I have a confession to make.

I grew up in a very religious home. Raised by my grandparents, my grandma (or as I called her, meemaw.) was a devout Christian. She read the Bible daily, prayed multiple times a day, watched religious television, and preached like you wouldn't believe.

When you're a kid, you just blindly believe whatever your higher ups tell you. That's your truth, that's your reality. You don't know any different. So I grew up believing in God, in Jesus, the Bible. I was force fed Christian movies and cartoons. I was preached at daily for my many sins. I lived in utter fear of going to hell if I screwed up. Religion made me perfectly controllable.

But we were pretty dang poor. Most days we wouldn’t know if we’d eat or not. Meemaw had us (me and my sister) pray and pray and pray for God to "deliver us from evil" and feed us. Back then, I never saw the minor miracles the Universe had sent us. I just started losing faith. If God were so powerful, why then can’t he help us?

When my teen years came, I wasn't ready. Not even close. My depression kicked into overdrive. I cried all the time, yelled, cursed. I couldn't control myself anymore. I didn't know how and it put a lot of strain on everyone.

During arguments with my grandparents, I would be reminded about how I'd be going to hell. This only served to piss me off more, and I ended up using it as a weapon. I used God as my weapon. I turned it against them, threw contradicting scripture in their faces. I gave them reasons why THEY were going to hell, and they didn't like it.

Once the internet entered our home, it was all over for them. The whole world was now open to me, and now I saw how ridiculous their religion was — or seemed to me — at the time.

I studied the Bible and other religions and beliefs. I found a lot of contradictions and started questioning it all. I proclaimed myself an atheist after too long. How could the Christian God exist? Why was he the one true God? What made Christianity the right religion? The true one?

Absolutely nothing. I realized it was fiction written by man. I scoffed and dared anyone to challenge my idea. When my grandmother would recite scripture, I'd provide scenarios where it couldn't be true. I remember telling her one time, "if I'm going to hell, you're DEFINITELY going."

Fun times.

Fast forward 20 years. I no longer claim to be atheist. For a while I tried out the label agnostic, but it didn't seem to grasp my beliefs either. I soon dropped the idea of calling it something. I just knew how to explain it, and its very simple.

The Universe is God. Everything is God.

From the smallest particle, to the largest star, we are all connected as one. I think a lot of us have lost our way to God. Lost our connection to the Universe, including myself, but I’m finally working to find it. I’m ready to reconnect with God — the Universe.

Here's my confession:

I haven't prayed since I was a child, forced to put my hands upon a TV screen and repeat word for word the prayer the rich pastor was reciting to us back then. No, I had given up on prayer, and faith and everything in-between.

The day before yesterday, I prayed.

I begged and pleaded for everything to make sense. "Please, help me," were my final words. Nothing happened, and I went about my day in misery, but...

Tiny changes — miniscule ones — started to set things in motion. The Universe was responding, I believe, but I was almost too upset to notice.

A beautiful sky. A long bus ride. A tasty hamburger. Some silly GradeAUnderA videos. A friendly stranger. A familiar smile. And the words that put my soul at ease. It all added up at the end of the day, and still I didn't notice the baby miracles.

But I noticed today, and my mind is open again.

It's hard to explain the details of the situation, but once I found out about all the workings that went into making me feel at peace again, I couldn't deny my prayer was answered.

I’m giddy with the idea that I was wrong. I think I must sound like a religious nut but I don’t label this as a religion. It just IS. And while the Bible and other holy books may be pure fiction, they still have some great metaphorical lessons to learn, if only we look past the surface.

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