In Lauren Reed’s journey of faith, walks have played a pivotal role.
Reed – who was baptized and also received the sacraments of Confirmation and Eucharist at the Easter Vigil on April 4, 2026 at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington – shared the story of her lifelong walk of faith in an interview with the Catholic Standard newspaper.
As a junior at the University of California at Los Angeles, she was experiencing personal and academic challenges.
“I took a long walk – I would do that to reset,” she said.
Before attending UCLA in that bustling city, Reed had graduated from a small Christian academy in a town in central Washington state. That transition was important in her faith journey, she said, noting that it opened her up to a new world as she met people from different backgrounds and experiences.
But along the way, she had drifted from her Christian faith. During her long walk, she worried about not liking any of her pre-med classes and felt she needed to pivot, and she also “did not feel loved.”
“It was the first time I had prayed in a year. It had been a long time since I had a heart-to-heart talk with God,” she said.
As tears streamed down her face, a woman making a mail delivery noticed her, stopped and hugged her, and said, “Miss, I want to tell you something. God loves you.”
“She gave me a big hug and kept saying, ‘God loves you,’ over and over. I really needed that. I wiped my tears away,” Reed said, remembering that moment. She added, “It was a hard day. I had some dark thoughts about life and death. I needed that reminder that God loves me.”
That moment, she said, “was really the pivotal turn for me. I had been so far from God, and I came back.”
She started reading the Bible again and did Bible study. That summer, she worked in an internship in Washington with Deloitte, which provides consulting and financial services to corporations and government agencies. She reconnected with a few friends who had been sorority sisters with her in Alpha Delta Pi at UCLA, and went church-hopping with one of those friends who had been raised Lutheran and whose grandparents were Catholic.
Later after graduating from UCLA, majoring in cognitive science and minoring in applied developmental psychology and philosophy, Reed got a job as a consultant and business analyst with Deloitte and returned to Washington in 2025.
She and her friend resumed church-hopping together. After doing a lot of research into church history, that led Reed to wondering “whether I wanted to go the Orthodox route or the Catholic route.”
“At that point, I had gone to a non-denominational church, a Presbyterian church, a Lutheran church, and then I also visited an Episcopalian and an Antiochian Orthodox church,” she said.
Then she and her friend went to St. Matthew’s Cathedral, “and that was my first time going to a Catholic Mass,” Reed said, adding that she felt her anxieties about finding a church home falling away. “I loved it. The first time I went in and felt a lot of peace… I felt like I was getting one step closer to God with each part of the Mass.”
At her first Mass at the cathedral, “it really felt like I was there to glorify and worship the Lord, and not glorify myself or a pastor,” she said.
Reed went to two more Masses at the cathedral before joining the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults classes there in preparation for receiving the Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil.
“What made me want to become Catholic was the Eucharist in particular,” Reed said, noting the Catholic teaching that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ, based on Jesus’s words at the Last Supper. “That’s what convinced me to want to have my First Communion and first Baptism in the Catholic Church,” she said.
Another factor that drew her to the Church was its universality. “I really appreciate how with Catholicism, no matter where you were in the world, everyone was at the same Mass and reading the same Gospels, and that made me feel I was really part of a strong and loving community,” Reed said, adding, “I felt connected when I think I needed that support the most… I felt a great joy to be a part of that.”
She appreciated how her OCIA classes “pointed us back to the Lord and our personal relationship with Him.”
A group of friends who go with Reed to Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral have been a great support to her, including her sponsor for the Easter sacraments, Gabby Lesiv; and two of her sorority sisters from UCLA – Anna Moeller, the friend who she had gone church-hopping with, and Sriha Srinivasan, who has been praying for her while walking on part of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Portugal.
“It’s a very special thing to have friends with such a beautiful faith,” she said.
As for Reed’s future walk of faith after the Easter Vigil, she hopes to participate in the St. Matthew’s community, including with the young adult group and a prayer group there.
“I’m really open to what the Holy Spirit has in store for me. I’m going to let the Holy Spirit lead my feet,” Reed said.
