God or Evolution or ???

My memories of religion are few but strong. My first religious memory is of going to a pink church with pink, decorated concrete blocks and crosses out front with two blue haired women, neighbors I think, who, in my mind, resembled the little old lady in the Tweety cartoons. These two little old ladies visit me in my nightmares and my thoughts often. These two little old ladies walked me into that quaint, quiet, peaceful church, walked me up to the altar and fed me lamb tongue, raw lamb tongue. At least that is what I remember. I can still feel the texture of it in my mouth, the cheweyness of it still makes my jaw ache, the smell still lingers in my nose. If that is religion, I want no part of it. I think I was 4 or maybe 5. I remember it like yesterday.

A few years later, my jerk dad was screwing around on my mom and his girl friend kept calling the house to see if he was home yet. My bi-polar mother knew something was up but couldn't put 2 and 2 together and she started to lose it, mentally. She had been going to a First Assembly of God church while my dad was gone and somehow, in her bi-polar mind, she thought it was the devil calling her and she had her first breakdown, I was 7. I remember hearing her scream at God asking why didn't He save her, why did He let the devil call, all this time it was my dad's fault.

Fast forward to about age 10, my cousin invited me to his church, First Baptist Church. He did the Saturday morning bus route. It was a weekly event where the preacher would get the congregation's youth and go to the elderly, the invalid and the other kids in town to see if they needed a ride to church Sunday. If the elderly or the invalid needed groceries or company they were helped, we did what we could, which usually was not much, but I remember going home feeling like I had done something good. We also got to have pizza afterwards and now that I'm blogging about it, I wonder if the pizza was what made me feel good or if it was doing the "Lord's work" that gave me the warm fuzzies. I don't know. I worked the bus route for over a year and was a very active member of the church. I was in 5th and 6th grade. I remember being in the Christmas program, my music teacher at school was also our music teacher at church so I had a good singing part in our pagent. I was saved around then too, as was one of the loves of my life...... but that's another story, one I keep close to my heart. This was when my grandfather died as well, I think I needed God then, I needed to know where he, my grandfather, was. That he was not gone, that he was still there for me. So, from grandpa dying to the Christmas pagent, to being saved fast forward to my birthday the following April. Every Sunday the congregation got up and acknowledged birthdays, so and so turned 86 yesterday, another lady turned 51 Monday, other kids celebrated birthdays, teachers, the preacher, his kids..... My birthday comes and no one acknowledges that I'm even alive that day. I turned 12 that Sunday and felt so alone. Alone in the house of God, alone everywhere I went. I'm still that 12 year old girl that no one noticed. I was wearing my best skirt and top, I even had on strappy sandles that day, it was April, the sun was shining, there was a slight breeze, I even have a picture of that terrible day. That day I was ignored. After a year and a half or so of doing the "Lord's work" I quit. I never did it to get anything out of it, but when I felt alone I stopped. Feeling alone while alone is normal, feeling alone while with a church group is not. That is another day etched in my memory.

That was age 12, I was in 6th grade, I was a peewee cheerleader.

When I was in 8th grade, 14 I believe, my half sister, Bear, came to live with us. Her mother had let a gay man move in with them and she found him and his lover and a bottle of baby oil on her free flow waterbed. I really didn't understand it all, nor did I really care about what it meant, all I knew was that my wonderful sister was going to be staying with me. She went to church, I think it was a presbyterian church, so I went with her, I'd have followed her into hell if she'd have let me. I had good memories of that church but then her mom kicked out the gay man and she moved back home, she stopped inviting me and I stopped going. It reminded me too much of her and her friends and reminded me of how much her friend loved her and I still had nothing and no one.

When I was a freshman, some of my friends invited me to their Nazarene church, that was fun but that was about the same time I really started driving a lot and I also started drinking about then too and going to church was just not all that interesting, there was just something missing.

Then I read an article about a 3.3 million year old girl. I've thought long and hard for years about this very topic, do I believe in evolution or do I believe in the bible? My mind grasps science, time altered our bodies to make them what they are. How could one man, no matter how superior, create this amazing world in 7 days? How could that one man's son's death mean so much to so many so many years later? Why do we pray to God yet others pray to Allah, are there really 2 (or more) Gods? Why do some religions believe that you have to believe only their ways are right? Why is everyone so divided on religion when it's supposedly such a great thing? How can two different churches opinions vary on the same good book? These are all rhetorical questions, I don't want them answered, I'd rather not know. My best friend is a Mormon, my oldest sister is married to a Catholic and several of my friends are Lutheran, Baptist and Christian Scientists, how can one of them be "right" and all the others be "wrong"? How can it be right that one of us will end up in heaven and not the rest?

I know that several of you are going to flame me for asking these types of questions, or tell me to get out my bible because the answers are there, tell me to get my ass into church, talk to a preacher, get psychiatric help...... I have so many questions and I just don't care anymore. It is what it is. My head believes the science, my heart wants to believe the bible. Deep down I think it's both, neither are 100% right or wrong.