by Mary1440

Created on: February 24, 2008   Last Updated: March 03, 2008

I was raised as a Christian in that I was told there was a God and was sent to a private Lutheran elementary school. The thing I remember most about those years is that on Monday mornings, the teacher would ask for a show of hands of those who went to church on Sunday. My hand rarely if ever went up. We didn't go to church as a family nor did we practice any faith of any sort in our family life. We wore the "Christianity" facade, but that's where it stopped.

As I got older, entering my teens the fact that Christianity and real life didn't mesh really confused me, though at that age I didn't question. I was told it was so, therefore it was.

As a young adult, married and a mother, I came to a point where I could no longer accept this religion stuff just because I had been told by people who should know, that it was so. If it was true, then it had to be true to me, between me and God, with nothing of what I was taught or who taught me to be considered. It was time for me to challenge these childish things and make my own choices based on my own thoughts and experiences.

So, one day I address this by telling God, "I don't believe in you. I haven't seen one thing on this earth that backs up what I've been taught that you're all about either. So, if you're there, if you're true and the bible is true, then I need you to show me. Until you show me that you are true, I just don't believe anymore and will NOT go around pretending that you ARE just because that's what I have been told by others and it's what I am suppose to believe".

A few years went by. I totally put aside all pretense of belief in God. I lived my life according to what was good for me, no rules of anyone's but my own. Those were difficult years for me, though. I felt a little bit like a ship without a sail, a car without a steering wheel or brakes, a row boat without oars. I think you get the picture. Because of this insecure feeling and lack of guidance I sought the great minds of the day like "The Power of Positive Thinking" and other self help books. I looked around me at my friends and tried to see what they did and why and how it work for them. I saw many who seemed to have it all together while I felt so scattered and unsure of myself. I would pattern myself after these others thinking that if I changed the outside to match theirs, my insides would also match theirs and I'd feel in control. That didn't happen, of course, so I continued to search to find that clue to that inner something I needed but

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