This will not make me popular. This will not go well. This is however the conclusion I've arrived to this morning while dropping my child off to Sunday school.
I'm an agnostic theist...or at least that's how I'd label myself if I had to have one.
The things you think of while driving a bus really can be life altering. I witness some of humanity in a way most people wont ever have the chance. I know who the forgotten people of society are. The undesirables. They do offer something I've yet to find anywhere else. They're real. They don't clean up on Sunday mornings or carry on with this picturesque way of living that has been advertised to us through mass media. Their emotions are strong and obvious, granted some of them suffer from mental illness I really can't say the people I've gone to church with in my life are exempt from that same struggle...perhaps they are just better at masking it. The stigma of coming out as an agnostic theist is fabulous, you've got the atheists that argue, "How can you believe in any God?" followed by the Christians who are angry you denied theirs. Awesome right? The black sheep doesn't have to answer to anyone. It's a grey spot but I've spent most of my life in that area of the spectrum, I just happened to arrive to this decision a little later than most. I will be eating my past words however with my family, they won't be happy with this garble, they wont support my decision to stay undefined, well there's a title but it leaves a lot of wiggle room and I'd prefer it that way. My husband's family live their lives for the lord, and his son Jesus Christ. I won't mock them nor would I disrespect their views because everyone is entitled to their opinion. I'm just afraid that this will break their hearts. My little niece Grace has the lord engrained in her heart, she draws little pictures of crosses and gives them to me as gifts, her bedroom wall says she is a child of God. I couldn't be the one to tell her I don't believe in her God, I wouldn't want to wreck everything she believes in. I was raised Christian, but as time went on I realized it seemed inherently WRONG that I(being Native American) was raised to follow a religion that killed so many of my people. My sister's mother was taken from her family and forced into a Christian boarding school just 50 years ago. They tried to kill off their language and disprove their Gods. My grandmother and aunts and uncles all follow Christianity but I simply cannot.
Today walking into church my son was so happy to see his cousin, I'll remind you we don't generally see our family unless it's at a family function which always includes prayer, for childcare(both my husband and I work), or something pertaining to church. It's exhausting and unfair. Why can't we just hang out? Everything is centered around God and their personal beliefs. I remember a time when I realized I was told lies about my husband to get us to go to church. Manipulation to conform to a specific belief? No thank you. I love our family but my biggest heartache is the fact that I can't be one of them without believing in their God. So here I am. Confessing in a blog nobody reads. Honestly it's a huge weight off of my shoulders. It's times like this that I miss my best friend Addison the most, I still can't really bring myself to write about her because I just end up crying and going to bed early. I wonder what she would say to me. I wonder what she would think. I really don't know if I will ever see her again, but I hope so.
