Some people go to churches, mosques, or temples to find and connect with God. I attempted every denomination you can think of and entered countless places of worship on my personal quest for spiritual enlightenment, yet I never felt totally connected there. Instead, I found God in an unlikely place.

I have fond memories of going to our local Lutheran church as a small child and singing in the choir. I loved the feeling of being in front of everyone and opening my mouth to fill the church with beautiful noises. My family was not a religious family by any means and our participation went from every Sunday to what my father called “C and E days”—Christmas and Easter. After I hit my teens, those days also faded, and church was no longer a part of our lives.

I was still curious about God and was still on a quest to find a connection; however, the only times I really prayed were when I was in trouble or in extreme emotional pain. They were usually very selfish, foxhole-type prayers that I said when my head was resting on the side of a cold toilet bowl and bile was dripping from the side of my mouth. I would pray to God, “I promise I will never drink again, if you can just carry me through this night or make the vomit stop.” When I found myself in deep trouble I would send up a prayer and make childish compromises with God: “If you get me out of this, God, I promise to be a good girl from this point forward.” I never followed through on those promises, of course. I tried to negotiate and manipulate my way through my relationship with God. During the final days of my darkness and addiction, I attempted to connect with God once again, hoping for validation for the horrible act I was attempting to commit upon myself—suicide.

When I woke up the next morning, still alive and ready to finally get clean and sober, I knew it was only by the grace of God that I was alive and given the gift of another chance. I had hope and strength that I never knew before that day, and I knew they weren’t coming from me. I began to examine my faith closely. I knew I must find a connection to something; a Higher Power of some sort is almost a requirement in recovery. Recovery, however, does not dictate what God must look like or be; you just must believe in something.

I began my quest once again by attending churches of every denomination, reading books, and listening to so-called experts, yet these sources’ definition of God seemed limiting to my reality. They all seemed to cram God into this little box of definitions and rules, and they gave me a list of rules I had to live by. If I didn’t live by those rules—if I should slip off that tiny man-made tightrope—then I was considered wicked and sinful. By being gay, I had already broken a rule.

I became tired of overzealous individuals who screamed at me out of their car windows, telling me I was going to hell for holding a girl’s hand as they sped off with their “Are you following Jesus this close?” bumper stickers. I became tired of people approaching me and telling me that I was going to hell for being who I was and for loving the people I loved. It seemed ludicrous to me to think that one could be damned to live a life of coldness and exile for simply loving another human being. I had never heard of anything so ungodly, and I couldn’t even begin to grasp how someone could fear God and teach others to fear God. To me, God is love, creation, forgiveness, beauty, and peace. How and why would you fear such a thing? I did not—and still don’t—understand how some preachers can teach people to fear the wrath of such peace and beauty simply because you do not live your life on the tightrope in which they require you to walk when you walk with their God. These things never made sense to me and certainly did not leave me feeling connected to God.

Not as free and spiritually connected as I felt outside walking around a beautiful lake by my house or at the beach. There was something about the sounds of flowing water that made me feel totally at peace . . . something about the sounds of ducks quacking, birds chirping, and waves crashing that made me feel closer to God than anything else in the world. The calm and peace I found in nature eased any fear or anxiety that I had about God, and it was there among the greatest of creation that I began to feel and understand God.

My faith began amongst the life around me: water, earth, land, a smile on a baby’s face, deep laughter from the bellies of children playing. God is fire. God is rain; God is everything, because God is in every detail. God is everything we see, everywhere we go, in the eyes of the strangers we meet, and in our own fearful eyes that we catch a glimpse of in the mirror so often. I see God in people every day, from the weather-beaten face of a homeless person on the street to the tired, stressed eyes of a single-mother in line at the grocery store. We are God; God is us—we are one. This is a very challenging concept for many to comprehend because it places us side-by-side with God and most people cannot accept that. For me, it made total and complete sense.

Many religions taught me otherwise—taught me that people are separate from God and not worthy enough to be on par with the great Lord, the Muhammad, Jesus, Allah, or whatever name you choose to assign to God. This is why I cannot ascribe to any organized religion.

When I think of God, I think of a beautiful being that embodies female and male, black and white and all the colors in between—one who is gentle, loving, and who knows the greatest pains of the world and the greatest joys. I think God embodies everything on earth because God is everything on earth.

Once I began to know and understand God in my own way, all fear went out the window.
There is a reason we have freedom of religion in this country: it is because our forefathers were wise enough to realize that God is in every detail of our world and we should each have the freedom to interpret and seek God in our own personal way. They were not pompous enough to believe that their version of God was absolute.

When we finally realize that our actions can in fact move mountains and change lives, then maybe we will stop stepping over each other’s beliefs to reach the highest spiritual level and will bring ourselves back to the ground and walk among each other as equals. Regardless of our spiritual beliefs or who our Higher Power is, we should treat each other with dignity, respect, and love; that-, in my humble opinion, is the ultimate God-like behavior.

Jennifer Storm is the real-life voice of millions of girls and young women today who are growing up in a nightmarish vortex of addiction, abuse, despair, and spiraling self-destruction. Addicted to alcohol by age twelve, Storm now serves as Executive Director of the Victim/Witness Assistance Program in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 2002 she was appointed commissioner to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Jennifer Storm has appeared extensively on national television and has been profiled in Rolling Stone, Time, Central Penn Business Journal, and many other national and local publications. She is the author of Blackout Girl: Growing Up and Drying Out in America. www.JenniferStorm.com

Jennifer Storm is the real-life voice of millions of girls and young women today who are growing up in a nightmarish vortex of addiction, abuse, despair, and spiraling self-destruction. Addicted to alcohol by age twelve, Storm now serves as Executive Director of the Victim/Witness Assistance Program in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 2002 she was appointed commissioner to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Jennifer Storm has appeared extensively on national television and has been profiled in Rolling Stone, Time, Central Penn Business Journal, and many other national and local publications. She is the author of Blackout Girl: Growing Up and Drying Out in America. www.JenniferStorm.com