Discovery...

First, let it be known that I came from a family of atheists   As a newborn, my parents had me baptized in the Serbian Orthodox religion (it would have been Russian Orthodox, had they - or rather, my Dad - not had a run in with the priest running the local parish) merely as a formality.  Participation in said church, purposefully nominal as it was, was planned strictly to make entry into their new found land easier via whatever connections they could easily muster (or that my rather mercurial father could not easily render asunder - but that's a story for another time).  In truth, they couldn't have cared less about church, religion, etc.  In fact, my father enjoyed regaling his neighbors and friends with his opinion regarding God's lack of existence, and would invite unsuspecting Mormon and Jehovah Witness parishoners into his home, where he and they would gleefully (well, on his end) spend hours debating the existence of God.

This did not, however, stop my parents from paying to send me to a Lutheran grammar school, a (for a few months) multi-denominational Christian high school, and a Catholic liberal arts college.  I tried to go the atheist route, myself.  But once I declared this point of view, WAY too many things started going wrong in my life.  I re-professed a belief in God around 1993, and then things started to turn around.  Love life exploded, job opportunities became better, and all sorts of other minutae that made my life so much better.

My faith has wavered a bit now and then.  I also dabbled in other beliefs, such as Wicca.  There's a place and time for alternative ideas, and, frankly, it suited me for a bit.  Coincidences that protected me during that time were reverted to my, again, rather nominal practice of that faith.

But in the middle of last year, it seemed to stop working for me.  I'm guessing I had stopped my daily candle lighting and goddess worship to a point where whatever spirits had been around me for a bit just couldn't be bothered anymore.

In any case, I turned into a wreck.  A wreck with no faith in anything.   Not even myself.

In the past few months, my husband has stated he wanted to give the Catholic religion another try.  Fine.  So we went to a local church last night to try out one of the services. The inside was as ornate as any house of worship I have entered in the Bavarian area. But I immediately felt a warmth in there that I hadn't experienced in any church.  Anywhere.  The service was all in German, but emotionally, I felt it speaking to me.  It was so overwhelming at times that I almost burst into tears.  At the end of the service, we lined up along with the other couples to have our union blessed.  I was at a point where I insisted on it.  When it was our turn, my husband explained to the ever-smiling priest that I did not know German.  He was ok with this and blessed us anyway.

I went away feeling that something had changed.  That things were going to be different with me, but that they would also be ok.  That at the end of two very hard years, and a particularly trying last few months in someplace I still barely knew, there would be a light, after all.  Both in my life, and with my love.

You can call it whatever you'd like.  I'd like to call it discovery.

Onward and Upward...