This morning at church, they started with one of the congregation sharing their faith journey, or testimony. Since then, my mind has been whirring, thinking about my life and how my faith has played out at various times, along with my undiagnosed AuDHD. Since I have this space, I thought I’d start sharing bits of my story at random, in the hope to put it in some sort of order one day…
So here goes. Let’s start at the beginning.
I grew up in a Christian family. My parents met at church (the story goes that mum hid dad over the head with a hymn book, I’m sure there’s more to the story, but that isn’t my story to tell). Every Sunday, we would go to church, wherever we lived.
As far as I can tell, the first church I attended was St Jude’s in Carlton, Melbourne, but I have no memory of that. Then we moved to Gellibrand, then Buchan, then my parents were missionaries in Nepal for three years before we settled in North Clayton in Melbourne, and started attending Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Oakleigh.
We were never part of a particular denomination. St Jude’s was Anglican, I know we went to a Uniting church when we lived in Buchan, then in Nepal we were part of the local church of missionaries there, which was a mix of different nationalities and backgrounds. Growing up, I was never aligned to a particular church denomination. Instead, my parents encouraged us to look for Biblical teaching, and part of this was encouraging us to read, question, and discuss the Bible and what we were reading.
We would have daily devotions from various family Bible study books and learn the stories of Jesus. There wasn’t a lot of moralising, it was more important to learn the stories and understand them. My dad told me once that they did this in the hope those stories would stay with us so we could use them as we grew and explored life. Those stories were presented in so many different ways – from reading the Bible to listening to them in church, to performing plays based on them, to singing, to other things that I can’t think of right now. The importance was on the story themselves.
Because we weren’t brought up with a lot of moralising, I didn’t understand the idea of ‘purity culture’ and what many other traditions say about the role of women.
I was also brought up in a church that had a vibrant culture of lay people, and we were encouraged to get involved from a young age. This included doing readings, prayers, welcoming people when they arrived, and being part of the music team. As a teen, I would also get preschoolers to help with lighting the candles each week. As I got older, I also taught Sunday School. There were also many women who got up to preach and had leadership roles in the community.
This upbringing had more lessons than simply the messages of faith. They taught me that I was important, that little things mattered, and that gender was no barrier to leadership. I can remember leading a service on my own for the first time when I was 18. That was a really proud moment for me.
This also taught me that faith is more than something you believe, it is something you can get involved in, something that is active and alive. It was also something personal, that it’s not just something my family did, but something for me, something personal. It’s also not something tied to a denomination or particular tradition.
As I grew, I found a personal faith. I was baptised by my own choice when I was 13 and Christianity became a hyperfocus for a while. Even after that hyperfocus died away, my faith remained. Along with faith, the church community was also an invaluable support, but more on that later.
I may have grown up in a faith community, but over time, my faith has become that, my faith. It’s not something that my parents forced on me, I could have chosen to leave once I left home, but I chose not to. My faith and the church community played a big role in my adult life, even as I was struggling through life as an undiagnosed AuDHD person.
There’s part one, keep an eye out for more.
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