I’m a pretty smart individual. 

It took me a long time to type that.  I have so much trauma wrapped up in the idea that I am simply unintelligent.  It has stopped me from chasing a lot of dreams.  I didn’t study science because of it.  I didn’t get my vet tech degree because of it.  To this day I tend to blame my failures on it.  “If I was smart…” echoes in my mind every minute of every day.  I have only now begun to unpack this.  I may never be free from it completely.  But the reality is I am a pretty smart individual.  

I love science.  I really enjoy learning how things work, and why.  The “why” is the most important.  I don’t just want to know how, but I like finding out why.  I like to learn and I find big puzzles fascinating.  Sometimes things can become pretty consuming.  From the smallest molecule to the entirety of the universe, my mind can wander.  I love the study of energy, and how we are all connected by it and that energy never ceases to exist.  What once was, always will be.  My brain can wander into the mental rabbit holes of black holes, the universe and the expansion of nothingness… and that is about where my brain short circuits.  How… how is nothingness expanding?  I literally have to take a  mental break when I learn about certain things because my human brain can only handle so much “unknown” before overwhelm sets in.   

Religious trauma is real.  Admittedly a lot of mine I blame myself for.  I asked the questions.  I demanded answers.  And the people who gave me the answers often cut very very deeply.  Those traumas still cause me to recluse into myself for answers regularly.  I have to come to my own conclusions because I don’t trust the words of others.  I will spend months not talking about God.  Months.  As if He doesn’t even exist in my life.  Do I stop believing? No.  But do I have to do my own research, find the center, find peace over the tough questions?  Yes.  

Every time, I find the same general answer.  God is bigger.  I can be a logical, science based person and know that the bible is wildly flawed.  Anyone who has read it can only come to the conclusion that the religion of the time was violent, crude and demeaning.  Especially to women.  I can understand science and know that evolution, history, and the earth have insurmountable importance and something to teach us.  I know that the world is far older than the bible.  I know that there are UNCANNY similarities between gods of the past and the God of the bible.  I know that throughout human history there are teachings of similar stories that flow through every corner of the earth long before anyone even knew the earth was round.  And yet, the same stories were being told.  I know that for thousands of years sage and other incense were burned to cleanse spaces of evil or bad energy and I also know that now it is scientifically proven that burning sage reduces negative ions in the air… you know, purifying it.  Wild.  

I’m allowed to believe in both.  I’m allowed to know what I’ve felt and experienced and also know what I’ve learned through science, history and reasoning.  The same people who don’t believe in evolutionary science or that the world is millions of years old are the same people who have no problem flying on planes or using an iphone.  And on the flip side the same people who say there is no God, are the same people who can’t explain why nothingness is expanding, why the power of the mind can halt pain, or why animals have a sixth sense.  There is room for both.  

I can believe in both.  Time after time, God has whispered to me, “I am bigger” than a book, a religion, a set of rules or behavior modification.  He is bigger, and I am tired of humanity’s small mindedness trying to stuff the whole of all that is, and ever will be, in a few thousand pages of a book.  God is bigger.  And I am SMARTER than to believe otherwise.