When I was a little girl, all of eight years old, I remember the excitement of wearing my perfect white dress and veil. The year was 1979 and I was about to make my First Communion at St. Ann’s Church in West Springfield, Massachusetts. First Communions were a big thing back then: a longer than usual Catholic Mass where everyone showed up to see their daughter, son, godchild, niece, nephew, grandchild present themselves at the front of the altar to take the body and blood of Christ for the first time. Then everyone gathered at my home where my mom put on a big spread of food and of course, there was also cake and presents. First Communion was right up there with my birthday and Christmas that year.
As that innocent eight year old child, I believed in God because I was supposed to. It’s what my mom believed. It was what my Memere and Grammie believed. It was what my whole family believed. I believed, more like I knew, that God made all of us, He was in charge, and I better not fight with my brother because that was a sin and then I would have to tell Father Bevilaqua all about it in confession. My little eight year old brain had God simplified to those three things.
I stayed in the Catholic Church until I was eighteen and that included being confirmed at Sacred Heart Church. My understanding of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit matured but that connection fell away once I went to college. Or maybe a better way to say it is that I still believed in God, but I didn’t have the time or interest for church or prayer.
I’m sitting here trying to remember the next time, as an adult, I was regularly attending church or consciously having a relationship with God. The easiest way for me to do that is by going through a timeline of places I lived after college and as I go through that in my brain, the next time I come up with is when I got engaged to my ex-husband. We wanted to get married in the church so we had to do premarital counseling and the priest was very firm about his expectation that we would be at Mass every week and, we did.
After we were married, we stopped going to church. A few years later, I read a book by Joel Osteen (I have different opinions about Osteen now but that is a whole other story) that made God so relatable to me. That God was more than ritual and sacraments. He made it seem like I could have a relationship with God. That part blew my mind…you mean a one on one relationship with Him? That was the part that was missing for me. I eagerly started visiting different churches because I felt that church, for me, was a part of that relationship with God.
I started branching out to different denominations and found a home at a Congregational church in town. I had no other experience with church outside of the Catholic faith but church, and more importantly, God, finally made sense in a relatable way. A lot of this had to do with the pastor that was there for most of the time I attended this church. It also had to do with the community that existed and the work that we did for others. It was God in action.
After being a long time member of this church, I had a yearning to be in an environment that I felt (whether right or wrong) was more Bible oriented. I couldn’t let it go; not for lack of trying though. Then there were several pastoral changes at my church and it all went downhill for me from there. I think the last straw for me was a pastor giving her sermon and claiming that Mother Earth was God. Around that same time, I went through an acute health incident that I saw as a catalyst to find a new church home. My faith felt like it had never been stronger.
I did find a new church home, at what was called a non-denominational church. I had gone to several services there and on the surface, it seemed like a good fit for me. The Bible was the focus of services. I found what the pastor said relatable. I loved the music and while my connection to God was strong before I walked in there, it became even more so during this time. All were welcome, or so I was told. People were friendly and as I got to know many of them, similar to my previous church, they were some of the kindest people I had ever met. Good people doing very good things in the world.
Time revealed things to me that made it impossible for me to stay there. While I was assured that all were welcome, it depended on your definition of welcomed. I was already feeling uncomfortable about certain practices when I discovered that while the LGBTQIA+ community was welcome to attend church, they were not allowed to become members of the church and that therefore prohibited them from service positions.
Around the same time, a sermon was given that made it very clear that as Christians, no matter what else this person says, does, or believes, it is our Christian duty to vote in a Presidential candidate that supports Israel and is pro-life. Obviously…Trump.
I never went back.
I did go back to my previous church a handful of times but it wasn’t the same. Church in general wasn’t the same for me either, so I stepped away completely.
I’ve been away from church a few years now. During that time I have found myself giving serious thought to whether God even exists at all. I’ve come up with the usual questions people ask such as “Why would God allow bad things to happen” and “Why doesn’t God hear my prayers?” These are valid questions that I have asked myself time and time again.
It scares me that most of the time I think I’m an atheist. How did I go from being a card carrying Christian to thinking God may not exist at all? Is it because I have spent so many years battling chronic illnesses and have never gotten a reprieve? Maybe it’s related to seeing how bad things are in the world right now? If God does exist, how much suffering is he going to allow in this world? Sure, we have free will but is “God’s plan” designed to bring so much suffering, especially to those who claim him as their god?
It’s funny because I sponsor many children through a Christian organization and most of them mention God and the Bible in their letters. They mention that they pray for me and my family. They ask God to protect and heal me. These little children, and some bigger children, have their childlike faith, just like little 8 year old me did when she made her First Communion. I can say, with the utmost confidence, that if I find my way back to my faith, it will be because of one, or all, of them.
I don’t know what the future holds in regards to my faith and beliefs about God or any other deities. But I do know that regardless of how that turns out, I will continue to live my life as I’ve always tried to….with love, compassion, and gratitude. No God required.
