“Welcome Home.” I heard those beautiful words over and over again in the first few weeks after my baptism at St John’s in May 2021. I knew deep in my soul that I had finally arrived at the “Home” 
I had been searching for since I was a teenager in the late 60’s.
I grew up in a Christian home attending the Quaker (a.k.a. Friends) Church. I had three brothers and two sisters. Life was simple and content. In my childhood I knew I was a sinner and was probably never going to make the grade to reach Heaven. In our church, altar calls were common occurrences; most times I was at the altar on my knees repenting. Reaching my teen years I was certain there had to be more to this life of faith than what I had experienced thus far. I bounced between repentance and rebellion til I left home at 17.
By the time I was 24, I had married, had three children, and divorced. By 26, I had married again blending our families, with five kids altogether. During these young adult years I always attended a church no matter where I lived—always struggling with my doubts and looking for more. Sometimes it would be a non-denominational church or a Baptist church or a Nazarene or even a Messianic congregation. In the early 80’s we added a foster son, age 14, making him our oldest child. By the late 80’s, as we were looking again for a church home that fit our early teen children, realizing they needed something we still had never found, we settled at a Foursquare church. We stayed in the Foursquare denomination for a decade, struggling with the same things as in the past. Our kids grew up, three of them finding their mates and having church marriages. I encountered many things that were in direct opposition to teachings from Scripture. If I was able to question leadership, it was brushed off or avoided completely. Eventually I became so disillusioned that I left the church completely.
In the mid 80’s my sister married an Orthodox man. He shared his life and his Faith with us in the most profound way possible. We were welcomed into his home and shared daily life with him and his multi-generational family. In his everyday life we watched him pray, fast and give in the most generous way, unlike anything I had ever witnessed before. I always knew he had something I didn’t have but had been looking for. He taught us how to live a better way than we had ever known before. When he passed away, our family attended his Orthodox funeral. I went away that day knowing deep in my soul that before I die I would become Orthodox. In that service, I had seen the holiness that I had been looking for. It was what was missing all these years.
I spent the next five years reading about Orthodoxy and learning what I could. My husband and I started talking about how to make the leap from Protestantism to Orthodoxy. I read every word of every web page for every Orthodox Church in the metro area, over and over. We finally settled on visiting at St John’s because they had chairs in the meeting area that resembled what was familiar from our Protestant era. On January 19, 2020 we bravely walked thru the doors into a world completely unfamiliar. At that moment I knew I was Home. We were warmly greeted and given a Liturgy book with a few instructions but remained completely lost for most of the service.
Considering that within days of that first Sunday we entered the Covid pandemic shut down, our introduction to Orthodoxy was quite unorthodox. I learned most of what I knew in those first three months from YouTube. Services were sparse and we had sign-ups and sometimes we were in the nave and sometimes in the fellowship hall. We were eventually able to start meeting with Fr. Matthew who patiently answered my many questions. By fall we were able to attend catechism class where I know without a doubt that this was what I had been looking for all my life.
I will always be thankful for my upbringing in a family of faith. I had a foundation of belief in the Holy Trinity and God’s profound love for each of us. I deeply learned the cycle of weekly services as we attended every single one that was offered. I grew up knowing about holiness and about reverence for the things pertaining to God. These are the things that kept me on track as I searched for more.
I have found in the Orthodox Church all the missing pieces that my heart was longing for as far back as my early teen years. As I have learned about and entered into the yearly cycle of the Church and seen the Eucharist treated with deep sacredness and watched our congregation reach out to the needy in the community, I am moved to the core of my being. I treasure my relationship with the Holy Theotokos and the saints that I never imagined before. The Holy Sacraments, the virtues and the Mysteries are a never-ending wonder. I stand in awe. I am Home—and for that I am eternally grateful.
