Faith

I've been thinking a lot about faith, spirituality, religion, and God a lot lately and with good reason. We have a friend who has a little 3 year old who has been in the hospital now for a few weeks. He was perfectly healthy and now is on the Berlin heart after having been on ECMO for a week and is tentatively awaiting a heart transplant. A 3 year old.... who was perfectly healthy. How does that happen. What is amazing is his parents faith, their strength in God, their trust in him that he will carry them through. What's more amazing is that this little boy is healing when they said he wouldn't. He may not need the heart that they think he does, he may actually heal enough to go off the waiting list. There have been people everywhere praying and praying for him and it's working. His dad is keeping up their caringbridge site and every post is laced with God, with faith, and with hope. Their faith inspires me. It makes me think of how deeply passionate they are with their religion and wonder where I should be.

There was a suicide by a young boy in a nearby school district and Jared knew his mom. Although I did not know the family personally, I had a fellow student in 7th grade commit suicide and this brought back up those memories. It made me remember that faith had a part in our schools healing at that time.

So where am I now? I've always believed in God. Going to church was always a choice for me, I was never told I had to go and never forced. My family always let it be my choice. I went heavily through part of middle school and high school and then went intermittently a bit during college. Then after moving around, lost touch with having a "home" church. I've never been one who believed that going to church is what makes you Christian. It's how you live your life. I had friends throughout various parts of life who were very Christian on Sunday, went to church every week, gave you crap if you didn't, and every other day of the week were very judgmental and not so Christian at all. This had turned me off of church for a while since I knew in my heart where I stood and realized that it wasn't the going to church but how you lived your life. Now granted I am not an angel and am definitely not claiming to be perfect.

God has been in my life a lot! He carried me when I had cancer, he helped the doctors and nurse who cared for me, he helped my family get through it, he helped me survive. I've always prayed a lot but rarely outloud. He doesn't care, he still hears me. I prayed when JT was in the hospital with meningitis, I prayed when I was with our little friend when she had her seizures, I prayed when a good friend's mom died in a tragic accident. I prayed constantly when I had my BMT for my counts to return, for extra "time", for healing. I prayed when we started adoption and trusted that everything would work out. I prayed when we did infertility treatments and told him I'd rather it didn't work, than have it work and have a miscarriage. I've prayed and he's always listened.

We had started attending a church that reminded me a lot of the church I grew up going to but had some issues there with our first baptism and nursery issues and the church wasn't very child friendly in the services. People pointed out that our baptism and nursery issues may have been race related but regardless, I can't go to a church where I can't trust the nursery. There's been staff turnover now and I've heard the church is changing for the better but in the meantime since we stopped going there we started going to another church which more non-traditional non-denominational church that I really like. The sermons are meaningful and relate to real life, the singing is amazing, and the sense of community is great, but the services are about 2 hours long, sometimes longer. And with two toddlers, it just isn't going wonderfully. I can't bring JT since he won't even sit for AJ's 30 minute swimming class. So he stays home with Jared. Addy loves it but only does well if the service is under 1 1/2 hours so many times we end up leaving early. The church is child friendly which is great but at the moment it causes me more stress to go with AJ but then I feel guilty the weeks we don't go. So where do I find that middle balance? A balance between living our lives in a more Christian manner, praying when the spirit moves us to, and attending church when the kids are having a good day. How do I balance that with guilt of not going to church when this is the church that I have enjoyed the most in my whole life but I want church to be a family affair not just something that I go do alone. So for now, attending may be a more sporadic thing with the hope of going more frequently as the kids get older.

I don't know that I will ever be that person who attends every week, who devotes their life to their church, who speaks about my faith to everyone but I do know one thing.... I will continue to be inspired by those who are and let them into my life. I will continue to let my faith and spirituality guide decisions, I will continue to quietly pray and move closer to the Lord.

And I will share this journey with my family.