My Journey with Finding Faith

Religion has always been around for me, even at a young age.. obviously since my name is Faith, my mom picked it directly from the bible.. however it wasn’t a sacred thing, or something that was looked at for comfort, not taught to us.. I knew nothing. It was just.. there.

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Originally, my family was Catholic.. I don’t remember much from that time or if this was before I came along, but eventually my immediate family converted(?) to Christianity. However they switched I am not sure or if they just decided to go to another church. The Catholic Church they were in was very judgy .. if you dressed nice you sat up front, if you didn’t dress nice you sat in the back. My mom would help sit people in the pews and this is what they told her to base it off of. My dad would help with various things around the church, I know he would help with landscaping eventually at the next one, but not 100% if he did that at this Catholic Church. 

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At some point, someone started rumors that my mom was cheating on my dad.. and created a whole story of it that was floating around the church, and essentially labeled them as toxic and un-church-like people. My mom was not cheating.. but the stereotypical church hypocrites were alive and well. That pushed them out of the church and they didn’t go back, and switched soon after to a Christian church.

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It was, from what I can remember, better there. My dad did do landscaping here, I vividly remember “helping” him.. as much as a 7/8 year old could lol. We ended up moving in 1999 to a more country style town verses the city we were in. 

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I eventually made some friends, and they would invite me to their church so I would drag my family there.. nothing excited them about it and I didn’t know anything or understand anything that they were talking about so I didn’t ask to go back. It wasn’t really a ‘hit’ with everyone. It definitely could’ve just been the church or how the sermon was being presented to us.. but at the time it didn’t motivate us to go back, and soon after we moved we had other big issues to deal with like my parent’s divorce..

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Fast forward several years.. no church attendance, no anything, just living my life however.. I never not believed in God, I thought that since I believed in God that that was enough.. church never was a place of comfort, or anything like that. It was just a building with people who were more two-faced that anything.. didn’t practice what they preached.

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I met my now husband at a dance studio of all things, that’s another story for another time. He’s a few years older than me, but young at heart as they always are, we connected and eventually started dating. His family was religious, bibles on the coffee table, added little ‘Praise God’ at the end of texts or at the bottom of birthday/ holiday cards.. Nothing like I grew up with. My uncle would make a joke of blessing the food at holiday meals, we’d all laugh because it was almost the tradition. One time while I was at my husband’s parent’s house, they had asked how my day at work was, I responded with it was ok had a headache most of the time but oh well, just a nonchalant answer. His mom responds with I’m so sorry I’ll pray for you. I thought that was so odd, I’m thinking why? It was just a day, and it’s almost done.. why bother the big guy with that? Lol.. and in truth I still kinda feel like that, I’m just a realist, I believe that things still happen and days can still suck.. but I just move on to the next day. I could be wrong with that? I don’t know, I’m still learning.. lol

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Point is that my up bringing with religion was a lot different than my husband’s. They grew up knowing, or at least understanding verses, I grew up being quizzed on who the lead signer or guitarist was for Megadeath or Metallica.. They grew up going to church on Sundays, I grew up trying to do that with only finding hypocratic people or pastors who couldn’t relate the message. Don’t get me wrong, my husband’s family had their battles as well, but religion was a little more important for them. 

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I understand why now, I didn’t or couldn’t grasp it then. Through the heartache I’ve been through the past few years in my marriage really brought me to my lowest point of self esteem, self love, and self respect.. I believe now that without this hard journey I wouldn’t have found how God could help me. 

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By the time we were engaged, we had found a church, a baptist church that his family went to, and quickly found our place there. My husband would help with the sound board, and I would work the visual effects for the band, we would help put on productions, and work in the nursery, and we really connected to the pastor as he related the message to us and taught us how to actually apply it to day to day battles. Unfortunately the church turned on the pastor, and ran him out. There were too many people in the church not ready for it to contemporize .. from the music to the message.. to even the stupid color of the trash can liners. Yes that was an actual issue. So we lost our pastor who married us, and the church that my husband’s family actually built. We couldn’t stand the thought of still being there with people who couldn’t get on board with what the church is actually for.

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After that whole debacle, we didn’t end up going to church until a few years later, after my husband’s dad’s passing. At the funeral, this guy we never saw before spoke, he was interesting how he related the message, talked about stories.. we thought he was just a guy that became close to my father-in-law. Come to find out, he was the new pastor at a church my mother-in-law’s family attended.. and this was the guy that ended up saving our marriage.

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We decided to try out this church, we wanted to find a church that worked for us so figured why not. The people were kind and welcoming, the kids zone was fun for our daughter, and we obviously already connected with the pastor and how he projected his message. It was still relatable, intriguing, and left us wanting to continue the message at home. Was this super instant for me? Not really, it took time, however it was something that motivated me to go again. 

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Eventually we connected with people, joined life groups, both of our kids were making friends and enjoyed their time in class, ended up working great. The church grew in the meantime, the church started with a small congregation and regularly has hundreds of people every week, and has even expanded to two other churches within our area. 

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Anyways, during the time of needed help in our lowest part of our marriage.. we sought after counseling with our pastor, and he has been such a support, leading us through our roles as husband and wife, man and woman, and how we use the bible to guide us further. But aside from that, he taught me how to find comfort in God while going through a bunch of crap to say the least. So much hatred for myself and for my choices in our marriage would bring me down so much, even though I wasn’t the one making decisions to cheat, but that’s what I was feeling. God gave me a chance to breathe, to safely self reflect, and being within the church- it showed me that I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only broken one, I wasn’t the only one hurting, we are all broken people looking for a breath in our own messes. Wanting to feel something other than hate, but gratitude that we made it through and that we will always have God with us, and that he is carrying us to our next step.

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Know that if you are struggling with anything, God is with you. He wants to help you, and he is there waiting for you to turn to him to help you get you through your darkest times. 

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Psalm 28:7– “If it wasn’t for the struggles, you wouldn’t be as strong as you are today. God is always building you up, even when it feels like He’s breaking you.”

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