I have a complicated relationship with God. Growing up, I could never wrap my head around the God they were teaching me about in Catholic school versus the God I believed existed. I would sit and watch hypocrites at church, acting like they were so holy and good just because they would spend an hour a week in a building. I would listen to the priest praise these people for being there and giving the church their money. Those people, who were awful in their day to day lives and treated people poorly, their souls would be saved. In church we were taught to love everyone, except gay people and sinners. This just didn't mesh with my ideas of God. After all, we are all God's children. We are supposed to love thy neighbor. Jesus told the parable of the shepherd who went after one sheep because that sheep is the one that needed him the most. Yet, time and time again, I would go to church, hear stories of God's love immediately followed by a homily of "God will strike you down", "Gays are bad", "Give us your money". I would love to say I'm exaggerating, but the last time I went to Catholic church, I walked out during the homily because I had had enough. "Ask not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church", and then continued to talk about how people weren't giving enough money to the church. It was that moment my all ready complicated relationship with God became broken and I walked away from the Catholic church forever.
After this, I started going to church with my father, who is Methodist. My dad never went to church, but when I asked him if we could go, he took me, no questions asked. For the first time ever, I actually enjoyed church. I agreed with what was being said. I remember the feeling I had when I came home from the first time going to his church. It was like a little light went on inside of me. The sermon that day was about how the church could help the community. Not just their parish, but the community as a whole. The Catholic churches I had been to never discussed helping the community, only fellow parishioners. I remember thinking, “They are actually telling people to be good people”. On Easter Sunday, they held Sunrise Service at Lakeview Cemetary, overlooking the dam. As the sun rose, I actually felt God. These people, they understood. They saw what I was searching for and gave it to me. A few months later, I was off to college. When I came back, the pastor of the church had retired and a new one had taken his place. And it was different. The feeling was just not the same.
In my search to find something, I looked at all different religions, including Judaism and Buddhism. I found out that I have way too much "Catholic guilt" for those. Anyone who has been through Catholic school for any number of years can tell you that certain things are just ingrained in your brain as a result, regardless of your own personal beliefs. Some of us dub this "Catholic guilt". It's the conflicting things that continue to go on in your brain due to what you've heard for so many years and what your heart believes. I believe in gay rights. I believe in a woman's right to choose what she does with her body. I believe in gender equality. Those beliefs are unwavering. There is no conflict in my mind that those are the right things to believe in and fight for. God's love? That's another story. My heart believes that God loves us all. My head still hears homily after homily telling me that there are conditions to God's love and only if I meet those conditions do I deserve that love. I have never found a church in which I truly fit. I blame the priests at my church and school for this. There is always a little voice in my head saying that God will be mad at me if I believe something different than what was drilled into my head for 12 years. But, still, I searched, or rather, I’m still searching.
I see people who have such strong faith, and live their lives following that faith, and I ache to feel a portion of what they feel. One of my best friends is a devout Catholic. More importantly, she's a good person. She follows the belief of loving thy neighbor means everyone, and we don’t get to pick and choose who that means. I can not imagine her ever thinking less of someone for their sexual preferences. She does not believe that women are inferior to men. We haven't discussed it, but I could not, for a second imagine that she would ever judge a woman for getting an abortion. In fact, being who she is, she would hurt that a woman was put in a position to have to choose. The reason is because, religion aside, she is a good person. She has faith in the God that I want to have faith in. A God who loves and forgives. Somewhere deep in my heart, I know this God exists, but 12 years of fire and brimstone won't let me push through mental hurdles.
Growing up, I was convinced that my role in life was a sick experiment by the vengeful God that I was constantly learning about. It is a sad, sad thing for a child to grow up truly believing that they were put on Earth to see how one would survive without God’s love. I spent years of my very young life feeling deserted and completely alone. As a parent, I do my very best to make sure my children understand that they are not alone. I do my best to try to get over my mental hurdles about God and let them know He is there for them. I know they see my inner conflict, but they don’t question it. So far, I’ve been fairly fortunate that my kids have a strong relationship with God---the God that I always wanted to believe in, not the God I was taught about.
A few years back, my family was struggling with health issues. We did not advertise this. In fact, there were only a handful of people, which did not even include our families, who knew anything. At that point in my life, I had been taking my kids to VBS. My son had been reading the Bible on his own. He and I had had lots of discussions about God. I had already taught my children the value of prayer, regardless of my personal beliefs on that subject. But I needed more. Not just for them, to get through that trying time, but for me, as well. I once again turned to the Methodist church, after all, that's where I had felt most comfortable in the past. I enjoyed going to church. Sunshine enjoying hanging out with all her friends in Sunday school. Monster enjoyed the music (music speaks to our souls in this family). It still didn't feel "right". I didn't fit there. The majority of the time, I was content, but every so often, something would just rub me the wrong way. There were little hints of conditions of God's love. I started to draw away from the church slowly. Then, one sermon made me take the final step. The sermon was about how "Christians" are the ones who will be saved. "Christians" are good. God loves "Christians". I have Jewish friends. I know, without a doubt, God loves them. To be so blind as to say that God only loves one group of people is something I just don't understand.
I stopped looking for a religion that I agree with. Instead, I look for God. I search for God each day. Sometimes, He comes at me full force, but not how people normally think of God. I see God in nature. There are days where the light is shining through the clouds just perfectly that the beauty overwhelms me, and, in my heart, I know that’s God. I see God all around me. I see Him in the sparkle or quiet of the snow. I see Him in the waves of the ocean. I feel Him in the soft breeze on a summer day. I see Him in the rumbling skies of a thunderstorm. I see HIm in the tiny toad that lives in my garden (sorry C, I do not see Him in spiders, their webs, but not them....). I point out a lot of the things that I see to my kids. I have explained that we know God is there because of this. I seek to find the good in people. I see miracles in my children.
Just because I don’t go to church does not mean that I don’t believe. It does not mean that I don’t have faith. It’s just more complicated than that for me. I still wish I could find more comfort in religion and God like others do, but I know my journey is not over yet.