Hello @HeroicMinute, I am so pleased to see and hear about your wonderful enthusiasm in finding your place within the Christian Community. You seem to be mainly attracting the right sort of advice from these lovely Mumnetters.
I assume that as I am now a pensioner I am probably - and hopefully - a lot older than you. I say "hopefully" because I think it would be wonderful if you still have most of your adult life ahead of you, and that your brain and heart are open to discovering so many fantastic things about how we as humans act and react, and how underneath all other considerations, love, kindness, empathy, and patience are the assets that all believers, no matter what religion they follow, should have as their foundation stones.
If you have the four basic attributes that I mentioned above - and from reading your OP and some of your subsequent posts - I believe that you do already have those four essentials OP, and that, therefore, Jesus already knows you personally and loves you. As we are human beings, and therefore far from perfect, it doesn't matter too much 'at this stage' if we sometimes also feel hatred, anger, impatient, and an ego that still needs to learn it's place in society.
As I said a short while ago, as humans, we are not perfect. I am not even sure that in our first lifetimes on Earth that we should even strive for perfection, as I imagine that being a perfect human being is probably a place of great solitude and of not being understood by any other human beings, including right up to the Pope, or Anglican Bishops, etc etc etc.
As I believe that you are already a very thoughtful person OP (as in full of thought, and in your case, it also appears to be, at least mostly, a very positve thoughtfulness), your 'jouney' - sorry! - to find the lessons you want to learn, and the people you want to share both the learning and teaching with (as this is definitely not a passive journey), will with some luck, and a lot of prayer/meditation be not quite so difficult as someone's who is starting from scratch.
It will still be a very rocky and hard road to navigate - out of necessity - but one that I think you are very capable of negotiating and ultimately succeeding with. May I just add OP, that in my opinion - humble or otherwise 🤭 - please don't get too worried by instructions that very much come from 'Man' rather than any of the Gods. I personally do not believe that any human beings have accomplished the necessary wisdom to be insisting that any God - but only one Jesus.- has told them directly what the rules of their particular religion should be. If we strive to be: kind, loving, empathetic and patient, then hopefully we won't stray too far from the right path.
I know that I have probably written far too much for you, heroic, or anyone else, to try and read all the way through here, but if you have, you might have been confused by me latterly referring to "Gods". That is because although I was brought up in the Protestant Christian Faith, during my middle aged years, I turned to Neo-Paganism, following a Traditional Witchcraft Path. I can not say much here about why I chose this Path, because Witchcraft itself, is not a Proselytising Religion. However, I think that I may be slightly unusual as I still believe - well actually - as I know with my own certainty, that Jesus was, and is, and will be, the best Human Being, Witch and God, there has ever been. Not all Witches believe in any God, or Jesus.
Please believe in yourself @HeroicMinute and have faith in your choices. I am completely sure that there is not only one road that leads to Jesus, or any God. xxx