A Woman Without a Religion

About nine months ago I started wearing head coverings.  After a couple weeks of begging God for answers to a question He finally (instead of answering the question) instructed me to wear head coverings.  I did it every day for a few months, and I researched them (something I hadn't been doing about my question; I wanted the easy answer).  I grew to love them for multiple reasons.  I had a halo of frizzy regrowth after some postpartum hair loss that it conveniently hid, it kept my baby from pulling my hair, it kept my ears warm in the winter time, it kept the wind from blowing my hair in my face, and I felt pretty in them.  These were the practical and superficial reasons for it.  The biggest reason to wear it went much deeper.  I felt closer to God by obeying a direction that came personally to me, and my attention was drawn to Him more throughout the day as I had a physical reminder of something I was doing only for Him every day.

So now as I go about my days I've been asked a couple times by people I've met if I'm Muslim.  No, I'm not.  I've never read the Quran.  But how do I explain who I really am?  Mormons don't accept me as one of them because I don't believe in blindly following their modern prophet.  Christians, I've been afraid to admit to them that I still believe in the Book of Mormon, and I believe that bad things Joseph Smith is said to have done, are rumors spread by his enemies.  And for anyone who isn't Christian it brings to mind a variety of bad things Christians have done in the name of their religion that I don't agree with.  I feel no loyalty with the Remnant Movement started by Denver Snuffer.  I'm grateful for the stepping stone it was in my transition leaving the Mormon church, but don't quite agree with some things happening among their group either.  Messianic Jewish seems the best fit, but their services are at times difficult to attend.  And most people have no clue what that means, which is okay, I can explain it to some degree, but not very well since I haven't been attending with them very long and have much to learn myself.  So if they have any questions beyond my simple explanation I'm unable to answer them. Talking to my atheist/agnostic brother-in-law he said, "So you're agnostic. That's a start.  You can't go straight from Mormonism to atheist.  I was agnostic for years before I was atheist."  Almost as if I was on the way to atheism because I no longer believe in the men who lead a worldly cooperate institution.  So I explained that my relationship with God is stronger now than it ever was, and I still believe in a specific God so "agnostic" doesn't seem right either.  And talking with my husband, even he didn't understand my aversion to labels, saying, "We're just Christian."

Labels are a way of lumping people together and associating them with other similar people.  The problem is that most these labels end up misrepresenting parts of that group.  Some people lump together Muslims into one group, and even though the violent terrorists are the minority among them, all the rest are guilty by association.  Likewise with race labels.  People of one group label people of another group and consider the other group to be guilty of whatever the worst people among them have done.  Guilt by association.  This is the most divisive thing we as people do.  And we do it as much with religion as we do with race.  Dividing those who believe in one thing from those who believe in another.  Rather than loving each other regardless of what we each believe and building on common ground, and discussing with the purpose of understanding one another and realizing we both probably have truth to offer the other that we hadn't previously considered.  But instead we are often too caught up in trying to convince others of our ideas to stop and consider theirs.

Ultimately no label fits who I am.  My journey is more complex than that. When it comes down to it, nothing feels quite right except to say I am a lover of God, a lover of people, a humble follower of Christ, and a seeker of truth.