It is exactly the same with me, except it only goes back to one day before this thread started for me. :) Before this thread, I really didn't know that Reformed theology existed in an organized way. I was so happy to find kindred spirits here, to meet new friends, and to learn that I hadn't been making this stuff up all along. :)
Thank you for sharing the stories of your friend and your childhood. When you spoke of your dilemma, I was going to answer in a certain way, but then I read Dr. E.'s reply (... it may take some time to unlearn 50 years of behavioral patterns; "entanglements," as Calvin calls them.) and I had to rethink it. I decided to just tell you what I was going to say, and ask Dr. E. if I'm off the reservation on this one. :)
I was going to say that I didn't think you had a dilemma at all. :) Both of the things you mentioned that you still do now, making the sign of the cross, and bowing your head at the name of Jesus have a few things in common for you. They are both things you grew up with and are now ingrained, they are both things you do that make you focus on God, and they are both things you do in reverence of God.
In "the before time" :) you did these things within a specific belief system that was given to you. These practices meant specific things to you based on that system. Now, however, though you still have the practices, your view of God has either changed, or at least it is very different from others who have the same practices. You have a new/different belief system about God in certain respects. Now, I'm guessing, when you make the sign of the cross and think of God, it's not from the old paradigm you were told to follow, it is from the new one you have accepted now. And when you bow your head in reverence, it is under your new system of accepted beliefs.
I was going to say that if all this is true, then I don't see a dilemma. To me it isn't the gesture or habit followed that is of primary importance, it is what it means to the person in terms of worship and reverence for God. After all, those are reminders of something. If those things now remind you of God in a new way consistent with your beliefs now, then I would say "great". And, if those things only remind you today of a prior belief system that you now disagree with, well, then that would be a dilemma. :)
I suppose it must come down to whether it is possible to separate the practice from the old belief. If not, then consider everything I've said to be a big "Never Mind!" LOL! I hope that's not true because I love simple, little things that remind us of God. He knows so well how much we need them. :)
But somewhere in my Scottish Presbyterian background, I felt a nagging reluctance to let it pass. So I asked my ex-RC, Jesuit-trained, Calvinist-by-the-grace-of-God husband what he thought.
It was his opinion that gradually those ingrained patterns fade away and are replaced with a confidence that Christ is everywhere, knows every thought, every deed, every desire, and thus, Christ's instructions in Matthew take on a very literal meaning.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." -- Matthew 6:5-8"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
Christ knows when our hearts kneel before we bend a knee.
It's been a joy to read your posts and follow your path, FK.
"...Perhaps the simplest statement of it (Calvinism) is the best: that it lies in a profound apprehension of God in His majesty, with the inevitably accompanying poignant realization of the exact nature of the relation sustained to Him by the creature as such, and particularly by the sinful creature. He who believes in God without reserve, and is determined that God shall be God to him in all his thinking, feeling, willing -- in the entire compass of his life activities, intellectual, moral, spiritual, throughout all his individual, social, religious relations -- is, by the force of that strictest of all logic which presides over the outworking of principles into thought and life, by the very necessity of the case, a Calvinist..."