Just as you would mourn a real life death...

I feel urged to mourn the death of spiritual life in people that I love. But there's always hope and I've learned over the past couple of weeks that there definitely is new life to come; especially if you are committed to making someone a part of your every day prayers. Growing up in a Christian school and church, most of the people I knew were Christian. So branching out this past year and hanging out with a lot of vcu kids has really been both shocking and refreshing. My once small world perceived that most people I would encounter held the same beliefs as me. And that is not the case at all. Especially going to shows, atheism is a big deal in the hardcore scene. They like their bitterness, upside-down crosses, and faith trash-talking. (can someone please tell them the upside-down cross is actually the sign for Peter the martyr?? They're unknowingly supporting religion ahaha). Anyways, it's really opened my eyes to a lot of things and I guess it's all part of graduating high school and getting out into the real world. It's also challenged my spiritual life because a lot of these people are kids I care about and call friends. You get to the point where you can see through their "F*** God" and realize they're just feeling pain. Which they have complete right to, because the church seems to cause A LOT of pain these days and people are slowly stepping away from church instead of migrating towards it. But like I said above, I have gotten to witness first hand how God can soften someone's heart and it's really easy...all you have to do is ask. I've spent most of my prayer life talking about myself and my needs and I've always known things shouldn't be about me but now it's real. I've also learned something about myself through this past year. I'm really not bold with my beliefs and I actually have a lot of timid feelings when it comes to being open about disagreement. It's easy to talk about God when you're with Christians (which I always was) but it seems to be a whole different story when you're around atheists/agnostics. I don't think I've ever been so afraid of judgement from peers. Even though I'm pretty bold in all other aspects of my life, I guess this is not something that comes natural to me for some reason and I definitely need to work on that. Anyways, this post was literally going to be one sentence but I guess I just sort of went with what I was feeling. Don't know if anyone can relate to this, but if so then that's awesome. Ok peace out blogspot :-*