At night, before Pea goes into her crib, we’ve started reading to her in her big white chair. It’s a routine I remember from my own childhood, and we were so excited when she became interested in anything longer than the typical board book she’d been addicted to. She has two current favorites on her roster, one is by Wayne Dyer, called “Incredible You! Ten Ways to Let Your Greatness Shine Through,” and the other is called “Thank You Prayer.” Both are wonderful books to end the day on, and the latter of the two is so catchy that I’ve had it memorized for months now. It’s sweet and innocent and spiritual. It is not religious. I am not religious. And there is nothing wrong with that. I have a pretty full spiritual life which includes a lot of one-on-one discourse with my own personal God, who I will not define because there is no need to. He / She / It is my personal God and that is enough.

I do not go to a temple nor do I go to a church. Not regularly, anyhow. Occasionally, I’m talking two or three times a year, we will as a family drive into Dallas and go to the Unity Church. They have a minister there who just rocks. She is smart as a whip and clever and funny as all get-out. But I do not go there to have my spirit saved. I don’t need that, thank you very much. I go there because, well, because it means a lot to my husband, a recovering Southern Baptist of the hellfire and damnation sort.

My mother-in-law, bless her heart, wants to sing songs to Pea such as one that goes something like this… “Jesus loves me, this I know, because the Bible tells me so.” I’m sorry if I offend, but in blunt terms, it makes my skin crawl. And not so much the part about Jesus, although my husband will tell you that that word is my “trigger” word and that when I’m sitting next to him in the sanctuary at the Unity Church and that name is thrown out, he can literally feel me shut down. No, it’s about the disrespect, the blatant disrespect for ME. For who I am, what I’ve lived through and what I did once believe, what I might never believe again, but what will always, essentially, be a part of MY EXISTENCE.

I was raised Jewish. My mother and father are both Jewish. My mother had her own reasons for turning away from the religion, ones that were out of her control at a very young age and which profoundly changed her view of religion. Not just Judaism, but any organized religion. She did not pass this disbelief on to her children. But it was there, we were unconsciously aware of it. Because I do not believe in organized religion myself now, and my brother, well, he is a Catholic. Go figure. But growing up, we went to synagogue on the High holidays. I went to Sunday school. I can still sing all of the relevant prayers. In Hebrew.

Nonetheless, as a Jew, I believe in God, but I do not believe Jesus was the son of God. There. I said it. So sue me. This is my belief and as it pertains to my life, it is a valid belief. And my mother-in-law? I don’t think she understands this. And so when she makes snide comments about my disbelief in Jesus, it hurts me to the bone. It’s as if she is erasing – discounting – who I am. My whole life. Who I was before I met and married and started a family with her son. Because I did exist before 2002. And I may not be able to explain who I was, because I was on a great search for “me,” but my differing beliefs (or disbelief’s, for that matter) should not be held up to make me feel less than. And when she says things like “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything,” it burns me up inside. This woman, who bore and raised the man that I am madly in love with today, has basically not taken the time to get to know ME. Because if she had, she would know that I believe in God, that I pray to a Higher Power, that I struggle every day with how to raise my girls in a just and dignified way without organized religion, and that sometimes I think, to hell with it, let’s go to a real church and be good Christians because isn’t that the way? That when my husband says he wants to tithe 10% of our salary to a church we don’t belong to and have been to less times in four years than I can count on two hands, I say, “OK.” Because I know how much he believes.