Hello there, everyone!
I'm very glad I found this place. I've been struggling with my religion lately. Not my faith, but my religion, if that makes sense.
Here's a short little bit of my story:
Well, that ended up being really long, so I am very sorry and thank you so much if you ended up reading through my entire introduction. I am pleased to be here, and hope to meet some other vegan Christians. If you are interested in what footage I saw, you can PM me, but I don't want to subject anyone to that without them asking because it was extremely sad.
If anyone reading this is interested in more about my story, I'm going to post a topic about my giving up animal products for Christ soon! I'll talk all about it then! And if anyone is interested in trying to eat less meat/dairy/eggs, please feel free to contact me as I'd be happy to help you!
One last thing: I love you all, no matter what you eat. Just know I am not judging you for what you eat. After all, I ate that way too. I just got a message from Jesus that it wasn't the way I am, and that I couldn't continue to support it. So that's what I did, I listened to Him and I changed.
Psalms 145:9 | Genesis 1:29
I'm very glad I found this place. I've been struggling with my religion lately. Not my faith, but my religion, if that makes sense.
Here's a short little bit of my story:
- I'm a 31-year-old woman, divorced 2 years ago (most devastating thing that ever happened to me)
- I was raised Catholic, and went through Confirmation. I married outside the Catholic Church, by a Methodist preacher to my high school sweetheart, who ended up being atheist. I followed along with him while we were married, I'm sad to say.
- Surprisingly, he asked for a divorce, and 6 months after he first mentioned it, it was done. (We had been together for nearly 13 years) It was the worst year of my life, but I actually gained a lot from that experience of being completely rejected.
- I made some great friends at a Baptist divorce support group. They helped me restrengthen my faith and beliefs and brought me back to Jesus. We did that journey together and are still great fiends!
- I am now engaged and in a long-distance relationship. I am sometimes still scared that I might mess up our relationship, but I feel safe and we are happy together. We do have a big decision ahead- where to end up living! And when to get married! He lives in Belgium, so it's very far from my Mississippi.
- At the beginning of this year, I saw some undercover footage of what goes on in CAFOs and slaughterhouses. What I saw completely turned my world upside down. I could not believe those things I saw were even legal, much less standard practice. I was physically disgusted, but even more than that, Jesus spoke to me.
- When I was younger, I used to have conversations with Jesus, well, it was more one-sided praying, I guess, but I felt like we were friends chatting, you know?
- So, when I was watching this video that I just stumbled upon on youtube, I felt this unbearable shaking pain inside me, and I heard Jesus call out to me, inside my head, "This isn't the way it was supposed to be! Make it stop!" Over and over he was screaming this in a tortured voice, like he was feeling every blow the animals were given.
- Even more I couldn't believe I was contributing to that, paying those people to do that so that I could eat a sandwich. It disgusted me and made me feel dirty and sinful and almost like ..... almost like I was tricked into it, like Eve was tricked by the Devil into eating from the tree of knowledge. I felt like I had been lied to my entire life by people I loved and trusted. They fed it to me, they told me it was good and wholesome.
- But I found out that night and since in my research, that it wasn't even necessary for my health, and in fact, many animal products in the quantities that I was eating (not that much, a little under the Standard American Diet) were actually unhealthy.
- What you need to know is I decided that night to never be a part of that system again, to never pay for that to happen, which is saying, "This is not ok for me to do, but I'll pay you to do it and by doing so, I'm saying it's ok to be done." I made the decision to be vegan from that moment on.
- Here I am 5 months later and I'm still going strong and loving my life and all I've learned. Going vegan filled me with a grace and a stillness I had never known before.
- Do you know why? That grace and stillness was from God. I cried because of the pain I was causing, I asked him to help me never feel that way again, and to never be the cause of anyone feeling that way, and he did. He showed me that I can align my actions with my beliefs. That I can practice what Jesus preached!
- It is a wonderful feeling, my friends and fellow Christians. I can't explain it.
Well, that ended up being really long, so I am very sorry and thank you so much if you ended up reading through my entire introduction. I am pleased to be here, and hope to meet some other vegan Christians. If you are interested in what footage I saw, you can PM me, but I don't want to subject anyone to that without them asking because it was extremely sad.
If anyone reading this is interested in more about my story, I'm going to post a topic about my giving up animal products for Christ soon! I'll talk all about it then! And if anyone is interested in trying to eat less meat/dairy/eggs, please feel free to contact me as I'd be happy to help you!
One last thing: I love you all, no matter what you eat. Just know I am not judging you for what you eat. After all, I ate that way too. I just got a message from Jesus that it wasn't the way I am, and that I couldn't continue to support it. So that's what I did, I listened to Him and I changed.
Psalms 145:9 | Genesis 1:29
