Crisis of Faith: Losing and Finding Religion

In the process of writing my book, my summary for therapy and just random conversation, I thought about my crisis of faith and how strongly I was committed to religion growing up.

Truthfully I'm not sure if I ever really believed everything I was being told. I was always more excited for play time or to go home and watch whatever was on TV. When I was at church it was always just some guy on stage reading from a really old book that people took seriously and recycled the same thing over and over again.

I was taught that homosexuality was bad although after watching a few episodes of Will and Grace I wasn't entirely convinced by the argument.

I was taught that premarital sex was wrong, the number of times it was repeated made me think that it was worse than anything else that was considered a sin. Sure you can murder someone, just don't fornicate beforehand!

I was taught that alcohol, drugs and swearing were to be avoided despite the alcohol in the wine which represented Jesus' blood. Drugs were an obvious one, but sometimes swearing just felt too good not to do.

There were countless other things which I've since let go of because they were just ridiculous to me and I saw no point in following something which was about someone else having control over you rather than following the bible's teachings.

When I went to TAFE in year 11, I met some of the most amazing people and it completely changed my life. There wasn't anything specifically special about them except that they made me feel special. For the first time in my life I was good enough. I was accepted. And I was finally able to just be me.

After all the years I spent in church and feeling like an outsider, it was amazing to finally feel what I'd always longed to feel. Free.

The more time I spent with people at TAFE, the more my world was broadened, thoughts challenged and beliefs questioned. Everything I'd been told had come from a close-minded source and I was in an open-minded environment where it wasn't black and white any more.

During that time I was trying to process a lot of other things which I'd never experienced before and wasn't sure how to deal with. I caught up with my aunt (dad's sister) for a sleepover. She had always been my personal hero and saving grace. I could talk to her about things that I couldn't talk to my parents about and although she didn't always give me specific advice, it was always filled with love and positivity, two things I was short of in my own life.

Around the age of 17, after finishing that TAFE class and spending time questioning family and religion with my aunt, I really started struggling with what I'd been told and how true any of it actually could be.

It felt so wrong to be told that people who didn't have hope for Jesus to return were unhappy and basically doomed for eternity when the people I knew who didn't care about religion were happier than any of the people that I'd known in church. How could that possibly be?!

Everyone else was living life on their own terms and loving it as much as possible. The people at church were living their lives for God and saw anything else as being wrong and some kind of selfish.

The more I went to church with conflicting beliefs, the worse I felt for having done so. How could the only time I'd ever felt accepted be wrong in the eyes of God? If I continued following this religious path which I'd rarely found happiness on, would God seriously be pleased that I was miserable at obeying his commands? None of that seemed right.

I made the decision one day to tell my dad that I didn't want to go to church any more because I didn't believe in it. I told him my aunt had said that religion had divided his family and I couldn't possibly be a part of something that had the power to destroy a family.

My aunt had given me photo albums of my grandparents when they were younger and some of the love letters and whatnot my grandfather had written her. He had been madly in love with her, yet I was living in an almost post-apocalyptic world where I saw my grandfather maybe once or twice a year before my grandmother died and even less afterwards. If a religion and its people were capable of doing that kind of damage, I wanted nothing to do with them.

For a while I searched out answers in different places which made more sense to me. My aunt's influence had lead me to try angel cards and I had been completely blown away with the result. She never pushed anything on me or told me not to go to church, she merely opened her home and a part of her life to me and showed me how beautiful freedom could actually be. It was like a massive breath of fresh air I'd never known before.

I started to get more into spirituality over the years and eventually found a group of people who share similar interests to me. The main difference I've found is the lack of judgement spiritual people have and how much positivity there is. The basis of it is living your best life and doing what makes you happy. Seeking angelic wisdom for guidance is part of the fun.

The feeling of hope and lightness that I've heard people speak of when they go to church is what I feel when I'm around spiritual people. It's happy, it's friendly, it's loving, it's free.

I still have no interest in attending church services and when I meet my parents for lunch on the odd Sunday after the services, I tend to either wait outside or thereabouts until I know they're ready to go and I don't have to listen to anything that demeans my newly found positive nature.

It's great to hope for something, and I know clinging to hope that all the evilness and nastiness will be wiped away one spectacular day and everyone who is worthy will live forever and forever together, but my hope was always that I'd make something big of myself, I'd made a difference in the world and ultimately, that the hell that I lived in would be escapable and I'd finally know what it was to be truly free.

Even though I have an endless list of reservations about religion, my family still attended regularly but I can see that it's not doing wonders for them as people. In losing religion I found myself, that's some crisis of faith.

What Is Life?!

Do you ever have those moments where you stop and ask yourself 'what am I doing with my life?'?

They usually happen after you see something epic and mind-changing that makes you rethink or re-evaluate what you've done so far with your life and where your heading. Or it's because you've seen/found/run into someone you used to know and can't help comparing your life to theirs, however unhealthy it is.

The whole time I was going through high school I felt like I was being left behind, forgotten, ignored. I convinced myself that it was more to do with chosen life path and what I'm meant to be doing with my life even if I don't feel like I've exactly found that yet. It's the closest and most comforting truth that I've found for myself.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post or two, so many of the people I went to school with are settling down with a somewhat successful career. Meanwhile I'm working, studying and figuring out what the hell is going on with my non-existent love life. Not that it matters all that much...really.

I'm 25, I've never dated anyone although I have a consistent track record of unrequited loves which is thankfully lessening out now that I've created the best kind of life that I want for myself, and the more people I find out are either married or getting there, the less appealing I find the concept.

After discovering a little too late that a guy from school I'd never considered but knew I possibly could have had feelings for, got married, and more recently a guy that I used to work with and had strong feelings for got engaged to his long-term girlfriend, I'm really starting to feel bitter towards marriage. As stupid as it sounds.

I was discussing marriage with some friends of mine, all of whom have different ideas on it. One of them is engaged but is incredibly casual about it and believes as I'm inclined to also, that getting married in your early-mid 20's is so young. Another friend is incredibly happy in her relationship and said that she would quite easily get married tomorrow because she knows nothing would change. The third friend, or rather my cousin, considers settling down with kids in the suburbs her greatest nightmare.

As much as I feel disappointment and discontent over so many people getting married, part of me wonders where exactly my life is heading, what the overall plan is for it.

I started believing in fate when I was 16 and met some ridiculously awesome people. Everything that happened because of meeting those people didn't feel coincidental, it felt like it was meant to be, and so I let it be.

Whenever I've spoken to psychics and spiritual friends, or even done my own tarot cards, they've all told me I'm meant to be a spiritual teacher or healer. Given what I've been through in my life and where I'm at now, I'm kind of inclined to agree with them. I can't see what else would explain my particular life path. Although I can just hear my therapist's voice telling me that everyone's life is different and it's not as uncommon as I or anyone else thinks for people to endure so much whilst missing out on various opportunities only for things to work out completely differently for them.

Of course everyone likes to think they're special, that they have a unique purpose in the world, or in this life and they're not just bumming along for no good reason.

While I do consider myself incredibly blessed for some of the experiences I've had in my life so far, I also feel more than a little cursed and I'll even through 'let down' into the mix. I didn't get to be a normal teenager. I didn't get to out and a socialize unless it was with church people who I wasn't overly fond of. My suffocatingly overprotective parents (more so my father) wouldn't even dare to think of letting me date anyone which explains the continued stream of unrequited loves.

My life didn't start to feel anywhere near normal until I moved out of home. It was into an all-female share-house near the city and about an hour train ride from the place I'd spent my teen years.
Once I got my bearings sorted and realized that it was really and truly up to me to make life happen, I was up and running.

In an effort to shake off the growing feelings for a coworker, I threw myself into online dating and speed dating alike. A close friend of mine since childhood told me it was a good idea especially if I wasn't comfortable around guys in person as yet. So I tried them both out. After 3 or 4 rounds of speed dating I decided to leave it, I'd made decent friends with some of the girls who I sat with, but it seemed a little too desperate for my liking.

I did the online dating thing for a year and a half. I've made a really great friend through it which probably isn't the point, but I think it's what I was meant to get from it.

Towards the end of my subscription when I realized I wasn't getting that much out of it and the fact I was paying more than my phone bill for it, I decided to call it quits. I'd met up with a nice enough guy for coffee and realized just how unprepared for dating I was. He'd had at least one long-term relationship under his belt and I was still trying to feel comfortable in the presence of a guy.

I also rationalized that whatever I felt within myself wasn't really to do with having a guy or romance in my life. That empty feeling I had was all me, and when I looked at myself honestly, I knew that wouldn't change by bringing a guy or even a girl into the mix, I'd still be searching for whatever it was I didn't have.

I saw a post recently on Facebook which I shared because I thought it was important. It talked about how being single isn't a bad thing, especially when it means you're not compromising yourself for the sake of someone else. I posted a comment with it indicating how accurate it was from my perspective.

A friend of mine then tagged me in the same post which she shared on her profile saying how much she appreciated my wisdom and told me to never stop being me. That was the validation I needed for me to know that I'm doing something right and well with my life. Yes it still niggles at me a little when I hear what other people I know or used to know are doing and mentally compare myself to them even though I know it's stupid and pointless to do so, but I know by how I feel about myself and my life as well as the direction that I'm going that I'm onto the best thing there is for me to be doing.

If it was meant to be, it will be. I think that's what life is.