As a pathway to God religion is one of the most useful tools for the human soul, but sometimes we get lost within the labels and lose our connection to divinity.

Raised Catholic until soccer took over my Sundays I didn’t find organized religion again until high school. Eventually, I chose to party over being a devout Christian at that age, I’m not the type of human that is able to do both. The party morphed over the years and eventually hit a downward spiral until I was about 25 and met an exceptionally abusive man. He never hit me, he just constantly called me a whore, slut, and other generally belittling names so that I believed that I could never do better. Eventually, I moved back in with my parents after that last fight had me cowering in the corner digging my own nails into my arms.

I continued dating him and to ensure that he didn’t scream at me and then dump me I basically hung out in my room alone. Desperate for human interaction I found that church was the only place that I could go without him losing it. What I found there wasn’t just a solid group of women to spend time with, it was a pathway to God. With continued bible study, prayer, and sermons I was able to realize that I didn’t need a negative relationship in my life and was able to let go. But the problem was that I didn’t have a concrete belief in some of the things that other people in church wholeheartedly believed. I just don’t find it factual that Jesus was literally a mystical son of God sent to Earth but I dug the metaphor. The continued fellowship and guidance from some key ladies in my life kept me at that home church until I made my next move to Arizona.

When I moved to Flagstaff, Arizona I didn’t find a new church since work sort of took over my life. I also had some doubts about my faith and where my faith was really channeling. Before I began my disaster relationship I had deeply studied the Buddhist and Pagan philosophies through various books and self-study. Since that was another thing that the man had hated about me my studies had become a sort of fantasy secret, but living in Flagstaff reconnected me to those roots. After trudging through the muck towards self-love and working on enjoying being alone I met cowboyfriend, an amazingly weird little Pagan cowboy snowboarder pirate. He literally makes no sense and it is one of my most favorite things. It gave me hope that I can be whatever I want, that a religious label is meaningless to me in my understanding of God.

A recent conversation with my older brother made me fully accept that I am not a Christian, the doctrine simply doesn’t jive with me. The reason that I enjoyed being Christian is that for once in my life people weren’t scared of me, they saw me as normal and our social interactions were more comfortable. Recently I read somewhere that God doesn’t have religion, people do. This felt so right to me and I started wondering why religion is in place in every modern society of people. It is obviously important to human societies all over the world and that is because it provides us with a pathway to God, who is the same entity over and over again no matter what book we’re reading. I feel fresh with this new understanding, where I once sat in a fog I now feel that without labels I can actually sit at Gods feet. I understand this isn’t a new idea but it is a newly solidified understanding in my own mind, and with that comes peace.

I know this is such a sensitive topic, but these are my feelings and thoughts on the matter. Since it had been so long since I shared with you guys I decided to share what’s been on my mind lately and I am doing so with the utmost respect to other’s beliefs.