Me: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been 25 years since my last confession.
Priest: Say 15 Our Fathers and 32 Hail Marys.

Going to confession is the price one pays to be able to eat the wafer. Going up to eat the wafer is a HUGE deal in the Catholic church service. In my childhood church, the wafers were locked in a gold chamber on the altar. The priest had the key and unlocked the chamber door and took out two bowls of bread wafers. I didn't buy into the "body of Christ" symbolism, as that was too gross and totally unrealistic. I did buy into the idea that these were small slivers of unleavened bread made on the other side of the world, in Jesus' desert neighborhood, and transported to our church. By eating the wafer, I shared something with Jesus and the people from the bible we'd heard about. I also looked forward to getting the wafer placed on my tongue directly by the priest as the start of a private challenge to make the wafer last in my mouth. I almost never swallowed it and instead would flip it, press it into the roof of my mouth and wait. As a young girl, I believed not going up for the wafer was reserved for losers, outsiders, and of course the wee ones who hadn’t yet earned their second sacrament, "first communion."

As a Catholic, this absence of expressed acknowledgement of my sins during confession means I may not participate fully in the mass. Instead, you remain in your seat while everyone else rises and walks in line up the center aisle to look the priest in the eye and receive the wafer from him. By the time I was a teen, I began to disagree with the wafer reward system. I didn't go to confession and asserted my independent spirit by not going up for the wafer. I was unwilling to lie and pretend I had performed the necessary ritual to please my parents and the priest. My mother would look at me, her neck seemingly stuck trying to unlock my knees to stand and follow. I’d whisper back, “I didn’t go to confession.” I think she worried about the people slowly moving along the center aisle with little else to do but imagine the unrepented sins of her youngest daughter.

Being Catholic isn’t easy; you need to earn your sacraments, stop in for pre-church confession, prepare to join in tone-free singing, and follow prayer rituals before you get to the lesson of the week.

I like the idea of singing together but I gotta be honest, in most Catholic churches I attend, we sound like we're not enjoying ourselves. I'm already self-conscious about my own singing as I can't read notes and have to guess if the next word rises or falls or is stretched out for emphasis. But despite the presence of confident singers within earshot, we're collectively uttering rough sounds to move the song along. An objective listener would say our voices are somber, close to sad. Why sing, if not to feel uplifted? I wonder if this is because we're often learning songs on the spot, with impromptu directions: "Turn to page 542 for Hills beyond Heaven." Even well-known Catholic standards like "Hallelujah" are restrained, proper, controlled.

I wonder if I am alone in this, but are priests taught to sing in monotone?

a figurine my mother gave me brings me joy and solace and inspires me to pray

Almost as a form of penance, I am subjected during mass to a wave of tiredness that comes as I try to pay attention. I have practiced, almost to perfection, the art of a quick nap while appearing to be in prayer. I can sense the movement of my neighbors rising to stand and I quickly wake to join. Only once or twice have I inadvertently stood up at the wrong time. All skills have a bad training day. For me, that fateful Sunday was in a church set up in a school with chairs instead of wood benches. I was there with my 3 young sons. I was deep in a dream when I bobbed my head backward then quickly nodded into what I hoped looked like prayerful concentration. Unfortunately, I was so tired my head fell hard onto the chair in front of me. I heard the gasp before I felt a woman’s arm on mine asking, “Are you okay?”

“Yes, fine,” I replied, slightly embarrassed. She handed me a tissue, which I assumed must be for drool. I went to put the tissue on my lip when I saw the blood drip on my lap. I'd cut my forehead. I pressed the tissue onto my forehead as my three kids began to climb in front of me to get a look.

This repeated disconnect from the service has kept me searching for a church where I don't fall asleep and would enjoy the singing,

My Dad told me a couple of months before he died that he had one regret. He hadn’t passed on his faith to his children, to me. I had a wonderful, honest relationship with my Dad, telling him my truth about struggling to belong to a church with many fundamental differences from my core values. When we talked about it, he told me he, too, struggled with the church’s position over a woman’s control over her body. Yet he felt overall the Church was good. I thought Dad and I had come to a similar perspective: take what you need and leave the rest.

Knowing he was dying and this was one of those conversations we would not revisit, I assured him I had faith and was a good Catholic, the best kind of Catholic thanks to his rearing. I knew right from wrong, practiced the ten commandments, was charitable, and even briefly worked for the archdiocese, for God’s sake! He laughed but he and I both knew what he meant. I wasn’t a practicing Catholic.

“I need to go to church” is something I say when I’m feeling disconnected, yearning for some clarity, pathway, connection to community. I have done this dozens of times, earnestly trying to commit to a church, a congregation, somewhere to plug in for me and my children. I have not yet found a place to call "my church."

Maren Morris gets it. God is always with me. I connect with God at a very deep level, a boost of joy that satisfies and brings a gratitude that lingers. I connect with God when lost, without a clear foothold when I am in the midst of a tough climb. I am brought by emotion to God when reason, experience, or science isn’t helping, but my ember of hope yearns for oxygen. I feel God’s breath warm my ember and help me get through.

For much of my adult life, this is my kind of church...this day along with one of my sons near Seattle.

Deep in the forest, skiing atop a mountain, or sitting in my car with the music blaring bring out those feelings sparked as a child when I first connected with God. It began with the Catholic church. It is sustained with my faith in God. Amen.

Read Act of Contrition by Linda-Marie