Me, Afraid of God? How Come?

That one time Prozac didn't help and then I met God on a twin-sized bed

⚠️ I discuss my feelings about God and our atypical relationship here. I don’t think that this contains anything blasphemous enough to offend someone, but just in case, here’s a warning.

Not much has changed since then, but as a small child, I used to be afraid of God.

Yes, I was afraid of Him, His power, His knowledge, His very idea. This was abetted by the practice of my maternal grandmother forcing my brothers and I to look at the elaborately drawn (artfully, really) depiction of the Devil in her very heavy and huge ornate ivory Bible nightly on the days when we had been especially irritating to her. But, none of us has been to jail or had a child outside of marriage, and I'm sure that my Grandmother would consider her efforts successful and absolutely worth it if she were still with us in the body today.

Fast-forward a few years to me looking on a portrait of Jesus at home and seeing His wavy light hair tumbling down His back and His handsome nose that could be carved onto a coin upturned in prayer. "He's cute!" I told my mother while she was cooking, drawing her laughter from the nearby kitchen of our second-story apartment. I was so enamored by what I saw that I decided to draw a picture of the framed art, and I suppose that that portrait hanging on our dining room wall forever shaped my taste in men as I now watch my long-haired and bearded husband take a nap in attempt to catch up on the sleep lost to the working week.

The religious practices of my family of origin never truly felt like a "fit" to me. I practiced traditionally, yes, mostly because it was expected of me, but I always kept a collection of unanswered questions in the back of my mind that I wasn't even allowed to ask about what all it was that we were doing in church and out. Why wake up super early and dress up so nicely to attend a Sunday service at our Baptist church just to return home later to hear curse words mixed 50:50 with acceptable language and tolerate a father who blatantly could not commit to his wife? Why sing a Gospel song when you're really prescribed Prozac (controlled-release) in junior high school but still don't feel "good"? And why offer money to a collection plate being passed around when your own water utility is going to be shut off soon due to non-payment, and you have to fill up the bathtub with water in preparation just to ensure that you can still flush your toilets later?

"Why has God forsaken me?" I have found myself asking on many difficult occasions during my life. I have felt horribly equipped by my blind grip and automatic leaning onto this superficial and vague notion of a Higher Being that I had not been allowed to come to discover for myself. My idea of God had been broken over and over again, reformed crookedly, bent, and mangled so badly, that I very much resented it.

I did not find God in my relationship to any man. I did not find God in my neurotransmitters, even with help. He was not in smoke or drink or chemicals, either. And I never felt more alone and lost than during the years that I searched for Him with all of my might, only to end up disappointed.

Yet, I also never felt stronger than on those many nights (after I had thrashed and tossed and turned myself nearly to sleep) that I would then mentally retreat and inwardly focus my consciousness into a state of deep and relaxing mindfulness. A meditative state.

I was homeless by then, sleeping in my kid cousin's old bed in her yellow room painted with flowers at my uncle's house. But there was an abyss of peace in the inky dark pools behind my two closed eyelids. It was so sacredly quiet there, and grew even more so every moment longer that I held my place inside. I felt nothing less than sweet relief once I discovered that I could reduce the subject of my attention to absolutely nothing, and experience the sensations of only being, only being alive.

And during those times of self-reflection, I also happily released my grip onto any artful depiction of God that someone else had forced me to see. There was only room enough to view myself here, you see. I was aware of all things even while my eyes were still closed, and I felt my breathing in the rise and fall of my belly as air entered and withdrew itself. I was experiencing God in every single breath.

"Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things." (Acts 17:25 NKJV)

Then, at the end of my great search, it turned out that I did not need to venture far out at all. It all was so brilliantly clear to me in that moment:

"I have said, Ye are gods; And all of you are children of the most High." (Psalm 82:6 KJV)