Having Faith
As I have mentioned an ungodly number of times on this blog, I am a walking ball of anxiety. And it affects so many parts of my life, especially because I've gone so long without actively working to fix it (2 decades basically).
One of the aspects of my life that got hit the hardest was my relationship with God. I've always been apart of the church. I was a churchgoer and an active participant within the church for basically my entire life.
And then I stopped.
I let life and moving away from home for college affect my relationship with God. And in doing so I eventually developed intense anxiety surrounding going to church and sometimes even being around other Christians. This honestly has to be a joke because I live with a Jamaican grown, born-again Christian woman for a mother. Imagine going through a crisis of faith for years and a mom who cannot understand how you went from a regular and active churchgoer to barely having gone to church in years. Shit goes from peaceful to slightly complicated in your household on Sundays.
The core problem isn't that I don't believe in Christ, I just have some hangups about being in a church with some of my current beliefs. I'm just not too certain about how the church treats certain social communities and groups. There is also the fact that I live a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle working in nightlife events and for a long time I simply did not have the time to make it church.
At this point in life, I'm trying to manage my anxiety and ADHD before they go from severe to uncontrollable, manage my health better and repair and maintain my personal relationship with Christ before I fully enter back into a church. That last one is not difficult but again anxiety and self-worth issues always like to rear their ugly heads when I try. Be it listening to Christian or Gospel music, developing and maintaining a personal devotional and bible study or even when I pray. The lil' stain in the back of my mind likes to perk up and just try and make me feel unworthy of the love and grace of the Lord.
But I've made better strides in the last year. I pray more, I've managed to reconnect musically with Christ and I even read my bible on my own time more often than I have in the past few years, heck even more than when I was fully and constantly active in the church. I'm honestly not sure if I'm fully ready to face going back to church most days. But I may do it soon.
Seeing other young Christians has really spiked my anxiety but it has also helped me realize that everyone has a completely different relationship with the Lord. No one relationship can or will be the same. But at the same time self-doubt is dangerous and vicious lil creature, at the end of the day this journey is my own and I'll figure it out eventually.
Please enjoy this playlist, exalting the Lord's name. Because sometimes you need to sit back and sing his praises.
One of the aspects of my life that got hit the hardest was my relationship with God. I've always been apart of the church. I was a churchgoer and an active participant within the church for basically my entire life.
And then I stopped.
I let life and moving away from home for college affect my relationship with God. And in doing so I eventually developed intense anxiety surrounding going to church and sometimes even being around other Christians. This honestly has to be a joke because I live with a Jamaican grown, born-again Christian woman for a mother. Imagine going through a crisis of faith for years and a mom who cannot understand how you went from a regular and active churchgoer to barely having gone to church in years. Shit goes from peaceful to slightly complicated in your household on Sundays.
The core problem isn't that I don't believe in Christ, I just have some hangups about being in a church with some of my current beliefs. I'm just not too certain about how the church treats certain social communities and groups. There is also the fact that I live a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle working in nightlife events and for a long time I simply did not have the time to make it church.
At this point in life, I'm trying to manage my anxiety and ADHD before they go from severe to uncontrollable, manage my health better and repair and maintain my personal relationship with Christ before I fully enter back into a church. That last one is not difficult but again anxiety and self-worth issues always like to rear their ugly heads when I try. Be it listening to Christian or Gospel music, developing and maintaining a personal devotional and bible study or even when I pray. The lil' stain in the back of my mind likes to perk up and just try and make me feel unworthy of the love and grace of the Lord.
But I've made better strides in the last year. I pray more, I've managed to reconnect musically with Christ and I even read my bible on my own time more often than I have in the past few years, heck even more than when I was fully and constantly active in the church. I'm honestly not sure if I'm fully ready to face going back to church most days. But I may do it soon.
Seeing other young Christians has really spiked my anxiety but it has also helped me realize that everyone has a completely different relationship with the Lord. No one relationship can or will be the same. But at the same time self-doubt is dangerous and vicious lil creature, at the end of the day this journey is my own and I'll figure it out eventually.
Please enjoy this playlist, exalting the Lord's name. Because sometimes you need to sit back and sing his praises.
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