Stephany Writes

Categories: About Me

The State of My Faith Today

If you haven’t been reading my blog for very long, you might be surprised to know that this blog used to be very heavily focused on my faith. Back then, I wrote about my faith on a weekly basis, but I can’t remember the last time I wrote about it. It’s been a few years at least.

And the answer as to why I haven’t written about my faith is a simple one: I’ve been wrestling with what faith means to me, if I even believe in God, and how Christians are viewed in this culture today.

I should start from the beginning. Settle in, my friends. This is going to be a ride.

I grew up in a Pentecostal church. If you don’t know what that means, basically I grew up thinking someone interrupting a church service to “speak in tongues” was totally normal. I grew up thinking everyone danced in the aisles and front of the church during worship. I grew up thinking I wasn’t “saved” enough if I wasn’t slain in the Spirit whenever a pastor prayed over me. (“Slain in the Spirit” basically means falling to the ground because you’re so overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit; or, if you’re me, it’s because you don’t want to be seen as “unholy” so you fall down by your own power.)

My grandparents were the pastors of my children’s church, and so we faithfully attended church every Sunday morning. We also typically attended church on Sunday night and Wednesday night. That was my life throughout my entire childhood and most of my teenage years. It’s important to note here that my dad never attended church with my mom, my brother, and me. He did not believe he needed church to be a Christian, which is true, but I’m not so sure he is/was a Christian. Mostly because of the way he used to make fun of my mom for attending church. So I had that dichotomy: my mom, a strong Christian woman who took us to church, and my dad, a nonbeliever who made fun of everything that had to do with Christianity.

In retrospect, my dad’s bullying ways are probably what led me to become an even stronger Christian. And, in truth, having my faith helped me through some of my more troubling years of childhood when my dad was at his worst. There’s something comforting about faith when times are tough.

My faith was a huge part of my identity from the time I was young and throughout my early twenties. I was fully invested in everything the church preached: I didn’t curse, dressed modestly, believed sex outside of marriage was sinful, didn’t listen to secular music or read books that didn’t have Christian themes. I wore a “True Love Waits” ring on my left ring finger for years and felt pride in the fact that I had never “given up my special gift” for some random guy. I was highly judgmental of people who didn’t follow the Christian faith. I believed that the only path to happiness was by being a believer. I didn’t believe in gay rights and was staunchly pro-life.

It’s comical to write all of this out, honestly, because it reminds me of a time when I was deeply unhappy. I wasn’t stretching myself and trying to find different viewpoints. I was stuck in a white conservative Christian bubble where things were strictly black and white. Gray areas did not exist.

So, what shifted? Because it’s obvious that I don’t necessarily prescribe to this same set of beliefs anymore. I’m more liberal, for one thing, and I can honestly say that it was the actions of Christians in my circle and the way they so easily supported Donald Trump for president that pushed me over the edge.

But truthfully, I was nearing that edge way before then.

I quickly became disenchanted with the church in my mid-twenties. It started when I tried joining church groups and was ignored. It’s always my worst nightmare – to push myself outside my comfort zone and join a social group alone, only to be completely ignored the entire time I’m there. I didn’t know about my introversion and social anxiety before then, so I thought it was just me. I thought I was good enough for the church. I wasn’t holy enough or friendly enough or pretty enough or skinny enough. And when this happened over and over again, it was easy to believe it was me and not them.

That’s when the cracks in my faith started to appear.

After not finding a place in my church, I started attending church less and less and subsequently, started to read my bible and pray less and less. I was still a believer. I still yearned for God, but it was less important to me. I didn’t think I was holy enough for Him.

And that’s when I really started to examine my faith and what it meant to me. What does being a Christian mean to me, personally? Do I even really want this life?

Every time I opened my bible, my guilt jumped out at me. There was just something about being told, over and over again, that I am a sinner and the only way to make up for my sinful nature is to believe in God that started rubbing me the wrong way. I couldn’t get away from this idea that I am a sinner, I have always been a sinner, and I will always be a sinner. This is really the basic tenant of Christianity, and it seemed like every time I opened my bible, I would learn about a different way I was a sinner and needed God.

Every time I did something that went against the faith, I felt an enormous amount of guilt. It could be as simple as reading a romance novel or as massive as masturbating (yes, I’m getting really real here). The guilt followed me everywhere and I honestly believed I was the only one who wrestled with my faith like this.

I’m not, of course. It’s the simple truth of the faith journey is that we all battle against our “sinful nature,” but what if… I just didn’t have to battle anymore? What if I just let myself do the things I wanted to do – things that, mind you, aren’t hurting anyone and actually bring me great pleasure – without the guilt I always attached to them?

It’s a question that followed me for years. There wasn’t a light bulb moment where I just stopped battling against my faith. It was gradual. I stopped attending church. I stopped reading my bible. I stopped reading Christian fiction. I stopped listening to Christian music. I stopped praying.

Gradually, I stopped battling against my faith. I just began to live my life without the guilt. It was freeing in the way my faith never was.

And then the 2016 presidential election happened and I saw Christians throw their support for a man who went against everything I thought they believed in. A man who bragged about sexual assault and didn’t believe in helping those less fortunate and made misogynistic comments about his opponent and other women. A man who wasn’t faithful to his wives. A man who said terrible things about other people. That is who you want to support?

It was the beginning of the end for me. I couldn’t reconcile my faith with the way the Christian community was behaving. If that is what it meant to be a Christian, I didn’t want any part of it.

So what’s the state of my faith today? The truth is, I don’t really know.

My faith looks nothing like it did when I was growing up. Even still, I take so much comfort in faith, in bible stories, in hymns, in sermons. I believe that God exists, but that He takes different forms for everyone and it’s not my job to judge that. I miss being a part of a church family, but I’ve been burned so many times by the church that I’m not sure I have it in me to try again, even with a church that ascribes to my beliefs. There’s also the fact that I have social anxiety and joining a new church is downright terrifying for me.

But also, I don’t want my faith to be a defining part of who I am. For most of my childhood, it was my main identifier and it’s really hard when your main identifying characteristic is something you’re actually bad at. And something that makes you feel guilty nearly all the time.

At my core, I’m not a Christian. I’m just a woman who is trying her best to be a good person. And not a good person because of my Christianity, but a good person because it’s the right thing to be. A woman who tries to fight an administration that doesn’t embody any of Christ’s teachings. A woman who tries to help out those in need as much as she can, accept everyone as they are, and keep her mind open to differing viewpoints.

My faith today is less about guilt and trying to live up to the impossible standards of the perfect Christian woman. My faith today is to simply be the best me I can be. To honor my needs, to love people where they are, and to live in a way that makes me proud.

Categories: About Me

A Year-by-Year Review of My Twenties

For the past two years, I’ve documented my year month-by-month, assigning the emotion I was feeling most strongly to each month. I thought it might be fun to document my twenties in the same way, which meant I had to dig through my blog’s archives and my own memories to figure out exactly what happened each year and how I was feeling. It was an interesting experience, helping me to see just how damn far I’ve come in ten years. I can’t believe that ten years ago, I was a scared college student who thought she was meant to be an elementary school teacher. How times have changed, eh?

When I was 20, I was stressed out.

I was studying to be an elementary school teacher, which involved three different internships in elementary classrooms. During my last internship, in the fall of 2008, my internship coordinator met with me in the middle of the day to tell me I wouldn’t pass. I needed to get my things and leave. It was heartbreaking and scary and I didn’t know what to do. I was the good student! I had always made Honor Roll or Principal’s List. I wasn’t the kind of person who failed things, and yet here I was, tearfully calling my mom to tell her I had failed at something and I didn’t know what to do next.

When I was 20, I became an aunt for the first time when my nephew J was born. This was also the last time I saw my dad face-to-face when he came to my small 20th birthday celebration.

When I was 21, I was at peace.

After some soul-searching and spending time by myself, I decided to change my major from elementary education to journalism. My heart wasn’t in teaching; it was in writing. I started over from scratch, taking pre-requisite courses on the art of journalism before being accepted into the College of Journalism and Media Studies at USF in the spring.

I adopted a dog this year, a nearly seven-year-old miniature dachshund named Dutch. I didn’t know he would become my entire world, but he did.

My mom and I ended up downsizing to a much smaller apartment. We were living above our means and needed something more affordable. We found a one-bedroom with a den and it was probably half the size of our old apartment.

When I was 22, I was focused.

My whole world was taken up by my journalism schooling and my part-time job at a daycare. When I wasn’t working, I was either in class, studying, writing papers, or publishing posts on my new-ish blog. (This one!)

This was the year I wrote a letter to my father, effectively ending our relationship. And it was the year my mom was hit by a car while running – truly the scariest moment of my life.

When I was 23, I was anxious.

I graduated from college this year, but the last semester of college was so anxiety-inducing that I probably should have been on meds (in fact, I was so anxious that I got shingles purely from stress.)

As a graduation present, my mom and I went on a five-day cruise and it forever changed my life.

A few months after graduating, I accepted a position as a marketing assistant at a direct marketing company. The pay wasn’t great, but it would get my foot in the door (and get me out of the daycare I was working at!)

A few weeks after starting the job, one of my coworkers was fired. We were a small company of just 10 people, so the aftereffects were felt by everyone. After that, I was so anxious and scared about being fired myself. Every time my boss had a closed-door meeting with the marketing director, I was convinced they were talking about firing me. I started having panic attacks about this, which prompted me to go to therapy.

When I was 24, I was lost.

Gradually, the persistent fear of being fired from this job dissipated and I grew in my role as a marketing assistant. But I was still unhappy because I did not love my job. It did not challenge me, I never had enough work to do, and my time was highly micromanaged. There were days when I cried in my car at the end of the day. I wanted more from my work life, and I fell into a quarter-life crisis of not having any sort of idea of what I really wanted from my career.

In the fall, my mom and I moved from our tiny one-bedroom apartment into a spacious two-bedroom and we were both all the more happy for it.

I went on two cruises, spent a long weekend in Georgia with my family, and started attending a new book club.

When I was 25, I was driven.

I made a promise to myself to leave the job where I was so enormously unhappy, so I threw myself into job searching. At the end of the summer, I accepted a position as a copywriter at a growing online marketing firm. It was one of the best decisions I made in my twenties. I received a significant income boost and got to do what I always wanted to do – write for a living.

It wasn’t until I started my new job that I realized I have debilitating social anxiety. I didn’t speak to anyone at my new company aside from my boss for the first three months I was there, and it took me a few days to even have the courage to walk into the break room.

At 25, I had my first kiss, bought my first car, and had my first vacation with friends.

When I was 26, I was happy.

There’s not much to say about this year of my life. I grew as a copywriter (and gradually even made friends with my coworkers), and learned that loving your job is a possibility. I developed deeper relationships with my friends. I dated from time to time. And I continued to live with my mom, which allowed me to pay down debts and save money. It was a good year for me.

When I was 27, I was engaged with my life.

This is the year where everything happened. It was the year I traveled to Savannah twice and fell head over heels for that charming city. It was the year I met a guy who changed my world for a few months and caused me to get super clear on what I need from my romantic relationships. It was the year my nephew, D., was born. It was the year I moved to Tampa to live with my best friend. It was the year my mom remarried. And it was the year I lost my grandma. Losing grandma was the most massive, soul-crushing loss I have ever experienced in my life, and I don’t think I’ll ever be the same.

When I was 28, I was lonely.

At 28, I was lonely. And then I was busy. And then I was lonely. And then I was busy. Rinse and repeat, that was my year. I was either overwhelmed with social plans and keeping myself so busy that I couldn’t see straight, or I was sitting alone in my apartment that was too expensive in a city I did not love. This was a hard year.

In the fall, I left Tampa and moved back to the city I loved, into an apartment of my own. It was my first time living alone, and I was terrified because transitions are notoriously difficult for me. But the transition was perfect and easy and stress-free. This is where I was meant to be – in this tiny apartment near my friends and my family and my comforts. This transition sparked a change in me, a feeling of being home and happy and whole.

When I was 29, I was content.

This was my best year yet! I started off 29 with a fun relationship with someone I met in Jamaica that never evolved past anything because, well, we live in entirely separate countries. But he was cute and fun to talk to and made me feel good, and who knows what will happen in the future. I participated in the Women’s March in my city and it got me fired up about politics for the first time ever. I settled into myself, my singleness, and my happiness. I traveled to Puerto Rico with my mom and Asheville with my girlfriends. I got a tattoo. I survived a hurricane. I read more than 100 books. I found out my old pup has dementia and taking care of him has become my utmost priority. I opened myself up to dating in a way I never had before. And I just enjoyed my life as much as I possibly could. Yeah, 29 was a fantastic year and it was the perfect way to say goodbye to my twenties and welcome in my thirties.

Categories: About Me

On My 30th Birthday

Today, I’m 30.

I’m celebrating by taking a day off work. My plans for today include sleeping in and lazing around in the morning, reading my book. In the afternoon, I’m going to take myself out to lunch and then pamper myself with a massage and pedicure. After that, I’ll probably stop at Starbucks for a peppermint mocha and some reading time in one of their cozy chairs. And this evening, my family is taking me out to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. All in all, it’s a day of treating myself and I couldn’t be happier about it.

I have a lot to say about turning thirty. First, I want to talk about how excited I am to be in my thirties. Everyone I know tells me that their thirties have been so much better than their twenties, and I believe it. For me, my twenties were a period of intense soul-searching and anxiety. There’s college and that first post-college job and making friends and trying to decide what exactly you want from life while still feeling like a kid.

At thirty, I don’t feel like a kid anymore. I don’t feel like a complete mess. I feel like a grown woman who has her shit together and knows exactly what she wants from her life. There is something so empowering and freeing in that statement. It means I have this incredible opportunity to shape my life exactly the way I want it to look.

My twenties were a turbulent period. I spent a lot of time being ashamed of myself. Ashamed of my shyness and introversion and inability to live on my own and codependency on my mom and financial instability and chronically single status and weight and sensitivity. But over the years, as I have grown into myself, I have accepted that these are simply parts of my story. My shyness, introversion, and high sensitivity are not character flaws, but some of my biggest strengths and they allow me to relate to people on a much deeper level. My inability to live on my own and codependency on my mom are things I grew out of, as I now live alone very successfully and find my mom leaning on me as much as I lean on her. I’ve become financially stable over the years, though I’m still not exactly where I want to be, but that’s okay. I’ll get there. And being chronically single? There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being alone if you are happy being alone. And I am. I go on dates and I put myself out there as much as I want to, but it’s a very low-pressure side of my life. I go on dates because I want to, not because I need to or because I feel like something is missing from my life.

Thirty doesn’t exactly look the way I thought it would look, especially as society told me over and over again that I was supposed to be married in my twenties and at least have a kid by now. This message is especially told to you when you grow up in church, where it felt like every sermon given in youth group was about saving yourself for marriage and waiting for your future spouse. But I honestly cannot imagine being married or having kids right now. I don’t think I was ready for either of those things in my twenties. And so I can’t be upset that I’m turning thirty, single and childless. Those things aren’t meant for me right now, and that’s okay.

If my twenties were my decade of self-discovery and coming into my own, then I want my thirties to be about settling into myself and not letting fear dictate my decisions. I want to put myself out there in fuller, richer, deeper ways. I want to ask for what I want in my romantic relationships. I want to finish that novel and publish it… and maybe publish a handful more after that one. I want to deepen my friendships, travel more, feel more financially stable. I want to have retirement savings and emergency savings and no debt. I want to read as much as I possibly can because reading is my happy place. I want more massages and pedicures and long walks in the sunshine by myself. I want solo travel and solo adventures. I want to find real, true, lasting love with someone who understands me and makes me laugh and can handle all of my anxieties and quirks. I want to have a baby, a little person who is a part of me. I want to get more tattoos, adopt more dogs, fill up my house with books.

And I want to never forget how I felt on this day – November 28, 2017 – when I turned thirty.

Today, I feel happy and whole and satisfied. I feel confident in who I am and what I want. I feel content with my life and the way it looks right now. This is exactly where I’m meant to be.

I believe in the Law of Attraction and that if I put good out into the world, good will come back to me. I believe that no is a full sentence. I believe that everything happens for a reason. I believe in the power of a good belly laugh. I believe that I am a good friend, a good daughter, a good sister. I believe that I am the best dog-mom for my old, blind, dementia dog. I believe that I have a gift for writing and I want to use that gift to the best of my ability. I believe in naps, in reading romance novels, in retail therapy. I believe in myself and my power.

I want to be clear – I’m not head over heels about everything in my life. There is a lot I need to improve on. I’m overweight and really unhappy when I look in the mirror. I have generalized anxiety, which means that every few months I go into a tailspin where I think everyone hates me and I need to delete my blog and never come out of my home again. I have trouble believing in my worth as a romantic partner, especially the hangups I have regarding sex. I spend too much money on things I don’t really need and I’m terrible at saving. I can be too sarcastic and too competitive and too sensitive at times.

We’re all works in progress, though. That’s the beauty of living. It’s messy and complicated, but even in the midst of it, we can find the beauty in it. And maybe that’s the lesson I learned most from my twenties: we’re never completely finished, but we can find peace in who we are, even when there’s more we want to do.

So, here’s to my thirties. I have a feeling they are going to be one amazing ride.

Categories: About Me

Why I Don’t Want to Be a Book Blogger

Book blogging would make sense. I love to read and I love to talk about reading, so what would be better than blogging about it?

And yet, I’ve never seriously considered book blogging. And I think I know why: I don’t want reading to become a chore.

Reading started to feel like a chore earlier this year. At the time, I was involved in three book clubs and had also accepted a number of book review requests on this blog. At one point, I was reading three books at a time to try and get them done before the book club meeting or blogging deadline.

It made me realize what a chore reading had become. I wasn’t reading the books I wanted to read, I was reading the books others told me to read.

I don’t want to disparage book bloggers. I follow a number of book bloggers and I enjoy reading their reviews and watching their Instagram Stories (book bloggers do the best Instagram Stories!) I think it’s great that we have people who are so passionate about reading that they start blogs designed entirely around their passion.

But it’s not for me.

I don’t want my reading to be limited to the next new release that I need to get my hands on. I rarely read new releases as it is – only 19% of the books I’ve read so far this year were published in 2017. I have over 800 books on my Goodreads TBR list that I want to read, and while a good number of those books are new releases, there are more backlist titles than not. If my reading becomes centered around new releases, or books other people are pushing into my hands to review, I’m never going to get around to those backlist titles that I want to read.

I’ve done a few reading challenges in the past few years, the most notable one being the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge that I completed in 2015. It was a fun experiment and I got to read a ton of books that have been on my TBR for a while, but I’ve just never gotten around to. But it also made reading feel like a chore. I felt like the books at the top of my personal TBR kept getting shoved further and further down the list (and forget about reading romance; 2015 was the year I read the least amount of romance in my entire life and that’s never a good thing!) It made me remember that reading doesn’t need to be a chore. It is a fun passion of mine and it’s okay if reading challenges don’t fulfill me like they do for others.

I just want reading to be a fun escape. I don’t want to put parameters on it. I don’t want to feel like I have to read a certain book because I have to write a review about it on my blog. (And, also, I want to have the freedom to abandon books that don’t fulfill me, which I can’t exactly do with books I’ve requested to review.) This is why I’ve stopped accepting review requests from authors and publishers who email me. I appreciate that they reach out to me and as an aspiring writer myself, I want to support them in this way, but it’s just not the right move for me. I’m still reviewing books for TLC Book Tours, but I’ve slowed way down on the number of books I ask for. I used to ask for one per month and now I’m only doing one per quarter, and it feels so much better this way.

There’s also the fact that I want my blog to be a place where I can write about anything. I haven’t limited myself to any niche, but have the freedom to talk about whatever I want. Whether that’s personal essays like this, features like “Currently In…” and “TGIF,” or vulnerable topics that have been on my mind, I love this blog being a place where I can talk about my life. I would probably be able to grow my blog’s following a lot quicker if I switched over to book blogging, but that’s not what I want from blogging.

So, while I’m happy for the book bloggers out there who are doing their thing and introducing us to new books, I’m happy to take a backseat to that and let my blog be my space and my reading life be mine and mine alone.

Categories: About Me

One Year of Living Alone

It’s been a little over a year since I moved into my apartment with the help of a good moving company Utah, my first place living completely on my own.

I was both nervous and excited about living alone. I was grateful that I was able to find an apartment within my budget because the last thing I wanted to do was find a roommate. I worried about getting lonely, feeling unsafe, and paying all the bills on my own. But I was thrilled about having a space entirely my own, not having to worry about working around another roommate’s quirks, and walking around my apartment sans pants whenever I wanted.

I didn’t realize how unhappy I had been living in Tampa until I moved into this little apartment in St. Petersburg, where I’m closer to my mom and my friends. Don’t get me wrong – I loved living with Roomie and I am so thankful that I got to spend a year being her roommate, but Tampa is not where I’m meant to be. I have a lot of friends who live in Tampa and love it, but it’s not for me. I’m glad I tried it out, but I’m even more glad to be a St. Petersburg resident once again.

I’m a homebody and a bit of a hermit, so I really enjoy having a space I don’t have to share. I actually enjoy coming home to a quiet and empty apartment; it brings me so much pleasure. I know most people hate that, but it’s soothing to me. After a day at work where I’ve been bombarded by bright lights and people and conversations and emails, it’s so comforting to come home to my apartment where I don’t have to talk to anyone. I can simply take a bubble bath, make dinner, and snuggle into bed early – alone with my thoughts, my books, and my dog. Those nights are so precious to me and I cherish them.

It helps that when I come home to my quiet apartment at the end of the day, I’m enthusiastically greeted by my dog. So, I’m not coming home to a literal empty apartment – there’s still a living being here that I have to take care of. But, thankfully, a living being that doesn’t expect more from me than walks, food, and snuggles. He’s A-OK in the silence, not needing to fill it with inane conversation or a jabbering TV in the background. It’s honestly the best of both worlds and I know it helps me to feel less alone.

I like that I can be as messy or as clean as I want to be without worrying about making a roommate annoyed at me. I’m not a naturally messy person, but sometimes the dishes stay in the sink for longer than a day or a countertop becomes a dumping ground for junk before I take the time to sort through it. It also means that I don’t have to contend with anyone else’s mess. I wouldn’t be able to handle a messy roommate, nor one who loved clutter, because both of those things give me anxiety. For the most part, my countertops are clear and my sink is free of dishes and my floors are swept and mopped frequently. One of the best parts of living alone: my mess is my mess alone and nobody else’s.

There are downsides to living alone. All the household bills are up to me, which scared me at first, but hasn’t been a problem in this last year. I’m the one responsible for killing the bugs and batting down the spider webs (thankfully, I’ve been bug-free and only have had to deal with one spider web). It can be lonely, especially if I have an entire weekend without plans. As much as I love plan-free weekends, there is such a thing as too much alone time. But the loneliness hasn’t been too difficult to deal with. I’ve managed to fill up my life with dinner dates with friends, time spent with my mom, and group classes at the gym. And I know if I am feeling lonely and craving human interaction, I can reach out to my friends and they’ll be there for me. As a single lady nearing thirty, I am oh-so-grateful for that.

Living alone isn’t everyone’s cuppa tea, but man, it has been a completely wonderful experience for me. It truly makes me happy and while I do hope this isn’t it for me – I’d like to be married and I’d like to have a family – I feel utterly thankful that I get to live alone and that I enjoy it as much as I do.

Image credit:
Patrick Perkins