mobile

Hey guys... Before I get into this, I would like to say that i'm very new to this whole rooting thing, so please forgive me for my lack of knowledge on various terms and such, and I'm a first time user here at xda.

What's written below might get a little bit complicated so i will try to make it as detailed as possible. Please bare with me here.
So I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 sgh-i337 (AT&T) running on android 4.4.4 (with touchwiz, you guys know the deal). I really wanted stock android lollipop, because I really like the look and feel to it. When I decided to root the phone, I went through many tutorials and I tried many different methods, and none of them worked. The phone still worked fine, but SuperSU was not installed and Root Checker said the phone was not rooted. After scouring the internet, I found one tutorial that had my S4 type and the same version. At that point I realized that my android version was hindering my rooting process. The tutorial used Odin to flash a kernel (NC1), root the phone using towelroot, install SuperSU, (Root Checker too to check if it worked), and then flashing the original kernel again (my original kernel was NJ4). After following this process, my phone was rooted, and everything worked fine.

As I said before, I wanted a GPE ROM, and so I needed a custom recovery. I decided to install CWM, since most GPE ROMs used this specific recovery. Again, I followed many different tutorials, and after each and every one, I would try to go into Recovery mode, and it would just launch the stock recovery. I found another tutorial on another website that involved flashing the recovery from an app in the google play store, so I decided to try it out. I now regret this as it led to more problems. I followed these instructions, and when launching into recovery mode from that point on, I get the yellow triangle with the error message "System software is not authorized by AT&T"
Sure, I could get around it by going into download mode from there, canceling, and it would reboot like normal, and the phone still worked, but I needed to get ride of that error message.

Once again doing my research, I figured out that if I flash a stock firmware specific to my phone, it will reset the phone (the only stock firmware available has android version 4.2.2, which is a really popular version, and is compatible with most custom recoveries and ROMs, so I decided to flash the firmware, as it would also change the version back, right?) When I flashed it using Odin like the directions said, it failed. i then figured out that it failed because my binary counter is not 0. I looked into resetting the binary counter for the AT&T S4, and I found Triangle Away. However, in order to reset your binary counter, you need an unlocked bootloader, and the AT&T S4 (sgh-i337) has a locked bootloader (I don't want to use Triangle Away if it's going to brick my phone, i'd rather unroot and keep touchwiz than brick). In the process of finding this out, I also figured out that the only custom recovery that you could use on a locked bootloader S4 sgh-i337 is SafeStrap. But i heard when using SafeStrap you are limited as far as ROMs go? Would I be able to get a GPE 5.0 Lollipop ROM with SafeStrap? Cause if not I might just unroot using SuperSU and software update my phone (will that fix the error when trying to get to Recovery mode?) Also, if I install Safestrap, will it fix the error message?

Again, sorry for my inexperience in all of this, and thanks for staying with me here. Any help and additional information on what I should do (or any GPE Lollipop ROMs I should use that are compatible with my phone and version and such), as well as any links to tutorials are greatly appreciated (also, keep in mind that all of the vocab I know when rooting is used in this post, I am not aware of most other terms - again, forgive me).