My Burden
Tonight I'm going to write about a subject that I generally avoid discussing with others: religion/faith/spirituality. It is a difficult topic for me mostly because I've had such a convoluted relationship with religion. My faith is very private, something I know seems surprising as much as I constantly expose my very soul in the words of this blog. But it is something I keep close to the vest. I don't proselytize and I don't want to be proselytized. And when one starts delving into issues of religion and faith, I often find that people cross the line from acceptance of a personal faith to attempts at conversion. Thus I avoid the topic entirely. However tonight I need to do some exploration.
I was baptized as a Presbyterian. My grandmother, who raised me for my first seven years, was Episcopalian but had found a Presbyterian church in the Bronx that she joined. Grammy went back and forth between the image of God as an Old Testament vengeful ruler or a New Testament beneficent savior, and my impression of God went back and forth with her. Guilt/love were the two sides of the God coin. Later when I moved to California with my mother, church became more of an optional activity. Consequently, God grew more distant in my mindset. We sporadically attended a church of Religious Science (not to be confused with Christian Science) because one of Mom's patients was the minister there. But as I entered my pre-teen years, I grew tired of the boredom of sitting in church for hours on Sunday morning. God no longer ranked very high in my world. Mom made me miserable and no amount of church or prayer made any damn difference. The only good thing about going to church was going to IHOP afterwards for pancakes.
As a teen I began to question everything about God and religion, as my intellectualism grew in power and meaning in my life. Religion and faith all seemed so illogical. You couldn't prove the existence of a higher power the way we proved our theorems in geometry. At one particularly enlightened moment in my middle adolescence, I proclaimed myself to be an atheist. Religion was merely the opiate of the people. I was too intellectual for that. Of course this stance broke my grandmother's heart. My mom, she was like, whatever.
I kept up my atheism until college. There, 3000 miles away from home, suffering through adjustments, traumas, academic debacles, and more crap than I had ever anticipated, somehow the absoluteness of atheism felt uncomfortable. Agnosticism, yeah, that felt better. I could hedge my bets somehow. You know the agnostics prayer? Dear God (if there is a God) in heaven (if there is a heaven)… During my freshman year, my depression was so severe that I would find myself sitting on the ledge of my dorm window high above the courtyard. I kept freaking my roommates out. Sometimes I wanted to just fall forward and end the pain I felt, but I was never so brave/stupid. Often when I was out there on that ledge wanting to fall, I started to pray. I didn't believe that anyone was listening, but I found the words to be soothing. They calmed me during a lot of the bad moments.
The summer after that horrible freshman year, I went back to LA. I had been dating (and sleeping with) a junior for the last couple of months of the semester. Not long after arriving home, I realized that I was overdue for a visit from Aunt Flo. I got panicky. After checking my underwear 17 times a day for a few days, I decided to make my way to Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test. (I don't even remember there being those now ubiquitous home pregnancy tests available at that time.) I wasn't totally freaked out as I had been on the pill, but had switched to a diaphragm. So protection was used. Imagine my shock when the woman told me that my test was positive.
I took the bus home all the while contemplating suicide at the thought of telling my mother about this. She took the news better than I had anticipated, considering that I hadn't ended up dead. She asked if I wanted to continue the pregnancy. I said no. (As a 17 year old with one year of college under my belt, I didn't see myself as being ready to raise a baby on my own.) She then told me that she would take me to a different clinic than Planned Parenthood for the procedure. We would go the next morning to set things up. I hated the way she looked at me that night. It was as if I had stabbed her in the heart. How could I have been so stupid?
That night I called Victor, my alleged boyfriend. Through my tears, I told him about the test result. He was relieved to hear that I didn't plan to continue the pregnancy. He then went on to explain that the only reason he dated me was to prove to his roommates that he wasn't gay. He really didn't have any feelings for me at all and thought this would be a good time to break up. After hanging up the phone, I lay there in the twin bed I had grown up sleeping in, with tears streaming down my face. How did I get so alone? No boyfriend. My mother furious at me. I had no one to turn to. So I did something I hadn't done in a very long time. I really prayed.
I didn't know if there was a God or whether s/he was listening to me, but I prayed, I begged for the strength to get through this trial. "God, please grant me strength," I said over and over again. I didn't ask for any magic to undo the mistakes I had made. I just needed some strength to face the consequences of what I had wrought. I prayed until I fell asleep.
The next morning, my sullen, disappointed mother took me to a more upscale clinic than the Planned Parenthood I had visited the day before. I explained that I was pregnant and wanted to schedule an abortion. The receptionist said that I had to take another pregnancy test. I sighed heavily and went to the bathroom. I was told that they would call me at noon with the results. I went shamefaced to my mother's office to await the call. When my mother handed me the phone, my knees almost gave way when I heard the result: negative. How could this be? It was just positive yesterday? The nurse told me to return the next morning with my first morning urine and they would test again. But my mind was in turmoil. Dare I hope that this latest test was accurate? How could it be? False negatives are common, but false positives? No way.
That night, I prayed again for God to grant me the strength to face the next day's results. In the morning, I collected my urine and revisited the clinic. The call again came before noon. The verdict: negative. I couldn't believe it. And though this episode might not have an impact for those reading, for me, it was nothing short of a miracle. It became the turning point in my reclaiming my faith.
I became Catholic. Yes, you read that correctly. I went from atheist to agnostic to Catholic. During my sophomore year, I went through a catechism and joined the Catholic Church. The long story short was that I dated a guy who invited me to mass. I dug the ritual of the mass and felt a connection with God after taking communion. My going to mass outlasted the relationship, and before I knew it, I was studying for my catechism with a very cool priest. I told him at the outset that I didn't agree with much of the Church teachings such as abstinence until marriage, no divorce, no birth control and such. He encouraged me to always question my faith and beliefs such that both would grow. It wasn't until much later that I came to understand how progressive that diocese was.
In time I managed to find a way for my faith and intellectualism to co-exist peacefully in my psyche. I continue to be what some have called a "cafeteria Catholic," basically taking what I need from the Church to make myself into the best person I believe I could be. Truthfully, I could conceivably think of my general religiosity as "cafeteria religion," since I do not immerse myself in the absolutism of any religion, but instead integrate what I need from the religion to become/remain a good, moral, loving person. Sometimes I think of my basic faith as not being too different from what you learned in kindergarten: be nice to others; treat people the way you wish to be treated, and other very simple but powerful lessons. It all felt right.
When trials befell me, just as I did that night so many years ago when I felt alone with my struggles, I prayed to God for the strength to face whatever the challenge was. I never prayed for relief, absolution, or magic. I only prayed for the ability to handle whatever was put on my plate. I thought that was all one should ask God for, after all, s/he never gives you more than you can handle, right?
But then, after all these years of finding peace in my faith, my religion, and my concept of a higher power, last Wednesday, Jeannette, my therapist, showed me an unsettling flaw in my construct. Wednesday was a high tears day. Since I lost the baby, days are divided into high tears and less tears. I've yet to have a no tears day. I sat in her office blubbering through the high tears. The pain was just too much, too much for me to handle. I couldn't cope. "I keep praying to God for strength," I told her through my wailing, "but I just cannot handle this pain. It is just too much."
"It is too much," she replied, "It is much too much for you to hold onto all by yourself. Why don't you ask God to help hold some of it for you?"
I was dumbstruck for a moment. How does one ask God for relief or assistance? Is this allowed? In my construct, all one could ask God for was strength to cope with one's burden. After all, God doesn't give you more than you can bear, right? To ask for help, to pray for a lightening of the load…somehow this seemed so wrong.
I stayed puzzled as Jeannette tried to work with me to ask God to take some of my burden. I wanted to comply, but something inside jangled. For some reason that I've been unable to explain, my mind seems to resist asking God for help with the pain I've been going through.
Is this because I feel that I should be able to handle all that is given to me? Am I channeling my I've-never-asked-anyone-for-help-because-I'm-so-strong mother? Do I not believe that God should be asked for relief or respite? And if it is the latter, I certainly want to know where in the cafeteria I picked up that one?
Today was a less tears day, not because I was any less sad, but because I had longer to escape from the world into my dreams. When I left the wonderful diversion of dreamland, it became clear to me as I stared at the vaulted ceilings that I was the reason my baby was dead. It was my fault. My defective uterus caused my baby to die. At lunch with Mason, I tried to explain my reasoning, but he wasn't having it. Fault implies intent, he says. I disagree. You can have fault without intent. My uterus wasn't good enough for placentation, thus my baby died because of me.
Maybe that's why I cannot ask God to lighten my burden. The fault is mine and I deserve all the agony that I feel.
Oh this is so not good. This is not good at all.
I was baptized as a Presbyterian. My grandmother, who raised me for my first seven years, was Episcopalian but had found a Presbyterian church in the Bronx that she joined. Grammy went back and forth between the image of God as an Old Testament vengeful ruler or a New Testament beneficent savior, and my impression of God went back and forth with her. Guilt/love were the two sides of the God coin. Later when I moved to California with my mother, church became more of an optional activity. Consequently, God grew more distant in my mindset. We sporadically attended a church of Religious Science (not to be confused with Christian Science) because one of Mom's patients was the minister there. But as I entered my pre-teen years, I grew tired of the boredom of sitting in church for hours on Sunday morning. God no longer ranked very high in my world. Mom made me miserable and no amount of church or prayer made any damn difference. The only good thing about going to church was going to IHOP afterwards for pancakes.
As a teen I began to question everything about God and religion, as my intellectualism grew in power and meaning in my life. Religion and faith all seemed so illogical. You couldn't prove the existence of a higher power the way we proved our theorems in geometry. At one particularly enlightened moment in my middle adolescence, I proclaimed myself to be an atheist. Religion was merely the opiate of the people. I was too intellectual for that. Of course this stance broke my grandmother's heart. My mom, she was like, whatever.
I kept up my atheism until college. There, 3000 miles away from home, suffering through adjustments, traumas, academic debacles, and more crap than I had ever anticipated, somehow the absoluteness of atheism felt uncomfortable. Agnosticism, yeah, that felt better. I could hedge my bets somehow. You know the agnostics prayer? Dear God (if there is a God) in heaven (if there is a heaven)… During my freshman year, my depression was so severe that I would find myself sitting on the ledge of my dorm window high above the courtyard. I kept freaking my roommates out. Sometimes I wanted to just fall forward and end the pain I felt, but I was never so brave/stupid. Often when I was out there on that ledge wanting to fall, I started to pray. I didn't believe that anyone was listening, but I found the words to be soothing. They calmed me during a lot of the bad moments.
The summer after that horrible freshman year, I went back to LA. I had been dating (and sleeping with) a junior for the last couple of months of the semester. Not long after arriving home, I realized that I was overdue for a visit from Aunt Flo. I got panicky. After checking my underwear 17 times a day for a few days, I decided to make my way to Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test. (I don't even remember there being those now ubiquitous home pregnancy tests available at that time.) I wasn't totally freaked out as I had been on the pill, but had switched to a diaphragm. So protection was used. Imagine my shock when the woman told me that my test was positive.
I took the bus home all the while contemplating suicide at the thought of telling my mother about this. She took the news better than I had anticipated, considering that I hadn't ended up dead. She asked if I wanted to continue the pregnancy. I said no. (As a 17 year old with one year of college under my belt, I didn't see myself as being ready to raise a baby on my own.) She then told me that she would take me to a different clinic than Planned Parenthood for the procedure. We would go the next morning to set things up. I hated the way she looked at me that night. It was as if I had stabbed her in the heart. How could I have been so stupid?
That night I called Victor, my alleged boyfriend. Through my tears, I told him about the test result. He was relieved to hear that I didn't plan to continue the pregnancy. He then went on to explain that the only reason he dated me was to prove to his roommates that he wasn't gay. He really didn't have any feelings for me at all and thought this would be a good time to break up. After hanging up the phone, I lay there in the twin bed I had grown up sleeping in, with tears streaming down my face. How did I get so alone? No boyfriend. My mother furious at me. I had no one to turn to. So I did something I hadn't done in a very long time. I really prayed.
I didn't know if there was a God or whether s/he was listening to me, but I prayed, I begged for the strength to get through this trial. "God, please grant me strength," I said over and over again. I didn't ask for any magic to undo the mistakes I had made. I just needed some strength to face the consequences of what I had wrought. I prayed until I fell asleep.
The next morning, my sullen, disappointed mother took me to a more upscale clinic than the Planned Parenthood I had visited the day before. I explained that I was pregnant and wanted to schedule an abortion. The receptionist said that I had to take another pregnancy test. I sighed heavily and went to the bathroom. I was told that they would call me at noon with the results. I went shamefaced to my mother's office to await the call. When my mother handed me the phone, my knees almost gave way when I heard the result: negative. How could this be? It was just positive yesterday? The nurse told me to return the next morning with my first morning urine and they would test again. But my mind was in turmoil. Dare I hope that this latest test was accurate? How could it be? False negatives are common, but false positives? No way.
That night, I prayed again for God to grant me the strength to face the next day's results. In the morning, I collected my urine and revisited the clinic. The call again came before noon. The verdict: negative. I couldn't believe it. And though this episode might not have an impact for those reading, for me, it was nothing short of a miracle. It became the turning point in my reclaiming my faith.
I became Catholic. Yes, you read that correctly. I went from atheist to agnostic to Catholic. During my sophomore year, I went through a catechism and joined the Catholic Church. The long story short was that I dated a guy who invited me to mass. I dug the ritual of the mass and felt a connection with God after taking communion. My going to mass outlasted the relationship, and before I knew it, I was studying for my catechism with a very cool priest. I told him at the outset that I didn't agree with much of the Church teachings such as abstinence until marriage, no divorce, no birth control and such. He encouraged me to always question my faith and beliefs such that both would grow. It wasn't until much later that I came to understand how progressive that diocese was.
In time I managed to find a way for my faith and intellectualism to co-exist peacefully in my psyche. I continue to be what some have called a "cafeteria Catholic," basically taking what I need from the Church to make myself into the best person I believe I could be. Truthfully, I could conceivably think of my general religiosity as "cafeteria religion," since I do not immerse myself in the absolutism of any religion, but instead integrate what I need from the religion to become/remain a good, moral, loving person. Sometimes I think of my basic faith as not being too different from what you learned in kindergarten: be nice to others; treat people the way you wish to be treated, and other very simple but powerful lessons. It all felt right.
When trials befell me, just as I did that night so many years ago when I felt alone with my struggles, I prayed to God for the strength to face whatever the challenge was. I never prayed for relief, absolution, or magic. I only prayed for the ability to handle whatever was put on my plate. I thought that was all one should ask God for, after all, s/he never gives you more than you can handle, right?
But then, after all these years of finding peace in my faith, my religion, and my concept of a higher power, last Wednesday, Jeannette, my therapist, showed me an unsettling flaw in my construct. Wednesday was a high tears day. Since I lost the baby, days are divided into high tears and less tears. I've yet to have a no tears day. I sat in her office blubbering through the high tears. The pain was just too much, too much for me to handle. I couldn't cope. "I keep praying to God for strength," I told her through my wailing, "but I just cannot handle this pain. It is just too much."
"It is too much," she replied, "It is much too much for you to hold onto all by yourself. Why don't you ask God to help hold some of it for you?"
I was dumbstruck for a moment. How does one ask God for relief or assistance? Is this allowed? In my construct, all one could ask God for was strength to cope with one's burden. After all, God doesn't give you more than you can bear, right? To ask for help, to pray for a lightening of the load…somehow this seemed so wrong.
I stayed puzzled as Jeannette tried to work with me to ask God to take some of my burden. I wanted to comply, but something inside jangled. For some reason that I've been unable to explain, my mind seems to resist asking God for help with the pain I've been going through.
Is this because I feel that I should be able to handle all that is given to me? Am I channeling my I've-never-asked-anyone-for-help-because-I'm-so-strong mother? Do I not believe that God should be asked for relief or respite? And if it is the latter, I certainly want to know where in the cafeteria I picked up that one?
Today was a less tears day, not because I was any less sad, but because I had longer to escape from the world into my dreams. When I left the wonderful diversion of dreamland, it became clear to me as I stared at the vaulted ceilings that I was the reason my baby was dead. It was my fault. My defective uterus caused my baby to die. At lunch with Mason, I tried to explain my reasoning, but he wasn't having it. Fault implies intent, he says. I disagree. You can have fault without intent. My uterus wasn't good enough for placentation, thus my baby died because of me.
Maybe that's why I cannot ask God to lighten my burden. The fault is mine and I deserve all the agony that I feel.
Oh this is so not good. This is not good at all.