I grew up in the Church, 

There was joy and laughter, and the overwhelming feeling of God’s love, 

I enjoyed singing in His name, memorizing each verse, 

It was my personal mission to be the best if only for Him. 

We were told we each had gifts to use for Him,  

And one day I thought I would burn up, I was so on fire, 

So, I began to write a sermon, one about sadness and loss, 

Something I thought I knew, but looking back now I only had glimpses. 

But I was scared to be put down for my musings, 

To be ridiculed for things I found to be true, my feelings and my findings, 

Therefore, my fire burned my message to ash, 

And then it disappeared altogether. 

I never hated God,  

Not when my life was one straight path,  

Not when it branched out into something I never could have guessed it would, 

But that fire I had felt so fiercely as a child never returned. 

I still went to church every day, but the children there made me angry, 

Each was different, harboring their own pains and responding in strange ways. 

I didn’t know why I felt so angry, and I still don’t. 

Maybe it was because I had gone through it too, and I was still a good kid (Why couldn’t they do the same as me?) 

Maybe it was because any of us even had to go through something at all – we were all just children. 

I don’t blame them now, 

Children are what you make them or allow them to be, and it was obvious to me that no one cared enough for these kids to help them, 

How could they be responsible for that? 

Nevertheless, that was the first time I pulled away from the Church. 

I came to less sermons, 

With the ones I attended never seeming to resonate with me like they once had. 

Even so, I still went,  

If only to make my sister happy. 

But then everything I had ever known was flipped upside down, and I was left floundering,  

I looked for God’s grace everywhere, but nothing showed up for me. 

Then the people at church took sides,  

They were too cowardly to say it to our faces, but they gossiped behind our backs (Isn’t that supposed to be a sin?) 

Because of this, a new fire had found its way to me, but this one wasn’t faith to my God, 

This one was rage. 

I never went back to that church,  

No matter how much my sister asked me to. 

This was the second time I pulled away from the Church, once again because of its people. 

Since then, I’ve grown, 

Maturing into who I am today, 

I’m still a kid, but I’m no longer filled with hatred, 

Yet I still can’t return to that church. 

I don’t know if I’m still a child of God after everything I’ve been through, 

But I’ll still try and present myself with the morals that His Bible preaches, 

Even if His people don’t themselves. 

This leads me to my final message: 

You can have grown up in the Church, but that doesn’t mean you are a Christian. 

You can give yourself the title, wear your cross every day, but until you act like a child of God, it will all be for show. 

I look back at who I was and realize I was the same as the people I speak about in this story – I was simply playing pretend. 

Someday I hope that when I remember the past, I’ll see a girl who did her best to fix herself, and maybe even succeeded.