Love Is My Religion

I was born into a Catholic family and was raised Catholic. I went to church every Sunday and I received all of my sacraments. But no one ever asked me if I wanted to be a Catholic. And I understand that this is just the way life is; you’re born into a family and you take on their religion. My parents are Catholic, their parents were Catholic and so on. And for many years of my life I went along with it, took it for what it was, never questioned anything. For most of my life I feel like I was forced to believe whatever I was taught by the church. I had no say. Whatever the church believed, whatever my parents believed, along with all other Catholics, was to be what I believed. But as I got older, I developed my own opinion about religion and what it means to me. And while I still believe some of the things I was taught, most of it doesn’t make sense to me anymore.

Do I consider myself a Catholic? I’m really not sure and I honestly don’t think it even matters. Why do I have to put a label on my beliefs? I don’t go to church anymore unless I have to for a funeral or a wedding. So other Catholics may say that I’m ‘lapsed’ because I don’t practice the religion, and that’s fine with me. I don’t feel like I need to physically be in a church to come across God. If I’m being honest, the church has never done anything for me. I have never felt anything extraordinary being in a Catholic church. No warm, fuzzy feelings come over me. Mass has always been boring to me, and maybe comes across as a little crazy, even cultish.

Think about it. Every week it’s the same thing. I could sit here right now and tell you what goes on from start to finish. The only thing that changes from week to week are the readings. Other than that, as a group, we all stand at the same time, we sit and kneel at the same time, we recite the same prayers at the same time every week, word for word. And when I do step foot in a church for a mass, I try my hardest not to have the prayers echo in my head. I try to think of a song or a movie scene but the words still go off somewhere in my mind and I swear it feels like I’ve been brainwashed all these years. And after all of the prayers are done and the gospel is read a priest stands on the altar and tells you what he thinks about what he just read. His interpretation. In essence, he’s telling you how you should feel. But no one ever asks how YOU actually feel or what you think about what is being told to you. My opinion doesn’t matter, my feelings don’t matter and that’s what I’ve been taught all these years. Whatever is in the Bible is the only truth we are allowed to know. It’s written for us to see, and learn and believe, with no questions asked. And you’re either with it or you’re not, and I guess I’m not anymore.

At my Grandmother’s funeral the priest talked about her suffering. And he assured all of us that God was with her while she suffered and we should all take comfort in that. And as I sat in the pew, my head was about to explode. I wanted to stand up and scream ‘He was the one who caused her suffering. So, it’s real nice that He comforted her, but she wouldn’t have needed comfort if He didn’t make her sick in the first place’. My Grandmother didn’t deserve to suffer, and I’m not saying anyone does, but she of all people DID NOT deserve it. When she got sick, I was so mad at God. At the time she was 88 and I thought ‘what the fuck is the point in making her sick now?’ If it was her time and God wanted her so bad, He could have taken her peacefully in her sleep one night. She deserved that act of kindness, of mercy from her God because she dedicated so much of her life to the church and her faith. She left her fate in God’s hands and believed in His plan. And while I may not agree with everything she believed in, I respected her faith immensely.

As a Catholic I was taught, or maybe this is just how I interpreted things, that all the glory goes to God. Everything good in our life is because of Him. But the bad stuff that happens is on us, is because of the poor choices we have made in life. How fucked up is that logic? Everything good that happens to me, everything I may accomplish is all because of God, but the bad things I do or go through are my fault. We can never blame God for that. That can really mess with a person’s mind. And I just can’t get on board with that way of thinking. I don’t blame God for the things I have been through in my life, or for the bad things that have happened. That’s just life. But I’m also not going to give Him all the credit for the good in my life, some things maybe, but not all. I have a roof over my head, food on my table and clothes on my back because of my husband who goes to work every day to make the money to provide for his family. And I thank my husband for that because he made the decision to do that for me and our daughter. He doesn’t have to, but he chooses to.

Many people are born with a gift, I truly believe that. And I believe that gift comes from a higher power. It is put into us when we first come into this world. But what we choose to do with that gift is up to each individual. Do I think my writing is a gift? Sometimes I do. And like I said once before I wasted that gift for many years. Should I blame God for that? Absolutely not, that’s on me and the choices I have made my whole life. The other side of that is if I had made a ton of money from my writing or written a bunch of books, should God get all the credit? Absolutely not. That would also be on me and all of my effort and hard work. So, I can thank this higher power for giving me this gift, but it ends there. Whatever comes from it, good or bad, comes from me.

I believe there is a God, I believe there are many Gods. My God is not the only one to believe in. I believe there is definitely a higher power. I believe in all of the angels and saints, and I believe that my loved ones are in a heaven where they are together and looking down on us, guiding us just as much as any God in the heavens. I believe that this world, this universe, is too big for there not to be more than one God. One of the problems I have with Catholics is that many of them, including people in my own life,  walk around like their religion is the only one that matters and if you don’t believe what they believe then you are less than them. That is some major bullshit. It infuriates me at Christmas time when I see all of these Catholics on social media with their memes about saying Merry Christmas and how mad they get when they think people are telling them they can’t say it, and how they don’t care, they’re going to say it anyway. It pisses me off because what they’re really saying is that they don’t care about your religion or your holiday, only Christmas matters. For me, I find it so disrespectful to disregard other faiths, so I am of the ‘Happy Holidays’ greeting. Unless I know for sure what your religion is, I will just wish for you to enjoy your holiday, whatever it may be. That doesn’t make me a bad Catholic, that makes me a decent human being. Thinking your religion is better than someone else’s only adds to the toxicity in this world and I want no part of that.

I believe in many things. I believe we all have a guardian angel helping us walk our path. I believe in fate and that some things are just meant to be and I have faith in believing that, whether or not I’m ever proven right. I pray when I feel an absolute need to but I pray to my angels. I pray to my Godmother, to my father-in-law and most recently to my Grandmother. I believe in love, I believe in my family, I believe in miracles and I don’t feel the need to say for sure where those miracles come from. My daughter is a miracle and I can’t look at her and not believe in a higher power at work. When a doctor says that she has no idea how I ever got pregnant I put my faith in all my angels working together to help create my daughter, who was born with a birthmark on the back of her head that a NICU nurse referred to as an angel’s kiss, and I know that was my father-in-law, I believe it was him. And my daughter is kind and caring and has a beautiful soul. She is love and I believe in her. I believe in the beautiful way my niece dances on stage and takes my breath away. I believe in the genius, and the curiosity and the wonder that is my nephew. I believe in the love that I see in my parents and I believe in the values they instilled in me about family that has nothing to do with religion. I believe in my husband, and in my marriage and everything we have been through, good and bad, to get to this place we’re at now. I believe in my daughter’s laugh and her smile, in my sister’s kind heart. I believe these are the things that make my world better. Above everything I believe in love. Love has made me laugh, it has made me cry, it has made me feel everything I have ever felt. Love makes me who I am, love makes me do the things I do. Love is amazing, love is painful, love is gentle, love is fierce. Love is the only thing that matters. Getting it is great, but giving it out to the world is amazing, it’s what we’re here for. I believe in God, my God, the one I envision for myself. And He is not found in a church, He is everywhere I look, in every person in my life. Am I a good Catholic? Probably not, but that’s ok because I believe I’m a good person and that’s the most important thing I can be.