Margarita Hour

Hey everyone and happy Friday!! I hope everyone’s week was good. My week was slam packed but really good. I am extremely excited for this week’s blog because it is my first ever blog topic submitted by a reader!! Tobi emailed me with this topic and there is so much to unpack so I think we should just get into it. I try to stay as honest and raw while I write these and I really think that aspect will shine through here. When I first read the topic submission one word came to mind “complicated”. I grew up southern baptist and my parents and I went to church every sunday no matter what. When I was a child I loved going to church, seeing my friends and I first got baptized at the age of 8. As I grew older it started to get boring. I would nod off during services and I just was not connected. When I was 11 years old my father passed away suddenly. Grief is a chaotic confusing thing especially as a child, but that’s another story. At first I felt my faith and honestly was not affected by it tremendously. I still had faith and did not doubt it for a second. For a while my father was a taboo topic in the household at times so we did not really talk about it much after it happened. When I was around 14 years old reality really set in. The denial stage had finally passed me and I realized he was gone. We never really had a relationship but I always had hope that one day we would reconnect and I could learn things about him and about myself. My mom and I are very different and she will tell me that some things that I do remind her of him. I always thought I would learn why I do the things that I do and if I get these little habits from him. It set in that I will never know, this caused my faith to slip. I had all these emotions,feelings, and I can be very closed off especially to my family so I just didn’t talk about it. Going to church and reading the bible was no longer something I loved, it was just a chore. I have had countless conversations with my mom telling her that I do not want to be preached at all the time and that I just want to talk to my mom. I would say phrases like “if you keep telling someone to eat carrots and pushing them down their throat they won’t want to eat carrots anymore.” To which she would respond with “if you knew that someone you loved was sick and you had the medicine to heal them wouldn’t you do anything for them to take the medicine.” (don’t you just hate it when your parents are right) I felt suffocated by religion and I did not fit in with the southern baptist crowd. A lot of the time I thought the people lacked empathy and were closed minded. To this day southern baptist is not my thing. I am more of a non-denominational girl. I would look around at the girls in my Sunday school and think “of course it’s easy for them to believe in God, they have never gone through what I have.” Then, I just stopped believing. I started doing whatever I wanted and ended up very physically sick for about a year. I started talking to biblical counselors and it just felt like they didn’t understand me. At 15 I was in recovery and I moved schools. I started believing again but not really having faith. It was like I believed in God and thought that was enough. The truth is even the devil believes in God it is about the personal relationship which I didn’t have. Fast forward to fall 2025. I still had the belief but not the relationship. Last fall was not a good season for me personally. If you guys read my second blog “I didn’t sleep for 5 months….let’s talk about” you already know a good bit on why. I was going through things mentally, physically, and there was so much change around me I didn’t know what to do with it. I had this one night where things really changed for me. I am not fully ready to go into detail. It is still very personal to me but I will summarize. I felt God’s presence on a night where I felt so alone and he instilled change in me. He gave me motivation for life again which I had not had for a good bit there. I publicly declared my faith by baptism in November, but I was not and still not perfect. That is something that I really struggle with is realizing that yes I am a christian that wants a personal relationship with God but I am still a sinner. Everytime I slip up and sin I feel like a failure. If you guys have read any of my blogs you would infer that I have a bit of a control problem. I feel like I have to be 100% or I am 0%. It’s hard for me to grasp that I cannot “get better” for God but with God I get better. I don’t know if that makes any sense but to give an example it’s like if you feel like you cannot get into the shower because you’re dirty, but the shower is what cleans you. How are you going to get clean? The sink??? Like,girl…. So I constantly talk to God everyday but I go through phases like when I am not doing as well as I would want to in school. I focus my control on that and think “I have to fix this and this and this before I talk to God.” When in reality I should be giving it to him and doing step by step what I can instead of leaping and hoping I get to the other side. P.S. I always fall all the way down. It is such a battle to face being a young college student who feels like they should know everything about their life now but having to trust in the unknown. Every time I fall out of the loop he ropes me back in. I feel like a child who is learning to ride their bike and wants to take off the training wheels too early and keeps on falling while their dad rolls his eyes and picks them back up. So, my relationship with God is complicated. I don’t read my bible and go to church as much as I would want. I am lacking discipline in that department but I will keep pushing to get on track. It is complicated but it is loving. I feel like I can talk to him even in my thoughts constantly. I love talking to him. Sometimes I just tell him about my day as if he doesn’t know it already. To me God is a friend, teacher, safety net, and a dad. It’s hard still thinking or talking about my father but it is also bittersweet. I talk to him through my prayers and sometimes I swear I will feel a cold breeze or slight touch right on my left shoulder. God is revealing to me everyday that I am not meant to do it on my own. I can not be in control and I have to let things happen. I have to trust. I have to listen, and I have to love. Going back to God has shown me things I would have never seen or discovered. Recently, I have been seeing pieces to a puzzle I didn’t even know I had. It has humbled me greatly and really tested my patience at times. I hope to keep growing closer and to keep learning till my soul is overflowing. So to conclude everything I know there was a lot. Everyone’s journey and path is different; it will not look like a Sunday morning or social media post daily. Having a relationship with God is not easy at all times if it were easy everyone would be doing it. The best things are things you have to work for and commit to. Remember that when you feel alone or “behind” in your faith. He will not abandon you, just keep having faith and you will keep finding missing puzzle pieces everywhere. Thank you guys for reading, this is the highlight of my week. I always want to thank Tobi and the others that have reached out to me about my blog and gave me appreciation and feedback. I have always wanted to write for people and I am beyond grateful to be able to do that now. If you have feedback, reach out to me through my contact on my homepage. I hope to do topics inspired by you guys every other week so, if you have an idea don’t hesitate to let me know. Have a great week and tune in again next week to MargaritaHour.