Most of my readership is devoutly Catholic, so kneeling in church is normal for y’all. It is, however, not for a lot of Christians, and it can make me a bit self-conscious to be the only one kneeling on occasion.
When I came to faith as a teenager, it was normal in my church, so I honestly didn’t think anything of it. Then, I spent time in a bunch of ELCA and AALC parishes where anything remotely Catholic was weird. (This is not a denomination-wide thing, at least in the ELCA. It’s a matter of congregational culture.) When I was pregnant with Daniel and afterward, I did a lot of sitting due to fatigue and sometimes back pain, so I got out of the habit of kneeling.
In 2014, I went back to the Episcopal Church and it was put on my heart to kneel for the confession of sin. My parish at the time had the choir leading music from the back and we were in chairs, not pews, and our chairs did not give us a place to kneel in front. I would self-consciously take a knee in the style of Colin Kaepernick or I would walk to one of the chairs in the back and kneel there. My self-conscious feelings changed when I was helping with contemporary worship one month when one of the guitarists and his wife also went to one of the chairs in the back and knelt with me.
Another thing that impacted me during this time was watching the fathers of young kids in the congregation (some of whom were my age) go to the kneelers in front of the bank of candles and kneel there with their kids. I’m normally a people watcher, and I will admit that it warmed my heart to see this, especially as I could tell it was having an effect on the kids. It definitely lowered my feelings of self-consciousness.
At my current parish, the people I sit with normally are totally used to it and are totally fine when I tell them that I’m about to drop the kneeler. They’re so used to it, in fact, that they put it down for me. 🙂 I find that it is actually really helpful for my faith to have different prayer positions, and I am really happy to be part of a church who is completely respectful of me doing what works best for me.