Personal Journey(s)

:::Warning::: This post is riddled with personal opinion!

Being that I was never "raised" in the church I had a very difficult time as I got older attempting to find a church that I felt a sense of belonging too. When I was in Undergrad I had the pleasure of finding one church that truly felt like home to me, unfortunately, it is located three hours or so away from my actual home! I have always had faith no matter the level of exposure I had to church or the sporadic Sunday school trips we made when I was younger. I just always believed in God, and in Jesus Christ and that he did in fact die for my sins! I chose to get baptized the week after I graduated from college because I was ready to make my public declaration of faith at that time.

In reading this I'm sure you're saying oh okay well that sounds great despite your upbringing not being consistently grounded in a church family and etc. you were able to find Jesus and follow the necessary steps to become saved... But when I came home from college I found a church similar to the one that I used to go to in Undergrad and attended for some time but something just didn't resonate with me as it had in the previous setting. As time went on and I got busier I attended less and less. I never turned my back on my personal relationship with God but I had less time and less motivation to attempt to find another church or to make the one I was going to work.

I then started to think about why it was so important to go to church. I understood that it is important to fellowship with Gods people and the church is a place to give praise and worship to God as well as having a place to pay your tithes and so on and so forth. So for those who have been able to find that connection and that stability in a church I'm super glad for you, but it was apparent that I was having a great deal of difficulty doing so.

Well when Grad. school came about and all the craziness that goes along with it, the life/relationship/situational changes and etc. I decided to stop making myself feel bad for not having found that "right" place for me yet! I took a year to spiral into darkness that was overworking, and overpushing myself. Then I took a year to get myself together and work on my relationship with me, well more like a year and a half. Now I feel like I have so much more to offer my relationship with God. This year my focus is to take more time to talk to God, to study the word, read my devotionals, and work my way back to a place where I'm ready to look for and know what exactly I am looking for in a home church.

I found myself giving myself such a hard time and feeling so guilty that I was not going to church on a regular basis and at one point I just stopped and said wait a minute!!! I know that God wants me to be a part of a church but I'm pretty sure that he cares most about my relationship with him and that he has put me in the position that I am currently in and the situations that I have been through to lead me to be the very person I am, and to be on the very journey that I am currently on. For some I may be intellectualizing the situation too much, but if I've learned nothing over the last several years I have learned that every person is different, their personality and the way the think and feel and respond is different than the next persons. I can't let someone else's expectations of me or my desire to please others determine the decisions I make and how I live my life. I'll get where it is that he is leading me when I get there and that's all I really care about anymore, and for that I'm happy.