Trippen, you got me thinking a lot yesterday and it actually reminded me to think about my own spirituality along with my personal experiences.

I can understand how you struggle actually. As I think back about my own history with Christianity starting in my childhood, well I was a lot like you actually. When I was little the overall message I got from my exposure to religion was that if I was good then I would be loved by others and even this man in the sky everyone talks about. And then I somehow kept remembering that I was given permission to be loved by whom many call the "son of god". And my father did explain some things to me as well because he taught sunday school for a while and he was very spritual and brought prayers to our dinner table every night to remind us to be thankful every day.

Well, when my dad was teaching sunday school classes and we went to church every Sunday, I grew to love church. And my home life was very confusing to me growing up and both my older siblings sexually abused me and were constantly trying to control me too. But somehow Trippen, I just considered the church a safe place. And that is what children do that are troubled and abused, they try to find safe places and ways to somehow please and find ways to feel safe in that pleasing as well.

Well, one year the church didn't ask my dad to come back and teach Sunday school and I can still remember sitting at the dinner table and listening to my parents discuss it. My dad was very hurt because the church didn't even thank him for his efforts to devote his time and I think that was the first time I heard the word political. And then it was decided that we would no longer go to church anymore. And I tried to understand that and the overall message I got from my mom was that my father didn't care for the minister either because he felt he didn't really know the Bible very well. Well my dad studied the Bible alot and from what I understand he started doing that while he was in the service. And now I think it was his way of trying to understand WAR and the bad that he had to see. And I found out later on that my dad was truely surprised that he even survived the war. He had been on a ship and was very young and at the lowest rank and was really treated poorly. He requested a transfer and the other men kept telling him it was a waste of time and that he would never get the transfer. But he did get the transfer and after he left that ship, it was hit by a torpedo and the whole compartment where he stayed with a lot men got hit and all the men he knew were killed. And now that I look back, a big part of my father really struggled with his experience of WAR. And I think that he probably had some PTSD too. And his search to deal with that was in his faith and in reading the Bible.

Well, so we didn't have church and that was hard for me because my daily life revolved around being very troubled and frightened and being very controled by both my siblings. And every day was that awful bus ride with my older brother and constantly watching the other children bully my brother and constantly seeing the pain on his face. And even the teachers were mean to him and he was constantly in the principles office ever since I can remember. And my home was all about what to do with this boy that just could not pay attention and settle down. Back then there was no knowledge about ADHD or any childhood disorders/learning difficulties. And I had to learn how to know to run when my brother could no longer control the anger that built up in him. And yet, I felt SO sorry for him too. I really was very confused when I was growing up and I was always hypervigilant. And in my flashbacks and as I remember that little girl, I feel so bad for her, how HARD she was trying and I wonder how she learned anything to be honest because she was always exhausted in school, and the other safe place was the nurses office where I would play sick just so I could sleep because I was SO tired some days.

Oh Trippen, I was afraid of so many people and so confused growing up. But somehow I knew that "faith" was important to have and some kind of "it is there to help". However, I also felt like I didn't belong to any group that was what I knew of as "Church".

And then my parents sent me to a private school that was Catholic. And what I liked most about that was, no bus, and I was away from my brother and the Bullies. But in this school I felt like I was an outsider because I wasn't Catholic. So I was shy and felt like while I could go there and learn, I just was not quite good enough somehow. And I was also to learn that I was on the lower learning level. There were the really smart girls, there were the middle smart girls, and the then the girls that were smart enough to get accepted to the school but were the least smart, I was in that group. And I didn't really realize that I was on that lower level because growing up and all those bus rides that were crippling and exhausting everyday, along with a very troubling home life, made it very hard for me to pay attention is school.

Well, in this Catholic school we had to take religion classes as well and we also had to go to mass. And in religion class that was taught by a priest I always felt he was just nice to me but he knew I didn't belong somehow. So I learned in religion class but it was kind of a feeling of I could learn but was just an outsider.

And then came MASS and the church at the school was so pretty with it's stained glass windows and the special group of girls that sang. And it reminded me of when I was little and loved church and felt safe there. But in this church I was somehow an outsider. And I always loved music and singing and so though I was very scared I got up the courage to try out for this special group of girls that sang at MASS. And I was accepted. But I still felt like I was not really totally allowed to have the permission to feel I was accepted by this religion these girls shared. And I was only there because my voice was pretty and helped the girls sound nice.

So Trippen, I basically felt like I wasn't truely smart enough, didn't really have permission to be 'TRUELY A PART OF" all the girls that ran around the halls of this really pretty old fashioned Mansion that was turned into a "GIRLS PRIVATE CATHOLIC SCHOOL" for the upper crust girls and most of them came from wealth too. And many of the classes I took were taught by NUNS and I always felt that they looked down on me and didn't expect much from this outsider girl.

But Trippen, I think it was mostly my Senior Year there that after giving it a lot of thought, I decided that I was going to give myself permission to take comunion, and that is like telling you a HUGE SECRET. I decided that I was just going to let myself have faith even though I didn't fit the specific qualifications that told me I was permitted. And I had enough religion classes and learned enough to feel that GOD would not punish me for wanting to find a way to love him. Which meant I had to also find a way to forgive myself and understand about the GOD/GOOD inside me and free myself from the BAD/EVIL that happened to me.

I have never officially qualified to be any one religion. But somehow I have grown to understand that I WILL JUST HAVE MY OWN SPIRITUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH "GOD".

FREE WILL? Well Trippen, when I think of FREE WILL I think of the fact that after all those years of somehow feeling that I wasn't smart enough, didn't belong enough, and truely didn't have one real connection to one religion, I HAVE THE FREE WILL TO HAVE A SPRITUAL RELATIONSHIP ON MY OWN.

Forget about RELIGION in my opinion. because that is "POLITICAL" which is what I learned at the dinner table so many years ago. Somewhere along the way, it was all those stories in Religion class that answered a lot of my questions. What it boils down to? Well, there are lots of stories with "Religions and their books and scrolls or whatever". But the truth is that all those stories are basically answers of how many different groups of people gained permission to pay attention to that simple message I discribed above. In each and every one of is GOD/GOOD and yes we can all be touched by BAD/EVIL/WHATEVER, but what it all boils down to is that WE HAVE THE FREE WILL TO BE FORGIVEN AND FIND THAT GOD/GOOD inside us and be FORGIVEN and HAVE PERMISSION TO, BY OUR OWN FREE WILL "HAVE THAT SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WE ALL DESERVE". The submission that you are so worried about, well, it really isn't what you are thinking that you can't just give yourself to. Because you CAN Trippen and it is a very personal thing for you and you HAVE THE FREE WILL to use it and tap onto whatever is special in YOU and use it, first for you and then share whatever you can learn. That is what the submission is all about Trippen.

And SO, whatever happened in the night with that touch of BAD, You are FORGIVEN, NOT YOUR FAULT Trippen, because you are given FREE WILL to FORGIVE WHATEVER YOU feel troubled about and truely have that "spiritual" relationship that you felt so long ago that you discribe in your post.

((((Hugs)))
Open Eyes