Little did I know...

Little did I know, but the high would be short lived, as I again began to have doubts and unanswered questions. When I was 17 I met the daughter of an assistant Baptist minister and began going to their church. I had been sexually abused by my dad from the time I was at least six years old and I told the assistant minister about it. He arranged with my parents to let me live with him and his family in a type of private foster care. My dad paid him $100 a week.

My parents also attended the church for a brief time, until the minister announced on the pulpit that my dad was a child molester. Before that though, my mom, dad and I were each baptized at the church. One day after spending the day with my parents I returned to my foster home only to find the house empty. Cleaned out. Not a stick of furniture. We found out that the minister had been caught embezzling from the church and he and his family had left town in a hurry.

I returned to my parents home and the abuse. As a result of that incident what little faith I had in God was totally lost and I became an atheist. For the next 25 years I would fluctuate between believing, wanting to believe, and Agnosticism, and Atheism. When I was twenty-six, I went to three months of Rights of Initiation for Catholic Adults and then was baptized and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church.

I had been allowed to by-pass the full year of classes because I hadnt called the church to inquire about converting until three months before the Easter Vigil Mass when confirmation for adults was held. I had entered the Catholic religion with the same philosophy that I had once heard Alcoholics Anonymous has, Bring your body, your mind will follow.

I didnt really believe in God, or in the core teachings of the Catholic Church, but I wanted so badly to believe in a power higher then myself, that I went faithfully to mass seven days a week, hoping that somehow I would start to believe.

But after several months, I began to realize that it wasnt going to happen, and my mass attendance became a once a week thing, then once a month, until when I was thirteen and met the man who today is my husband and who wasnt Catholic, I stopped attending mass altogether. I had never told anyone, before my husband, that I didnt believe in God. I dont think he took me seriously at first. I dont think he had ever known an Atheist. My husband is 29 years older then me.

Weve had a wonderful marriage for these last 10 years.