Moving on from atheism, Commitment-Phobe toured churches and tried God. Now, as a new Christian, her journey continues

Recently I’ve been getting even more involved with my church. Most Sundays I have a job to do at church and I spend time there during the week too. Which should all be great, but… Last Sunday I watched a family crossing the road in front of our church on their way to do some Rollerblading in the park and I thought: I envy you. Not the potentially bone-breaking activity as such, but the freedom of not having to do anything on a Sunday apart from being alive and resting. The freedom to not use Sunday to ponder the nature of sin or mortality, or question one’s own inability to be more Christlike. The freedom to not give a damn!

For the first time I feel a kind of loneliness as I go to church. Perhaps it’s the fact that our church is not in our parish. We are not neighbours with any of the other church members. And now our daughter is not at nursery in the parish, we rarely bump into familiar church faces. We’ve been going to church for almost two years and I am actively involved but we do not seem any closer to forming tight friendships with anyone (apart from our old vicar and his wife, who have now left for new pastures). Is it purely a geographical problem and would starting over at a church just around the corner help us feel less isolated?

Perhaps it’s because we weren’t active Christians before we started going to church and neither were our close friends or family. When we choose to attend church every Sunday we are also choosing not to make plans with friends in other parts of the city…

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This is an extract from the November 2016 edition of Reform.

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