When I was kid, I didn’t argue my parents when they told us we would probably only be going to church on Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve. People singing songs that weren’t Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Ring Around the Rosie only made me retreat to my coloring book more. Then I would precede to drop my colorful rainbow crayons and then start sobbing that they slid under my seat. And then before I knew it, my Disney Princess coloring book made a loud clump as it hit the ground after the crayons. And I cried more; the second time it was more like a scream-yell. And then after that, my mom would arch her eyebrows at me, yelling at me with her eyes since she couldn’t open her mouth in the loud-quiet room. She put her finger over her lips, and it was maybe one of the first body language gestures I ever learned. 

 

What’s funny is that now, not going to church bugs me. It didn’t bug me all through high school, but once I got to college and I realized I was in the minority of students who didn’t like to smoke pot in their free time, I found myself exploring religious organizations on campus. I admit it’s bad. It’s not good to seek out religious organizations just to find people who don’t smoke. But that isn’t the whole story.

            

In high school, my mental health was declining, and my best friend, using her faith that’s stronger than the Sword in the Stone, saved me. She changed my mindset, gave me the desire to want to get better, and BOOM. One act of faith saved my life, made me want to live, and it was like God mattered to me in a way He never had. 

 

I’ve never been very religious. I still have yet to read the Bible, though I want to start. I want more than fiddling with the Nintendo Switch control while playing Mario Kart and watching smoke fill up the room from places outside my own lungs. I want to keep those friends because we talk about toxic masculinity and self-respect and a multitude of amazing things, but I want other friendships too who can challenge me in ways they can’t. 

            

I’ve gone from growing up with religion being a simple pastime you can choose to go to, to wanting to go even though I don’t have to. I’ve gone from making jokes of how little I know about the Bible, to being pleasantly-surprised with how much I actually know.  

            

Where I hesitate is if I join a religious organization on campus, is it possible to belong with them but to also belong with my other friends? My identity is a foggy sky right now where the fog refuses to dissipate. I have things in common with one group and things in common with another, but those two groups have nothing in common with each other. It’s like I’m a hybrid, half-human, half something-else-I-don’t-know-what-it-is-yet. I’m here and not here at the same time. 

            

My college friends who write like I do, when they picture a church, they see a white priest kicking them out for not wanting to marry a man. And some churches are like that. But what I can’t make them see is the church I see in the back of my mind. I don’t see the church of my childhood. I see one welcoming of all kinds of different people. I see one I haven’t visited yet but that I know I will. 

            

I think the Bible can be interpreted in different ways; I don’t think it has to be as traditional as we’ve been taught it. And that’s my opinion. Others who have the same belief as me will disagree, and that’s okay. 

            

I’ve come across people who think I can’t be an advocate for modernism, anti-traditionalism, and LGBTQ rights and still have a strong faith. And I’m here to say that they’re wrong because I do have both. 

            

I may not know where I fit in yet, but I know that faith is more than going to church with a coloring book. It means more to me than it did back then. 

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Most of my faith—not my parent’s faith or even my best friend’s faith—but my faith takes place outside of a church. It comes to life in prayer and connection and in my writing, and knowing that is the first step to making my two identities mutually exclusive, and to finding out who I am.