Day 25: In Chapter Eighteen, I become a “Church Chaser”! 🙂 Share your own story of faith. Your beliefs, your journey to find a church or place of worship, and how believing in a higher power has impacted your life.
I’ve always considered myself to be a religious and faithful person. I was brought up in the Catholic church. I attended Catholic school from kindergarten until eighth grade. At the age of sixteen, I chose to get confirmed in the Catholic faith. However, now, as an adult, I can say with full disclosure that I no longer attend the Catholic church. There are just certain things in the faith that I do not fully believe or support. I often found myself being told what to believe, and I never felt that I could think for myself or search deeper into my relationship with God as a Catholic. This is just my own personal experience. I have several family members and friends who are still very active in the Catholic church. I have nothing against it. It provided me with a great moral upbringing, and I do have a lot of fond memories from it growing up. It just isn’t for me anymore.
With that being said, I stopped attending church not long after I got confirmed as a teenager. If I went on Sunday’s, it was usually because my mother forced me to. I didn’t attend church too often in college. Occasionally, I would go to mass on a Sunday here or there, but it was never a priority to me. I went to a non-denominational church back home a few times, but I really didn’t start going back to church on a weekly basis until I moved to Nashville. One of my best friends invited me to go with her to a local community church one Sunday evening, and I fell in love with it after the first service. Everything just finally started making more sense to me, and the messages that the pastor delivers each week always resonates with me on such a deep level. It’s always so applicable to whatever I’m going through in life, and it’s exactly what I need to hear, even when I don’t always know it. I like walking into a church that is far from traditional. I feel less intimidated and less judged. I love that this church focuses so much on serving those in need, not only within our Nashville community, but globally, as well.
I don’t consider myself to be a perfect Christian girl at all. I believe in God, but I’ve certainly had my moments of doubt when I turned my back on Him. I’m still very much in a phase of life where I’m trying to develop a deeper understanding of God and my own faith. I think I’ll be like that for awhile, to be honest. Regardless, I’ve learned that nothing in my life is ever up to me. It’s all up to God, and I’m doing my best to trust in His plan, even when I don’t always understand it.
La Bella Vita 