry.

and i do not want to diminish how beautiful that season was, because it truly was. seeing other young people encounter Christ was one of the greatest rewards. being able to use the gifts God had given me to help introduce someone else to Him awakened something in my heart.

but in hindsight, i can also see something else happening beneath all of those yeses.

i started believing that this was how Jesus saw me.
through everything i did for Him.
through how much i served.
through how often i said yes.
through how useful i could make myself.

i had already learned how to perform for teachers, leaders, family, and even myself.

without realizing it, i had begun performing for God too.

then came Steubenville Toronto.
i attended in 2018 and again in 2019 with my parish youth group, and those weekends opened something in me that i did not fully understand at the time.

i remember Adoration especially.
hundreds of young people in one space, all focused on the same Jesus in the Eucharist.

and for once, there was nothing for me to organize.
nothing for me to lead.
nothing for me to accomplish.
nothing for me to prove.

i could just be there.
with Him.

and something inside me realized that there was so much more to Jesus than i had known.

i wanted more.

when i started at the University of Guelph, i found the University Catholic Community (UCC) and the Newman Centre quickly became one of the safest places for me on campus.

university came with its own anxieties. there were courses to keep up with, expectations i placed on myself, and the pressure of trying to fit into a university culture that felt very different from everything i had known before.

the Newman Centre became somewhere i could breathe.

but what made it especially meaningful was that i could experience Christ there without carrying the leadership labels i had become so used to.

i could start fresh.

not as maryanne the leader.
not as maryanne the chapter servant.
not as maryanne who had to make sure everything happened.

just maryanne.

through UCC and Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO), i took my first faith study, Discovery.

on paper, Discovery was an introduction to the Christian faith.
for me, it became an invitation.

i had spent years learning about God.
i had already served Him.
i had sung about Him.
i had spoken about Him.
but through that faith study, i began to understand that Jesus was not simply asking me to know more about Him.

He was inviting me to know Him.

there was a deeper level to all of this.

God desired my heart.

later that year, i attended CCO’s Rise Up 2019.

during Adoration, i surrendered.
and i gave Jesus my yes.

i did not know then what that yes would eventually ask of me. i definitely did not know how many times throughout my life i would have to give it again.

but i meant it.

something ignited in me.
i began recognizing this missionary heart that God had placed within me. i wanted to know Jesus more deeply, but i also wanted other people to know Him.

then COVID came.

the world became quieter, but strangely, my faith did not.

i kept taking faith studies. i prayed. i learned more about Catholicism. i started leading faith studies of my own. i became the communications and social media lead for UCC, and for all the difficulty that came with that season, the stillness gave me so much time for self reflection and prayer.

i grew closer to Jesus.

during that time, i also participated in the 2021 CCO Toronto Mission.

that experience strengthened so much of what Christ had already begun building in me. it pushed me to be bolder in my faith, to share the Gospel more openly, and to stop treating the good news as something i was supposed to keep safely to myself.

there is one moment from that mission that i will probably always carry with me.

one of the parishes where we helped host an Adoration outreach night happened to be the same parish where i had made my First Confession, received my First Communion, and later received Confirmation.

years earlier, i had received those Sacraments without fully understanding what God was inviting me into.

and now i was back. same parish. same church.

but this time, i was standing there with a guitar in my hands, singing and serving Jesus with a heart that had consciously chosen Him.

the church had not changed.

but i had.

and that moment felt like God quietly showing me just how far He had already brought me.

but even after all of that, i drifted.

toward the end of the pandemic, i entered a season where i became increasingly distracted from the person i knew God was calling me to be.

i found new communities, new routines, and new ways to fill my time. i met people i am still grateful to have known, and there were genuinely good memories from that season too.

but somewhere along the way, my desire to belong started becoming louder than my convictions.

i became numb. 
slowly, i started losing touch with parts of myself that once made me feel alive.
my creativity. my passions. my sense of direction.
and most importantly, the relationship with Jesus that i had spent years nurturing.

the Jesus i had once given my yes to became someone i kept postponing.

when i think about that season now, there is one image that always comes to mind.

a table set for two.
Jesus is sitting on one side.
and He is waiting for me.
He is not angry.
He is not impatient.
He is not asking why i am late.
He is simply there, smiling, waiting for me to take the seat across from Him.

and i stood Him up.
that realization still breaks my heart.

Jesus was waiting for me, and i kept choosing everything else.

eventually, that chapter of my life came to an end. relationships changed. friendships changed. and suddenly, many of the things i had built my days around were gone.

i had to find myself again.
and my family helped me do that, especially my kuya, my older brother.

my kuya became one of the people God used to pull me back into my own life. some days, he would bring me with him to school so i could sit there, focus, and finish my degree. i started taking care of myself again. i went to the gym. i slowly rebuilt routines. i began putting pieces of myself back together.

in a season where i felt like so much had fallen apart, God reminded me that love had been around me the entire time.

sometimes His love looked like prayer. sometimes it looked like the Eucharist.
and sometimes it looked like my brother saying, essentially, come with me. you have things to finish. let’s go. and food is on kuya (thanks kuya <3).

then Lent came.

every friday that year, i started attending the Stations of the Cross at my parish.

and at first, i really believed i was starting over with Jesus.
i thought i needed to rebuild everything from scratch.

i had walked away.
i had neglected Him.
i had chosen other things.

surely i had destroyed what we had built together.

but week after week, walking through Christ’s Passion, i began realizing something that changed everything for me.

i was not starting over.
because Jesus had never left.
i had been unfaithful.
His love had not.
i had stood Him up.
He was still sitting at the table.

and for the first time, i think i began to understand that Jesus’ love for me did not depend on how perfectly i loved Him back.

that changed the way i understood love itself.
love was not effort after effort after effort.
love was not proving how valuable i could be.
love was not giving everything i had until there was nothing left of me.
love was not performing well enough to deserve someone’s attention.

Christ loved me beyond my apparent value.

He loved me because i was His.

as i returned to Him, i also began falling in love with the sacramental life of the Church in a way i never had growing up.

i fell in love with Jesus in the Eucharist.

Confession became more than something i had once done because it was required of me. it became a place where i encountered mercy.

i began praying with scripture through lectio divina. i consecrated myself to Mary. i journeyed through 33 days with St. Joseph. i kept returning to the Eucharist.

all of these things that could once have felt like Catholic obligations began feeling like ways of staying close to someone i loved.

i still gamed. i even streamed. and through that, i met beautiful people too. 
the difference was that i had learned something important.

there is a difference between allowing something to be part of your life and allowing it to become the foundation of your life.

Jesus was no longer someone i wanted to squeeze into whatever space was left.
i wanted Him to be everything.

and somewhere in that season of returning to myself and learning what it meant to be loved by Christ without having to earn it, God also brought my partner into my life.

looking back, i can see Jesus in that part of my story too.

he met me at a time when the version of “maryanne berroya” that had once been so closely tied to recognition, leadership, accomplishment, and being known was beginning to quiet down.

he did not pursue me because of a reputation.
he did not know me because of everything i had led or accomplished.
he just got to know me. 
and he chose me for me.

that meant something deeply personal to a girl who had spent so much of her life believing that love and belonging were connected to what she could offer.

through our relationship, Jesus has continued teaching me lessons i clearly still needed to learn.

my partner challenges me to become a better version of myself. he has helped me recognize how often i shaped myself around other people’s expectations, and he has encouraged me to put down the people pleasing habits that had become second nature to me.

he has taught me that choosing myself does not mean loving other people less.

that boundaries do not make me selfish.
that peace does not have to be earned.
and that i do not need to abandon myself in order to be loved.

little by little, i began experiencing more of the inner peace Christ had already been inviting me into.

my partner did not become the source of my worth.
Jesus had already shown me where my worth came from.

but through him, God gave me another glimpse of what healthy love could look like.

love that challenges without diminishing.
love that makes room for honesty.
love that does not require a performance.
love that wants to see you grow while still believing that who you are right now is worthy of being loved.

he sees my softness, my sensitivity, my ambition, my quirks, my dreams, the parts of me that shine, and the parts i am still learning to be gentle with.

he sees me.

and i think God knew how meaningful that would be for me.

because so much of my relationship with Jesus has been learning this same lesson in different ways.

i am not loved because of how useful i am.
i am not loved because of how impressive i am.
i am not loved because i have managed to keep everything together.
i am loved because i am known.

sometimes Jesus has taught me that directly through prayer, Adoration, Confession, and the Eucharist.
other times, He has shown me glimpses of that love through the people He placed beside me.

my parents. my grandparents. my siblings. my friends. my partner.

different people. different seasons.

but somehow, the same message.
you do not have to perform to be loved.


then adulthood brought a different kind of distance.

when i started my first full time corporate job, i was exhausted.
there was no dramatic moment where i rejected God.

i was not angry with Him. i did not suddenly stop believing.

i was just tired.
really tired.

my life started feeling like one continuous cycle.
wake up. commute. work. eat. sleep. repeat.

i would come home emotionally, socially, and physically drained.
i had very little left for my family. very little for my partner. very little for my creativity. very little for myself.
and eventually, very little for God.

my prayer life became inconsistent. Jesus became someone i mostly saw on sundays at Mass. opportunities at church came, and i started saying no because i genuinely felt like i had nothing left to give.

there were bills to pay. there was work to do. there was a career to build.
and i convinced myself that if i could just become financially stable enough, professionally successful enough, secure enough, then everything else would eventually fall into place.

so i locked in.
and somewhere along the way, work began taking up almost all the room in my life. 
i was miserable.

eventually, as the job became more second nature, life started opening up again.

while working downtown Toronto, i found myself visiting St. Stephen Chapel whenever i could, sometimes every day, just to sit with God in the middle of the noise of the financial district.

those moments grounded me.

it was strange how just a few quiet minutes with Him could remind me of who i was again.
but at the same time, another struggle was beginning to grow underneath everything.

i became obsessed with moving forward.
i wanted the next job.
the next opportunity.
the next level.

i had a plan for my life, and i wanted it to happen on my timeline.
when opportunities repeatedly did not work out, the fear started creeping in.
then it grew.
and grew.
until eventually, it felt like it was everywhere.

i became terrified that i was falling behind.
professionally.
financially.
personally.

i was approaching 25 and started asking myself questions that felt much heavier than they probably needed to.

am i doing enough? am i successful enough? should i be further ahead by now? am i wasting my potential? what if everyone else is moving forward and i am just standing still? AM I GOING THROUGH A MID-LIFE CRISIS? IS THIS BAD FOR MY SKIN? how's my cortisol levels? am i living to the standards of my parents? am i living to the standards of myself??

the high achiever in me panicked.
and the perfectionist in me became cruel.

the same ambition that had pushed me toward so many beautiful things started turning against me.

i developed an intense impostor syndrome. my anxiety began affecting my relationships, my confidence, the way i saw my future, and the way i saw myself.
there were moments when everything felt like too much.
and asking for help felt almost embarrassing, because i had spent so much of my life being the girl who was strong.

the girl who was confident.
the girl who knew what she was doing.
the girl who had everything together.

i had spent years learning how to appear capable.
and suddenly, i did not feel capable at all.

during one particularly anxious week, when i felt disconnected from myself and completely overwhelmed by everything happening inside my head, i went to Confession at St. Michael’s Cathedral Basilica.

i did not walk into that Confession knowing that it would become another turning point in my relationship with Jesus.

but it did.

the priest spoke to me about my perfectionism in a way that stayed with me.

i began to understand that the part of me that wants to do things well, that cares deeply, that strives for excellence, is not something i need to hate about myself.

it can be a gift.
but even a gift can become distorted when it begins serving fear, control, pride, or selfishness.

and suddenly, i could see what i had been doing.

my vision had become so consumed by what i wanted for my life that i could barely see beyond it.
i wanted the right job. the right salary.
the right timeline.
the reassurance that i was progressing.
the proof that i was doing well.
the guarantee that everything i was working toward would actually happen.

and underneath all of that was fear.

fear that i was falling behind.
fear that i was wasting my potential.
fear that maybe the life i imagined for myself was slipping away.

and beneath even that was the same instinct that had followed me for so much of my life.
if i could just work hard enough.
plan carefully enough.
perform well enough.

maybe i could make everything turn out exactly the way i wanted.

after Confession, i sat in the front pew to do my penance.
and something in me finally let go.

i surrendered.

my career.
my plans.
my timeline.
my anxiety.
the version of myself i thought i needed to become.
the fear that i was behind.

everything.

i gave it to Him.

and He responded.

i still do not know how to explain what happened in my heart that day without making it sound simpler than it felt.
but the anxiety that had consumed so much of me loosened its grip incredibly quickly.

and there was peace.
real peace.

not because every external problem disappeared.
not because i suddenly knew exactly where my career was going.
not because God handed me a perfect five year plan.
but because for the first time in that season, i stopped demanding one.

for so long, i had been asking God to bless the life i was trying desperately to control.

that day, i finally gave Him the life itself.

and something changed.
i stopped living out of fear.

and i started living in love.

that does not mean i stopped being ambitious.
it does not mean i stopped caring about my career.
it does not mean i stopped dreaming.
if anything, i still dream very big.
but fear no longer gets to decide what those dreams mean about me.

i can pursue growth because i am excited about where God might lead me, not because i am terrified of being left behind.

i can work hard without making work my identity.
i can desire financial stability without believing money will somehow make every part of my life whole.
i can have plans without demanding that God follow them.
i can be ambitious without turning every achievement into proof that i am worthy.
i can breathe.

and maybe that is what Jesus has been teaching me my entire life.

when i was young, i thought being a good Catholic meant looking the part.
when i first entered ministry, i thought Jesus saw me because of everything i did for Him.
when i encountered Him in Adoration, He showed me that He wanted my heart.
when i wandered, He showed me that His love did not disappear when my faithfulness did.
when i returned, He showed me mercy.
when my family picked me up, He showed me that His love could meet me through the people who already knew me best.
when He brought my partner into my life, He showed me another kind of love that did not ask me to perform in order to receive it.
when work exhausted me, He reminded me that He could still be found in a few quiet minutes in a chapel.
and when anxiety convinced me that i was falling behind, He reminded me that my life was never a race He asked me to win.

through every version of me, His invitation has been remarkably simple.

come back. 
sit with Me.
let Me love you.

today, Jesus is my best friend.

He is my anchor.
He is my everything.
His heart is what i want reflected in mine. my heart breaks for the things that break His, and i feel more and more called to use whatever gifts, creativity, opportunities, and voice He has given me to help other people encounter Him.

not because i have mastered the Catholic faith.
i have not.

not because i never drift anymore.
i still have to choose Him.

not because every prayer feels profound or every season feels easy.
they do not.

but because i know now who is waiting for me.

and that is why i am sharing this.
because maybe you know His name too.

maybe you grew up Catholic.
maybe you received every Sacrament.
maybe you know every response at Mass.
maybe you once served.
maybe you once felt so close to Him.
or maybe you have never really known Him at all.
maybe life got busy.
maybe something or someone else slowly started taking up more space.
maybe you became numb.
maybe you are exhausted.
maybe you are angry.
maybe you feel embarrassed because you think you should have known better.
maybe you have spent so long away from Him that you do not even know what coming back is supposed to look like.
or maybe, like me, you think you need to rebuild everything before you are worthy of returning.
you do not.

there is still a table for two.

Jesus is still there.

He is not staring at the clock.
He is not keeping score.
He is not holding a list of every time you chose something else.
He is not waiting for you to become impressive enough, holy enough, or put together enough before you sit down.

He is just waiting for you.
i know because i have stood Him up more than once.
and somehow, every time i turned back toward Him, i discovered that He had never left the table.

His love did not depend on my faithfulness.
His mercy was not exhausted by my wandering.

His invitation had not expired.

there was still a seat with my name on it.

and there is one for you too.

you do not need to have everything figured out.
you do not need to know exactly what to say.
you just have to be willing to take your seat.

and maybe, when you are ready,
give Him your yes.