The Beginning of My Story...

I originally began blogging when Mike and I started volunteering with the youth group at Stone Church as a means to open ourselves up to the students. Over time, I have come to enjoy sharing my thoughts and day to day events… I have also invited many to read my blog, and always hope to some how minister to any readers in need. (If any have accepted my invitation :) ) So… if you have come by invitation or by chance, today I want to share something close to my heart. And maybe if you can relate to “My Story” your heart will open to what I have to share.

My faith journey began as a child like many of us. My parents sent me to Catholic School for 9 years (K-8) ; during that time I received all of the necessary sacraments. As a family we almost never missed a Sunday mass/service. I learned a lot about Religion and Catholicism during my up bringing… we learned the golden rule, 10 commandments, various bible stories, and the basic story of the gospel… All good things!

I went on to college and strayed a bit… however, tried to make it to Mass as often as I could. I would see a couple others there from school too. During this time, my mom was really questioning her faith and the Catholic teachings… which seemed to cause a bit of an uproar in the family. You see, at the time the rest of us were thinking how dare she turn her back on the “Church”? Growing up in the setting I did.. everyone I knew was Catholic… so the only “Real” church was the Catholic church. Now I know that it is not the church we are looking to be loyal to, it is God that we need to remain faithful to.

I came home after my sophomore year, and began working for United Airlines the next fall. During this time I almost never made it to church. I was traveling, mostly on the weekends with a very “junior” schedule, so most of the time it was just not feasible.

A couple years later I married Mike, neither of were in any sort of church-type habit… so we didn’t make it a priority. During our first year of marriage we argued a lot, we were on an uncomfortably tight budget, let’s just say stress was affecting both of our health and our relationship. I remember one day I was talking with my sister. At the time she had Sydney, and Marie was very little. She said to me something along the lines of “It amazes me that God loves me more than I love my kids”.

That really got me thinking… I REALLY love my sister’s kids… I love them so much it overwhelms me sometimes, when each of them were born, I felt like I knew them my whole life! It really got me thinking about God again. I wanted to know more about this “impossible”, unfathomable love. Mike and I went to church together for the first time in our married life (outside of weddings, funerals, Christmas and Easter) within a couple weeks.

Well that’s a lot for one post, so I will continue sharing my story in future posts.