i remember the first time i didn’t feel good enough. i was
seven or eight years old, playing barbies with a neighborhood girl in her dingy
basement. i was confused. where was i going? was i going alone? could my
parents come? my brother? could we bring my guinea pigs?
“you’re going to hell.”
i didn’t really know what hell was, so i shrugged it off.
this happened to me a few more times during elementary
school. whenever the topic of church came up, or the fact that i wasn’t
baptized, someone always brought up my inevitable demise after death.
i felt rejected, unloved, and desperate for positive
attention from a community that rejected me. so i asked to be baptized.
and i was. my grandparents came. there was cake. i stood in
front of our church and, along with a brand new baby, i was sprinkled with the
holiest of waters and saved by god.
or so i thought.
because religion is a peculiar thing. the older i grew, the
less i believed. i wasn’t interested in going to church every week or reading
the bible or being told what to do. i started thinking liberally, freely. my
parents were teaching me love and acceptance while the world around me seemed
to be cultivating hatred.
president bush was up for reelection in 2004, and i became
incredibly political. i was in support of gay rights and a woman’s right to
choose; the church and i didn’t agree on very much anymore. i became more aware
of an institution that didn’t give my soul or my body the love and support it
needed.
as a freshman in high school, i dated a boy who was cheating
on jesus with me. his mom told my momma that he and i could be “special
friends,” and nothing more. little did she know that i was kissing him in my
basement while i forced him to watch crime movies when he really wanted to
watch the notebook.
i avoided god and church for a long time. i claimed to be
agnostic, but i really didn’t know what i was. i was lost. i was confused. i
wanted to be accepted by the people around me.
when i started dating my last boyfriend, i was suddenly
surrounded by church again. the more serious our relationship got, the closer
(in physical proximity) i got to god and church. the more i thought about
marriage and family, the more i wanted to have a relationship with a church.
because i was raised without a forced relationship with a
god or church, i felt confused. i didn’t blame my parents for anything, but i
felt like i needed someone to blame. when i thought of the family i wanted to
raise, i wanted to raise them in a church. i thought that allowing my future
kids to at least have the opportunity to believe in something was going to be
better than the fact that my parents didn’t tell me to believe anything.
now i see how backwards that was.
because religion, for most people, is something they learn.
they’re taught from a young age about god and their church, and they believe it
because the people teaching it to them are people they love and trust.
i’ve spent a lot of time in churches this year. more time
than i’ve probably ever spent in churches, and that’s mostly because of my trip to europe in january. i paid real life money to be in not just one or two
churches, but like, way more churches than i can really remember. i climbed
hundreds of stairs to get to the top of st. paul’s cathedral in london and
notre dame in paris.
and i felt nothing.
i even talked to alex about how i had such a strong peaceful
and spiritual feeling while we climbed around and explored the cliffs of moher,
and in all the churches we went to, i felt nothing.
and that’s kind of when i realized that my church is my yoga mat. covered in my sweat and tears and a little bit of my blood, my mat is my
spiritual place. my church is my parent’s house, that smells like home and is
filled with people i love. my church is my bed and all of the lazy mornings i
spend reading and eating my breakfast.
and i think i’m lucky that i get to fill my spiritual
dwelling with people that i love, people that challenge me and raise me up in a
way that i never felt in a “real” church.
