I want you to imagine coming home from college for the first time only to discover that most of your immediate family has converted to a new faith. I want you to imagine how you’d react to 
that, because that’s what happened to me!
For as long as I remember, I attended the same non-denominational Protestant church. During my years in the High School youth group, I became quite heavily involved in all aspects of that church—leading worship band, working at the church’s coffee cart on Sundays, going on the spring break Mexico mission all four years, staffing youth summer camps, etc. Any event the church put on where a high schooler could be involved, I was there.
I begin with that to provide context for the sudden and severe lack of involvement in any church I experienced when I went to college in Seattle. Seattle Pacific University is a Christian college with ties to the Free Methodist Church—there’s even a parish basically on the campus. But even though I had been prepared through conversations with my (then Protestant) parents that—due to the tremendous overlap of belief between the non-denominational church I was used to and the tenets of the Free Methodist faith—I should feel “comfortable” attending that parish, I never did. In a new situation without the ties of obligation or friendship I had at home, I felt no connection to the convenient on-campus church, and almost never attended.
Then I visited home during an academic break.
My family had always attended the same church, so when my brother and parents explained to me that they had found dissatisfaction with it, searched for the Fullness of the Faith, and had begun the catechumenate process into the Orthodox Church, I was, frankly, floored. Through many conversations with them, I was able to begin connecting their journey to the disconnect that I had been feeling in my own faith. So I began my own search—much to the chagrin of my theology professors, who had to deal with endless questions. (But really, how can they teach a class with slides on Protestant beliefs and slides on Roman Catholic beliefs without mentioning that there’s another way!?).
Even though I was searching, at the time I did not like my first experiences attending Orthodox Liturgy with my family. The more I learned and read, the more I liked the theology and belief, but I saw the practice of the faith as “too ritualistic.” So for a while I searched for alternatives. I wanted something deeper than my original non-denominational belief, but I wasn’t ready for Orthodoxy. I attended services at Lutheran, Methodist, and Episcopalian churches before settling on an ACNA Anglican parish.
I liked everything they believed, and their practice was a little less rigorous. For a while, that worked. But as time passed, I kept attending St. John’s with my family whenever I would visit home. Over time, something about that Anglican church stopped connecting with me: their beliefs and practices were still all “right,” but they didn’t feel “full” anymore. I began missing the beauty of life in the Orthodox Faith and even the parts of Divine Liturgy that I had originally decried as “too ritualistic.”
I eventually moved back into the Portland area and began attending Divine Liturgy weekly, instead of only when I would visit home. Over time, I found that I had finally come home to the Fullness of the Faith which I had been searching for! On Holy Saturday 2023, I was received into the Church—Glory be to God!
