Everyone who has walked the face of the Earth has their own story, an epic poem about how they became the person that they did. While not everyone is going to have the literary talent of Homer to write a captivating poem, there is always one thing that changed them for the rest of their life. For me, this was when I was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) earlier this year.

I grew up in a Chritian home, with a mother and father who were members of a non-denominational church. This means that their church didn’t identify itself as falling under a specific category of beliefs. At the age of four, my parents got divorced. My younger sister and I began living half-time with both of our parents: my father requested that he had us on Sundays to take us to church.

That is where my beliefs began to split.

In my father’s house, I was wearing a mask of Chrisitanity. As the years began adding up, so did my attempts to get out of Sunday services. Having developed a strong opinion at 14, I viewed going to church as torutre. I didn’t want to spend three hours listening to someone teach me about a God I didn’t believe in.

Near my fifteenth birthday, I made the decision to stop living with my father. This was an extremely difficult decision to make, because, while I loved him dearly, I could not live in a house that gave out punishment instead of praise for developing your own opinion and growing into your own person.

Because I had more freedom, I chose to stop attending church. My mother, understanding that I would not go somewhere that I didn’t want to, let it be.

A year and a half later, I began to attend a Sunday night youth group to see my friends. This sparked a wonderful chain of events. Two months later, my path crossed with a member of the LDS church. She invited me to a church dance after speaking with me just once.

I later began attending church with her and started meeting with the church missionaries. I had no interest in joining the church, but, being a naturally curious person, I was intrigued. After meeting with these missionaries for three months I was asked if I had an interest in getting baptized. After consideration, I was put on date to do so.

My mother didn’t like this at all. She respected my beliefs, but made it very clear that she thought they were wrong. It was as though I was reliving what had happened two years prior with my father. Though, I knew I had to stand up for what I believe in, despite not having support from the person I loved the most.

I have been tested and tried throughout my life. Tested to see if I am willing to break away from what I am supposed to believe. Tried to see if I will find my own truth.

There are so many external pressures on people to stay on the path that their families have put them on. It is extremely difficult to break out of the chains that the world has put you in and go look for something, anything, that you know you have to find. Though, as I have found through my own story with its own twists and turns, you have to stand up for what you believe in, no matter what the boundaries may be.