Just a year ago...nearly left church...

As I enter into the second half of May for this year, I couldn't help thinking back to what I was going through last year during this period. While I'm now a baptised member of my church, around this time last year, on 15 May 2005, I had actually made up my mind to leave church, and was expecting that day to be my last day in church. During the big group teaching, I still remember one moment when I took a look around at all the other youths who were attending the lesson with me. Which of them had any idea that I had made up my mind on that very Sunday to leave church?

However, after the 2nd service that day, I felt like I was just giving up without doing anything to help myself. So I approached one of the youths leaders who had left church before and spoke to her for quite some time. Then another youth leader came and joined us, so I told him about my problems too. Both of them encouraged me to stay on in church, but neither of them knew then exactly why I wanted to leave church. I knew that if I stayed on, emotionally I couldn't hold on for more than a few weeks, but I decided to stay on anyway.

Thinking back, I nearly, VERY nearly left church that day. Couldn't have got any closer than that. But making the decision to stay on that day was the start of how things would eventually turn around.