So, as I touched on a bit in my last post, I started dipping my toes in the ministry pool when I started dating someone who was going into the ministry. However, I had no intention of going down that particular path at the time. In fact, if I’m being honest, I was quite on the fence about ministry as a whole.
Generally, I’ve been a Christian my entire life. I had my bouts with agnosticism and doubt, but I was born into a Christian household and I was raised to believe in God. I didn’t go to church every Sunday, however. This was mainly because one of my parents was Catholic and the other was Lutheran, which led to a disagreement on what church to go to or even what day to go (Saturday evening mass versus Sunday morning traditional service). Eventually, they agreed to disagree, so I spent most of my Sundays cleaning my room instead of attending a worship service.
By the time I was old enough to decide on my own whether or not I felt like going to church, I chose to continue not going. This was partly because I had a bit of a falling out with God when I was fourteen (more on that later), but largely because my main group of friends didn’t go to church either. We stayed out late on Saturday nights and slept in on Sunday mornings. I only went to services a few times with other friends or with family on certain holidays, but most of my teenage and early college years were spent reading, writing, and playing video games with friends instead of spending time with God in worship.
It took a few depressing relationships and some self-esteem issues for me to set foot in a church again, let alone on a regular basis, but let’s save that for the next post. Hope you don’t mind a somewhat anti-climactic cliffhanger . . .
Kimberly Woods 