Testimony

Image source

First of all, credit goes to WhitneySue from Feel my Sunlight for this post idea. I kinda copycat-ed her post :)

Secondly, click "Image source" for the Facebook post about the picture/Temple. This picture is gorgeous. I love it.

Thirdly, my thoughts :)

I'm not your typical Mormon. If you've read much of anything on my blog, you know I'm a convert. I was raised Catholic. My family and I weren't very strict Catholics, and my fam still isn't strict, but Catholics nonetheless.

For example, the day before yesterday was Ash Wednesday. That means we did not eat meat for dinner. It also means we won't be eating meat on Fridays until after Easter. And I have to come up with something that I can give up for the next 40 days. Hmm. I've done chocolate before, but that's super hard! (My friends will tell stories, from before I was Mormon, of me forgetting about giving up chocolate, only to remember after unwrapping my chocolate chip granola bar, so I picked out the chocolate chips.... and washed it down with chocolate milk. Oops!)

We used to pray at mealtimes, but now we only pray when eating with my grandparents. In my house, it's called "saying Grace."

Bless us O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to recieve, from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen.

I come from a family that has never prayed as a family outside of meal times (see "saying Grace" prayer). I come from a family that encourages memorized Catholic prayers. The Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, the Nicene Creed. Before mass begins, we kneel down, make the sign of the cross, and say little prayers in our heads, followed by making the sign of the cross again. That's the closest I've ever come to seeing my family members pray outside of mealtimes.

In my family, Jesus is barely ever mentioned, except in church on Sundays or when my mom decided to homeschool us for "Faith Formation" classes. That didn't work so well, so we went back to attending Faith Formation (FF) at our church on Wednesday nights. I've always hated FF. My sisters have, too. (It's like Mormon Sunday school, only not on Sundays and not fun at all and you only do it till you get confirmed in 10th grade)

My family doesn't dress up for church. I don't think any of us have gone so far as to wear sweatpants, but jeans and tshirts are common. We do not swear in my home. Except sometimes my parents do when they get really mad, and my sister and I are both guilty of using less than clean language with each other in moments of extreme frustration. I need to work on that.

My mom once told me that my parents tried not to be the crazy people who do everything churchy and are obsessed with religion. They want us to have spiritual knowledge, but they didn't want to go overboard. And in a way, I'm kinda thankful they raised us that way. If I had been raised in a strict Catholic environment, it would have made my conversion story that much more difficult. But I also kinda wish they would have at least "talked religion" with us kids enough so as to make us comfortable discussing our faith with them. I feel super weird talking to my parents about churchy things.

I often "blame" my friends for my conversion, but that's not entirely true. I am a convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints because I had a persistent feeling that Catholicism wasn't "it," and I needed to find what "it" was. I am a convert because Heavenly Father did many much prompting of just the right people at just the right time to say just the right thing (or lend me a Book of Mormon, as Katie did). I am a convert because I really really wanted to know if all of this stuff was true. So I asked. And I researched. And I asked. And I got an answer, but not quite the answer I was expecting. I was expecting a "yes" or "no," but I got a "get baptized" ;)

Almost two years after that "get baptized" moment, I realize that I had gotten my "yes it's true" answer a couple times while reading the BOM. One time, I was reading the BOM on my iPod, and randomly in Alma, it suddenly hit me that this could all be true. And later, when I finished the BOM for the first time, I prayed to know if it was true and I got an answer- yes, yes it is true. But I wasn't ready to choose to be baptized at that point. 

Now, I homeschool for seminary because my parents won't let me get up that early. I'm trying to finish Personal Progress, and because I started late, I don't have to do quite as much as your typical young woman who started PP as a beehive (thank goodness, because I could never finish otherwise). I try to go to activities on Wednesday nights as often as I can. I went to church exactly once in 2013, because my parents want me to still go to mass with them, and our ward happened to have church at the same time I had mass. This year, I've gone several more times, but I'm almost always required to do massive amounts of homework before I can go. I want to be that girl who magically has no homework left to do on Sundays, or who refuses to work on homework on Sundays regardless of how much she has. But I can't be that girl, because in my home, school always comes before church. I wish it wasn't like that, but for the time being I have to respect my parents, because that's one of the Ten Commandments so it's probably kind of important ;)

I'm trying to get better at doing homework before Sunday. I'm trying to get better at "praying constantly." I'm trying to get better at making time to do seminary assignments. I don't always succeed, but I'm making an effort. I figure that I'm still young and still have a lot to learn, so I can't expect myself to suddenly be perfect. I'm human. I procrastinate, knowing full well that I will have to make up for it on Sunday. Someday, eventually, I just might have a Sunday where I spend the entire day doing churchy things. That's my goal.
To quote WhitneySue's post "Why Christ is the center of my life,"

Life isn't about being perfect my friends, it is about becoming like Him who was perfect. We do not start in perfection, but we can grow to it. we have been given this opportunity to be changed thanks to Christ and his Atonement.

 Amen!

<3 Marie-Rose