I really hate how my ideas and urge to write always comes up when I wanna sleep. It’s midnight and I was dozing into the kind of sleep I was going to enjoy but noo,my brain told me to come here and write this down because if I postpone it to morning I’m going to forget it….anyway ride along and read till the end…please and thank you

Anyway…I’m going to write about something I’ve been keeping in for quite some time…my spiritual journey….spiritual because I believe I’m more spiritual than I’m religious…

So uhm you know how we grow up and attend the church that our parents go to and it becomes the only church you know because you literally were raised in it? Yes same thing happened to me. I grew up in the Anglican church and learned the principles at a young age so much that they paved my way of life. I joined the youth groups there and enjoyed every moment of it. Became the leader at age 13 and as somebody with a dominating character I had fun, enjoyed leading and knowing that the younger members of our girls guild look up to me and trust me enough to guide them. Anyway I’m not here to tell you about my adventures as a member of a girl’s guild.

So I’m a good Anglican church going girl who abides by the rules and gets to the age of…lemme call it vowing loyalty to the church. I vow but to be honest I did it because I thought that’s what I ought to do at the age of 14 as everyone else at that age was doing it but after the vows church doesn’t feel the same. It feels like I’m viewed as an adult with certain responsibilities and for somebody who didn’t fully understand the depth of the whole thing I start feeling pressured. I went to church to avoid the questions of why I’ve been skipping church. It felt to me like I was there to check the attendance list as opposed to how I’d go to praise and feed my spirit.

After long introspection, I realized that my relationship with God is suffering…I felt empty like something was missing then I remembered how I’ve constantly seen girls who were in my guild leave our church and join other churches and despite how they were mocked for leaving, they always seemed liberated to me. So I start contemplate leaving too. But how do you leave when this church has been the only church you know. Not only have you grown accustomed to it but it’s literally part of who you are. The rest of your family if not the majority goes to this church and they’ve vowed loyalty to it and unlike you, they are taking their vows seriously. So you see that mentioning that you want to leave to your family will sound like you’ve committed a crime.

But since I’ve always been something of a rebel myself… the idea of leaving begins to be exciting and you know what I do when things excite me? I want to see them through and bring them to life. But question is…which church am I switching to? It wasn’t hard to figure because I went to a Seventh day Adventist pre school and primary school. This says to a certain extent I was familiar with their principles and some of their teachings have shaped me because spending nine years under the care of a church school does something. I mean I didn’t even wear earrings for the rest of my high-school years to varsity. To this day they hurt my ears if I wear them for too long.

So Seventh day Adventist church became the best option. I’ve experienced other churches yeah? but they didn’t connect with me enough to want to go back or maybe I wasn’t looking to stay so I didn’t look for reasons to stay. So then I visit Seventh day Adventist church with a neighbor of mine. I chose to go with her because she had recently switched to the church and to me nobody understood the position I was in better than she did. One Saturday I ask my momma to grant me permission to visit the church. She allows me on some it’s Church and you’ll still be closer to God there, however I can tell there’s a look that says I knew this moment was coming in her eyes. Anyway we leave with my neighbor… on our way there I’m both excited and anxious. We get to church and when I tell you that I felt like I’m home?? Believe me. It felt like they’ve been waiting for me to come home. For the first time strangers felt like family…it didn’t feel like everyone is there to do their business. The church had my heart… they provided lunch even!!! I was bewildered…like y’alls churches feed y’all…mind blowing!!! Although I got to understand why they serve lunch. During lunch I was seated in the corner with my neighbor and her buddies and while watching everyone interact and eat their lunch, I knew that is the place where I want to spend my time praising God.

The scenarios about what could be were exciting but I didn’t know how to break the news to my family… I “visited” the church knowing that I’m switching to it and the visit was more of me introducing myself to it. For several Saturdays I visited and after every sermon I felt fulfilled, closer to God than I was before and as a girl who was taught the importance of having a relationship with God, I loved what I was doing for myself. But the longer I “visited” the more questions of my absence were raised and as you can imagine it began looking suspicious. Anyway I still continue my visits until I decide to tell my mom that I’ll be going there for the rest of my days. She was cool about it. However the stakeholders in this issue were not my parents only, this meant that I owed them explanations but I wasn’t about to explain myself, I hate it.

Lemme circle back…..like any other relationship, my relationship with this church has a honeymoon stage filled with bliss and perfection, but you know what follows the honeymoon stage? The awkward stage where the thrill of a new relationship kinda dies down and you start seeing your partner’s flaws. It’s that point where y’alls favorite color is not the same anymore. Heck where you hate their favorite color. The relationship started demanding commitment but how do I give it full commitment when there’s some stuff I haven’t confronted that I’m still dragging with me. Either way I thought I’ve got this I’ll manage.

The more I thought I’ll manage the more it became a challenge… I was learning a lot of things and I loved learning, however the teachings were a whole different thing from what I know. They contradicted in a way…and at first I thought it’s nothing but eventually I was torn too. I started feeling like there’s two people at war inside of me…I couldn’t allow myself to transition into this new person and at the same time I was not the old me. So I started feeling like I don’t belong anywhere anymore. No one really talks about how hard it is to change and let go of the things you’ve known all your life.

The internal conflict lasted for so long and when I was about to make my best attempt at fixing it, I got a varsity admission and oh well here’s to the beginning of a new journey. So I never really solved it and for a long time I didn’t know what was wrong and right until one day I removed myself from the expectations that I thought were imposed on me and thought about what I really want to do with myself. I couldn’t answer the question of where I attended church for a long time. So now I’ve decided that not family or two of my churches can dictate my spiritual journey because it is a personal journey. A journey about me and no one else not even my mom. I’ve since decided to do what is best for me and going into the year 2022 I feel the need to fix my relationship with God and put effort into it. I don’t know how it’s going to be like but I have faith that it’s going to turn out really well. And the family I’ve been postponing breaking the news to?? I decided it’s not their business and I don’t owe anybody an explanation. So yes that’s the story about how I went from being a sweet church going girl to becoming a “rebel”….damn my fingers are tired.

I’m going to sleep now at 1 am. Hope this brain is happy