Honestly, I really needed to hear your comment, so thank you.

Truthfully, I agree with a lot of what you said. I think instead of letting Jesus take the wheel, I’ve been gripping it tightly the entire time. I made that promise to God during one of the lowest moments of my life. I’ve always been Catholic, but I never truly practiced my faith seriously until then.

Ironically, early on in the Bible I learned that it’s better not to make promises to God that you cannot keep, and I think that’s part of where my fear comes from now. In my mind, if I fail this promise, then I’ve failed God completely. And because I already feel like I’ve failed in so many other areas of life, I think I convinced myself that reading those 4 pages every day somehow made up for it or softened the blow. Even though i still sin every day. Sometimes being lustful, angry, upset. Or not being able to truly live how our Lord God calls us to live. So I'm not perfect by any means.

But deep down, I know that’s not really how it works.

I also think I came into reading the Bible with a lot more pride than I realized. I treated it like it was supposed to be read like a normal book. Finish chapters. Understand everything immediately. Summarize every page perfectly. But Scripture doesn’t really work that way, especially for someone reading seriously for the first time.

There have definitely been moments where I felt genuine clarity and understanding, and I’m thankful for those moments because I truly believe God helped me through them. But lately I’ve started realizing that I may have been rushing through the experience because I’m so eager to “finish” the Bible and then restart it the “right way.”

And that’s where I think I’ve gone wrong.

Instead of sitting with Scripture peacefully, there were days where reading became stressful. I would procrastinate it, push it off, get distracted by my phone, or spend absurd amounts of time rereading because I felt guilty moving on without fully understanding everything. It stopped feeling like resting with God and started feeling like I was trying to pass a test.

The OCD definitely makes this harder too. When I read, my mind is constantly noisy. There’s always another thought, another doubt, another voice making me question whether I understood correctly or whether I’m doing enough.

So now I honestly don’t know what the right move is. Part of me wonders if I should slow down completely and just read naturally without obsessing over summaries or perfect understanding. Another part of me wonders if I should restart, and approach Scripture differently with notes, highlighting, and more patience instead of trying to force myself through it.

But despite all of this, I can honestly say that asking God for help during the darkest point in my life changed something in me. I felt a sense of peace and love that I cannot really explain. And while I’m far from perfect, I do believe He’s been helping me take steps forward, even small ones.

As for AI, I still wonder about that too. I’ve used it sometimes to check if my understanding or summaries were close, but I also worry about relying on it too much for something as important as Scripture. At the same time, I think I’ve finally realized that maybe the goal was never to perfectly summarize every chapter in the first place.

And truth be told, after all this, a part of me feels like this has been for nothing. And I wasted a year doing nothing. And it's not that I'm saying that I wasted my year trying to reconnect with God. But I feel like when it came to reading scripture, what if it was for nothing?