My earliest walks with God. (Part 1)

A story of how my faith has grown into what it is today.

The most influential people along my faith journey:

• My mother
• Suzan (long time family friend)
• My step-mother
• Beth Moore
• C.S. Lewis
• An old Co-worker
• Father Gerry (head reverend at my church)

As some read this they might be surprised, where others won’t be.

My most memorable day in church, I cannot remember how old I was, but it was a Sunday morning, and I wasn’t feeling all that well, and all I had eaten for breakfast was a piece of toast. At this time we were going to a church that our family friend Suzan had told my Mom about, it was a Christian church but I don’t remember the denomination. We had arrived for service (all four of us, which was pretty rare for my dad to come with us) me, my sister, mom, and dad. About 15 minutes before services were over I had this strange feeling come over me and then the sudden urge to throw up (yes, I was the kid that threw up in church…). Luckily there was no one else in our pew so my dad ran me to the bathroom, where I did not throw up again… strange.

I have revisited this memory a lot over the past several years and for some reason I don’t think what happened was a simple as flu. That day in church hit me harder than any other day I can remember. I felt lighter after that day, more connected to God, more open to the idea of being baptized. Obviously I will never know what exactly happened that day until I meet God, but still like to remember that day as the beginning of my journey.

After that day my live returned to normal for the most part. A few years later my parents divorced and my dad moved in with my step-mom. My step-mom introduced me to the Catholic Church. At first I was intimidated by the grandeur of the church we went to, the anointing of the holy water every time you entered, the songs responses that everyone but me had memorized… but over time I became very comfortable in the church. I also decided for my junior and senior years of high school that I wanted to go to a private school to help prepare me for college. So I attended a Lutheran High School for two years. We had chapel every Wednesday and it was lead by students with the supervision of a teacher. This is where I become fascinated with all religion. In my first week of school in my first ever religion class, one of classmates asked me “if you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?” I thought about it and my response was “Nothing.” He was a little surprised by my answer as he told me that no one had ever given him that answer before. To this day, I would not change one thing in my life, good bad or ugly, it all made me who I am today. By the time I finished high school, I started to contemplate becoming a catholic, I explain why I chose the Catholic faith a little later. I moved off to college and stoped going to church and started to feel a little lost.

I had to take a humanities class for college and the first book we read was the Bible. There were a lot of people upset that we were forced to read it, but like the professor explained, if you take it for face value it is just a collection of stories. I agree to an extent, but then again I am a Christian so it is so much more than that! I remember having open discussion groups for this class and peers saying how it was impossible for that the world to be created in 7 days, and how people could never have lived that long. They were having trouble taking it for face value, a collection of stories. The one thing that I have always thought (which you are entitled to disagree with me) is that time worked differently in the Old Testament. The calendar year that we live by currently is not the same one that Jesus lived by nor is it the same as the one the people in the Old Testament lived by. With this thought, how can we say that someone couldn’t live for 150 years or more.

I knew in my heart that I needed to find a church during my sophomore year of college. I tried a couple of churches that had a large college student following but never felt that the pastors were sending the right message for me. I was working at Old Navy and one my co-workers said that she attended a non denominational Christian Church that also has bible studies. I went to a couple of services and I was hooked! Next step, bible studies! I went with my co-worker to my first bible study group ever. The study was of Daniel and the prophecy’s that he had. HOOKED! That was it for me, I knew by the end of that study that I had to find my relationship with God.

Stay tuned for more of my faith story! I’ll be posting another piece in two days!