Growing up, I spent nearly every Sunday in church and catechism. We first went to a Roman Catholic church and then went to an Episcopal church. To me, I couldn’t tell the difference between the two other than that they were in different places. By the time we started attending the Episcopal church, I was about fourteen or fifteen years old. I had already decided not to be confirmed and was no longer attending mass regularly. It just wasn’t my thing I guess. My mom tried to keep me going to church, but didn’t fight me when I made my decision to no longer attend. My family had always been supportive of this choice and they’ve never pressed me about since.
Even though I don’t regret no longer attending church, I wish that I would’ve picked up something else along the way. I always considered myself logical, maybe sometimes too much, and I found it hard to believe in an entity that didn’t provide me conclusive evidence of being present. On the other hand, that meant that I couldn’t disprove existence either. So, I became agnostic. What I wish I would’ve gotten from my experiences in church though was faith.
I didn’t know what it meant to have ultimate trust in someone or something, even though I couldn’t actually logically come to its conclusion. Faith is typically associated with religion and I thought that was the only way that I could understand it. I didn’t know that I could have faith in people.
When I first met John, I had no faith. I didn’t know what it meant and I couldn’t foresee myself ever being a faithful person. I just had no understanding of it whatsoever. The more I got to know John, the more he taught me about it. He was the first one that made me understand that faith wasn’t just for religion or church. He showed me that you can have faith in people and who they are. I learned that even though I could not see the future or always know what was going to happen, I could be faithful. I learned to be faithful because I had faith in John. No matter what happened, I knew that I could trust him and believe in him.
This was a new feeling – one that I had never experienced before in my life. It took me a long time to embrace it and, at first, I would often combat the feelings. I had gone my whole life feeling a different way and was struggling to come to terms with, essentially, a new belief system. Now though, I’ve learned to expand my faith to others. I still stand strong by my religious beliefs and be agnostic, but I’ve learned to have faith in those around me.