I used to be so proud of being Roman Catholic. I went to a Catholic school. I wore the little plaid jumper. It wasn’t Jesus’ fault that our school had the ugliest plaid ever. Blame it on the Sisters of Mary.
I started Catholic school in kindergarten and attended through my sophomore year of high school. All during that time, I had a feeling that God was taking care of us. Otherwise, how could my constantly stressed parents and our little family have survived this long? There must have been a Universal Someone looking out for us.
I remember being in first grade and learning about selfishness. In our religion workbook was a story about a little girl who had very little food and a little girl who had a lot of food for lunch. She was dressed nicely and very smiley. The poor girl was unhappy. We learned in religion class that we need to share with people who have less than we do. I drew piles and piles of cookies in my religion book. That poor girl was walled in with chocolate chip goodness. I crossed out and drew horns on little Miss Well-Fed. I could really identify with the poor girl. I always felt others had more than my family did. They probably did too. My mom was selling her blood to feed us, and she’d already pawned her wedding ring by this time. I don’t ever recall seeing her or my father wearing wedding rings. She regularly would return the Christmas gifts we got her in order to pay bills.
So I started going to church and learned what I was missing. I learned my catechism and what Catholics believe. That was all well and good, but I soon started having doubts. I couldn’t believe Jesus had died and risen from the dead. I just didn’t. But I was a good girl so I played along. Those adults must be right. I didn’t understand all the rituals or the purpose of them. They seemed confusing to me, and meaningless as well. Singing praises to some invisible God? Fawning over Him and singing all praises to this being? A simple thank-you wasn’t enough? I sure felt thankful each time my mom and dad got paid. Did this being care about all this buttering up that we were doing?
I am just one person, these are just what my thoughts were/are. Others can believe differently, that’s ok. God has created a world with room for us all.
Well I wanted to be a good girl. As noted, I’m an approval seeker. I didn’t want to get in trouble and I wanted my parents to love me. My sister was already causing trouble. The pride my mom obviously felt about my good grades and good reports from my teachers just felt so warm and delicious. I was not about to give that up by questioning Catholicism. And did I really care that much about religion? Not at that time. It was good enough for then. I didn’t really need the world explained to me at that time; nor did I really seek an explanation for anything about how the world came to be, or how I came to be. That story about how my mom puked into my dad’s hat while in labor was so funny; who needed a better creation / birth story than that one?
I continued to grow up. I turned into an addict. I struggled through life. I never questioned faith that much. At one point I considered converting to Lutheranism because it seemed like my in-laws would be very happy about that and maybe accept me. They seemed normal and they were Lutheran, so why not? But their eagerness to judge others and put others down just turned me off so much.
I think it’s apparent that I was not really seeking God at this stage in my life; I was seeking approval. From humans. Acceptance. From somewhere, anywhere I could get it.
Faith didn’t become very important to me and I didn’t really think about it much until I started working the 12 steps. The steps called for a relationship with a higher power of my choosing.
Wait. I could choose? Now that was a concept.
While working the steps, I decided what qualities that I needed in a higher power, whom I chose to call God. I learned a different way of relating to God. I came to believe that God could and would relieve me of my obsession and heal me, if I continued to do my part, if I continued to ask for and act on His will.
Then I met the Mackistani. I had already stopped identifying as Christian or Catholic. My old doubts about the rituals, the dogmas, the priesthood, the churches had arisen from my childhood and I realized that I didn’t need to tamp them down. My religion or faith was something entirely for me, not for others. I figured the answer would come eventually, but for right now, this faith was working for me. It was bringing me closer to my higher power – God, as I call him.
When I met the Mackistani, the time came for me to let him know about OA and its presence in my life. I had to explain it to him and that meant also explaining how things work with God too. When I did that, he exclaimed that that sounded an awful lot like Islam.
Now I had many negative stereotypes in my head about Islam. Some of them are still there; I was reading a story about child marriage in Yemen today and they cited the marriage of six year old Aisha to the Prophet. What ignorant people.
Well Mack is here to snag me. More tomorrow!!!
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