Teens On God

By Mayra Tito -- June 22, 2009

Step by step, my eyes glide over the couple moderate blocks I have to walk to get to church. My brain is heavy with weighted thoughts, asking myself exactly why I have gotten ready and dressed so delicately for this sole meeting. Why have I come, is it my love for singing, my thirst for God? Then these thoughts lead up to other feelings of puzzlement that tickle my brain, but the concept I'm referring to is my beliefs and the broad "Do I believe in God?" question. I finally get there, briskly walking up to everybody, returning the "Hello's and "How are you's," and mechanically grabbing a singing folder and a book where this Sunday's songs are listed in carefully planned order.

Nonchalantly, I join in our practice and as soon as I formulate all the words and they are freely flowing through my brain to the point of actually understanding, I recognize the extent of the meaning and concepts we are singing about. Like an astonishing morning sunrise with just the right colors strewn over the sky I realize that I wholeheartedly love every aspect of it. The whole lot -- the singing, God's word, the merriness the words bring to my soul, and undeniably the streaming together of all these events -- they touch even the deepest creeks of my heart. It is then that I choose to believe in God, take the chance to believe in something others argue shouldn't and couldn't be real because they can't see it with their eyes.

It is for that weekly realization, renewal of belief in God and the unexplainable feeling of God being present in me, this is why I come. I lose myself in the world's material, especially emotional, and hard-up comings that by the end of the week I'm mentally turned to mush. So at the end of the week and the beginning of a new one I have to feel that oh-so-powerful closeness to God that makes me generally a happy person and makes surviving possible.

Mayra Tito is a sophomore at East High School in Denver, Colorado. She attends Sacred Heart Church where she is a cantor in the choir.

Do you have a story of your relationship with God you'd like to share with other teens? Email Patheos at [email protected].