Here was this invisible man who could see everything I did, hear my thoughts, and was silently judging me. Like an evil Santa that would send me to hell, instead of putting coal in my stocking, if I stepped out of line. It wasn’t a very comforting thought.
As a teen, I attended a religious high school, became more involved in my church, and tried really hard to develop a personal relationship with the lord. In the chapel services I attended at school, they called on us to open our hearts to God, to accept him into our lives and be saved.
I tried, I really did. I prayed for God to save me, to come into my life and my heart and help me, but I never felt the miraculous change that others around me reported. It was no easier for me to resist temptation, my heart didn’t feel any lighter, and all of the hurt and anxiety that I carried around on a daily basis was still there. Instead of feeling better, I felt worse that I couldn’t seem to change. I wondered what was wrong with me, and if I would be condemned for loving God with a lukewarm heart. It seemed that no matter how much I desired it, I couldn’t stir up a fiery passion for my savior.
I spent years walking the walk and talking the talk of a Christian, but I always felt as if it was a sham. I spent my entire life in the church, I knew what to say and what to do, but I just wasn’t feeling it in my heart.
Then, when I was in my mid twenties, my world fell apart… I lost my church, my faith, and it was then that I set out on a quest to find my God.
You see, for all of those years, I had been a foolish person building my house upon the sand [Matthew 7:26-27]. I thought I had a nice place, but it had a really weak foundation. For my entire life people had told me what I should believe, and I had tried to fit my faith into their box, their house, their church, because they were people who held authority over me. I never questioned it, I never questioned them. When the rains fell, the floods descended, and the winds beat upon my house, it fell because the foundation was never anchored in my own heart. I was lost and left with nothing.
I’ve spent the last ten years rebuilding my faith, trying to find a path home. What I’ve learned during that time is that I’ll never stop building and learning, and I’ve also learned the path is different for everyone who travels it.
Faith is not in a building, or a book, it’s in your heart. You can’t be told how to achieve it, or where to find it, you have to search for it yourself.
During this time of rebuilding, I’ve become very strong in my beliefs, and passionate about my faith, which has compelled many people to ask me exactly what it is that I believe in. The simple answer is that I have faith in God, and it’s the one I most often give. However, I think that the most important question is not “What do you believe in?", but is instead “Do you believe?”
I recently became an ordained minister for the Universal Life Church, something that began as a joke, but is starting to become a little more serious for me. Originally I thought it might be fun to perform a wedding or two for friends if they needed it, and it would be a laugh to tell some of the self-righteous people I know that I’m a minister. As I’ve researched the tenets of the church though, I’m learning that the doctrine it’s founded on is closer to my own than I’ve ever found before.
Knowing that there are others out there like me, lost sheep trying to find a path, has perhaps made me a little bolder. I want to share my journey with others, and maybe together we can find our way home. You’ll find that most of my faith has a Christian spin to it, but I believe that all faith is important, and that tolerance is key to understanding. So if you’d like to join me on this journey I’d love to have your company, no matter what you believe, just as long as you do.
