The beginning

I thought it best to start with a little background.

I have always believed in God. I was raised Methodist and I can remember going to Sunday School at our church. I don't remember learning anything there. But I remember going. I don't think we went every Sunday. I don't ever remember my dad going to church with us... just me and my Mom.

I went to Catholic junior high and high school. I gained some opinions about the Catholic faith while I was there. I won't share those here.

In college, I decided that going to church was merely to prove to others that you believe in God. I felt, and still do, that faith is a personal relationship between oneself and the Lord. I found that I felt closer to God in places other than church. It was many years before I went to church again.

My first year teaching, I taught in a Catholic school. We went to mass once a week. I taught Kindergarten and preschool there. The mass wasn't altered to the level of the students. I felt badly for them, having to sit there and listen to something they couldn't possibly understand. I wasn't allowed to teach religion, because I am not Catholic, so I wasn't able to discuss the message with them.

Mike and I were married and soon moved to another city. We found out 9 months later that we were going to be parents. I had a strong desire to find a church. I was surprised by this feeling... but we went with it. We began attending a Catholic church in the town we lived in (because Mike is Catholic). While I was pregnant, it wasn't too bad. Although I never felt like I belonged there. After Blake was born it was even worse. I found that if I went to the cry room, I wasn't able to hear the sermon because the other parents in the cry room were discussing events of the week or upcoming plans, and the children in the cry room were doing homework or running around. We continued going to this church sporadically until we moved back to the town we live in now. We "church hopped" around here quite a bit. Mike joined the military and was often out of town so that left me and my 2 year old, boisterous boy to go to church together. I rarely got anything from the sermon because I was so busy trying to keep him entertained and quiet.

I pretty much quit going to church. And continually felt guilty for it.

Then a friend at work invited us to attend her church. She kept telling me how wonderful the church is and how much we would love it.

I finally told Mike that I thought we should give it a try. He agreed. We went. We fell in love. The church felt like home to us. We felt welcome the moment we walked in, even though nobody came running up to us thanking us for coming. The church is huge (over 1500 members) and growing more and more.

That first Sunday had us hooked. But tragedy struck our lives in the form of an ectopic pregnancy the following Friday. I had to have emergency surgery, which ended up being more invasive than they thought it would need to be. I was off work for the rest of the year (I'm a teacher) and was told I would need at least 6 weeks to physically recover. We didn't attend church during that time.

When we did finally go back, we felt even more at home. They have a fabulous program for children, so we were able to drop Blake off in his classroom and then attend worship ourselves. Blake fell in love with the church as quickly as we did. At 6 years old, if we went out of town he would ask, "Will we be home in time for church?" He is now 8 and still loves going to church. He has learned so much...much more than we could ever teach him at home.

That pretty much brings us up to date. If you've made it this far... thank you for reading!!

I purposely chose a very plain palatte for this blog. I want the focus to be on my journey with Christ, and not on some artistic background.