My Story of Faith

My journey of faith has been one of ups and downs.  My journey is by no means finished and in some respects I believe it is just beginning.  I was raised Catholic.  My parents made me attend mass with them every Sunday and then in high school I went through the confirmation process along with all my peers who were raised Catholic.  I never questioned whether or not I wanted to be confirmed Catholic but instead I just went along with it because it was just “the next step” in the process of growing up.  Then I went off to college and like many other Catholics of my generation I stopped attending mass.  I stopped praying regularly and I stopped being faithful to the church.  It didn’t help that this was the same time that the Church sex scandal was just being uncovered.  The pastor at the church I attended while in high school was being accused of sexual abuse.  I thought to myself, “How could a leader in the church be so hypocritical?”  

              This attitude towards the church and my overall indifference in my beliefs continued for a few years after college.  I would only attend Mass on Christmas and Easter and occasionally with a girl who I was dating at the time.  Then I went through a hard time in my life.  I went through a roller coaster of changes in my life.  I quit my job and decided I wanted to change careers.  I developed a medical condition, which made me depressed.  However, it took a while before I was diagnosed with this condition and I had no idea it was causing me to be depressed.  I searched high and low for everything I could be doing in my life to make myself feel so sad.  I turned to God more than ever in this time.  It was almost as if this was my last resort when it should have been my first.  It is in this time of desperation that I experienced God in my life more than I had ever before. 

            I hope to be able to reach out to other young adults who have either been away from the church for a while or have never experienced faith in their lives and let them know it is never too late to come back or to discover faith for the first time.  God does not love those who don’t attend church any less then he loves those who come to church every week.  The point of attending church is not so God can love us more but instead so we can love God more.