A Look Into My First Bible Study

Last year mid-summer, I broke down to Perry in tears about wanting to spend more time as a family. I blogged about it here. I don't know if it was Perry who suggested it, or myself, but we agreed together to start going to church. We were both raised with a faith background and we thought it was best to start giving that same thing to our kids.

Having come from two different Christian backgrounds made choosing a church a challenge for us though because he didn't connect the way he felt he should in a Catholic mass, and I didn't want to stray from my Catholic roots. Eventually we agreed to start attending the Lutheran Church we take the kids to preschool at. While I felt like I could fit in more with their services, because their similar to the mass I'm used to, after several months, Perry confessed it wasn't doing much for him. After the new year, we started going to the Christian Life Center. While the Lutheran Church had a Sunday school for the kids, it was in between services so we were having to wrangle all the kids during mass instead of actually listening to it. At CLC there was a special room for each of the kids - nursery for Charlotte, preschool for JP, and youth mass for Hunter. (Bonus that the boys weren't together!) And we've been going there since pretty regularly. (I even know some of the songs now since I've been listening to AirOne, a Christian radio station, lately!)

Another one of the things I wanted to do more of this year, aside from going to church regularly, is read. I have a stack of books, in my head, I want to read, but I just never sit down to do it. I started out strong in January by crossing a book off my list called, 'Love Does' by Bob Goff. I don't know what it was that made me buy this book on my Kindle sometime last year, but I did, and finally 6 + months later I actually started to read it. It's a book about the lessons he has learned throughout his life in regards to the Bible. While it may not sound too interesting, I took a lot from it, as I'm not normally a Christian book reader.

In one of the chapters he went on to explain how he pulled a prank on one of his good friends. A while later he received a call from someone in Uganda asking him to be a member of the Uganda counsel. Thinking it was a prank set up by his friend, he decided to just say yes to everything they wanted just too see where it got him, and it ended up not being a prank after all! For some reason it resonated with me- just saying yes. I feel like I am really good at making up excuses not to do something instead of just doing it. At that point I decided I would say yes to the next opportunity which presented its self- no matter what.

I don't recall if it was later the same afternoon or the next morning, but a mom from JP's preschool class messaged me. It wasn't out of the ordinary for her to do so, but her question caught me a little off guard - do I want to join in on the Bible study she was going to be teaching? It was clearly all in God's timing that she picked the time she did to ask me. I had no idea what to expect from a Bible study as this would be my first. But I kept my promise to myself, and I said yes. I was so nervous just to go, let alone answer simple questions about who I was. But I did it. I sucked it up and did it. And then I continued to go back the following weeks.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we're currently working on sharing our stories about how we've come to know the Lord in our life. I'm really bummed to have missed the first week of it because Charlotte was still getting over the birthday cold I gave her. I heard a few last week and some brought me to tears. I'm a cry baby anyways though... At the end, our group leader called me out saying she wanted to hear my story next week. I knew I was going to have to share, but that made it a little more real.

For the past week I've laid wide awake in bed thinking about my story. I mostly couldn't get past the idea of sharing something so intimate with a group of (wonderful) women, whom I hardly knew. I wasn't sure how all the events in my life have lead me up to this point, how they've made me who I am. The first few nights I laid awake, I couldn't get past a meek, "I was born and raised in the Catholic Church. I've known the Lord my whole life." But had I? Had I really seen Him in my life and believed He was there? In the moments, no, but looking back, while I lay half awake, yes, I could see He was there. Slowly over the next few nights I pieced my story together and then slaughtered it when it actually came time to present it. Seriously. I cried nearly the whole time and I felt like the whole thing was scattered and didn't make sense. Let's face it, I'm not good at impromptu...

I can't tell you enough how blessed I am to have these wonderful women in my life now. They've really inspired me to be a better person - to be a real Christian, one who knows the Lord, not just about Him. A couple sessions ago we dug into the topic of prayer. It was very enlightening for me and something I need to do more. Being raised in a Catholic church, I was taught prayer after prayer. While they have a purpose, I never really felt like I was connecting the way other people seem to when the pray. At the end of the session, I confessed to the small group I was in, that I didn't know how to pray as they did. Though I knew how to say a prayer, I felt it was different than actually praying. It seems silly, but hearing these lady open in prayer and close in prayer, makes me wish I was articulate like them.

As the study comes to a close in the next few weeks, I'm anxious to see where this path takes me. While at a church retreat with my mother-in-law a few years ago, quite a few of the ladies there prayed for me and with me, and could tell I had a tender soul and that "God has good things planned" for me. So I'm anxious to see where this path takes me!