Something has shifted for me, and it feels major.
I can't explain what it is, though I have a deep knowing that things are going to start going well for me now. My intuition is telling me to Trust, and my intuition has never led me astray. Ever.
When I started writing this blog, I found myself writing mostly about church experiences. I never really had a plan for my posts, I just needed an outlet. When church stuff came up, I just rolled with it. Something has changed in me since my last post though. I don't feel like talking about my religious experiences much anymore. It suddenly feels like they all happened to somebody else I know, not to me. I feel like a different person now.
I've realized that while I was processing my relationship patterns and learning more about who I am over the past few months, I was parallel processing the depth of influence that Christianity has had on my character development. Everything about who I used to be was based on some twisted teaching of Christianity: my embodiment of traditional gender roles; my perspective on various societal institutions, like marriage, and education, and government; my perspective on financial stewardship; and my deep sense of innate worthlessness. Christianity has permeated every aspect of who I am, and because North America is a culture that was founded on Christianity, it likely has more widespread relevance than I originally thought, even if you've never stepped foot in church before.
These past few months have brought, through deep suffering, a new freedom from the constraints of what I was taught about the world. I no longer believe that I am a sinful being, but a being of Divine Love. I no longer believe in duality, because I've experienced polarity. I no longer believe that external structures are more powerful than internal ones. And I no longer believe that I am separate from God, nor from fellow humans.
I don't know. A lot has changed recently. My growth these past few months was so rapid I could hardly keep up. For a while it felt like I woke up a different person every morning, which wasn't a bad thing, since I was intentionally seeking growth, but it was intense. This past week, however, I've started to feel different. I'm closing out an eight year cycle of unparalleled growth and stepping into a new story of certainty in who I am. I'm starting to feel powerful, calm, present, and consistent. Emphasis on consistent.
Consistency and stability is what I desperately sought my whole life. I feel like the fruits of my labour are now ready for harvest, but it doesn't look the way I thought it would. I'd been trying to create a life of external stability for myself, but right now my experience of stability is entirely internal. I feel deeply settled inside. I genuinely love the experience of being me. I can be present in every moment, no matter how stressful, because I like being inside of my own head, my own body, my own heart. My stability is coming from a place that is unshakable. My internal consistency is far less susceptible to outside forces than a steady career and healthy relationships could ever be, although I'm welcoming those in as well.
I guess what I mean to say is that I am becoming the person that I always looked to others to be for me. The stability that church gave the illusion of, actually resides within me. And for that reason, I am no longer very interested in going.
Church has been such a huge part of my life. It has permeated every aspect of who I am, how I perceived the world, what I dreamt for myself, how I navigated relationships, and how I viewed my worth. It's taken literal years to undo the damage, and DEEP heartbreak, over and over and over and over again. I can never extricate Christianity from the story of Steph, but I am now ready to write a new story, one where I am the main character, not church, and one based on joy, not suffering.
I am so grateful for church, and for my story, and I am not closed off to the future possibility of attending. I feel like I've left on a really good note. I have gratitude that churches like this last one exist, because I know the power of community and spirituality. I'm just tired of the same old story and I'm ready to start telling a different one. I have no idea where I'm going from here, but I never really do, so I guess some things still are the same...
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