May 17, 2022
COUNTDOWN TO MY 50TH BIRTHDAY
Finding Your own Spirituality
God} Beyond Christianity} Beyond the Church | Countdown to my 50th Birthday | Day 14
Celebrate self | Let your Light shine
Open Conversation: Disclaimer, this is my opinion of the following topic, and it is not meant to offend. Please read on.
I am a has been Christian who is now a Spiritual Being since my husband, and I have separated ourselves from the religious web of Christianity about seven years ago. We were heavy into church for many years.
Over the course of about the last 5 years of our church going lives we spent way too much time volunteering on different committees, running children’s classes and youth departments.
At one of the last two churches that we were on the leadership team for I was the dance ministry leader for the youth and adults dance ministries. I gave a lot of my personal time (it was a volunteer position) to both ministries and loved that aspect of it. However, I am saddened to say that as much as I love to dance and teach the technique of dance to others it was a stressful experience.
Conflict in Leadership
I have a passion for dance and movement it is part of my being so teaching dance from a spiritual standpoint was not what made it stressful. The unfortunate reality of it was not being trusted by the Pastor of the church to do so without him having a say in every aspect of the ministry. This meant that I could not even choose the song, plan practice times or other communication with the parents or members without his knowing about it. He had to be aware of everything.
That made it hard for me to be who I was spiritually which is very taxing on the soul. It got to the point where I thought about walking away often but would always tell myself that what I was doing was not about me, it was about God, so I kept going. That is until I stopped.
When your Spirit speaks Listen!
I learned through that experience that when you get that tug and pull in your heart (first instinct, first mind) go with it, that is your spirit guiding you. Had I done so the experience I had during the end of my time at that church would not have been so hurtful. Out of respect for all those involved I will not go into detail, just know that out of that experience I realized that my spiritual intuition was telling me it was time to move on and I ignored it.
Move on we did however, because my husband was having his own problems on leadership, so we decided that it was time to depart that church and move on to another. However, that experience although a little better had its own set of problems and caused us to have our own set of concerns.
Over the years we began to realize that we were spending way too much time at church and that we were no longer connected to our personal spiritual growth. It started to become sadly obvious that a lot of people believe that God can only show his presence in church, not understanding that he is everywhere and that became an issue for us.
Finding Your own Spirituality
Through our own research, studies and experiences we understood that God is so far beyond the church but, not only that we began to see that there is more to spirituality than being a Christian. More importantly we learned that there are so many other spiritual beings out there in the spirit realm, so with this knowledge we decided to take a step back from being members of, and or on leadership at any church.
Let me tell you it is the most freeing feeling you can ever have! To not be told how or who to worship, to not be told what is expected of you because you are a member at a church, or to not be told what you can and cannot do because you are a “Christian” is so liberating. We have never felt freer!
Don’t get me wrong we still believe in God, just with our own relationship with him that allows us to have a more grounded view or “Spiritual Base” (as I like to call it) of understanding that he is not the only God out there in the spirit real guiding us throughout our days.
I share this story to say that no matter what your belief is or how you practice your Faith, Hope and Love let it be on your own terms, not someone else’s. There is a place in the spiritual world for all of us no matter what you believe, so don’t be afraid to let your Light shine in whatever way it shines! That is a part of Celebrating Yourself!
