A Spiritual Journey

As a young child I was born into an Irish Catholic Family.  However my parents were divorced when I was still a baby.  I was born in 1965, this was a era in the Catholic Church where the church had a lot of power and there was not a lot of forgiveness.  Even though this is the core of the teachings of Jesus Christ.

I lived with my father.  After my parents separation, my aunt (fathers sister) came over to Liverpool from Ireland to live with my Dad and help him take care of us.  My mother had left the house.  

My fathers family were staunch Irish Catholic, we would visit his family in Ireland as the years went by, in the back ground my aunties and uncles were always saying things like what are we going to do with these children, as the children in my family were he product of a divorced union.

When we went to school which was a Catholic School.  There was always teaching on the faith. In all of the teaching it was always reiterated that divorce was a sin.  This was the noise or the atmosphere that I was brought up in.  As someone of Irish decent, on my travels coming backwards and forwards I was in Ireland in 1997, it was the year that divorce was legally recognised in my country of decent.

My faith was in tatters.  I felt sure that there would be no place for me in heaven, the fact that my parents divorced was going to leave me in limbo, or at the very worst hell. It was something that I never really wanted to think about, until at age 11 in school we had a faith teaching.  I was educated in the Southern Hemisphere.  In the lesson that we had, we were taught the meanings atheism, agnostic and a believer.  As I am from a Christian country it was centred around Christianity.  

Atheism:  An absence of belief in the existence of deities, a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. Atheism is contrasted with theism, which is the belief that at least one deity exists.

Agnostic: An individual who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God.  A sceptic, doubter, questioner.  

Believer: Faith in Christianity is believing that God sent Jesus Christ to die for our sins that we may be forgiven and saved. It is also the belief that after dying, Jesus rose from the dead, and through faith in Him we have eternal life.

Then we had to decide which one we identified with.  I was agnostic, I was a doubter, unsure, though I had an inkling or a part of me in side that would not identify with atheism, just in case.  The lesson was very confronting for me, as I felt really out of favour with God because of my parents divorce.  

There was a part of me however, that was relieved in one way as I had identified within myself that I had some kind of an opinion on faith.  I found some comfort in this.  I never thought about faith again until I had to confront myself in my twenties.  Divorce had made me nervous and unable to process my emotions, divorce and being a migrant.  We had migrated from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern, so there were also cultural differences to navigate.

Through the absence of a mother at home as she had to work to support me.  I developed an unhealthy relationship with food, I developed the eating disorder "Bulimia Nervosa".  At the age of 27 I had come to understand that this had the power to kill me.  My body was out of sync and I could not trust the food on the plate.  

I can remember quite clearly at the chain of events that would change my life. It was a Saturday in August 1994.  There was a radio advertisement, it started something like this.  Is food a problem for you.  Are you constantly on a diet.  Is your weight up and down.  Do you refrain from eating all the times?  Do you eat an purge?  I knew that this was me.  The radio ad had a telephone number to ring.  I picked up the phone and reached out for help.

I explained that I did have a problem with purging.  The lady on the other end of the phone gave me the address of the meetings.  They were held at the arts centre in Christchurch.  I made a commitment to myself that would alter the course of my life for the better.

The program that I had engaged with was called over eater anonymous.  It was similar to the AA twelve step program.  I was intimidated at first.  There were about 40 people all sitting around in a circle.  There were 2 banners on the wall.  One was the principles of Over Eaters Anonymous, the other was the 12 steps.  I was warmly invited into the meeting and welcomed in.  The meeting was opened.  There was a committee and it was very organised. Then the meeting was opened by a person in the group reading from the alcoholics anonymous big book.  They read for a while, then the reading would be passed on to the person next to them.

As the people attending the meeting were there to over come an addiction to food.  They replaced the alcohol references to food references.  I was a little unsure at first, though I kept on listening.  Over the first few weeks I learnt the first three steps were crucial to beginning the program.  

The first three steps went something like this

1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

This was the first time that second time that I had been confronted with the issue of faith. Funnily enough, when I was 20 years old I went into the military, there were over 200 people on my recruit course. We had to either swear an oath on the bible or an affirmation in a private room to be loyal. Out of 200, there were 2 of us who chose to take the affirmation.

The second time was in seeking help for an eating disorder. Step three had frightened me going way back into my childhood. I was terrified of Jesus Christ, the existence of God.. I explained this to the other people in the group. I was comforted and reassured, then given a more comfortable alternative for me. It could be that I could trust a power greater than myself to restore me to sanity.

I was a horse rider and could identify. I could see the power greater than myself in the trees, the flowers, the sky, the sun and the sea. This would take me on a journey of spiritual awakening. It was the beginning of a spiritual awakening and overcoming childhood fears that would carry me through my life.