{"id":620,"date":"2014-09-25T17:23:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T17:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wellness.winonastateu.com\/?p=620"},"modified":"2019-06-14T21:13:47","modified_gmt":"2019-06-14T21:13:47","slug":"faith-the-choice-is-yours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/blog\/faith-the-choice-is-yours\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith: The Choice is Yours"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"teens<\/a>

These are my friends from the youth group in my hometown that I went to throughout high school.<\/p><\/div>\n

Religion has been a part of my life since I was a baby. Every Sunday, my family and I would go to church and on Wednesday nights, I’d go to some type of youth group event with my brother or friends. While I knew that faith is meant to be more than a routine, sometimes it felt like I was just going through the motions.<\/p>\n

Coming to college completely changed that for me. Suddenly, it was up to me if I wanted to continue to stay active in my religion. I could choose whether to go to church or sleep in. It was up to me if I wanted to spend an evening at a college ministry event, stay in and study or go out with friends. I knew what my parents and friends would expect of me, but they weren\u2019t there to tell me what to do. It was truly my choice.<\/p>\n

While I am telling you about my personal faith story, the fact is that we all have this choice. I am sure many of you–whether you\u2019re Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, Muslim or non-denominational–are also from families where you were expected to go to worship services or observe religious practices. And college presents the perfect opportunity to decide if this is a faith you want to follow for the rest of your life or not.<\/p>\n

Now for me, I went to church in the first week of college just to see what it would be like. The church, Pleasant Valley Church, was very similar to mine at home. and I actually liked it quite a bit.\u00a0 I could definitely see myself as part of their community.<\/p>\n

But fast forward a few weeks, and suddenly I didn\u2019t think it was extremely important to go. I was confused about whether I wanted to go church consistently or put my faith lower on my list of priorities. For a few weeks, I struggled with this question. I would go to church, enjoy it a lot, but then by the middle of the week wonder if I wanted to go.<\/p>\n

About a month into my freshman year, I went to Pleasant Valley Church\u2019s college ministry event for young women, H2O Women: Apple Orchard. You can guess where we all went– Eckerson\u2019s Apple Orchard! It was such a great experience and I got to know some of the girls involved with H2O<\/a>. Over the next few weeks, they helped me realize why I wanted to pursue my faith. I could see their passion and fire for the God I serve and I realized that I wanted that passion too. Getting involved with a faith discussion group also strengthened my choice to serve God wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n

In the past year, I have definitely struggled with my faith. Do I continue to actively practice my faith? Do I let it slide? But then there are always times after these doubts where I realize that I could never give up the faith I grew up with. It gets me through the stress of college and is very comforting to me. I feel like my faith helps me very much with my spiritual wellness. When I get stressed about something, I know that I can rely on my God to take care of my worries \u2013 something that I have a lot of.\u00a0 I just remember that I don\u2019t have to worry about the next day because my life is in God\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

Pursuing my faith in college was something I ended up choosing. \u00a0By doing this, it became more than just my parent\u2019s faith: it became my own personal faith. I couldn\u2019t be happier with this choice and the benefits to my spiritual wellness I’ve gained from it. I hope that you all will think more about whether or not you want to pursue your childhood faith also.<\/p>\n

–Sharna Miller<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religion has been a part of my life since I was a baby. Every Sunday, my family and I would go to church and on Wednesday nights, I’d go to some type of youth group event with my brother or friends. While I knew that faith is meant to be more than a routine, sometimes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[191],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellness-blog","tag-sharna-miller"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PQJv-a0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2887,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/2887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.winona.edu\/wellness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}