It's taken 19 long years, but I'm finally on my way. I OWN my own faith, I FEEL it and LIVE it and not just say it. It's been quite the rocky journey to get here, and it's taken some losses and some hardships and sometimes God just stepping back and letting me fall on my face over and over again. But I'm here now. I'm old enough and smart enough to have learned how to distinguish between the church and my own faith. I've got a REAL relationship with God, not just one that's surface. That's defined by what other people tell me.
I grew up in a home where we don't talk about a whole lot. It's not necessarily a bad thing, if you're like my parents who are introverted and don't normally process things by talking and exploring ideas with other people. But I'm not like that. If I'd gone to them with a concrete question, with a confusion or with something that I'd needed to discuss, I'm sure they would've been open to discussing it with me. But I never really learned how to do that growing up. Which is probably why I tend to be so closed off. So I grew up trying to process my faith without community. Without talking. Solitarily. And my faith was one that, though I tried, I never really owned. I never knew that it was ok to not have a particular day or moment when I just handed my life over. I never knew that it was ok that my life wasn't a compelling testimonial about a reformed drug addict or something. So I tried to make it like that. And I tried to pray the way they did in the books. I read a book that I didn't understand because I didn't know how else to feel righteous. I drove people away with an over-zealous outward expression of my "faith", which in retrospect was a compensation mechanism to feel closer to God because I didn't have any other way. I was so good at saying the right things and being holy and righteous, but I didn't know what I really stood for. I didn't live it - I just pretended. Thank God for my best friend, who saw who I was, but also what I could be. Who I could be. And she loved me. Regardless.
Then I hit my sophomore and junior years of high school. Things started changing. People started changing. So slowly I didn't even notice what was happening to me, to the way I viewed the world. People who I thought were my friends weren't anymore. I got dragged into the middle of fights between friends. I was involved in some fights of my own, mostly with my parents. I started reading books for school and thinking about the things they were saying. I found myself wondering, first about if I really believed what I was saying. Then if I ever could believe it. Then I thought about how dumb people were for believing that God could save them. Then I thought about how dumb people were for even believing in God. I didn't. For a long time I didn't. My best friend was still there. Unconditional love.
I was forced to go to church, which only drove me futher away. I sat and listened to most sermons and listened to people sing worship songs and then gossip during the peace, I listened to judgement being unfairly passed, I heard the message that I wasn't good enough and never would be (which, although partly true, was carried to the extreme). I heard the message that being a Christian means being eternally happy, that you are not allowed to hurt.
I hit a rock-bottom at the end of my junior year. But that wasn't my returning point. I mean, it was the beginning of the end, but it wasn't the beginning of the beginning. I started re-examining my closet atheism, but I wasn't a believer. I had been ashamed - first of my doubts and then of my conclusion. I hid it from everyone. I still acted the part I knew I was supposed to. But I started thinking again.
Somehow, by the Grace of God (because there truly is no other explanation), I found my faith again. I started reading my Bible. I started reading other books. I started talking to people. And I stopped pretending and started being real. I admitted doubts. I talked to people. I started living my faith in a community - first that started with me and that ever-faithful best friend, and then expanded to more and more people. It's only been in the last year that I can truly say that I am a devoted Christian (though the label sometimes still makes me cringe). I can say that I've defined my faith not by the church, but by my own relationship with God. That's where my faith begins and that's where it ends. I'll go to church sometimes, if I feel called. I need to find a church that fits my needs, not my parents needs. But I have a relationship. I can talk to God. Not just pray and walk away, but actually talk to Him. Listening and talking. Give and take. A real relationship.
And thank the Lord I had my best friend there. Otherwise I might not have made it.
And it's the only thing, the one and only thing, that gives me strength, that gives me this lasting, secure, and profound happiness. God has blessed me so greatly with this life, with these friends, and with His Great Grace and Love. And I am so eternally Happy!!!
