August 30, 2026 - When Church Becomes a Home

I wanted to tell you all today about when church became less of a thing that I did and became more of a place that I call home.

I was raised in the Catholic Church, and my dad took us, my brother, my sister, and I, every Sunday, and you went every Sunday unless you were sick.

And This was until we were 18 and we were old enough to make our own decisions about going to church.

And when I turned 18, I kept going to church because that's what a good Christian does.

I didn't really think about not going because then by that point, I think it was a habit.

And don't get me wrong.

I appreciate my dad giving us that religious space,

and my mom too.

To learn about God and faith, and even now, during the Our Father, I hold hands with my family because that's what we did when we were younger.

And at the end, you squeeze three times, I love you.

I do that every time.

And when I hear the songs that were my dad's favorite growing up, he'd go, oh, this is a great song.

I go, even now, this is one of my dad's favorite songs.

So That base is still there.

I love hearing things like that and carrying on our little traditions that we had.

Eventually though, as college introduced me to other people of different beliefs and ideals, I started asking questions about my faith and what I really believed.

I began questioning some of the things that I had always been taught and tried to figure out what my relationship with God looked like.

Psalm 139, verse 15 and 16 say, My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

After college, I met my best friend, who's now my husband.

While we were dating, I started attending his church in Colorado.

It was a Methodist church, and I remember that we went to a contemporary service, and it was almost jarring because I went to the traditional service, Catholic service, every time.

And I don't know if you guys know, but Methodists don't kneel.

So that was... a really big change for me and the songs were different in the work so it was a little something to get used to but the first service that I went to I remember I heard the pastor say this is God's table everyone is welcome sorry those words struck me it was like the missing piece for me I felt like I was home in the Methodist faith Everyone is welcome here.