Well Hello again! It’s been a hot minute since I last wrote. After the death of my friend in April, I have been taking time to figure out some things in my life, one of those things being faith.
I wanted to share my faith journey with you all, which is terrifying to me because of the enormous shift my journey has taken, but the reason for starting this blog was to find healing for myself and to share my findings along the way. So here it goes…
I was born and baptized Catholic as a baby. I grew up saying the Our Father and Hail Mary at bedtime. I attended the Catholic School District from Kindergarten to Gr.12 minus a few months that I attended the school in Fort McKay. As a young child, my relationship with God was strong. I prayed all the time and found comfort in talking to God. Almost always, I felt my prayers being answered and this in turn strengthened my faith in Him even more. Around this time I moved to Fort McKay and began learning about my Cree culture. I attended Pow Wows, smudged for the first time and participated in my first sweat at the age of six. I absolutely loved it and found myself wanting to learn more about the spirituality of my Indigenous culture. At that time it was easy for me to combine Indigenous spiritual teachings with the teachings of my Catholic faith. In my child mind, there was no difference. It all felt good and made me feel connected to God.
Eventually, I moved back to Fort McMurray permanently and lost touch with Indigenous spirituality and teachings. Actually, I remember becoming embarrassed by it after I shared a story about healing through dance in my Gr.6 class and everyone laughed. Some kids would call me a Windian (a white indian) and so I pretended I wasn’t Aboriginal at all, except when I would visit Fort McKay again, then I would pretend not to be white at all. LOL. Anyway, that’s another story for another time.
As I grew older, I found my connection with God slowly slipping away. My parents at that time abused alcohol and there was a lot of fighting in our house. I would lay awake listening and praying it would stop. Most of the time it didn’t. I remember this one night in particular where I was really scared and I thought if I just prayed hard enough God would help me. It didn’t work, my prayers went unanswered and for the first time in my life I felt abandoned by God. So, what did I do? I abandoned Him. I stopped praying, stopped believing and started rebelling.
I would roll my eyes in religion class. I would argue and question everything my teacher was teaching us about Jesus and God and I would laugh when she couldn’t give me a good enough answer. I was hurt and I was angry and there was no way I would allow myself to be “fooled” again. With all of the judgement I felt by my Catholic peers, it was easy to hate and return the judgement.
Fast forward a couple years to the loss of my two friends and my sudden wake up call to change my life. I started praying again but this time it was different. This time I read books about energy and spirituality and soon I began believing in a Higher Power again. For years after I was on a mission to heal and reconnect with God but this time it would be on my own terms, in my own way.
I became an Indigenous Liaison and began taking back my culture. I started smudging daily and found myself wanting to learn more and more. At 23 years old I began learning about residential schools and the unbelievable acts of violence, assault, and racism. It was a Canadian genocide that had been kept secret for years and years. I was enraged not only that this happened but that it was encouraged, endorsed and ran by Christian and Catholic churches. For years after learning about this I experienced what my counsellor called delayed grief. I would cry about it often as I was in the midst of working in it’s disastrous after effects as a Liaison. To say I was angry with religion would be an understatement I think. But then… I found yoga.
Yoga at the time was my saving grace. It helped me to breathe again and in the silence of meditation, my anger slowly dissipated. This year, as many of you know, I decided to dive deeper in my yoga practice and signed up for six months of yoga teacher training. During my training, I read more books on spirituality and learned about both Hindu and Buddhist teachings which I found very intriguing. I started implementing some of the teachings in my life but found I could never stick to any of them. I visited my friend one day who is Hindu and before we ate she prayed at her beautiful shrine set up in her home. I watched and was amazed. I wanted that kind of devotion, that kind of faith and when she was done I told her about my longing for that type of spiritual commitment. She told me simply and with a smile on her face, “You will have it when you find what works for you.” I was comforted and also confused by her comment. I thought yoga and this universal spirituality was what worked for me. But how come I was struggling so much with being discipline and devoted to it?
I read the Bhagavad Gita which is an ancient Indian text of literature and philosophy important to Hindu tradition, and the whole time reading it all I could think about was Jesus. Then, just before Christmas, my parents took me to Tom Jackson’s benefit concert The Huron Carole. He sang beautiful renditions of traditional Christmas carols and told heartfelt stories of his life on the streets, being proud of his Native heritage and about believing in Jesus. I was awe-inspired. I went home and downloaded his Christmas music and blasted it through out the month of December.
From then on, I started listening to Gospel music more frequently and found myself wanting to go to church. From past experience, I knew Catholicism wasn’t for me but I had attended a few other churches like McMurray Gospel Assembly and Fort City Alliance church over the years and they seemed more of a fit.
On April 28th, I decided to give it a try and sat in on the 9:30am service at Fort City. As soon as the worship team started singing I started bawling. Explaining it is hard because there are no words that come close to describing what I felt except maybe an overwhelming love. Smiling and crying, I felt my heart lift and for the first time in a long time I felt like I was truly at peace. It is scary for me because of all my reservations towards religion from before and so I treaded lightly. I wanted to see if this was really what I wanted and it just so happened that there was a study group for people contemplating Christianity that just started at Fort City called Starting Point, so I began attending that right away.
That first Sunday I attended church was the day I learned about my friend’s passing. I actually received a text about his death during the service. The week before I started going to church was when we found out Ellanor had been diagnosed with Autism. The week after my first Sunday at church, my cousin was diagnosed with cancer. There has been so much turmoil, heartache and confusion in these past few weeks but it is the first time in my life that I feel strong enough to face anything. I had no idea you could feel broken and strong at the same time. That you could feel such sadness but be filled with such hope at the same time.
The more I trust, the more my heart opens. The more my heart opens, the stronger I get. It is overwhelming and terrifying yet equally exhilarating.
And, the more I learn about Jesus, through the same stories I once rolled my eyes at, the more I am filled with a gratitude I have never felt before. The type of gratefulness that brings you to your knees.
Holy moly guys, I think I am becoming a Christian.
Bee and Kai 