On Hands And Knees

As a child, Fundamental Christians exerted terror and suppression upon my surrounding community.

If I wished to “belong,” the bus would pick me up for Sunday School, and if the adults and children liked me, I would be rewarded with straw-tubed sugar called Pixy Sticks.

I talked my best friend into going with me one time, as we had been promised hot dogs and other rare delights that our mothers usually denied us.

My friend even to this day remembers that the church leaders lied to us and withheld the food – instead, preaching to us about “Hell’s Fire and Damnation,” and about how she and I were “Surely Going To Burn” because we were such wicked children.

I stopped going to social gatherings because the kids didn’t like me, anyway, and were mean and judgmental. I guess they thought I was poor because my mother liked to handmake my clothes.

I was white with sun-kissed skin and fawn-freckles on my nose from hot Fresno summers, and my light blond hair stranded past my shoulders like an angel’s.

Maybe I was beautiful and odd to them in my persistant quietude. Maybe they felt they needed to get a reaction from me.

I would observe them with my Persian-shaped, gray-blue eyes that absorbed and processed their behaviors much too obviously for their comfort. I imagine my gaze could seem unreadable and fathomless.

I had learned early on to avoid the smack of an adult hand by giving away no emotion. If only they had known what a wicked Hell-fire temper I could lash at them, if I’d allowed “spirit” to move me!

I turned away from Biblical scriptures because I witnessed how such people distorted these messages. They used them as reason to stay ignorant while propagating emotional violence and not growing into their true potentials – nor taking responsibility for their actions.

I related more with Jesus and other Prophets, whom as humans had opened their arms wide to their grander life’s purpose, and who had offered good, moral knowledge and positive guidance to societies for enhanced quality of living.

I thought I would be “without ‘God'” for my entire life, though I was reconnected with Source in my early childhood’s near-death experience. Since then, the energy of Hope has always been carried inside of me.

When I met my fiance online in my 40’s, I felt something untapped before near my heart resonate in messaging. “Pay Attention,” it said to me – and I sat up straight and absorbed learning about him, whatever traces I could glean.

When I traveled to Egypt to meet him, it was my first time out of my country, on a Mission for Love, flying on the day of the magnificently burnt-orange solar eclipse, shrouded by the haze of smoke from then California fires.

An omen if ever there was one.

When I arrived in Egypt, the different sense of time and place from that of the United States hit me as if I had just landed on a different planet.

I had eaten wheat on the plane trips over, testing it again on my system, as food options were limited. I instantly regretted it, once I disembarked.

I have emotional reactivity to wheat. I suspect it’s probably from pesticides or genetic altering American farming is known for sponsoring. My brain responds as if having a neurotransmittal allergic reaction, making me susceptible to environmental sensory distortion.

What this translated to was that upon encountering the “natives” of Egypt, the different shapes of the men’s heads and bodies (many covered in thin robes) affected me with sudden paranoid anxiety, as if I was surrounded by aliens and had xenophobia.

It was not a fun sensation to be experiencing, when I was already nervous to be meeting my fiance and had been pleaded with by friends and family to not travel to Africa because they were afraid I would be kidnapped!

However, I was also filled by a sense of “Presence” over that open expanse of heat-ambered sand, and when my beloved began sharing about the Qur’an and his family’s version of Muslim faith, I felt as if I had found a link to God that all my life had been missing.

Three years later upon my return to Egypt (when my fiance broke off our engagement), I still felt a strong sense of “God” and “Family” steeped deep into the land’s environment.

When I returned home, I went to a masjid so far away it took hours to drive to. I prayed to Allah and “His” Angels about what had happened with my loss and what my life had come to.

I admitted to “Him” I could not conform to any one religion, that I would never wear the hijab as symbolism of my dedication, and that “He” has always known I am different from others – so please guide and do not abandon me.

Recently, there have been events where I pray when in difficulty, and it seems I am answered. Even if I am not happy with the initial result, I see it leads to a wiser outcome.

I am not sure what to think about these experiences. My “Path with God” has always been a unique one.