You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
Matthew 5:13
I have always believed, as far back as I can remember. There isn't a day I can recall whereupon I have doubted or wouldn't fight for what I believe. I have lost friends, been severely bullied, and falsely stereotyped all of my life. I remember in kindergarten this one girl named Jade was popular. Her mother was a model or something and her father was terrifying due to his build and massive amount of tattoos. Her prissy attitude annoyed me and I wished that she were transferred to the afternoon section on a few occasions. When she found out my faith, I remember the look of horror that passed over her eyes. The next day and every day after that, I played at recess alone. I didn't mind so much because I didn't really like playing with other children (especially since I wasn't close with any of them) but I still felt the impact. In elementary school, several of my good friends refused to talk or play with me after they decided that I wasn't worthy of their time because I was not a Mormon. I developed a few nicknames then that I didn't understand and in an effort to not feel their betrayal deeply I dove into my love of literature even further, consuming all of my time so that I wouldn't have to face my lonely reality.
When I visited the houses of my friends and saw their differing spiritual practices, I wanted to learn and understand. This one friend of mine in 5th grade would pray before each dish in a meal. She prayed over 10 times when we sat down for dinner and I had only prayed the once before and the once after. I didn't know whether to be impressed or what. I highly suspected that she was just showing off but... still. She had shown me something that I didn't have and I didn't know if I should be grateful or mourn. I came to the conclusion that her religious regime was "too strict" and I left her ways to her. I didn't need that kind of nonsense.
When I was still in elementary school, I decided that I wanted to read "The Golden Compass", which if you are religious you would know was written by an atheist for the intent of converting the faithful away from God. My mother allowed me to but with the warning: Be careful. Perhaps I was too young to fully see his plan in action, but caught up in the story I only saw glimpses of this malicious intent. But I read with fear and prayed that I wouldn't lose my precious Lord from ink on paper. (I didn't) However, while reading the series, I visited my great aunt's house. Her children (my father's cousins) were several years younger than I due to her delay in marriage and she freaked out that I was holding something she considered so evil around her children. As a Calvinist, she is pretty extreme about the type of content allowed near her young. I couldn't understand her extreme reaction as I believed even back then that knowledge and understanding is essential to "holding your own". Why live with such fear? I knew then that I as much as I loved her and her family, I could never be a Calvinist because those with the Truth should never fear any lie.
During my middle school years, I started to attend the youth group at my parish. We met weekly and usually discussed some topic that was chosen while munching on snacks. Every month or so we would do a service project but most meetings were just the group of us sitting in the basement discussing faith and enjoying each other's company. I've always seen a difference in amount of devotion between me and my peers in Sunday school but it really started to sink in here. The flippancy of faith, the embracing of social lies, the desire to no longer be virgin. When I was the only one who knew how to locate a section of the Bible, when I was the only one who had our basic prayers memorized, when I was the only one who actually knew the hymns that we constantly sung during mass... these things become apparent. Summer church camp was even worse. These that were supposed to believe like me, desperate to give away their morals to the world in an effort to belong and feel connected. It scared me. It made me indignant. How do I convince them to listen? I couldn't. Not when our peers spoke of loss of virginity. Not when they described the sensations of being high. Not when they knew the answers from experience which lay unsettled in many a heart.
High school was almost worse. I started my own dating journey and there is a lot of confusion in trying to navigate romance while holding onto purity. It was very hard to stay out of the trap of thinking that my worth depended on a man instead of Son of Man. When everything in our culture is based around romance and sex, it's very easy to get pulled into thinking of sin as "not that bad". It was a struggle to stay pure and it always was a cause of argument that ended with everyone bitter.
In addition to that drama, many of my friends in faith started to fall away as they had already gone through Confirmation and therefore no longer cared. (more accurately, their parents no longer cared and therefore they no longer had to put up a facade) Many others got torn between social justice and faith doctrine... usually choosing to stick with their political views over their faith. It's when I really started to appreciate atheists. They know where they stand and they live it. Too many Christians are cafeteria-Christians. Diet Christians. Choosing one thing to believe and rejecting others. Not actually following through but rather morphing their faith into their lives for purposes of comfort. It's also when I developed a strong distaste for evangelization. When the Mormons of my childhood who abandoned me due to faith reasons started coming at me from all sides, from all sorts of tactics... it became obvious that their intent was my conversion. Getting in some practice before their mission trips, I suppose. Their ways were numerous and highly devious. I wasn't given a chance to trust any of them because literally anything and everything was a tactic and I had to be on high alert in order not to fall victim. To this day, I cannot see "The Great Commission" as anything but a heartless, ruthless attack to force perspective upon others by manipulation. It feels so wrong to force another to come to the Cross. Let them get there without throwing Bibles in their faces and talking about Jesus as if he is dead or no longer a man.
Speaking of Confirmation, I became a "reasonable skeptic" for the entirety of that year: questioning everything I heard and was told, truly making sure that I believed to the point of torture and death that what was presented was true. It was a rough yet quiet process. The hardest part was choosing a saint. I had a lot of difficulty choosing someone whose life inspired me to become better, be purer. The desire of every Catholic should be to become a saint. I wanted to find someone whose life would remind me of this divine purpose. But they had to be relatable. Someone whose life I could see myself living if God called me. I had no luck and frankly stopped trying after a time because it just seemed so hopeless to find someone to be my guide, my hero, my mentor. I started judging their names instead of their character and settled with one that I was comfortable with. I learned her story and was okay with it yet kept forgetting it when asked. I felt like a failure surrounded by hoards of flippant characters that made it difficult to improve. After Confirmation I felt like I was given a chance to do and be more. I was able to be more involved in the mass and to start co-teaching some CCD classes. We had switched churches so I was no longer singing but I was still active. However, disagreeing with structure had some very direct ties with loss of passion of service and helping out became a chore more than a gift. It didn't help that my own father stopped coming on Sundays for his own and various reasons.
I went off to college around this point in time, desperately hoping to find some spiritual guidance and to form relations with actual believers instead of flippant ones. I had missed the deadline for serving during mass but I went to every service I could and became a part of the midday choir for about a semester. I would bring friends with me to mass sometimes, Catholic and not alike... but, I still didn't feel like it was mine. I prayed and slept with the Eucharist. I went on their fall retreat but it felt so hollow to me-- and I knew that this was one of the deeper retreats offered anywhere on campus; Catholic or otherwise. I tried going to Confession often. But the priest seemed more interested in passively accepting my sins as life instead of giving actual penance and the guidance I was desperate for. Then, when I went through training, I discovered that he did not hold the Eucharist to be sacred and thus Jesus and it broke my heart. Around this time, I was pretty consistently going to a Baptist church with a friend because he wanted me to go to his church and I viewed it as a doctrinally incorrect Bible study. But it made me feel like a traitor to my own faith to go so consistently especially with this new-found news about my priest and my reluctance to confess at all because of my experiences with him. When my friendship with this Baptist blew up, it was almost as if all desire for me to be a God-driven woman died too.
That summer was pretty rocky for me. I learned some things that made it hard to continue forward quietly. My siblings and I bonded over this shared pain. Due to my work schedule, I often could not go to mass which made my mother disappointed. It became a habit to avoid the building. Find other things to do. Remain busy. Put my sleep deprivation above serving the Lord. I went back to school hoping to go to the other church, desperately looking to find something to ignite my faith again. I could not return to the first church because that priest was toxic to me and I did not feel like I belonged to the ones that my family attended. I was hoping for a fresh start.
Well, I went for two, maybe three weeks and I couldn't find anything particular about it that would make me stay. The music played oddly for me to sing to, the homilies were mediocre, and it felt like most of the attendees were just going through the motions. Honestly, it felt all too similar to the one my mother attends-- without me being able to name the faces. Needless to say, it did not reawaken me and despite my internal urgency to confess to the priest, I could not urge myself to do so. It was easy to find excuses to not go or plan my life so that I was too busy to attend. I stopped consistently praying and found it all together too challenging due to lack of motivation to properly fast and devote time to the Lord.
I am not saying that I'm an atheist. I'm not. But all of my spiritual vigor and desire is gone. My spirit itself has died and I don't know how or even if I want to reawaken it. I consider myself a member of my faith because I have yet to see anything to indicate that it's wrong. There's just too much logic and documentation to abandon the beliefs simply because of a dead spirit.
The year ended and I hadn't once gone to Confession. I went abroad to an atheist country and they were more loving and Christ-filled than most Christians I've ever met. They cared about others and lived their lives quietly. It wasn't a perfect system by any means but the government's ban on evangelization in country was only good.
I came back to the States and went to church twice as an obligation. A large part of me doesn't want to go until I have a 2-3 hour confession first... And I've sinned. Deliberately. This past year I've made active choices to reassemble my priority list and God is no longer number one. But this is just part of growing and discovering myself. I don't regret my life. I live without regret.
Let's see what awaits me next.
