I know for a lot of people religion is a touchy subject, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. For most of my life I grew up without any kind of religion at all. My dad never grew up with it and my mom went to Catholic school from kindergarten through high school plus church on Sundays. So by the time she was finally living on her own she was kind of burnt out on church. When I was born my parents did baptize me Catholic, but that was far as it went. I can honestly say the first time I remember being in a church was when I was 8 years-old when my aunt got married in one. After that I went to church when my older brother got married, when another aunt got married, and then anytime we would visit my grandparents in Canada.
It wasn't until I was about 19 years-old that I started going to church out of my own free will. My older brother found Christianity and started going to church in high school with a few of his friends from the track team. He eventually went to a Christian college where he met his now wife. When I was a teenager my brother, his wife, and my oldest niece moved to Orange County. When my parents finally felt like I proved I could safely drive outside of our own town, I would randomly go spend the weekend in Orange County with them. I knew they went to church on Sundays and that if I would be going to spend the weekend with them I would have to go to church too. It didn't bother me. It wasn't something I necessarily felt 100% comfortable with, but I could do it.
The truth is for most of my life I was an atheist. The whole idea of God and religion seemed so unrealistic to me. For someone who was born with so many health issues and medicine and science being there for me, I believed in science. The big bang theory, evolution; it all seemed like clear facts to me. Since I had always been a "see it to believe it" type of person the fact that no one had ever "seen" God, how could He exist? Even though this is what I believed I still had doubts, or possibly hope, in the back of my head that God and Heaven were real. So maybe my view was agnostic, not atheist. And then my blockage happened.
It was almost exactly 3 weeks after my blockage happened that God came into my life. At this point my anxiety was really high. I couldn't relax at all, I was nausea all the time and could barely eat, I had an on edge feeling all the time, I felt like my skin was crawling constantly, I couldn't be left alone without panicking, and almost every 30 minutes or so I would just start crying for no reason. My sister-in-law came over to hangout with me and talk to me. She asked me if the next day I wanted to go with her and the rest of her family to the evening service at Real Life Church. At this point I was ready to try anything.
The next night we all went and that was when everything changed (I will always remember the date which was September 11, 2011). For the first time in almost 3 weeks I was able to relax for an entire hour. I was able to think about something else and focus on something else. I felt calm, I felt like myself. It was after that service that I knew I wanted to go back. But because the majority of my life I didn't grow up with church or necessarily believe in God, I wasn't very consistent with it. Eventually though I became more diligent with it. My mom started coming with me, my mom's best friend came with me, even my dad has come a few times. It's definitely brought me closer to not only them by giving us things to talk about, it's brought me closer to my older brother and his family, got me closer to a few friends, and helped me to make new friends.
It is also responsible for me starting this blog. In religion you often hear how God has a plan for all of us. Here is the series of events that happened and what I think God's plan for me may have been: I got the blockage in my small intestines, I developed large amounts of anxiety, having anxiety made me agree to go to Real Life Church, I felt calm my first time there which made me want to keep going, I bounded with my family more because of church, after months of dealing with anxiety I decided to seek out a therapist, that weekend church announced their first series for the new year was about getting rid of bad habits from 2012, that first service they talked about care groups, there weren't any care groups at the time so I decided to join a Life group, in my Life group was another young girl who has dealt with similar things as me, I wasn't liking my therapist so I looked at the Care Groups again and found out the therapist who lead the depression/anxiety group, I made an appointment with her, she told me about love lists, I created my love list and came up with the idea for a blog, 7 days ago I started this blog,..........and now who knows where this will go.
I can say that even though I still have my doubts about wether or not God is real, which means I'm human, I can honestly say my life seems fuller and better since I've started welcoming religion and Him into my life. Since I now realize that this could have been God's plan all along, I'm not as angry or upset about the blockage in my intestines. I've made peace with it, and that is one huge step in finally getting over this.
If you would have told me 2 years ago I would be going to church regularly, reading the Bible, considering getting baptized, or would have been writing a blog like this I would have told you you were crazy. I know religion isn't the cure for anxiety because clearly I'm still dealing with it, but to me it has really helped and become important to me. And remember if it's important to you, it matters.
Day 7- Thing I love to do........Go to church.
God works in amazing ways...Jeremiah 29:11
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