Becoming my own

When I was young, my whole life revolved around my family. I have a fairly large family, consisting of four children and my two parents of course. We were a very tight knit family and all of our time was spent with one another. Being the youngest child of my siblings, I pretty much just followed along with everyone else whether I actually knew what was going on or not.

Religion played a very large roll in my life when I was growing up. My mom was such a stickler for saying prayers before going to bed, and saying grace before every meal. I can remember being woken up early on Sunday mornings to get cleaned up and dressed in my "Sunday best" ready to go to church. I was involved in children's religious groups and everything else that went along with church. At the time I didn't really understand what everything meant that I was learning, but I liked it because I had friends that when to my same church.

Progressively over the years my family began going to church less and less. I was no longer in any groups and holidays such as Easter and Christmas were the only times that we went to church. By the age of ten, my family was going through some hard times and my parents had filed for divorce. I was old enough to understand what was going on but at that time I hadn't yet made the connection of how our family problems had related to church. Honestly I didn't really mind that we didn't have to get up early on Sundays anymore.

By the end of middle school and the beginning of high school I hadn't stepped foot in a church for probably close to five years. I didn't pray anymore or say grace before any meal I ate. So much hardship had happened in my family that I didn't find it worth talking to God about because I thought that he didn't care obviously because so many bad things had happened. At that time in my life I was extremely depressed and I couldn't find a way to accept the things that had happened and move on.

Now at the age of 19 years old, I have grown up and matured greatly from my depressing days of middle/high school. I have learned to reconnect with God but I did it on my own, not because it was being pushed down my throat by my parents. It took me a long time to realize that no one was to blame for the problems that happened in my family. I overcame my resentment towards God and realized that when times are hard it is useful to have a higher power to turn to when life just doesn't make sense. I wouldn't consider myself a saint by any means today, but having a better relationship with my beliefs has definitely formed me to be the person that I am now.