Brenda, I can relate to your sadness that even people in church seem to be too busy to care anymore. Before we moved to Ottawa, we were very active in a very warm, dynamic church with incredible music and powerful ministry. Then we moved here, "shopped" around for quite awhile before finding a congregation that seemed dynamic and authentic. But we went to that church (well, hubby gave up after a couple of months, but I, the eternal optimist at the time, kept persevering), sat in the same general area, every Sunday for over a year. Both hubby and I would greet the same faces around us every Sunday and try to get involved in conversations with the people close by, but nobody ever seemed to remember us from one Sunday to the next.

When my Dad died, it was too painful to go back to that church where I was clearly an invisible nobody. I went back once, a few weeks after Dad's death, and sobbed all the way through. Even then nobody seemed to care in the least. So after a lifetime of being heavily involved in church, I stopped going altogether.

It took me a long time to find the one we go to now. It's a completely different denomination, ministered by a guy I used to babysit when he was just a little boy. It's a wonderful, caring, warm congregation...a lot like here! It was well worth the pain and searching that it took to get us there. So don't give up. Some congregation out there needs you as much as you need them!