This is me ...
I'm Rebecca, and these are the precious people I share my life with ...
This is my husband of nearly 9 years, Adrian, our 7 year old daughter, Seren, and our 5 year old son, Dylan. If you want to read more about us as a family, then head on over to my original blog, Life as a Mum to 2 Children with Cystic Fibrosis. This blog is ongoing, and I've been keeping it for over three years now, and it chronicles the rough road we've been following for the past few years.
This blog is my place to explore my spirituality, and is my way of keeping track of my journey 'back into the fold'. Not that I've ever hidden my religion on my other blog, I've mentioned prayers and prayer requests, and spoken about going to Church, or Seren going to Sunday School, but this blog ... this is where I want to talk in more detail about how I'm feeling, and about my desire to get to know the Lord better to be able to love Him and praise Him fully again.
So, in order to move forward, I need to explain my past, the other side of my 'broken road' ...
I was dedicated into the Baptist Church as a baby, and my mother and maternal grandmother were regular Church attenders.
For any non-Baptist readers, Wikipedia has a brief explanation of Dedication ... "A dedication ceremony takes place in some Christian churches which practice adult baptism (most commonly Baptist churches). The child is presented to the congregation, and vows are made to raise him or her in the Christian tradition, in the same way as at the more common christening ceremony, but the child is not baptised, as the adherents of the denomination believe infants are unable to make a profession of Jesus Christ as Saviour."
For all of my childhood, I attended one of the two Baptist churches in my hometown. The pastor at my church was called Mr Close, and he was the nicest pastor ever, and the Sunday School leader, Mr Rosser, was just as nice. I attended the Sunday School from a young age, working my way up through the classes as I grew older, and a couple of times, I even gave the Sunday School lesson to my class when I got into my later teens. I also attended Good News Club on a Friday night at the Church, and then when I outgrew that, I moved on to Christian Endeavour, which was also held on a Friday night.
So, Church was a big part of my life, and I loved it.
When I moved here to Suffolk, I knew no-one, save for Adrian, his parents and his grandparents. I discovered that there was a nearby Baptist Church in my new home town, but to be honest, I was too nervous to turn up on my own out of the blue, knowing no-one, and so, when my grandmother-in-law offered for me to join her at the local Friends Mission Hall for their Sunday service, I accepted gladly.
The Friends Mission made me feel very welcome, and because they followed a Baptist form of service (and Seren and Dylan were Dedicated there, following the Baptist order of service), I settled in okay, but I was in somewhat of a minority, and not just because I'm Welsh, but because at least 90% of the small congregation were in their 70's and 80's. I was in my early twenties at the time. But we were made very welcome, and Seren went to her first Christmas services there at the Friends Mission in December 2002.
But then when we moved to the other side of town in February 2003, and neither Adrian nor I could drive (I still can't!), and I was working 5 evenings a week as a directory enquiries operator, I couldn't attend the Friends Mission Hall services very often.
So, as I didn't know anyone in our new area of town, I just made do with going to services with my mother at the Baptist church in South Wales whenever we were 'in town'.
But then, a few months after we moved, I was given information on nearby toddler groups, one of which was held on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons at a nearby Church of England church. It fitted in nicely with Seren's naps at the time, and so we started going there now and then.
Again, we were made to feel very welcome, and we got to know the vicar and his lovely wife and children, and attended the occasional service there, usually at Christmas-time.
Once Dylan came along, and was so unwell, we didn't get to the toddler group very often, but I kept in touch with the vicar's wife through the Community Parenting programme I volunteered in for some time. (Here is an explanation of Community Parenting ... Community Parent Volunteers work with and support families living in the local area with a child under the age of 5 years. We offer a confidential, befriending, parent to parent support which helps isolated families to meet others. We use picture based information sheets covering topics such as parenting, healthy eating, hygiene and personal health. We are there to listen to families.)
So at this point, the only time we were visiting a church was when we'd attend the Baptist church in South Wales, and in January 2005, we spent a beautiful, emotional and uplifting day there having our wedding blessed, Seren dedicated for the second time, and Dylan dedicated for the first time, in front of the Welsh side of our family and friends.
Dylan was dedicated for the second time in May 2005, here in Suffolk, at the Friends Mission Hall, with some of our Welsh family, and our English family there to share with us.
But we still weren't attending many actual church services, apart from the occasional service at the nearby Church of England church. And it was after one such service that we were talking to the vicar about Seren maybe starting to attend their Sunday School group, called the Sunday Gang. As I remember, Seren had just started attending Rainbows, which was held in the same church hall, and so I knew she felt comfortable there.
So, even though it was a Church of England church, I wanted to honour the promise we'd made to bring the children up in the Christian tradition, and so Seren started attending the Sunday Gang. And she really enjoyed it. The vicar, his wife and their children are lovely, and Seren settled in there nicely, back in ... late 2007, I think.
But more recently, Seren was seeming to lose interest in the Sunday Gang. At first, I thought it was just because she'd been unwell recently, but when her reluctance to attend persisted after she'd recovered, I had to re-think things.
I did try to encourage her to attend, stressing how much I had loved attending Sunday School when I was growing up, and I didn't want her to miss out on that, especially because she very much enjoys learning about God and Jesus, and loves to read her Bible stories, and so clearly wants to have God in her life.
But, in all honesty, I had to admit to myself, that it was rather hypocritical of me to be encouraging her to attend Sunday School when I myself rarely saw the inside of a church from one month to the next. I wasn't exactly 'practising what I was preaching'. So what sort of an example was I setting to her? 'Do as I say, not what I do'?
And that is the moment when God stepped in and changed my life.
That was when I had to admit to myself that I was gradually falling further and further away from the Lord, and was in danger of losing Jesus from my heart altogether.
Things had started to go a bit pear-shaped when I moved to Suffolk, and I struggled to find a Church I was comfortable with. But at first, that didn't affect my faith, and I was still trying to live my life as a Christian, upholding my Christian beliefs, and praying regularly.
But once things got so unbelievably difficult, when Dylan was a very sick baby, and a very sick toddler, I lost my focus a little. And then as depression held me tighter and tighter in it's awful grip, I lost my focus a lot. I became bitter and angry inside. But I did still pray. I didn't forget God completely, but I struggled to love Him completely, when such bad things were happening in my life. I know that's awful, because those times were when I should have been turning to Him even more, and letting Him sustain me ... but I didn't.
And then, when, on top of all the awful things that we'd suffered through, my Dad got cancer, ugh, I was just so darned angry. But I still prayed. I prayed and prayed for his cancer to be treatable, for him to be cured, for him to recover and to regain some quality of life. He was going through so much already with his Ankylosing Spondylitis (a treatment for his AS actually caused his lymphoma), and it was just ... well, totally unfair when he got cancer as well.
And then, when we were told in January 2009, that his doctors were giving up on trying to cure Dad's stubborn secondary mesenteric tumour, that they were just going to try to 'control' it for a while instead ... that was when my faith all but disappeared.
Red hot anger overwhelmed me, and, I'll admit it, I was angry at God. Why on earth was He putting my family through this??? Hadn't we been through enough??? I won't go into it all now, partly because it would take so long, and partly because it would invade the privacy of members of my family; but from about 1998 through to the present day, my family has been through some pretty horrendous times. It's been heartbreak after heartbreak.
And the thought of losing my father was the last straw. I was absolutely furious at God. I tried to tell myself that He had a plan for us, that there was a reason for all this stuff happening, but it wasn't enough. I couldn't see that plan, and I couldn't see why why why why why we had to face losing my precious Dad.
And after that, I pretty much turned away from God. I didn't pray too often, and found it hard to find comfort in religion. It was definitely not a fun time. But I didn't know how to make things any better.
I was still encouraging Seren to go to Sunday School through the year, but then when she became unenthusiastic about going, I knew I had to do something. I didn't want her losing her faith like I'd lost mine.
So I had to do some serious thinking.
And ... I decided that it was high time I got myself back into a church. Using the excuse that Church of England wasn't 'my style of church' wasn't going to cut it any more. If Church of England wasn't my style of worship, then what was I going to do about it?!?!?
Try the local Baptist church, that's what! And this time, I wouldn't be going alone. Knowing no-one. I'd be going with Seren.
I suggested it to her one Sunday, after she'd refused to go to Sunday Gang again, and she jumped at the idea. Wow. So I researched the Baptist church on the internet and saw their lovely website, and the following day, I phoned them up to ask if it was okay if we came along to their next service.
Of course, they said that was fine, and they said that they were happy to have Seren in their Sunday School, and happy to be responsible for her Cystic Fibrosis and asthma needs during the Sunday School sessions. And of course, I had to check if there were already any other young CFers attending the Sunday School, and as it turned out, although there is a young person with CF within the Church, that person is quite a few years older than Seren, and isn't in the same section of the Sunday School. Phew!
So we planned on trying out the Baptist church for the first time the following weekend, but as it turned out, I came down with a flu-style virus which knocked me out for two weeks solid, and so it wasn't until 6th December that we were able to attend a service ...
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