This morning I was asked to go help clean the building that I attend church in each week, as happens every few months or so. I showed up a few minutes late (per usual Amanda), and started to clean the glass doors like I usually do, while the people around me were vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, and tiding up chalkboards. Everyone was casually friendly and happy to help, albeit a little groggy first thing on Saturday morning. Nothing outrageously exciting happened or was said, but while I was standing in the foyer with glass cleaner in one hand, and a heavy duty paper towel in the other, looking at the floral print couches you can find world-wide in LDS church buildings, I remembered something.
Now, I've grown up my whole life attending church in similar buildings. In fact, some of my earliest memories are of being in church meetings, or activities in these buildings. I can remember playing hide and seek behind those flowery couches, and laying on my stomach on the matching carpet to read books while my parents listened to the messages being shared. As a kid I went to primary where we sang songs, and had treats and learned about being kind to each other. I always had friends as a teenager because we had youth groups we met with throughout the week to do activities with, or sometimes even service projects. And when I moved away from home to go to college, church was a sanctuary of familiarity even when I was thousands of miles away from anyone and anything I'd grown up with. Church was a warm, and inviting constant. And I loved it there.
Lately though, that hasn't been so. A lot of the people around me have lost trust or an interest in organized religion, and since I don't live with my family any more, I now attend church by myself. Also, life has gotten more demanding over time, and much of what is preached in church asks us to change, and strive to one day become like God, which means we are striving for perfection. And I already feel far from perfect of my own volition; trying to meet work needs, and trying to work on self progression, and really trying to build relationships. Not to mention, so much of religion is centered on families, so the social aspect of church becomes a magnification of all the families and their children, or the couples who are about to start their own families, and there is an inevitable, even if unintentional, alienation of those of us who are full-blown adults who are actively involved in the workforce and community, but have yet to claim our own family unit. So it's become more of a cumbersome task lately to be involved, and to get up and go to church each week.
But while wiping down those glass doors this morning, standing in that foyer so similar to the dozens I've stood in over the years, participating in the mundane, simple task of volunteering to help clean the building, for the first time in months, I felt like I was home.
I realized I was there only because I chose to be. No person knew, or cared in the long run, that I was there. But I chose to be. And I realized I chose to, because deep down that is where I wanted to be, because of whom it does matter to. I realized that no matter what the particulars of my life, no matter how hard or confusing they get, and no matter what is going on around me, God loves me. He's my friend. And He's not a friend who picks sides, or is only a friend if I meet a certain standard. He loves me always. I was standing there in front of that crazy floral couch, and I remembered why it was that I have really come to church all my life. It is because my Heavenly Father and my Savior, Jesus Christ, have come to be my closest friends, and I feel their love most when I go to church.
You know those times when you get to talk on the phone with, or meet up for dinner with a friend you haven't seen in years, and you get to talking, and it feels like no time has passed? And despite the fact that your lives are completely different than they used to be when you knew each other before, you still have a deep, devoted love and respect for each other? And your heart is full, and your life is the better for it? And then you always end the conversation with the promise that you'll keep in touch more often? That's how I felt leaving the church building today.
I don't know exactly what the switch was, and I know life will continue to be a challenge. But now, for some reason, today, it is clear to me that I know God, that He knows me, and that I want Him to be a regular part of my life. So I'll overlook the discomfort that sometimes arises, and go to church tomorrow because I want to. Because I want to continue to know God.
"Spirituality, our true aim,
is the consciousness of victory over self
and of communion with the Infinite.
Spirituality impels one to conquer difficulties
and acquire more and more strength.
To feel one’s faculties unfolding
and truth expanding the soul
is one of life’s sublimest experiences. "
1996: Me and Soph at my baptism
