Today has been a day of many changes, realizations, and new vision for my life.
I went to my old church, Springfield Faith Center, today and it felt like coming home after being gone for far too long.
Normally you would say "What's the big deal? You were gone and you came back."
This is not the case within my mind however.
I grew up at SFC, starting in the nursery when I was only 3 months old.
for the first 13 years or so of my life, SFC was my home. It was my social place, where I could talk to lots of people and get lots of hugs without being scolded for talking to much. I was the garden to my social butterfly, so to speak. These wonderful people of SFC watched me grow up. They were my family in the truest sense of the word.
When my mom died, however, I became severely depressed. I pushed away everyone who just wanted to help me. I wanted nothing to do with sociality.I basically became a reclusive emo, but without the makeup, only simply cause I was too depressed to care about makeup. I didn't want people asking me how I was because I would just have to lie when they did. I didn't want people to talk to me. I was too focused on myself and my own misery. Because of this I pushed God away too. I didn't want him in my business, in my own personal life. I didn't want to make an effort to have any sort of relationship with him at all. Because of all this, church became a place I despised.
I would often sneak out of service and sit outside or in the lounge until church was over. I didn't want any human interaction, any instruction, any guidance...
It was a very bad place in my life.
Without the guidance and instruction I despised, yet so desperately needed, I fell into sin. I began running with the wrong crowd. While I never participated in any of the immoral and illegal things that went on in that crowd, I was so desensitized I accepted it without thought. It was only my strongly moral upbringing that saved me from joining them further than I did, for which i am eternally grateful.
The summer after my freshman year, something amazing happened in my life.
I went to Camp Crestview, and God absolutely changed my life forever.
I don't remember a specific instance that camp in which I changed, only that I did. God saved me from the deepest pit of misery in which I was wallowing. He pulled me out of my depression, my anger, my self-pity, my grief, and my issues of self-worth.
But he didn't stop there.
After pulling me out of said pit, he provided me with the most amazing supportive group of friends I could have ever asked for, to keep me from falling back in. Nathan, Ryan, Abbie, Hannah, Jonathan, Joy, and Kristen, just to name a few. I cannot express how amazingly grateful I am to them all.
That following school year I moved in with my Aunt Deana, and began attending her church. I love Lifebible, truly I do. Again, God provided me with wonderful supportive friends there as well.
But in all this, I never went back to SFC for any considerable length of time.
Now the place I despised, has once again become the place I loved as a child. The place where I am known, loved, supported, guided, and deeply cared for. My family is there. My dearly beloved childhood church family.
Going there today, I truly felt (belatedly) like a prodigal daughter come home.
I feel like God is calling me back to my first love, my first "family", my first "home".
I feel like I need to get deeply involved in my home church again.
I will be sad to leave my LifeBible family (though I will visit often) but God is calling my heart back to my first home, the place where I learned to love Him as a child.
There is much more that happened today, but I shall save writing of it until tomorrow, as it is past 1am and I need to sleep.
So much, all in one day... God truly is incredible. <3
