I am a Southern girl, born and raised. I grew up on sweet tea, bbq, and macaroni and cheese.
At some point in high school, I started worrying about the caloric intake of each glass of sweet tea. I still wanted the taste of sweet tea without the calories, so I started to use a sugar substitute. I got the sweet taste without the calories of real sugar. The perfect solution, right?
Wrong.
My body doesn’t know how to process a sugar substitute. It wasn’t made or created to process a sugar substitute. It rejects it and offers me headaches in return.
Sweet tea isn’t the only place that I’ve accepted a substitute. I’ve slowly been ingesting substitutions for what it means to be a Christian.
Rather than pursue personally what it means to be a Christ follower, I have depended on others to tell me what it means to follow Christ. I try to digest their beliefs and make them fit into my body, but they just don’t sit right in my stomach.
Being a Christian is a personal decision, which means a personal experience. Mine isn’t the same as yours and yours isn’t the same as mine. We are unique and individual as are our faith experiences.
When I stop worrying about what other people are thinking about me and stop trying to look and act like a Christian, I began to reflect on who I was created to be. That’s when I realize… there’s nothing like the real thing.