Why I Am Orthodox

On this eve of Palm Sunday, I am wrestling to define why I am Orthodox Christian. I'm sure no answer I give tonight will be complete, so forgive me while I release my thoughts onto the page.

I am Orthodox. I am Orthodox because for 30 years the world gave me reasons not to be. And for 30 years I had doubts and questions. The Orthodox answers to those questions satisfied my soul. (I was blessed with parents and mentors who lived their faith and understood its doctrine and a husband who is the same.)

I once read that marriage is about choosing to fall in love with one person every day for the rest of your life, choosing to be together anew every day. Being Orthodox is the same. I fall in love with my faith daily. There are many appealing alternatives in the world. But I read in my Bible that the gate is a narrow one, that the Way should be difficult to follow (Matthew 7:13-14, Luke 13:24, Matthew 24:9, John 16:33, James 1:2, 12). If I am not struggling on the way to heaven, then I do not feel that I am on the straight and narrow. Orthodoxy is undoubtedly about struggle.

There are other, more specific reasons, why I am Coptic Orthodox, but I won't get into them tonight.

(To be perfectly clear, this is not an attempt to "evangelize." This is a post for me, about me. I don't consider myself an evangelist. My life goal is this: "I cannot persuade myself that without love to others, and without, as far as rests with me, peaceableness towards all, I can be called a worthy servant of Jesus Christ" St. Basil the Great. May God give me the strength and wisdom to do that well.)