This past weekend was Easter weekend. I hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend, whether or not you celebrated. 🌷🌻
As a child my favorite Easter memories were dying eggs with my cousins, hunting for Easter eggs, and going to church with my family.
I was raised Catholic and attended Catholic school throughout elementary and middle school.
Starting in middle school, the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders would put on a play for the school called Stations of the Cross.
If you are not familiar with the Stations of the Cross also known as the Ways of Sorrow, they are images symbolizing the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. There are a total of 14 stations of the cross.
In seventh grade, I was cast as Mary Magdalene. I was excited because I had quite a long monologue to memorize, and if you know anything about Mary Magdalene she’s probably not the ideal person someone would want to portray.
Nevertheless, I was happy to play my part.
A lot of who I am and who I was as a child was heavily influenced by my attending of Catholic school, though my mother was not heavily religious.
My mom was raised Catholic and she thought it best to raise me the same way.
I ended up attending public high school, and it was quite a stark contrast to all that I had known in Catholic school.
I attended elementary and middle school with the same 30-31 students. Sometimes students would come and go, but I mostly only knew the same kids growing up. We had religion class including homework, and tests. This was graded on my report cards.
When I went to public high school, it was a difficult adjustment in the beginning. For the first few months, I was regretting my decision and wished I has chose to go to a Catholic high school.
The behavior of the students was shocking and I was overwhelmed having come from a small fishbowl of 30 students. My high school had a little over 3000 students.
As you can imagine it was definitely a real shock for me and I was learning and seeing things I had never experienced before.
Anyways, I don’t have any crazy high school stories. I didn’t join the crowd of people who got into trouble. I was mostly quiet, played sports, and kept to my small group of friends throughout high school.
However, during this time, I did turn away from God and Christianity.
I didn’t have any grand prophetic realizations about God, but I turned away from Catholicism, and Christianity, while ignoring a relationship with God in my life.
I stopped praying and stopped believing God was there and had an impact on my life. Mainly because no one talked about God in high school for obvious reasons.
This disillusion continued into my college years.
During college, I was definitely seeking external validation and trying to find, that through friends and dating.
I constantly felt empty, alone, sad, and disappointed.
To clarify, I didn’t necessarily stop believing in God, but I just closed the door on him and chose not to acknowledge his presence.
Towards the end of college in my junior year, I did find a campus organization called Cru, which was a denominational Christian organization on campus. I attended their weekly meeting for some time and for some reason felt called to go there.
We would talk about Jesus Christ and worship together. It felt nice being in the company of people who believed in God again. This was short-lived.
For a brief time, I also attended a young adult ministry with some co-workers I worked with at Starbucks. They had a relationship with God and I was drawn to this because I was searching for something.
Part of who I am is that I am always looking at the bigger picture and looking for meaning and purpose as well as signs of what I should be doing with my life.
Even though I did not pursue a relationship with God during high school and hardly during college, I do believe God has always been there for me.
He has always been watching over me.
I am guilty of being that person who prayed and called on God when I needed him and it was convenient for me.
When I was struggling and going through a hard time I would still find myself praying and asking God for favors even though I was in no position to be asking for my prays to be answered when God was a stranger in my life.
This conditional relationship with God carried on after college.
Fast forward to about a little over a year ago, my lovely friend Alex would invite me to church in San Diego. She also invited me to young adult ministry there which I would attend sometimes.
I would attend when I felt like it, when I wasn’t lazy, or when it was convenient for me.
Clearly, there was a pattern in my relationship with God.
Even though I still didn’t have a personal relationship with God, I believe he has always been present for me and calling on me. He has shown up in my life in unexpected ways.
No matter how far I distanced myself or wander away from God, he has always had a way of revealing himself to me and drawing me near to walk alongside him.
Since moving to Montana I did not expect nor was I actively pursuing a relationship with God.
I was still praying and talking to God here and there, but I was still at arms length.
This January, my boyfriend asked if I wanted to go to church because a work colleague had invited him to attend service at River of Life church.
I did not hesitate. I was interested. We went to church one Sunday, this past January, I was nervous the day we went.
I was nervous because the church wasn’t really mine or my boyfriend’s thing.
We went, and as you would expect for non-churchgoers, at least speaking for myself, it was awkward. It was uncomfortable.
I was judging the Pastor. (Yes, I said it.) I was comparing this church to my other church experiences and trying to decide if I liked the Pastor and if what he was saying resonated with me.
I was also unfamiliar with the worship songs and trying to decide if I liked them. I was a stranger and it was new and unfamiliar.
Think back on all the times you tried something new and immediately wanted to reject it and find something wrong with it as an excuse not to have to show up again.
This is what I was feeling because I was a stranger and I felt like an outsider who didn’t have a relationship with God. I felt like I didn't belong.
Because I didn’t know the Pastor, because I didn’t know the worship songs, and because I didn’t know anyone at the church aside from my boyfriend.
I decided to continue to go to church the following weekend. Still, it was uncomfortable and unfamiliar, but I felt called to be there.
So I continued to go the following weekend. After a few Sundays of attending church at River of Life, it really started to click. I felt called to be there.
Since then I have been steadily going to church each Sunday morning. Sometimes life has gotten in the way, but I have made it a priority to attend church. As a child, it felt like a chore going to church.
As an adult I feel called by God to be at church and it doesn’t feel like a chore. It feels uplifting and I have slowly created a small community at church. I have been attending the young adult ministry Bible study. I have created connections and new friends.
I really enjoys Pastor Jason’s sermons now and I feel like his words speak into me and resonate. Worship is now my favorite part and the song get me pumped for the word of God.
I also started a weekly virtual Bible study with my friends, Alex, Dani, and Rosalind. It has been really rewarding reading the Bible and discussing it as it relates to life and society today.
This has been my faith journey. Not linear and not perfect. I have wandered and strayed. I have doubted and lost faith.
However, my faith journey continues. I am working on building my relationship with God, now I am deliberate and unafraid.