I am a Christian and I am proud to be, so why do I find it hard to make time for God in my everyday life? I feel that I was more connected to God when I was younger, and as I grew up and left for college, I feel more and more disconnected from my spirituality and my relationship with God. I have come to the conclusion that it has to do with the “mainstream-ness” of society because reading Bibles and attending church no longer fits a busy millennial’s schedule. We are so busy making money, getting an education and being distracted by electronics that we lose our sense of spirituality and sense of self. I don’t want to speak for everyone, but in my situation, I grew up in the '90s and that meant playing outside and going to summer camp not playing games on tablets and catching Pokemon. This reveals a huge difference between my generation and my younger brothers’ generation — and that’s time.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing to indulge in watching people’s Snapchat stories or stalking people on Instagram, I do it all the time! But on the flip side, I find myself not making time to reflect on my values and who I am as an individual, which has caused me to lose touch with my inner being craving for attention. I used to pray every night and was a frequent church-goer, but now I’m too busy catching up on Twitter drama at night and too busy sleeping in on Sunday mornings that I haven’t been paying attention to God and His word. I noticed negative impacts on my daily life now, like always feeling like I was lonely if I didn’t have my friends or family with me and having a low self-esteem because I was always comparing myself to “prettier girls” on social media. A lot of that has to do with a loss of self-confidence and that’s because I wasn’t focusing on myself and was more focused on how many likes I got on my profile picture.

Overall, even if you aren’t Christian or religious at all, I think we all need to “unplug” and “re-plug” back into ourselves and connect with nature and the deepest feelings of our spirits because that’s what keeps us grounded and gives us a sense of purpose. Even though my life has become more fast-paced, I need to learn to center God and connecting with my inner self in my life because that’s what I value over anything else. So I don’t care if religion isn’t mainstream enough, I’ll create my own stream.