My Spiritual Journey

I grew up in a Christian family and like any child I never thought about what I personally believed until I was about 13. Although my family has never been incredibly religious, even though they did send me to a private Christian school when I lived up in Massachusetts but we didn't go to church on a regular basis. Then when I was 10, my parents and I moved to Florida and I started going to church with my grandmother every weekend for the next 3 years.

Over those 3 years, you can say that I became bored with Christianity and I stopped going to church. So over time, I became an Agnostic and became very defensive when anything that had to do religion came up. I was never hurt by the church or religion in any way; I was just at a point where I didn't want to follow a specific set of "rules and guidelines" laid down by religion.

By the time I was 16, I was at an incredibly low point in my life. I never gave a second thought about religion and never thought it would help me in my situation. I was seriously considering dropping out of school and committing suicide at some point. Now looking back, I was homeschooled and in a way I find it hysterical that I wanted to "drop out" of school when I never actually "went" to school. Am I the only one that finds that funny? Never mind, moving on!

When I was 16, I was doing a show at local community theater. One person that was working backstage with me was a very religious Christian. Initially, I kept my distance from him and didn't bother getting to know him because of that fact. As time went on, we became very close friends and I opened up to him about many things in my life. I told him about my depression and what not. I never minded discussing religion as long as you didn't try to force me to convert to your religion.

So, my "conversion" to Christianity was simple so to speak because I believe there isn't an actual by the books process to become a Christian. Everybody has their own story as to why they became a Christian. One day, my friend and I were once again having another religious discussion and I was talking about some issues that were going on at home. At one point in the conversation he said, "I'm not trying to convert you, this is something that God has been telling me over the last couple of months and I almost didn't listen. All God wants me to tell you is that He loves you." At that point, I started crying because when my friend said that, for the first time I had actually understood who and what God is. My friend simply saying, "God loves you," I instantly "converted" to Christianity.

Many people will say that you need to be baptized in order to be saved and completely "convert" to Christianity but that isn't true. The only thing you NEED to do is accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and have a personal relationship with him. Many people say you need to be baptized in order to actually become a Christian but that isn't the case but I will save that for another article.

After I accepted Christ, I started going to church again religiously. I didn't miss a week in 3 years and sometimes I went to all 4 services at my church every weekend. Of course I've had my hit and miss times with religion but I've consistently stayed with Christianity and followed Christ. I'm not the major Jesus freak that I used to be but I do follow God with all my heart. I just don't flaunt it constantly like most Jesus freaks do; I have finally found a balance.