Can I Be Excused? I Seem to Have Lost my Bible

I grew up in a town so small and traditional that you almost had to be white, straight, and Christian just to survive. My mother grew up in First Baptist Church playing piano and organ. She tried to raise us there, as well, but that didn’t work out very well. I went to Sunday School and Sunday service and was even baptized when I was 8 years old. But it never really clicked with me the way I felt it should.

By the time I was 12 my older sister and I weren’t attending services anymore. For a while mom had forced us to go with my great Aunt. My aunt spent almost all of her time at the church but, to me at least, she suffered from the same affliction the rest of my church-going-peers did: hypocrisy.

It was hard for me as I got older to sit in church on a Sunday morning and listen to a classmate of mine get up and talk about how much she loved the Lord when I knew she had been out at the pasture party the night before drunk and high having sex with her boy friend. My aunt, who was about as mean-spirited as they come, was the very soul of compassion within the church doors but nothing but spiteful outside of them.

As I neared graduation I rejected the Christian faith all together. Looking back I realize how much being under such a heavy Christian influence affected how I thought and acted. Being a lesbian it’s hard for me to acknowledge that I used to hate homosexuals. I thought they were disgusting and that they should be ‘prayed for’. As I grew older and ignored the tendencies that were right in front of my face, I also began my rejection of the faith I was raised with. By the time I graduated I was in love with my best (girl) friend and was considered an atheist by pretty much everyone at school.

It took a full year after graduation before I even considered that I might be gay and acknowledged that my feelings for my friend went beyond just friendship. As is common at a time like that, I went through a major depression. And God? Well, I didn’t want anything to do with Him. How could He make me – perfect in His eyes – when I was having feelings that weren’t ‘right’? The bitterness ran deep.

I was 20 when I stumbled upon my current religion. My roommate had a good friend who lived in the same apartment complex we did who was a witch. From hanging out with her and listening to her conversations I began to form an idea of the Wiccian faith. I had a lot of pre-conceived notions of what witchcraft was and I really didn’t believe in it. But I listened to her and asked her questions. She became one of my best friends (and is still, to this day). She recommended some books for me to read and some exercises I could try to help me find my center and be at peace.

The last five years have been start and go but I have found my path. It is so wonderful to finally have faith in something that doesn’t reject who I am in any way, shape, or form. Women are embraced as the mothers of life and are revered (to a certain extent). Sex is an act of love – of self and others – and isn’t something that is a sin. Homosexuality is no more ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ than heterosexuality. God isn’t some distant idea anymore. The God and Goddess are everywhere and everything.

One of the most important things my friend told me was that Wicca is the one religion that you don’t have to go into believing. That, with time, the truth is revealed to you with proof. I never could connect with the pastors of my youth. Prayer didn’t help, either. While I ‘pray’ quite often now, it is not the same at all. There is a peace now where before was just a void.

When I embraced and accepted what I had found I realized what I had been lacking for so many years. I know that whatever direction my sexuality goes my religion will be behind me one hundred percent. Best of all (to me at least) my faith is one-on-one; me and my God/Goddess. I can share it with a group, if I so choose, but being alone makes me no less a witch. There’s no hypocrisy to deal with when my religion is my own and my church is my own altar in my own house.

I have so much questioning to do. At this point in my life I am at the center of a huge web of possibilities. I have to search within myself to discover what I want. My faith is a guide and a comfort to me. I do not have to be afraid of anything I find because I know my higher power supports and believes in me. That freedom is worth the years of suffering I had to do to find it.