“Work hard, play hard, rinse, repeat” was how I lived most of my adult life. While living in NYC, I spent a lot of my early years focusing my energy towards gaining earthly pleasures and career advancement in lieu of strengthening my bond with Christ – never mind being a good daughter, sister, wife, neighbor, and friend! It is NYC after all, as I told myself, and one is only responsible for taking care of oneself, right? (If you don’t, maybe no one else will…)
Each Sunday morning in reflecting back at the week, I felt a deep sense of dread when I realized I chose wrong many times in a pinnacle moment in standing at the crossroads of a moral decision…I was the poster child of a so-called Christian that was “talking the talk”, but not necessarily “walking the walk” in the footsteps of Jesus. My secret shame that I carried silently for years. And so, feeling like the ultimate hypocrite sitting in the pew for Sunday service after “only God knows” what I had been up to the night before, I spent my 20’s and 30’s generally avoiding it. I attended church maybe only a few times a year for Christmas or Easter.
When my mother passed away in 2022, I was working late the night before and opted to take the 10am train the next day to Boston instead of the 7pm that night. I was woken up at 5am to be told by a nurse that she passed away sometime around 3am. So there I was all alone in this news in my apartment, alone like she was, because I had chosen wrong. Once again, I had chosen wrong – and at the worst possible moment this time. The incredible weight of this guilt was crushing me from the inside out that following Sunday as I walked home numbly from Penn Station following her memorial service. In this terrible haze of grief, God literally put Church of the Incarnation in my path and told me quietly to walk inside for the first time, and something inside me listened and obeyed. Let me tell you that Incarnation shone like a beacon in the sun to me that dark day, welcoming me with its kind staff and parishioners, calling me to the Episcopal faith…and I have not turned back since! Each day since then I feel it growing stronger and I have really come to see the Bible as the living, breathing Word in times of turmoil.
While I am a human being and I still make mistakes and fall, I know that God understands my honest desire to be a better daughter, sister, wife, neighbor and friend – and a better example of a Christian. As Adrian told us before, WE may falter but HIS love for us does not. Please remember that always, if you are visiting us for the first time or millionth time and are struggling in your faith like I was. I encourage you to lean in, listen for God, and allow Him to guide you towards His love. That is the exact moment that your life will start to change. May God bless you all. Amen.
Annie