by Kirsten Locke

Created on: May 25, 2007

When I was very young I used to believe in God as much because I went to church regularly as for any other reason. Mother took me and my siblings to services every Sunday. I attended not only Sunday school as a preschooler but catechism classes until into my teens. I have been baptized, of course, and have also gone through Confirmation ceremony. For my middle school and high school years, I attended a private school run by nuns. I continued to attend Sunday mass during my college years and after becoming married, but once I started to have children I wasn't able to attend quite as regularly. I did go when able, bringing my offspring along with me.

I no longer attend church, nor have I done so for most of the last decade. I don't foresee changing this behavior in the future, either. What changed? Why have I dropped this thirty year habit?

I changed. At the age of thirty, I became another divorce statistic and have been a single mother ever since. Time and energy became that much more absorbed with caring for my four children. I could get us to services on only the most sporadic basis before the divorce, but as my resources became more and more limited attendance trickled down to almost nil. And even more than that, I was questioning nearly everything that I had ever believed about God, the church and my place within the universe.

During this soul-searching period, I and my children visited mental counselors, support groups and other therapists on a regular basis for several years to help us cope with the stress of our situation. Delving into my past, I learned how events from my childhood lead to decisions that I had made as an adult and their eventual consequences. I learned that some of what I had believed had brought me to my current situation. My faith was shaken, but that just made me hold onto it that much tighter. My faith was still a lifeline to who I was overall but attending services definitely fell by the wayside. A good shaking wasn't going to lose me completely, though.

I realized what mistakes I'd made and why I'd made them and now worked at learning how to make better choices for the future. I needed to learn new interpretations of certain old lessons as well as learning brand new lessons. Teaching an old dog new tricks, however, can take longer than when we're young and more flexible. I still stumbled. I had learned from old mistakes, but now made entirely new ones.

A year after the separation, we became homeless. While staying in transitional housing,

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