There was this time when my faith was in crisis, when I questioned if I had ever truly believed what I had professed for as long as I could remember.

It was a defining, depressing, dark and desperate season.  And it was painfully lonely.

If a person could be born a Christian, if there was a place where that actually happens, it’s right here in the buckle of the Bible Belt, that strap of country I’ve lived my entire life.  Some places in the South even have two churches on every corner.

My earliest memories are spattered with church-y things–playing Mary, the mother of Jesus, in our Christmas pageant, singing in the youth choir, and because there must’ve been a shortage of adults in our church, helping serve communion and passing the offering plate upstairs in the balcony.  Sometimes we’d sneak an extra wafer and shot of grape juice.

Maybe those were the sins I was paying for as a grown-up. If that’s the case, though, I hate to think what the spiritual consequences look like for the grown-ups who turned a blind eye to ragamuffin children serving communion because they were too indifferent? busy? to step up.

(For the record, I don’t really believe this is how God metes out judgment.  And it’s also important to know this was after my mom had died and our father didn’t attend church with us most of the time.)

I eventually mustered the courage to tell my husband about my faith funk.  It was easy enough to hide the deepest parts of my struggle because I still believed it was the best way to raise our children – with a Christian (moral) worldview that considered others more highly than themselves.  I don’t recall the details of our conversation, just the gentle shove that moved me to action–

I hope you’ll click over to conclude reading ;
this is one of my favorite and it was wonderful to pen the memory.