As far back as I can remember, I’ve been attending church. As a young boy, I remember my mom calling for me to wake up early on Sunday mornings. Often times I was hoping she’d forget it was Sunday or that there would be some other reason that we could stay home. Yes, it’s true, like most kids I did not like going to church. We always attended a very large, cathedral-style Catholic church. Endless rows of long, hard wooden pews lined the entire church in different directions around the alter. Huge, golden chandeliers hung down from the sky high ceiling. Beautifully, massive stained glass windows and gold detailing accented the towering walls. I remember many Sunday mornings spent studying the layout of the ceiling and attempting to count the individual lights on the chandeliers. The echo effect inside the large church, along with the priest’s accent made it difficult to follow. My sister and I would sometimes be given “The Look” from our mom for talking or not sitting still. To be fair, I wasn’t always distracted or zoned out completely from the mass.
I remember going to CCD classes on Monday nights, but we always called them religion classes. We learned about God and the ten commandments. We learned about the birth of Jesus and parts of His life and death. I can recall doing my first confession and also learning how to receive communion. I remember being so nervous for my first communion. I was trying to remember which hand went on top and what to say when the priest placed the Eucharist in my hand. Walk too fast and you might bump into the person in front of you, too slow and you will hold up the line.
My reason for telling you all of this is to express my mindset and thinking throughout this journey. My hope is that someone out there can relate to this and my prayer is that some small part of all this can help even one person whom it reaches. Now, the last thing I want is to put down or express negativity towards my upbringing in the Catholic church. Looking back, I can see the foundation that was built through my younger years. I thank my mom for never giving up on waking me up all those Sunday mornings. My mom’s relentless devotion to God and raising me in the church was the foundation for my faith and helped me to turn my life in the right direction. Even though I could not see the point of any of it as a child, there was something being planted deep inside of me.
Teen Years
Into my teenage years, I continued the routine of going to church on Sunday mornings. Around the time that I began driving, I started going to a Saturday evening mass with some friends. We had all grown up through the same upbringing and going to mass was just what you did. We never really questioned this process. It was a good thing.
Teenage years were especially tough, as I’m sure most can relate. I dealt a lot with depression and loneliness which lead to resentment and anger. Sometimes these things may not have always shown, but they were just below the surface.
During a particularly rough patch of teen life, I remember just wanting peace from all the stress and thoughts circulating inside me. Without telling anyone, I began going to the same very large church by myself on Monday nights. There was something about the nearly empty cathedral. It felt smaller, more intimate. At the time, I didn’t really want anyone to know I was going, so I’d park behind the church and just go sit in the back few rows of pews. It was right there, in those moments when I began to feel something different in this place I had for so long wanted to avoid as a child. I began to crave this time and look forward to this quiet escape from the worries and stresses of this life. To be completely honest, it wasn’t the mass or the words spoken by the priest, or the sound of the music being played. It was peace. True peace.
I desperately wanted this peace all the time. I needed it outside the confinements of the holy walls of the church. My one night of the week escape began to not be enough. A few days later, I would begin feeling stress and anxiety come creeping back in. I was praying as best as I knew how, even becoming angry with God that my circumstances did not seem to be improving much. I would vent all my concerns to God and pray the Lord’s prayer often. I really had no idea what I was doing or honestly how much I truly believed in all of this, but this was all I had to hold on to at this point.
I remember looking at the Bible from time to time and trying to read bits and pieces, attempting to make sense of the language in my King James Bible. As I did, I began to read things that didn’t seem to match up and raised questions to me about who God truly was.
At some point my sister had started going to a non-denominational church with her husband. This church was completely different from the one we had grown up in. I can remember her and my mom talking about this new church and thinking, ‘this sounds crazy.’ I used to feel the need to defend my church, my beliefs, and my religion. To me, it felt like my Catholic beliefs were being put down and under attack. I remember thinking that God said we should love all people, so why are you attacking me and my religion? I didn’t know what was right or wrong at this point, so I made a commitment that would forever change everything I thought I knew about God, the church, and myself.
I decided to read the Bible from cover to cover, so at least I could know for myself what it says. Just so you know, and to make something abundantly clear, I am not a reader. I do not enjoy reading and could never finish a book because I could not focus or remember what I had just read. I would read a sentence again and again and still felt that I could not grasp what was being said. After reading page after page, I would be left wondering what I just read. I just could not stay focused. Anyways, I had made my decision so I began…
“In the beginning God…”
Night after night, I read page after page, some nights just flying over the words and seemingly not understanding a word I had read. But I just kept going as I was on a mission. Mission for what exactly, I didn’t really know, but I was going to get through this book. Along my extensive journey, I found some interesting things that caught my attention.
I can remember one of the first things that stood out to me in Matthew 23:9, Jesus said “And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in Heaven.” I had to read this a few times. Did this mean I was not to call a priest by the title of father? To me this was just a sign of respect and frankly, just what we’d always done. So I kept addressing my priest as father, but this verse had stuck and I couldn’t help but feel that maybe this was not right.
Twenty Somethings
I started dating my wonderful wife in my early twenties. She had grown up very similarly in a Catholic church near her home. When we started going to church together, we began attending a Catholic church on a local college campus. The smaller size congregation and the priest at the time, who was easier to understand and follow, are what mainly drew us to that church. I was probably pretty close to having completed my first read through of the Bible by this point. I remember the day I told my future wife that I felt like there was something more to all this religion stuff. I told her that I felt like I needed to make some changes and I felt that I was beginning to see things in a different way. She didn’t quite get what I was saying and honestly I didn’t even fully get it myself.
Closing
I am not trying to tell you what is right or wrong. I know I did not like when someone would do that to me. My goal in all of this is not to prove one religion is better than another or to point faults in anyone’s faith. I am simply telling my journey with the hope that it may help someone to decide to dig deeper for themselves. I hope that if you are reading this, that you will make the decision to open the Bible for yourself. Not because I or anyone is telling you to, but to seek who God really is.
Remember that peace I found in that nearly empty church years ago? Well I realized it wasn’t confined to the church building. It was all around me, seeking me, and waiting for me to seek Him. I believe my decision to open that Bible and begin reading was me seeking. Even though I did not exactly know Him, He knew me. I began to realize that God is so much more personal than I thought. Going from a full church during Sunday mass, to a nearly empty Monday service, to where I belonged all along. Myself and God.
