Draft-1/28/16

I got home earlier yesterday then everyone else it was way to quiet. I wasn’t expecting it so I kept my music on my iPod and heated up my leftovers, washed a few dishes and then started eating by myself. As I sat there at the chair my thoughts crept to earlier in the day at the cafe. We have a regular that comes in just about every day. He’s lds and formaliar in the fact he reminds me of every lds bishop/councilor. The first few times I saw him I thought he was from my singles ward. The thought had crossed my mind that they had put a Bp on me, only I would think that. Ha”!
Yesterday he had the missionaries with him and they all asked how I was doing and then I asked them what they were up to, they told me they were staying busy with appointments that looked bright. Then they mentioned they were going to work on me next and bring me back. I smiled-laughed and awkwardly walked away.
I thought about this conversation and one we had had a few weeks ago where he mentioned that I had a light about me. He went on to ask what my religion was, I told him that I was lds but that I don’t go anymore. This led me to this week reading a journal/autobiography on someone’s spiritual journey. It all again has come back full circle, what is it that I believe in? I sat there on the chair rocking listening to the music, listening to my feelings and it dawned on me for the first time I don’t have a church anymore and somehow I was okay with that. I haven’t been to church regularly in a year and the last time I went was back in May. I haven’t been to the temple in over a year, and all of this I realized I was okay with it. I’m okay with where I am at. The decision has become easier for me to make. Clearer in a way. The pain has been lessening, I don’t feel the pull as I have in the past.
I have done this before, gone through inactivity but I never really felt like I was inactive they were just spells and i always new I would be back. Even a few years ago when I went through my huge faith transition, I had taken space but I knew I would be back. This time feels different. This time feels like I have nothing and I’m not really even sure what I believe in anymore. Where is my faith, where does it lie?
The last three years have all been internally, I have gone through believing full heartedly in a god, in Jesus, in Christianity and then having it torn into nothing, I believed in nothing I had nothing and at during one of the hardest times of my life. But then I started soul searching, really digging into spirituality into my own religion and now I have come out of it not needing religion. And I am okay with it. Spirituality is different, it really is way more inward -about my own journey, it brings me more focus on my body, healthy focus. More compassion. I am more trusting in myself, I feel that it has made me a better human, less judgemental more giving, humble. Less prideful. Yet all of these virtues is what is taught at Church. I feel less confined.
I do believe that religion has its place, I have just grown out of it. Who knows if God exists, who even knows if we even exist. Try wrapping your head around that one for a night or two. But what I do still have are my experiences that have carried me- when I was 7 and in Sunday school, when I was 12 and just recently baptized in the lds faith, my summers in high school, that September afternoon right before my divorce at the temple, my dreams, the May night down in Moab and then this summer and those experiences. I have them all in and out of church, religion. They are mine and each one has gotten me to where I am now. Which is to question and to seek out the truth, no matter how difficult, upsetting and heart wrenching it is.
Sometimes I wish I could just go back, but I can’t. I think it would be way more harmful if I just numbed myself and said it was okay. So religion has gone, my belief system has wavered but my faith (in myself) has gotten stronger. I could be all wrong, I’m okay with that to, we all could be wrong. What I do know is that at the end of the day we are just all star dust. Living this life, trying to work together and figure it out as we coast along the cosmic field of this universe. I’m okay with that as well.
Star dust, beautiful star dust. Fine and colorful.
With love,
Jess