K
katiecall87
Guest
I have a unique background with the church. I spent the earlier parts of my childhood identifying as Christian, but not really going to church more than every once in awhile. After my parents divorced, my father married a Catholic woman who pushed my sisters and I through catechesis and getting our sacraments. I initially rebelled against the sudden change, but in an otherwise chaotic and unhealthy home environment- the church quickly became a comfort for me, and participation was very sincere. There was once a point in my teenage years where I had been fascinated with the idea of becoming a sister.
At any rate, I wound up leaving home very quickly after graduating high school. I immediately enlisted in the Air Force, and after completing basic training and technical school, wound up living in Germany. I fell in love to a good Christian man, who was not Catholic, and because I was ignorant of how things should be done, I married him civilly thinking that it counted as my vocational marriage. I went to mass for quite a few years, receiving communion, before realizing that I wasn’t supposed to be doing that. I had already had my first child and was even in charge of our base’s Catholic Women of the chapel group.
I stopped taking communion, meaning to get my marriage blessed, but found that it was very difficult to do. My husband, while supportive, didn’t really understand my urgency and dragged his feet w tracking down his baptismal certificate so we could get the ball rolling.
Slowly I began losing interest in my desire to go to mass. I was separated from my Catholic family, my base had a very weak sense of Catholic community. I had created the chapel group in an attempt to get a community but the ladies weren’t interested in any sort of weekly meeting or activity so the group existed almost entirely in name only. I wound up giving up running it and joining many of the protestant groups- just so I could have a faith filled support group that met often, but I always felt really uncomfortable and out of place, because I was too sincerely ‘Catholic’ in my christian practice. I felt like a fish out of water.
(Continuing in a reply because I wrote too much…)
At any rate, I wound up leaving home very quickly after graduating high school. I immediately enlisted in the Air Force, and after completing basic training and technical school, wound up living in Germany. I fell in love to a good Christian man, who was not Catholic, and because I was ignorant of how things should be done, I married him civilly thinking that it counted as my vocational marriage. I went to mass for quite a few years, receiving communion, before realizing that I wasn’t supposed to be doing that. I had already had my first child and was even in charge of our base’s Catholic Women of the chapel group.
I stopped taking communion, meaning to get my marriage blessed, but found that it was very difficult to do. My husband, while supportive, didn’t really understand my urgency and dragged his feet w tracking down his baptismal certificate so we could get the ball rolling.
Slowly I began losing interest in my desire to go to mass. I was separated from my Catholic family, my base had a very weak sense of Catholic community. I had created the chapel group in an attempt to get a community but the ladies weren’t interested in any sort of weekly meeting or activity so the group existed almost entirely in name only. I wound up giving up running it and joining many of the protestant groups- just so I could have a faith filled support group that met often, but I always felt really uncomfortable and out of place, because I was too sincerely ‘Catholic’ in my christian practice. I felt like a fish out of water.
(Continuing in a reply because I wrote too much…)