I Get It Now

Or what I am receiving through my faith as a Kemetic now that I never got while a Christian.

Today, I’m starting on a new endeavor.  I didn’t complete and have no intention of completing the Pagan Blog Project.  It became something I felt I had to do instead of something that I wanted to do, and I fully believe that if you feel like you “have to do something” and you don’t really “want to do it” that this is the first sign of a problem.  It was an obligation, which created a stress.  When you work the crazy hours that I do, something has to give, and it was that.

I’ve thought about participating in the Kemetic Round Table for awhile now, but when I saw fellow blogger over at For the Netjer posting about joy, I knew this was the topic I needed to get involved in.  “The Kemetic Round Table (KRT) is a blogging project aimed at providing practical, useful information for modern Kemetic religious practitioners.”

What parts of Kemeticism do you enjoy the most? How has Kemeticism enriched your life?

Where I live, I don’t know if I know of any other Kemetics other than my fiance.  The majority of the pagan community around here is Wiccan-centered, and while I relate more with them than says Baptists, there isn’t a whole lot of commonality between us.

Prior to my awakening, as I like to call it, to the Gods of Ancient Egypt, I was devoutly Christian.  I prayed, went to church multiple times a week, hung out with others like me, and did everything I was supposed to do, but I always, always, always felt like something wasn’t right.

I grew up in a household where I never really needed punishment.  I was raised to know the difference between right and wrong.  Most of the time, I knew what was right, and I did it, but there was the occasional moment where I knew something was wrong… and I did it anyway.  Sometimes I would get caught, and sometimes I wouldn’t.  But either way, it didn’t matter because I knew I had done something wrong, and I felt absolutely horrible about it.

My parents didn’t punish me because they knew the emotional beating I was giving to myself was more than enough to handle my behavior and prevent me from doing whatever it was ever again.  The most they ever had to say was, “We’re disappointed in you.”  Ugh, it was the absolute worst.

There were two types of bad things in my life: earthly bad things (like being mean to my sister, or eating a cookie before dinner, or getting a C in a class) and spiritual bad things (like smoking, drinking, cussing, etc).  And I knew, because of my church upbringing, what the Bible expected of me and it made me feel horribly guilty.  I felt guilty all the time.  Why?

Because I am gay, and the Bible told me that this was wrong.  The Bible and my church and my faith told me that God did not approve of my behavior, and that if I prayed enough and was a good enough Christian girl that God would fix these feelings inside of me…. and I would be whole again.

That was the deal with my southern version of Christianity: you are broken and only God and faith in Jesus can save and fix you.  And I did everything in my power that I knew to do, but it never worked.  And I felt horribly guilty.

So you ask me “What parts of Kemeticism do you enjoy the most? How has Kemeticism enriched your life?”

My answer is freedom.  Freedom from having the guilt of not living up to what was expected of me.  Freedom to experience the Gods love without caveats.  Freedom to know without hesitation that I am loved, and cared for, and saved simply for being myself, the person I was created to be.

I have freedom from guilt of not being enough.  I am enough.  We are all enough.  The Gods created us just as we are, and to Them, we are enough.  My faith has given me freedom from destruction of so-called “Biblical Sin” that causes so many people all over the world to feel like they are failures.  I have freedom from suppression.

That freedom has allowed me to be happy, genuinely happy, for the first time ever in my life.  When I stopped worrying about the Christian ideas of sin and going to hell because I realized that they are just modes of suppression and not actuality, I was able to turn my attention to becoming a better version of me, the way I was supposed to.  I stopped feeling guilty about the love I had for women.  I stopped feeling guilty about “falling short of the sight of God.”

I blossomed.  I found my path, walked it, and have been eternally blessed since then.

I can be myself, all of myself, and that is enough.  That’s what I enjoy the most.  That is what has enriched me the most: the fact that I can be every bit of myself, just as I was created, and that, to the Gods, is enough, which is enough for me.

 

For more blogs like this one, go here.