The first time I found god, I wasn't even looking. No one told me to look, I just sensed Someone. When I was a child, if I woke scared in my bed in the middle of the night, I instinctively said, "Help. Please." I was addressing someone. After a minute, I'd call out to my dad to come check on me, but even while I waited, intuitively I was urging someone to help Dad hear me and get there faster. No one told me to do that. It wasn't that my parents didn't believe in god, but we weren't the kind of home where someone explained that god was there listening. That feeling was just in me, and I could never remember at time it hadn't been. Later in church, god was introduced, but I already knew him. I'll use the pronoun him for now because that is how I knew god at that time. That church was low key, low pressure, service-oriented, and loving. I don't remember ever hearing about Hell or evangelism there. Whatever I heard fit the god that listened to me in the dark at night when I was scared.
That was my first relationship with god.
The second time I found God, He was different. He was a Him who needed capital letters. I found out I had to know Jesus for access to God. I'd always felt like I could talk to God before this, but evidently, that had been temporary, because I hadn't known better. I hadn't heard about asking Jesus into my heart, so I did that. And it was important to know Jesus, so I'd be safe from Satan and Hell. Prior to that, there was some vague notion of the devil, but never as a real entity to worry about. I learned that when I was scared in bed or anywhere else, the fear was him or his evil helpers, and the only safety was to call on God to "Bind Satan in the name of Jesus." So even though God was still loving, a new unseen spiritual world was happening all around me. It was terrifying, but I thought I was mostly safe because I knew God and Jesus. Most of my prayers at that age (I'd started journaling them) were repetitious prayers for God's help, for my friends, salvation, and for safety.
The next time I met God, shit got even more real. I was a young woman. I found out Satan wasn't so much the problem as was my Original Sin. Actually, humans had caused all of the existing evil in the world by listening to Satan a long time ago. Eve listened first, and as a woman, I felt extra shame for this. The Bible became a really big deal too. God wanted me to study and accept every word without question. And I did. I was good at it. I was naturally wired to thrive on a team with a mission. I loved studying, and I loved doing the right thing. I was such a good girl. I was as good a girl as I had been as a little child in my bed at night, but I didn't feel like it. Now I knew I was born filthy. It was like God had just tolerated me until I finally came around. I'd had a "grace period" like a temporary hire, but now I was in, and I needed to live accordingly. So I did. I did what I thought the Bible required of women. The men did what they thought it required of them. The pastors and the deacons and the elders did their assignments. The women couldn't hold those positions, but we could teach each other and the children, so we did. And all the time I did it, I enjoyed my work, but it also felt like a losing battle. Every mistake I made in life was no longer a mistake; it was a sin. It was a reminder that I'd been born filthy and incapable of any good without Jesus. This was supposedly the Good News. But I just felt ashamed. It felt like God and everyone else had known I was gross before I did. But I'd gone along happily, unhindered, ignorant. This type of relationship with God lasted over 20 years. My awareness and shame and anxiety only increased during this period.
The fourth time I'm meeting God is now. It's been seven years since I left the third way. The third way was ruining me. Until recently, I was scared to even say God's name because, although I knew I couldn't continue that relationship the way it was, I couldn't prove the theology wasn't true. I just knew I didn't want my kids or me in it anymore. And I couldn't risk calling on Him or even physically touching the Bible because I was so susceptible to jumping back in. It had been my life for so long that I didn't trust myself.
But this time I'm getting to know god cautiously. I'm making sure god isn't mad if I don't use capital letters. god isn't. I'm testing the waters by using non-male pronouns for god. god doesn't mind. I'm asking god to confirm that yes, if humans were created by god and in god's image, we must have good in us even as infants. And I see that good everywhere and in everyone. And I'm finding out what so many people have said, but that I was scared to believe: There are many paths to god. I suspect god is huge, maybe a person, maybe a big pervasive love, maybe just something or someone I can't explain, but definitely the Someone that was listening to me as a scared child calling in the dark. I'm not sure why god needs to be more. I think we just thought we needed god to be.
Because of this fourth meeting, I am finally able to look forward to many more.