Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 October 2008 09:45:48
Regular readers, who have been following this blog over the last few months, will know that I in the mist of the move the changing church thing and my responsibilities as a parent have been recurring themes.
I arrived in this city with a number of ideals which I am realising may conflict with other equally high ideals I hold and reality may need a re-evaluation of the whole lot.
In the run up and as I arrived I was sure that I could handle going to any church as long as I was able to get Third Party into a faith community she was happy in and that I felt it was vitally important for me to go the same church as Third Party. Equally strongly I have always maintained that Third Party's faith journey (or departure from it) has to be her own & that whilst I might give an opinion she has to know she is free to make her own decisions and have her own spirituality.
The reality is that I have realised that the first part is much more easily said than done. I have found a church I am rapidly feeling at home in and one that I have decided I really want to be part of. It is a church, with a more varied age range than I thought initially, which seems suited to my spiritual scizophrenia (i.e. both my radical side and v. traditional side). Yet, at the moment, Third Party has decided that the church I like is not one in which she really feels happy - certainly during the mornings, and has been making her feel an ickle homesick. She is talking of possibly going to a more lively one or about maybe not going to a church at all. The lively one is, I think, a good church but it is one which I know is based around alot of things that make me struggle with church at times and would not be such a healthy environment for me. More than that I don't want her to "fall away from church", but I know she is now of an age where she has to make the decisions.
Therefore, I think it is time to accept that my ickle girl isn't so ickle anymore and I have to really put into practice the idea of letting her develop her own faith in what ever environment she wants to. Whilst I wanted to be at the same church as her for a whole set of good reasons, I have to accept that it may not actually be the right thing for us. Similarly I might have to accept that she might be a church leaver, atleast for a while. So amongst all the things I have gotten from the extremely steep learning curve I'm on one of the most important may be the realisation that I have, for lots of right reasons, been trying to control the environments my daughters spiritual journey has developed in but now it is time to let her go and put the theory of independence into practice.