NCYC 2025
Times of ‘failure’ and anxiety can lead to God’s call for our lives, youths tell peers
By John Shaughnessy
Like a growing number of teenagers, Felicity Britt and Mary Cing struggle with anxiety and a fear of failure.
At the same time, they were brave enough to share their struggles and fear with thousands of their peers at the National Catholic Youth Conference.
As they opened their hearts during the talks they gave at the conference, they also offered a path to a closer relationship with Christ through their humility, their hope and even their touches of humor.
“Like a lot of teens, I find myself struggling with anxiety, and trying to figure out what I am doing,” Felicity began her talk at the conference on Nov. 21. “Like a lot of Catholics, I’m trying to find my vocation and search for God’s call in my life.”
A member of St. Roch Parish in Indianapolis who is a homeschooled, high school junior, Felicity thought she had found her answers in a creative way. She started to design, create and sell faith-inspired sweatshirts, with plans of donating the proceeds to a shelter for women and children.
“If I can’t make a huge difference in the world, the least I can do is make a small difference for a few people who need it,” the 17-year-old told her peers. “That kinda helps you get over the anxiety. Helping others, serving others—that’s part of how Jesus is working through our lives.
“The only problem is, I didn’t sell a single one! And anyone who’s had a failure like that knows it’s extremely disheartening for something you poured your heart and soul into to crash like that. And not even crash, but to never even get it off the ground.”
Still, she continues to make sweatshirts.
“Why? Because I want people to know it’s our effort that matters. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have immediate success. There’s still an effort behind it to love and serve.”
She felt the force of another so-called “failure” when a friend drifted away from the Church. Felicity thought she could have done more for her friend, but her choir director told her, “It’s in God’s hands. The best thing you can do is live a life so full of God’s love that it becomes a light for her and others.’ ”
That’s what she tries to do, Felicity told the audience, even as she’s still sometimes full of anxiety.
“Selling sweatshirts–or trying to sell sweatshirts–is a small thing. But it’s done with big effort. And with an even bigger desire to share what I have learned about love and Jesus and discipleship. There are so many people in the world doing small things for the Lord but with big effort. Imagine if we all did that?”
In closing, she said, “I’m scared! I still don’t know what my vocation is or how exactly I’m supposed to be loving and serving others. But I am called. We all are. Called to give what we have, even if that’s just a pocketful of anxiety and a couple of unsold sweatshirts.”
‘It didn’t go as I hoped’
Felicity developed her talk—and the confidence to share it—through the Preach All Ways Initiative at Marian University in Indianapolis, a program designed to help youths and lay adults share their journeys of faith with others.
Sixteen-year-old Mary Cing also participated in the program, leading to the story she shared at NCYC on
Nov. 22—a story also touched by doubt and failure.
“Last summer, I participated in a week-long summer program at Marian University called the Missionary Disciples Institute (MDI) that included daily faith activities and new encounters with other young Catholics,” said Mary, a member of St. Mark the Evangelist Parish in Indianapolis and a student at Providence Cristo Rey High School in Indianapolis.
“After MDI, I had big plans on what my journey of discipleship would look like, but it didn’t go as I hoped, and I never actually got to carry out my planned way of serving others.”
Living that experience, Mary told her peers that she felt like St. Peter when he “asked if Jesus was really going to wash his feet.”
“Peter thought discipleship would look like one thing, but Jesus surprised him with a call to perfect humility,” Mary told the audience. “This is the mysterious and challenging thing about the way God works. We are always fed and sent out by God in the Eucharist, but our next step after that is not to focus on the benefit behind the missionary work we perform, but instead, to give space for God’s calling to grow in our hearts.”
She said we also have to realize that God “knows what we’re meant to do and when we’re meant to do it.
“And he often calls in perfectly unexpected ways,” she continued. “The greatest way to answer God’s call is to let him fill you with his love in the sacraments, so that you can receive his clarity in the moments when you would least expect him working in your life.
“We may not know right now what God is calling us to do, but we do know what God is calling us to be, and that is a disciple who is perfectly open to him.” †
See more stories from the National Catholic Youth Conference here