Growing up Catholic, my faith was the most important thing to me. I never thought it would be so difficult maintaining a strong faith in college. I was born into a huge Catholic family and growing up, I resented the idea of going to church and it was always a struggle for me.
My parents are both Catholic, as is the rest of my family, and it was the one thing I knew would never change in my life. I was baptized, received my first communion, and was confirmed. All three of these things are huge sacraments in the Catholic Church.
Typically, you are baptized into the Catholic Church as a baby and you receive your first communion around the age of 7 or 8. Your conformation is the most important day in your young, Catholic life. This is the sacrament where you become an adult in the churches eyes. This process is long and tedious. Although, often times it was a lot to do, it was an amazing period of growth in my faith for me and in the end was with it.
As a Freshman in high school, my parents left my faith up to me. They wanted it to become mine. With that opportunity, I ran. And started to have a very strong faith. I was very involved in my church doing mission work, bible studies, and even leading small groups. I was fully devoted to my faith pretty much all of high school and it was something that was so beautiful and I was so proud of. I didn't just go through the motions, I tried m hardest to live the life God designed for me while still bringing praise to his name.
Flash forward to my senior year of high school. The biggest, most unexpected thing happened in my life that acted as a wave in my calm sea of my faith.
On August 5th, 2016, I lost one of my very good friends. Logan's passing was so difficult for me and it made me start to question my faith.
How could God let this happen?
Why Logan?
Why now?
These were all things that constantly went through my mind. After that tragic experience, my faith was undoubtedly shaken. I lost touch with God during my senior year, which was something I never expected to happen.
I then moved into college with an already rocky faith, and in my head I thought I would move to Kentucky and my faith could instantly be fixed because I could move on from the past.
I was wrong.
In college, having a faith is difficult especially when a lot of your friends do not share the same religion as you. College is cool though because in church, when you look around at who is there, it is all college kids who want to be there. These kids no longer are being forced to go to church on Sunday with their parents. It's all their own effort.
With that being said, it's still not easy. One of the main issues I struggle with personally is scheduling. I'm always so busy with things like class and sorority that it has become difficult to attend church. Yes, I should do a better job of making my faith and attending church a priority, but y'all, life is busy. It's something to work on.
So how am I going to work on it? I plan to get more plugged into the church on campus and make it more of a priority in my life. I'm attending church more now that I am home again with my family. It has started to impact my life in a positive way. When I go back to college in the fall, I'm going to want to maintain this spiritual point in my life.
Faith is not perfect. It is ever-changing much like a roller coaster. You will have low and high points in your faith, but the important thing is that you accept that and still remember one thing. God loves you and wants a relationship with you.
