I can never remember not knowing about God, church and Sunday school were part of my life. As a baby I was baptized Catholic and went to a Catholic church all through elementary school. At some point we changed to a Presbyterian church, but in the end I really didn't know the difference. I can't say any church is bad, just my experience with them. By the time I was a teenager I was in our church youth group, now I know most are no where near what mine was, but let me just say it was bad. We only ever volunteered at a place once, because we would never be asked to come back. Don't get me wrong, I loved our group while I was in it, it just didn't exactly have any sort of Christian standards.
My parents brought us to church for the good morals, I know lots of parents do this, but I'm not sure it didn't do me more harm than good because all I saw was the hypocrisy of bringing us to church without truly being a believer. So this is a lot of what I saw the church to be growing up, a bunch of people who didn't believe who wanted me to believe??? I didn't get it. To top this off there was also everything we hear about the church in the news; How could the church possibly be a good thing?
At one point I got engaged to a bouncer at my favorite bar ( I will write more on this another time ). When asked about our wedding plans he told everyone we were getting married in the Catholic church....over my dead body! We didn't go to church and neither of us were believers, but he wanted to do it for our parents sake (as it turns out none of them were really believers either). But to me it was saying our marriage would be a sham, as I didn't believe in the powers that were to marry us. Needless to say it was all moot point as we never got much past this point.
Fast forward a few years, I am now a single mother thinking I need to look into some sort of religion for my sons moral upbringing, I didn't realize until later the issues this caused for me. Well I had good intentions of looking into religion anyhow. Then I met a guy in the bar 'James', on a 1-10 scale he was an 11 and yet here he was not only talking to me but hitting on me, the shy fat girl. The short story is that night he mentioned to me that he attended church every weekend, and at that point I felt convicted, if this great guy went to church every weekend, maybe their was something more to it. In the end he never called, so it became a joke between me and my friends I was going to search every church in town to find him. As it turned out a few days later my neighbor invited me to her churches welcome bbq. While her church was not for me, it did start me on my search for a church that suited me. This was actually about me, not about some guy I met in the bar. As it turned out a few months later I ran into an old friend and as we tried to co-ordinate our schedules it turned out the best time for me to get together with her was at her church.
All I can say is I found my home. The very first sermon I listened to seemed to be directed just for me, so did the ones to follow. This church took the time to get someone to walk along side me, and guide my path as a new Christian. As it turns out I ran into James again, not in church,, but in the same bar I originally met him in.
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