Akathistos

I was born to an Italian (Roman) Catholic and an Irish Catholic, both of whom attended church more regularly than anyone else in their families. My mother, as a child, attended church at least once a week, and many times she had to walk there by herself. I know that my father was always very drawn to the church, but I don’t know specifically his walk as a child. I was christened Catholic as an infant and even attended Catholic preschool. But when we moved in the fall of first grade, for some reason, we no longer attended a Catholic church. We began attending a Christian and Missionary Alliance Church. This is where I was “saved” and “turned my life over to Christ.” I can’t say that I was a very dedicated Christian or that I wasn’t; I was somewhere in the middle. I loved God, but couldn’t find my niche in the evangelical church. Much of the time I felt like there was something missing at my church and that I believed some things that just weren’t even discussed. I had a high mariology, but this didn’t seem to fit in with my church or my family members who had escaped their catholic past. It seemed that the Christians that I knew thought that anything relating to Catholicism was inherently bad.

When I was eighteen I went to college across the country and was exposed to Christians who believed a variety of things. It seemed that no evangelical professed the same beliefs, and this was very confusing to me. I jumped from church to church and couldn’t find a place where all of my beliefs fit in. About half way through my college experience, I was becoming exhausted with feeling pressured to raise my hands in worship or to go to an altar call; these were areas of Christianity that I was not comfortable with. I attended church on a semi-regular basis, attending “Bedside Baptist” more times than I would like to admit (aka sleeping in).

I began dating a guy who attended a Pentecostal church and believed that everyone must speak in tongues (which I told him I would never do) and who sinned in order to “have a good testimony.” Wow! What was a thinking? I look back on that time in my life and see how far from the Lord I really was. Luckily, this person who was supposed to propose to me on New Year’s Eve called a few days earlier to say that he wasn’t going to be coming out to New York anymore and broke up with me. I believe that this was God protecting me and preparing me for the path that I would begin to take with the man who is now my husband.

A month from the day that my former boyfriend broke up with me, my husband and I went on our first date. At that time in his life, he was seeking faith outside of the evangelical church. I can remember attending the Catholic church with him, feeling incredibly uncomfortable in the place that I was instructed to reject as a child. We jumped from church to church for years, especially during our marriage, and never seemed to find “the church”. We attended an Episcopal church for a while, but when that church was in the middle of the liberal debates, we decided to go to a church with more stability. That is when my husband visited the Orthodox church near our town. He was hooked from the start. And I hated it. I didn’t want anything to do with it. The priest at that time instructed my husband to have us attend the Orthodox church one Sunday and then a different church the following week. On the alternate week, we visited every possible church you can imagine: Episcopal, Baptist, Christian Church, Catholic (liberal and not), CMA, etc. But I could never find a church. After many arguments and tears, I was finally resolved to attend the Orthodox church for six months and then to make a decision. My dear husband was so patient with me through this time. I would take one step forward and then ten steps back. I made the sign of the cross one Sunday, but then it took me another month to do it again. Now I can’t go a day without it!

This was about the time when my family came to visit on what was their Palm Sunday (ours being a week later). We visited the Alliance church nearby, a church that my husband and I had attended for months when we first moved here. We had originally stopped attending this church because they passed out communion on the way out the door. It was terrible! On this Sunday, that fact that it was Palm Sunday was not even mentioned, the music was so loud that I had to remove my six month old from the service and, once again, they served communion as people left the service and proceeded to irreverently talk and laugh out loud. My parents were shocked. And I knew that I had to be Orthodox.

This is the point at which I knew I could no longer be Protestant. I spoke with my husband and confessed that I was ready to become a catechumen, words I thought I would never say. And the rest is history. I love the Orthodox Church. I am happier here than I ever thought I could be at church. I figured that I would always be unhappy with some aspect of the church I was attending, but I honestly do not feel that way now. My husband, son and I were chrismated on Holy Saturday 2007 and we baptized our daughter in September 2007 (our first “cradle Orthodox”). I still have a lot to learn, and I often take a step forward to then take ten back, but I am certainly always moving toward the Cross.