Weekly Assignment
Week Three: The State of My Faith
On the secular level, I have faith in a lot of people, probably more than I should. I tend to hold people's words highly. For instance, when a friend tells me they'll be over in fifteen minutes, I always trust that they will pull up onto my driveway in exactly fifteen minutes. I am also pretty gullible. I never realize it when someone lies to me, or is even just joking. When people tell me they will do something, I figure that they will. I know I shouldn't be so trusting in everyone as I am, yet I don't know when I shouldn't trust someone.
Although I have faith in a lot of people in my life, one area in which I lack faith is in relationships. I dated this girl who I was totally obsessed with (probably not a good thing). Weird stuff would always happen, like once she told me she couldnt go with me to the movies, and yet when I went there that night some of my friends said that they say them in the movie theater. She made up some excuse about about trying to suprise me, and I believed her. Then after we broke up I slowly learned how two-sided she was with me and, that she kept a lot of stuff from me. While that has been a while, I still have trouble gaining the trust of girls that I'm interested in.
On the theological level, my faith has grown exponentially since last year's Steubenville retreat. After the retreat, I remained very close with my St. Catherine Laboure youth group and attentended prayer nights and things regularly. During the middle of the school year, I branched out from my parish a bit and began helping lead gradeschool retreats for other parishes. While I consider myself to be pretty faithful, my faith isn't very intellectual-based. The reason for my faith growing at Steubenville was mostly emotional. With thousands of kids praising Jesus whole-heartedly in one packed room during adoration, you can just feel the presence of Jesus dwelling in abundance. The main message was just to love God. I realize now, however, that in order for me to go deeper in my faith I need to learn more about God. While God has revealed Himself to me through prayer, I feel that I can hear more of his messages through the Bible. I feel that the more I understand God, the more I can love Him.
During the end of the school year and beginning of summer, I struggled with my faith more so than I can ever remember. Before the year started to wind down, I was constantly in prayer all day. A leader in my youth group suggested that if we prayed in the morning, just thanking God for random things we saw and witnessed, that it would continue on through the day. When exams started creeping up and I had to work harder in school, I couldn't focus on God as much. That state of mind lasted for about three weeks until school was over. Then when summer finally came, I had realized that my lack of prayer had formed a gap in my relationship with God. It's funny how we want school to end so badly, and then when it does we are bored out of our minds. I now had more free time than i needed, yet I felt like I wasn't as close as I once was with God, and being in that mentallity that made it hard for me to pray. Luckily, through this course and youth group related events, I am where I once was in my faith, yet now I am more reasonable about it. Hopefully what I learn in this class I can carry through my whole summer, and life.