Are you on a faith walk? It can feel often like a lonely, insecure, demoralizing path. Take heart; you are not alone.
I began my spiritual journey sometime during my teenage years. I would like to be more exact, especially since I lean toward an obsessive-compulsive mindset, but after all these years the origins are cloaked in the veil of TIME. I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church and spent some time as an "organizational" man. I served as an altar boy for eight years and was a lector (reader) for about a decade before I encountered my first crisis of faith. [There will be a blog covering that at a later date so I will not post any spoiler here; you will just have to wait.] At that point I walked away from the Church. No self-aggrandizing announcement to the world at large that "I AM LEAVING! GOODBYE!". I just walked away, not from God, from other Catholics.
It occurred to me that I had become a numb churchgoer, sitting in the pews - or on the altar - looking around at everyone else, checking out the beautiful windows with images of Jesus, his mother Mary, and an assortment of other more-equal-than-me saints. Whatever message being handed down from the pulpit was lost on me.
And I became lost: to myself; to my friends; to my family.
Do you want to know the one person to whom I was not lost?
God.
Wherever I was, with whomever I was, whether I was present in that moment or not, God never lost track of me.
Even today, when I go through the trials and tribulations that befall all of us, and take a wrong turn, make a decision that does not pan out, when I leave the path and wallow is self-pity and bemoan the misery that is my life...
God knows where I am. God knows where you are, too.
Come, walk with me.
I began my spiritual journey sometime during my teenage years. I would like to be more exact, especially since I lean toward an obsessive-compulsive mindset, but after all these years the origins are cloaked in the veil of TIME. I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church and spent some time as an "organizational" man. I served as an altar boy for eight years and was a lector (reader) for about a decade before I encountered my first crisis of faith. [There will be a blog covering that at a later date so I will not post any spoiler here; you will just have to wait.] At that point I walked away from the Church. No self-aggrandizing announcement to the world at large that "I AM LEAVING! GOODBYE!". I just walked away, not from God, from other Catholics.
It occurred to me that I had become a numb churchgoer, sitting in the pews - or on the altar - looking around at everyone else, checking out the beautiful windows with images of Jesus, his mother Mary, and an assortment of other more-equal-than-me saints. Whatever message being handed down from the pulpit was lost on me.
And I became lost: to myself; to my friends; to my family.
Do you want to know the one person to whom I was not lost?
God.
Wherever I was, with whomever I was, whether I was present in that moment or not, God never lost track of me.
Even today, when I go through the trials and tribulations that befall all of us, and take a wrong turn, make a decision that does not pan out, when I leave the path and wallow is self-pity and bemoan the misery that is my life...
God knows where I am. God knows where you are, too.
Come, walk with me.
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