¶ Intro / Opening
Good morning, my
little love bunnies. How are you? Hi, hope you're doing great and having a fantastic week. It is Wednesday, which means you get a personal episode from me. And what I'm about to talk about, I don't talk about a lot. And it's about faith and my Christianity. And I mainly don't talk about it because I feel like I'm still a newbie at it a novice at being a Christian. I'm terrible at it. So therefore, I feel like I have nothing to talk about, or have nothing to share, because I'm
terrible at it. But I will go back to the beginning and tell you about when I was saved. And I was a child. I don't know how old I was. But I had gone away to church camp. Which I loved. I
¶ When I Was Saved
loved going to church camp. And I Gosh, I was probably eight, nine, maybe 10. At the time, maybe? Yeah, that's that sounds about right. Maybe a little No, I wouldn't say older than that. That sounds about right. I was before teenager, that's for sure. And I remember sitting in our my little a frame cabin. And one of the teenage counselors
had come in, and we were sitting on like the edge of the bed. And she had asked me if, if I would like to get you know, welcome Jesus into my heart. And I can't remember exactly how she put it. But she read a passage out of the Bible, I forget what it was.
I'm sure you guys know about being saved, to asking Jesus to come into your heart, that kind of thing. And that's what we did. And we prayed. And
I remember that. And I felt like that's what I was saved in. That's what I invited Jesus into my heart. Now, having said that, as a child, what do I do with it now? I never really had any guidance, as far as what to do, what to read where to go. I mean, the only time I went to church was with my grandparents. And that actually came a little bit later in life when I was a, you know, early teen. My
mother didn't go to church, and we didn't go to church. But the times I did go to church, it was with either set of my grandparents. And I remember my one Grandma, I call her mumble mumble Easter. She was very devout, I guess is the
¶ Grandparents Influence
word for it. She loves Jesus. She's still living. Thank god, she's still living, but
I'm afraid for I don't know how much longer hopefully I don't know. It's, she's she's not doing well. But I know she loves Jesus. And that's all she would talk about. And she was diligent about going her husband, Mark Popol wasn't a believer at the time, or he didn't go to I don't know if he wasn't a believer, but he didn't go to church, until towards the end of his life. I think he finally did. But anyway, that's where I got all of my knowings about Jesus. It was a child's
version of it. I would go to Sunday school, or I would go to Vacation Bible School. And that's what I learned was a child's version of Christianity and a child's version of the Bible, and a child's version of Jesus and what he did for us. And then, you know, I became a teenager and then I graduated high school went off to join the Navy served in the Navy five years active duty and then I you know, I was just a heathen. I was just a even after that I never, never
¶ Navy Heathen
followed or, or grew my Christianity at all, y'all. I, I was wild buckwild back then.
And I was that way for a long time. And then I sobered up because I'm a recovering alcoholic. And that is probably another episode for another time. And I when I sobered up, I was Gosh, mid 20s probably. And they talked about God a lot in these meetings. And I feel like I reconnected with God. But it wasn't Jesus. It was just a
higher power. It was God. Although it was a Christian God that I believe Did you know the one God, and, you know, that's what, got me sober, and then you know, sober for a little while, and then I'm married and had children. Now when I had children, I thought, Oh my gosh, I have to get them in church, I have to go back to church, I need to go back to church, I want to go back to church. And so I looked around, you know, went to several different
churches. And every time I would go in, I would think, what can I get from this church? What can I get from this message? What are
¶ Finding God Again
they, you know, going to try to help me out with what or help me out with when I say help me out with I mean, with my spiritual growth? What am I going to get out of it? And then, and I went to a couple of different mean, a Methodist Presbyterian here and there, because I grew up Presbyterian slash Methodist, I suppose. When I say grew up when I went to church with my grandparents. My one set of grandparents are Presbyterian. I think the other Grandma, I think
she was Methodist. But anyway, so here I am trying to find a church to fit into, see where I belong, what I can get out of it. And few years go by, and then I finally run into an old friend of mine that I hadn't seen for a while, and she seemed totally different. And she seemed very happy, joyful, content satisfied. And I thought, I asked her, I said, What happened? You know, you seem a little different. She said, Well, I converted to
¶ On Becoming Catholic
Catholicism, and it's been the best thing I've ever done. I feel I'm very happy. I love it. You know, why don't you come visit. So I did. I went and visited. And I remember, side side note, my uncle got married to a Catholic woman, and he converted. And I was in their wedding as a little,
little, little little girl.
But I remember meeting my aunt Linda, and her family. And when I walked into that family that house that first time, I felt love immediately as a child. I felt good. I felt safe. I felt happy. When I walked into that house, I could feel it as a child. I'm not kidding. And I remembered that. So when my friend said, Come visit, I'm like, Okay, I'll go give it a shot. I'll, you know, since I'm visiting all around anyway, so I
went there. And I swear, y'all the first time that all the whole congregation, the first time that we knelt down together, it hit me all of a sudden, I realized I'm not here to get something. I'm here to serve. And I thought, Okay, that's it. I'm here. And I enrolled in the RCA classes, which were fantastic. It was a few months long, you went once a week. And you learned about the Catholic belief, the system, you know, you learned about the
history. And what you know, where it came from, and what happened, whatever you learned all about the Catholic Stuff, the Catholic Stuff. And I thought, well, even if I don't join, this is great, because I love the history. I love the I love learning new things. And so even if I don't, you know, convert, at least I've had this experience. Well, of course, I converted and was confirmed and all that and I'm a converted, I'm a Catholic. And then I went to mass on a regular basis for a
long time. I even had my kids baptized in the Catholic and my daughter Gracie went through confirmation and all that. My son hadn't done it yet. Only because he was at a different school and he was supposed to be going and something happened. But anyway, he because he went to a school that was away from us. He went to a military school that was away from us, so I couldn't take him. So here I am going along in my Catholic belief and everything and
everything's going good. And then my husband passes away the father of my children. And it's funny too, because when I married him, he was brought up in church of christ faith, and he said, Every time the door was open, we were there. And as an adult, he didn't want to go to church anymore. He felt like he didn't need to go to church, to believe in God and to have Jesus and in his life and everything. He was one of those people that thought religion was created to
control the masses. And he's felt like he didn't need to do the act of going to church in order to believe in God and be a Christian and have Jesus in his life. And so I was a little nervous about telling him that I wanted to convert to Catholicism. And then when I told him, he's like Carol, he said, I would never get in your way of wanting to have a relationship with God and Jesus, you do, what you need to do what you feel is good for you.
Anyway, so anyway, when he passed away, I stayed in there, you know, stayed in the religion got closer to it. And, you know, but eventually, but but again, in my when I would go to Mass, I didn't really grow my spiritual growth, I felt like I guess I felt like there was nothing more to do, because I was going to mass and I was listening. And I felt like, I was doing the deal. I felt like it. And, but eventually, I've, for whatever reason life got in life happened. And I, you know, just
stopped going. Not I didn't stop going on purpose, like, Okay, I'm not going there anymore. It just happened. And I haven't been in a very long time in years, years, y'all years. And here's another thing. I never studied or read the Bible on a regular basis on my own ever. I knew about the stories from, you know, being around other people.
And so, to me, I still had a child's version of Christianity. Because I never saw anything more. I never chose to learn more, or read more, or read the Bible and grow closer to Jesus, or God, I didn't do that.
And then I met another friend who turned me on to Bible study fellowship. And that kind of turned the corner for me, I have never been to a regular Bible study on a regular basis of any kind. This was my first experience. And I was, gosh, early 40s when I did this, and it was eye opening, and I fell
¶ Find Bible Study Fellowship
in love with it. We did the book of Matthew and I had never, ever seen or heard or read or anything like what we did in Bible study, fellowship.
Or otherwise known as BSF. I enjoyed it thoroughly, you would have you would meet once a week, you would
have homework to go home and read a passage and they would have questions you would write it down. And then next week, you would come back, and you wouldn't meet again. And it was I loved it. It was just for women, the one I went to was just for women. And I loved it. Excuse me. And then after Matthew was over with, they took summer break, and then they would come back in the fall and start again. And I've signed up again. Only this time they did Isaiah, and y'all I went for a
couple of weeks. And I thought there's no way I can do this. Azalea was way,
way over my head. I had no idea what was going on. So I'd so I so I quit. Because I wouldn't get it. I didn't know what I was doing. And it was just way over my head. It was too much for me.
And so you know life happens and you go on about your business. You go on about your day, or I did. And you know, I believe in God. I believe in God, I still do and believe in Jesus and he's our Savior. I just went on about my life never really considered. You know anything more, until I met another friend. Her name is Constance and she has set my heart on fire for Jesus. She
really has. Thank you. And every time we get together we you know we're always talking about we're fellowshipping we're and she makes me want to go look at the word for myself even more. And so I started reading the Bible. She has a year long Bible reading plan on her web. sight
¶ Current Status
at cosmopolitan cornbread.com. And I started doing that on my own. And she would recommend some books for me and I would go get the book and it would be very eye opening. For example, she recommended Dennis preggers the rational Bible, where he takes Genesis, just the book of Genesis and breaks it down verse by verse, and has commentary on it. So it's a really thick book.
So I thought that
I ordered that one. But I accidentally ordered Exodus, which I say accidentally, I think it was divine intervention. Because I've got the one of Exodus, and my gosh, I love it. I'm eating it up. I love Love, love it. I didn't know all this stuff. I did not know all this stuff. All these like Noah and Moses, when you know you're a kid and learning about these men. I thought sees men are like, gods and saints, and they're perfect. And you know, they're all knowing and wisdom as a child. But these
were flawed men with doubt. Oh, my gosh, it was it was just eye opening. And I feel like I'm finally growing and learning more as an adult. Instead of a child's version. I have an adult I'm beginning my adult version. Or maybe maybe I should say teenager version, or, you know, young adult version. It's been good. And so then I thought, well, maybe I should go back to Bible study fellowship. So I started looking into it. And I inquired through email a couple of times never heard anything
back. Sometimes they're hard to get into. And then I thought, well, maybe it's because a COVID they're not meeting.
Then
I get an email out of the blue, not from a person in particular. But it's from Bible study fellowship itself. And they were talking about online. Oh, online. So I signed up online and we had our first meeting last week online and it felt really good. We are doing Genesis actually. Isn't that funny? That I've already read Genesis and now we're studying it with BSF that is so bizarre, because we're already into
Exodus on my own. But I love the fact that we that my Bible study fellowship online group is actually studying Genesis. So now I can actually fellowship with people about it and learn more. It's been great. It's been really good.
However, I will tell you that I am still not anywhere. Perfect at all.
Because I will soon as I you know, as soon as I read or pray or whatever, I can get ready to take a shower and go out, go to work and somebody will cut me off in traffic and all start cousin. It's really silly. But I'm trying. I'm trying I think the biggest hardest hardest thing for me to accept is that Jesus has forgiven me He died on the cross and my sins are forgiven. And but I cannot forgive myself for all the crap that I have done. And then I continue to do I feel
like I'm a bad person. I feel like I don't deserve or I'm not worthy of it. So it's my junk that I'm getting hung up on I just so I'm just gonna keep reading I'm gonna keep studying gonna keep praying keep talking to God and Jesus. I'm also started a new podcast called the
What's it called? cultivate, cultivate the cultivate podcast, maybe? Anyway, is by Kelly mentor, m i n t er, showing his three episodes out. It's a brand new podcast, I highly recommend her she broke down the
miracle when Jesus was at the wedding with his mother and his disciples. And he turned water into wine.
She broke that down into an amazing story and that story, what am I an amazing learning lesson learning thing.
And it's so funny because she and I both a long time ago had this image in our head about this particular miracle that, you know, Jesus was he knew who he was, and he gathered everybody around at the wedding is that watch this, that I'm going to do this and he, you know, he just was showing off not showing up but he was like, come to me and look what I'm going to do and this miracle I turned water into wine.
Well, that's not how it happened at all. She broke it down really, really good. And I'm not going to get into it because I'll screw it up. recommend you go listen to it. It's the second episode I think. I think yeah.
I like her podcast and I will keep listening. I'm excited. I'm excited about all of it. I just get I'm excited. I'm excited about it. I love love it. All right, I think I'm gonna go for now. I'm just gonna go for now. You guys have a great week and I hopefully we'll be back Friday. We'll see. Have a good one.