My Story [Emily] pt 1
I was brought up to know what the inside of a church looked like but never to know what was inside faith; to hear bible stories but never to think about what they really meant outside of the usual cliché messages; but despite this I felt from a young age that God was calling me for more, I just didn’t know how to serve him.
When I was eight years old I remember being terrified that God might want me to become a nun (my family were Catholics) because even at that age I knew I wanted to get married and have children and nuns seemed all so old and dull.
Having said that, I did meet some wonderful nuns and priests in my childhood who had a profound effect on me. One was Sister Nora who taught me before my first holy communion when I was 10. She showed me that joy could really be found in God Himself and not just in His creation. She was always smiling, always ready to explain when we didn’t understand, always patient and forbearing.
Another was Father McCormack who told the most wonderful stories. His sermons were never boring, even to a young child.
He taught me that serving God could be fun and that God’s lessons could be found in everything if you just looked the right way.
When I became a teenager though, like many young people, any religious tendencies I might have had faded in importance behind friends and school and the normal worries about growing up. My family had always only gone to church to keep up appearances so they didn’t mind whether I went or not and most of the time they had better things to do themselves. I wasn’t a bad child by any means – I always did my homework on time and got good marks, never stayed out too late, never did anything which would make a parent worry.
As I got a bit older there were a few things I hid from my parents but nothing beyond what most British teenagers get up to. In reality though, God calls for much more from us than would please the average parent and certainly much more than what is expected from the average teenager.
At 16 years old, things began to change. I was looking for something although I didn’t know what.