I remember starting to blog about 7 years or so and my goal was to be as transparent as possible. Somewhere along the lines, I retreated back to my old ways of mincing my words for the comfort of others. I have decided to stop that today. As of lately, I have not been feeling so “Christian,” or actually I have felt that way for quite some years. This could honestly be for a plethora of reasons but the main one for myself is finally seeing all of the ways in which religion has violated, and traumatized so many of us. As a woman, we were socialized in the church that purity should be our number one goal next to being the perfect wife. When I think about it, I can’t really think of a time in church where the message was about more important topics like mental health, self care and maintaining your health so that you could actually help the world as Jesus had intended for us.
There is so much I could get into regarding this topic but I want to just be honest with myself out loud for once. Christianity was something passed down to me as a child from my family but in hindsight it was never fully practiced in my household. The traditional aspects of it were there such as going to church every Sunday, being involved in different ministries including choir or dance, and attending VBS in the summer. But it was more surface level in my opinion. We were just told that the Bible is our guide, no questions asked. Reading through long passages at church that sometimes made zero sense to me and were simply expected to go along with it. I am not saying that I have never felt deeply connected to Christianity but at a point one does begin to question nearly everything they were taught as children.
I am someone who has always been extremely deep and when things are kept at the surface level, I suffer or simply don’t want to be involved. To fully experience life, we must feel and sometimes those feelings are not great but often times than not, those unpleasant feelings are what help us to grow.
I remember in college having an extremely strong relationship with God and all throughout my childhood. But once I snapped out of it due to back to back circumstances that made me question God, I began to look outside of what I had always been taught. At first it stemmed from anger but then eventually those feelings mellowed out and I simply had so many questions. I still have so many questions that I don’t believe will ever be answered but I honestly don’t think church can answer them for me.
I have prayed, meditated on the word more than I can count but still I come to the conclusion that religion, and spirituality are two topics in this life I will never fully comprehend. How can we fully put our trust into any of them? I am unsure of how to navigate these ideas mentally without feeling like I am running in circles. Even with all of that in mind, I do still feel connected to God or The Divine, but just not in the ways I was instructed as a child.
This is a conversation I could not dare have with my family, except for maybe one other person and it sometimes make me feel like a fraud for even thinking this way. But, it is my truth. As I mentioned in my last post, I am on a discovery of self so perhaps one of my questions will finally be answered as I continue cruising through my healing.
Just Sophonie 