My Faith

I've been absent from my blog for about a week. Yikes, time flies. I've been so busy with our house sale and the usual business of our household. Don't know yet if our house is sold...but there is some interest. I keep telling myself that it is in God's hands. I know we will sell our home in His timing. But, I'd be lying to say that I'm not impatient. I'll keep praying....for myself to let go and maybe a little prayer for my house to sell too. :)

I wanted to follow up on the other question that was asked by Carrie.

Did I read in your blog somewhere that you converted to Orthodox Christianity? What were you before and what led you to convert?

I grew up in a Christian family although we didn't attend church regularly. I was baptized in the Lutheran church and also attended an Evangelical church for a bit. In my teens and early 20's I did not attend church at all but did consider myself a Christian.

Cam grew up in a non-Christian home. Cam's mom is a Unitarian. Cam has always considered himself a Christian. Cam's mom took him to a Christian pre-school and all throughout his childhood he attended Boy Scouts and various Christian church youth groups, mostly at the Free Methodist Church. Cam had also attended evangelical and Catholic churches in his late teens and early 20's.

Shortly after I met Cam he took me to visit a church in his hometown. I really enjoyed the minister's homily and liked the overall feeling at the church. Cam knew the minister because he had worked as a strength coach at the high school in the gym's weight room. Anyway, skip forward a year or so. We had gone to visit that church just a couple of times over the year.

Cam and I were not living a life according to the Christian faith. We were pregnant with our first born and we were not yet married. We wanted to get our life right with God. Actually, I credit Cam with getting our life on track. Cam arranged for us to meet with the minister...at the time he was known as Pastor Dave. I did not want to go but Cam drug me there. I was humiliated. We talked with the pastor about our life and our faith. We made a commitment to change our life. We did just that. We started attending every week and starting living the faith.

The church was a non-denominational Christian church. The church had begun studying Church History the previous year and was in the process of converting to Orthodox Christianity. We joined in the studying and fell in love with the ancient church. Cam loved everything about it from the start. Cam is a huge history buff so it was right up his alley. He fully embraced every aspect. I loved learning about the church and how it began. I really do not like change very well but after reading and studying each aspect of the faith I too loved it. I also loved the people in the church. I felt at home and surrounded by love of the people. We have so many wonderful friends from our church. I'm so thankful for those people who made me feel welcome and loved when I felt vulnerable.

We were Chrismated as a family, Cam, Tuba and I in Feb. of 97, just after we were married. The entire church was Chrismated together. Now Pastor Dave is known as Fr. David. It was a very special and wonderful experience. I think about 35 families made the conversion together. Since then our parish has grown and grown.

For more information on Orthodox Christianity go to: http://www.antiochianladiocese.org/ and here http://christianity.about.com/od/easternorthodoxy/p/orthodoxprofile.htm

So, that's the story of how we came to become Orthodox. We truly love this faith and church and our church family. My mom also converted last year to the Orthodox Church.