The Beginning

Every story has a beginning, so it seems that's where I should start.

My story begins at the beginning of my life. Though my mother was a believer, she didn't have me baptized because she felt that it needed to be a personal choice. You come to Jesus because you choose to, not because someone chooses for you.

My parents didn't go to church when I was very young. The first time I went to church/Sunday School, was when I was about 4 years old. The neighbors invited me. I don't remember too much about it, except that I was dressed all out in my Sunday best, and I remember coming home having loved it.

After my parents divorced, we moved to Michigan to be near my mother's family, and there I went to Sunday School and church every Sunday in a small church that my grandfather had built on his own land (which he donated to the church). Between my house (which was also on my grandfather's land) and the church lay my uncle's house (also on grandpa's land) and my grandparents' house. It was a quick walk through two yards to get to church.

For the record, I loved church. I loved Jesus. As a little girl, I felt like Jesus was always watching over me and protecting me. I felt loved. I participated in every activity I could. We were such a small church (in a small town) that everyone knew each other. There were potlucks and children's parties and family parties and church picnics. I was too young to participate in the children's summer camp (we moved away the year before I was old enough), but I did participate in summer programs.

When I was 14, we moved from our small town in Michigan to a much larger city. It wasn't a big city by any means, but we went from a town of roughly 4500 people to a city of roughly 75,000 people. It was a big difference to a young girl.

We lived within walking distance of a church, and I continued to go to Sunday School and church every Sunday. This was a part of my identity, and it helped me to adjust to the move. I didn't make a lot of friends at school, and church was a way of meeting people who were, more or less, open to friendship.

As I grew into my later teens and started high school, I started making more friends at school, I got interested in boys, and I get involved in extracurricular activities (including a job). I didn't seem to have as much time for church anymore. And I started having questions that the people I asked at church didn't answer in a way that was satisfactory to my inquisitive teenage mind.

I didn't make a conscious choice to stop attending church. As it happened, by the time I went off to college, I was no longer attending and, therefore, finding a church in my new place of residence wasn't a priority for me. I still believed in God, but it had become a more conceptual kind of belief than an active kind of belief. And this became my M.O. for most of my 20s.

In my late 20s, I was living in Nashville, married, and struggling due to all of the unrealistic expectations I place on my marriage, my husband, and even myself. Then a friend invited me to go to church with her. This was what I needed, and without knowing it, what I had been seeking. I didn't get as involved as I had been as a child and young teen. I did take part in some church activities, but I didn't join a small group, and I didn't become active in the community beyond the few friends I already had there. But, at the time, it seemed to be enough. So much so that on December 17, 1995, I was baptized. That's a story for another time, but I will never forget it.

The year that followed was not a good one for me. It was filled with a lot of painful experiences, including a divorce and the death of my mother. My mother's death hit me particularly hard, and it took me nearly a decade to recover. While I continued to go to church for a while, I just didn't know how to access the healing and peace that was promised. I think that a part of me shut down and didn't try. Maybe I was mad at God, or maybe I was just too broken to see clearly. Either way, I began to seek my peace elsewhere and slowly moved away from the church.

Two years after my Mom's death, I moved away from Nashville and to Michigan. My lifestyle changed a lot when I moved, and I ended up not seeking out a church. In many ways, I was rebelling against God and against the person I had been up until that point in my life. I ended up seeking the "spirituality" I desired in other ways and places, and the hole inside just kept getting bigger. By 2004, I no longer knew who I was, and I was leading a life that didn't make sense to me anymore. I tried to make sense of it and make it work, but I was completely lost. This is also a story for another time, but at some point in that year, I found myself realizing that I no longer felt any attachment to life. I knew I needed help, so I went to a therapist.

Two years later, I had found myself again and felt re-engaged in life. And just in time to be diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer—inflammatory breast cancer. This could have been a blow, but, instead, it gave me focus. I spent that year living life while fighting for my life, and somewhere in the midst of it, I found my way back to God. Or, more accurately, He brought me home.

That's the short version... the beginning, the middle, the present. The end is still being written, but the story has changed dramatically since I came back to my faith. And that's what this blog is all about. I'll tell the other stories, and the story of coming back to my faith in other entries. But I wanted to provide a context for this blog and what it's all about.

This blog is about my faith... what I believe, why I believe, and how that faith has shaped my life. I will share the ways I see God's hand at work in my life and new understanding about Jesus, my life in Jesus, and myself that result.