Narrative Essay About Going To The Church

The first time I attended a church was with my mother when I was about 10 years old. A friend of my mom’s was the one who had given us the invitation. If it weren’t for all the terrible things that my mother was forced to go through in those months, she probably would’ve passed up on the offer. I think she went because she had nowhere else to turn and she had nothing to lose. I will never forget the large square room that everyone was gathered in that night. The walls were an old dirty white and there was a stage in the front of the room the color of rust where the preacher stood. His face and armpits were covered in sweat, his sermon was loud, emotional and filled with so many metaphors. I looked around …show more content…
I wanted nothing more than just to be like everyone else. I didn’t want to stand out. I was still skeptical, but at the time my adolescent insecurities seemed more important than my spiritual awakening. Going to church with your family was what everyone else seemed to do, so I did it too. I still felt uneasy whenever I walked into church and I thought I was some sort of demon for a while. I tried to conform and I tried to adjust, but I could never truthfully say that I believed in whatever they were saying wholeheartedly, or that I even liked going to church. I kept going because I was under the impression that going to church is the right thing to do and that it was the expectation of all normal American families. In short, I tried to resist less what everyone was trying to push onto me. However, I proved to be resilient. After so much pressure I snapped. I just couldn’t bring myself to put my faith into something that I didn’t believe in. Suddenly, my wellbeing became more important to me than trying to fit in. I put my foot down and started expressing my distaste for our church to whoever would listen. In that short while I grew a large amount as a person. No longer was I to be the victim of societal pressures and expectations. The idea of being happy and free of a set of standards that I could never conform to excited me. I no longer wanted to be …show more content…
It’s amazing how anger can help you to be brave. How it can set you free sometimes. Even after this I still felt alone. My mother and I didn’t act like a mother and son should act. During this time I was becoming really interested with social issues. I was learning so much about the world and I wanted nothing more than to be a part of the solution. I thought of myself as this super-progressive person with a super tolerant and impenetrable set of morals, yet at the same time I was being intolerant of an entire group of people because I didn’t understand them. I had become the sort of person that I had hated the most. Time went on and with better understanding, walls that were built up started to fall. I began to slowly unlearn all of these unfair stereotypes and perceptions of religious people that I acquired from years of resentment and tried as hard as I could to understand these