I've been slowly losing my faith

Jesse is the only one out of the three to go to Sunday School to prepare for his Confirmation. He hates it. I mean HATES it!

I can't blame him. We live in a very small town. And I've always believed (especially since we moved here) small towns breed small minds. I know that's judgmental, but if you only knew...you would totally understand. There are a few bright spots, but mainly, this place is just terrible for people like us. People who have a weird, sarcastic sense of humor and don't fall all over ourselves because of a silly little thing like an autism diagnosis. Maybe that's the issue.

My husband is not a religious man, and that's okay. I still love him. But I also love God and I really do value my religious beliefs. I was hoping that I could pass that on down to my kids. I had very good intentions...many moons ago.

The former director of the religious classes made anyone who missed church feel like they should just end it all and burn in hell. She had the kids memorize prayers even I didn't know. And if they didn't memorize them, they would not advance to the next grade up. WTF? I always felt that prayer should come from the heart, not mimicked like some sort of Nazi general. (Yeah, I know, but again, you don't know what we've been through here). When Kelly was set to make his Sacrament of Reconciliation or Communion (not sure which) she had the entire class come to the altar to be presented to the congregation. I feared how Kelly would be in a chaotic type of situation, but all in all, he did better than I expected. Sadly, in a newsletter shortly after, a lot of people were 'shocked and appalled' by what they saw and how the children were disrespectful. Of COURSE, I took this personally and felt she was attacking my kid, but honestly, there were others who were very rude and obnoxious. I felt she should have confronted those parents individually rather than being passive aggressive. See what I mean about small towns and small minds?

Kelly and Harley do not attend church anymore because they were exhausted with the restrictions that were put upon them by this lady. I don't blame them. But it wasn't just this lady. It's the entire congregation.

Because I know how my kids can be, I feel the safest place for all of us (as far as distractions) is for us to be upstairs in the balcony. A few times, we would be late and there would be people in our normal seats, so we made adjustments. One time in particular, an entire family saw we were there, and without words, just got up and moved downstairs as far away from us as possible. I held back tears. I didn't know if it was because they didn't want to deal with minor incidents with my autistic boys asking question after question with voices well above a whisper, or because she just didn't like us personally. The funniest thing was there was another lady with her son that came about 25 minutes late (no I'm not judging, it's just a fact). We were still in the balcony, but in different seats. She approached us and said, "You're in our seats." I looked over at the other empty seats and as confused and kind of giggled. She says, "I'm not kidding." WOW! So, we uprooted, because I didn't want to fight in God's house. Sadly, there wasn't enough room in that open seat for all four of us, so Kelly sat on the floor. The lady says, "You can sit here," to which he responded, "I don't want to sit in your seat. I'm not kidding." LOVED IT!!!!

I know I'm all over the place today, but please bear with me. I have too many thoughts in my head to put down, which is why I'm not always blogging or even writing in my journal anymore.

I'm sure you're wondering why I just don't switch parishes. Well, according to the Catholic church, I'm not allowed. I can't take my own time, spend my own gas money and travel 10 minutes to a more open and understanding church. No. It's all about supporting our local churches. So, until Jesse makes his Confirmation, we are stuck.

There are many more stories I can tell, but like I said, I'm all over the place. My mind goes in a million directions trying to keep my wits about me. I can only try each week to be open to my congregation, but it is short lived by little things, like dirty looks and interruptions of prayers to chit chat. Yeah...that really happened.

God Bless :)