Optimism and Church..........

So in my quest to remain an optimistic person while facing an ever challenging life, I have decided to seek assistance outside of myself. I am appealing to a higher being. I started going to church. I've never considered myself a very religious person, but I have been Baptized and I grew up in church. I guess I decided at some point in my life that organized religion was not for me. As a child, I attended a church that was torn apart by politics and opinionated views. I'm not sure if that put a bad taste in my mouth or if, as I got older, I simply evolved into the decision that this wasn't for me. Either way, I gapped the distance between myself and that higher place.

But now things in my life are different. And all too many times, people use life's challenges as their excuse to walk back through those church doors and into God's arms. I am guilty of that. I am guilty of far worse things, but today we will start here.

I have always been able to guide myself when it came to tough roads that lay ahead of me. But sometimes (most of the time) I am not enough. I am discovering that the most positive mind in the world (not that I am claiming I possess it), can use guidance from something else, whether it be family, friends, physicians, pastors or community. When faced with the challenges that single parents are faced with and when trying to remain optimistic about life, turning to sources of guidance beyond yourself has to become part of the plan.

I love my new church. It is humongous! But at the same time, something makes you feel right at home. Andy Stanley is the pastor and sometimes you don't even see him live during his sermons, but he provides a connection that is delivered in the most casual, good friend over coffee conversation. He dresses in jeans and he gives you rock in roll music to worship to. It is the church that isn't really church.

Maybe that is what I've been looking for all along.

Happy Living All!