Week 4

It took some time to find the right church for her; my mom wasn’t Catholic and as such, Catholic churches and their practices weren’t comfortable for her either. Luckily for her, in our small town, there were enough churches to choose from, each a different denomination. As a matter of fact, in our downtown area, there is an entire block of churches. Every corner you turn down, another church is staring you in the face.

            Eventually, she settled on the church most of the people I went to school with attended: The First Baptist Church of Floresville. I’m not sure what it was, but almost everyone I knew went to that church and nowhere else. It was like it was the church of the younger generation, and since there were so many people there my age, the church just seemed different. I know Baptists are always portrayed as strictly by the Book, but at this church, everything was less formal.The pastor we had at the time would speak to us as though we were all his friends, the lessons that were being taught were being read like stories. It was nothing like how I was raised originally. It wasn’t led based on the fear of God, rather the love of Him and the love we were shown. 

            Despite all of this, I still could not feel at home in this church. It felt like I was trying too hard to be this one thing for my mother when I didn’t even want to be there in the first place. To make matters worse, the service all the people I knew attended was at 10:30… the one I had to attend was at 8:00. There were very few people there at the time and absolutely none of them were people my age or even people I knew. I was bored. I was tired. It wasn’t me.

            Again, I was being forced to go to church when I didn’t want to go. I was free of the private Catholic schools forcing me to go as I transferred out of that system before I went into the fifth grade, but I was being sucked back in. In my mind, at least the Catholic churches, as stuffy as they were, had beautiful architecture and windows for me to look at. The Baptist church didn’t have any of that, just the father of one of the friends I used to fall asleep with in precalculus as the pastor talking to everybody at the front of the room. As much as I loved Pastor Mike, I was bored. I didn’t want to do this. Half the time, I didn’t agree with what was being said, especially when the people at the church started to get political and all of their politics aligned with one another and definitely not with me. It was a weird situation.

            I don’t go to church anymore. I never feel the need to. From what I’ve heard, Pastor Mike no longer works at the church and has retired. As he was the only reason I would have considered going back with my mother if she wanted to (she hasn’t gone to church in a while herself), all my ties to church have been completely severed. I don’t miss going and I don’t feel as bad about it anymore. I used to, but not because I felt bad for not going, but because I felt bad that I didn’t feel bad. It was more like an obligatory reaction, as though I felt like I had to feel bad. I don’t anymore. It feels nice