The Heavens Declare The Glory

Let's be honest. In a different place and time, in a different world, in my heart of hearts, I would be me, but someone else. I would be a medicine woman in an ancient tribal society. Or I would be a healer, a fortune teller, living with a traveling band of nomads, wearing big flowy skirts in bright crazy colors. 

Living under the open sky

But I was born in the 20^th century into a Southern Baptist family in the Deep South in America. So it's not surprising that I have spent much of my life feeling “out of place”.

I identify as a Christian. I was an evangelical Christian for the first half of my life, and I’ve been an Orthodox Christian for the second half. My earliest memories are of praying, reading the Bible with my mother, going to church and listening to my father preach, singing hymns with all of my heart, sitting in Sunday school and vacation Bible school; you name it.

God was very real to me, not just a “Being” in the pages of a book. I was a true believer. Still am. I was so steeped in my religious upbringing that once when I couldn’t find anyone in our house when I was five years old, I assumed that “The Rapture” had come and I had been left behind, and I was terrified and devastated. My mother came home from the neighbor’s house to find me keening and wailing in grief. (I think I need to spend some time writing about why in the heck I believed I was such a sinner at the age of five that Jesus would take everyone else to Heaven but leave me behind...)

Anyway, today I’m writing about something else. I need to just get it out and put it on paper and release myself from the weight of this statement:

“Being a Christian” wasn’t enough. The Bible didn’t answer all of my questions.

There. I said it.

You see, I believed that if I prayed enough, and obeyed my parents enough, and trusted Christ enough, and read the Bible enough, and listened to the religious leaders enough, I would know where I belonged, I would find my place in His world, and I would understand my gifts that He gave me.

Instead I spent my entire life believing something was inherently wrong with me because I had a personality, thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and visceral knowings that didn’t jive with my upbringing.

I can’t even tell you how many times I was told by a parent or religious authority figure to just trust God. And pray more. And work harder at doing the right thing. And just hang in there.

None of those admonitions are bad or wrong. They aren’t. But they also just aren’t enough. As answers, they fall short.

I didn’t understand me, and how I relate to the world around me, until I learned about... 

My horoscope.

Me, hiding from the fallout

I can hear it now. Shocked gasps of terror coming from all the good people worried about my eternal salvation.

But it’s true. It just is.

I’m not an actual student of astrology, but I’ve had a few appointments with people who are experts in their fields, and are greatly respected by many in and out of the astrology and mystical communities. The first time I trusted God and myself and another person enough to have a conversation about me and the interpretation of the placement and movement of planets and stars in the heavens when I was born, I finally made sense to me. I made sense. To me. And my intuitive thoughts, feelings and behaviors that I had spent a lifetime begging God to do something about, to take away, to just change damn it, all of a sudden made sense. And I cried tears of relief. I wasn’t crazy. And I wasn’t evil.

Because you see, that’s what I had been taught. If you even read the horoscope in the morning paper, you are “opening your heart to the devil.” That’s a quote from my dad. Yeah. I was terrified of the devil.

I was so afraid of him that when I had a true “out of body experience” when I was almost 13 years old that had the devil attacking me, and me calling on the name of Jesus, and the devil disappearing at the power of Christ’s name, instead of rejoicing in the protection of Christ and the knowledge that I could call on Him myself, I lived in terror that the devil wanted my soul so much that he came straight into my subconscious to get me. And since I was so weak and helpless I better hide myself from any place he might be.

I didn’t recognize until many years later that what God was actually telling me in that experience was that He is in and with me and I am safe in Him, and that I can call on Him for protection. Little Old Me could call on All Powerful And Mighty Him. No, I was sure I was going to hell, even though I had the power to scare the devil away with Jesus. I missed the point. (But I digress...and will probably write more about this story later, too.)

All of that to say, it took a lot for me to look in another direction for some answers. I “believe” in astrology. I don't worship the stars, nor do I believe the stars control my life. But I do know that “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), and that there is truth to the idea that they can and do influence our attitudes and behaviors. I see astrology as another tool to study and understand personality traits and behavioral science, not as a religion.

Believing that God can work through His creation to help humans understand the world in and around themselves shouldn’t be a bad thing. But it took me more than 50 years to gain the courage to seek those answers.

I’m glad I did. I’m still learning. Mostly I’m learning to trust myself, and trust the Holy Spirit in me. I wrap myself in the arms of Christ and His light, and I seek truth. If in my quest for the truth I keep my eyes on God, I now believe that I can rest in what I find. I can discern the difference between truth and lies.

This is a comfort to me. And makes me feel like the strong woman God wants me to be. And gives me the courage and the protection to seek Truth no matter where I may find it.