What this blog is about...

So I have had this blog sitting around for a couple months, not sure if I would do anything with it, especially as I just pretty much gave up on my last blog (Seemed like something I'd stick with at the time.) But this one isn't so much about history (it will still be there, I can't escape it) as it is about myself and my "journey" as an American women in her 20's changing my views and ideals on a often controversial subject in the US and worldwide: Religion and what role it plays in our lives.

I was born into a semi-average home, both my parents had been previously married and each had a child from that marriage before they met and married in 1984. They waited to have me until 1988, and despite a 14 year and 9 year age gap between my older sister and older brother, I have always been close to them. I also have a brother from my parents, he's 2 1/2 years younger than me. Two girls, two boys, different ages growing up in sometimes the same house, but always the same city.

I was baptized in a Lutheran church that I attending regularly until I was 10 years. The only reason we stopped attending was because we moved from San Diego, CA to Raleigh, NC, and we couldn't find a church with similar values to our own. We moved from a liberal area to the fringe of the Bible Belt, and religion takes on a whole different face in those parts.

I guess I became disconnected with Christianity for sometime, as we never attended church and my parents were never the type to force me and siblings into doing something we didn't agree with. Mom occasionally went to church, and sometimes we went with, but overall, our faith was just something we kept to ourselves and didn't really concern ourselves with and that's a hard thing to do down South, where a good chunk of the people where their religion like a boy scout badge.

In high school I started looking into other faiths, just out curiosity. In the end I decided to stay with Christianity and I guess "rediscovered" my Lutheran faith. For those of you who don't know, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America is one of the most liberal and in my opinion most progressive Christian churches in the US. They haven't always been that way, but they truly take to heart the message of Christ in accepting and loving others, no matter race, gender, and even now, sexual orientation. And I guess that's why we never had an easy time finding a church to attend in NC, everything is much more "hell fire and brimstone" down here...it's a major turn off and in my opinion contradictory to Christ's original message, but I'll get into that another time.

I'm now 23 years old and I've held onto my faith as it was in high school since then, not exactly happy, but content. I know some would ask why not just let it go altogether? I've certainly contemplated it, but I could never truly find myself without faith or at the very least, a belief in a higher power/creator God. Now, don't get mistaken, I fully believe in evolution, I find it fascinating, and early humans amaze me. I love learning about how we've changed since our beginning. But then that's where I differ in some ways, I believe that evolution was designed or created, if you will, by God. I don't expect everyone else to believe that, nor would I ever force someone else to believe it, but it's my view, one I hold very close. I'm not about preach but I do ask that it be respected.

This is where my blog starts, since about last August, I've had many things change, for better or worse, in my life. It causes you to think a LOT about things, and you don't always like what you find. I was still living at home with a minimum wage job, and struggling with community college...yep, community college. I would consider my math skills remedial at best and as long those classes are required I kept putting them off. After exhausting pretty much every other subject and gaining 30 more credits than the 30 needed to transfer, I still had those damned math courses. I'm happy to say now I'm on the first of the last two courses and after # years in CC, I'm beyond ready to move on.

It was really hard, watching my friends attend "real" college and as of now most have graduated, but my parents always supported me, telling me it would be far worse if I wasn't staying with my education. It was even more of comfort to know I wasn't alone in the never ending college cycle, some people had been at longer than I have. But I still wasn't where I saw myself when I graduated from high school and that bothered me.

I was always dealing with a lot in family life, we all get along just fine, but drama always finds a way in and it ends up throwing everybody off their rocker. That just added to my already depressed mood and it began to effect my school work in classes I normally excel in, those being everything but math. I was faced with a personal crisis, that was slowly draining me, and I found that turning to my faith wasn't a comfort, which was something I never experienced before.

My friends definitely saw me in my blue mood, and I was suddenly always in their company at a local hookah lounge, where I made new friends, and eventually my first serious relationship. But it was where and who these people were that changed a pretty major part of my life...my faith. They were Muslim, and up til that point I was like most Americans in thinking Islam was a male-dominated and oppressive religion, boy, were my eyes opened. From places like Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, these people weren't and aren't any different  from me and other people in their 20's.

Not once, has my boyfriend, who is Muslim, asked me about converting. Nor does one of my best friends constantly prod me about her faith. They're Muslim, but they're not about to go about making everyone else think or believe the way they do...which in US, well the media has believe that the only thing Muslims want to do is convert us. And for some reason beyond me, while most people seem to know and try to brush off what media sensationalizes, when it comes to Islam, we seem to believe most everything of what they tell us.

One day, sitting in my room, I began to wonder about Islam, so many people in my life now are Muslim, I want to know more about it, so I decided to buy a book about converts from the US, figuring these would be the people I could best understand and relate to. This then changed into me asking my boyfriend to take me to the local Mosque, where a Q&A was open to people wishing to learn more about Islam. I asked my friend to help me buy a head scarf to wear to the Mosque, to my surprise, I didn't feel weird wearing it or at the very least "oppressed" as I had previously been convinced all Muslim women were...wow it's hard to admit that I believed that once.

While I visited the Mosque, the speaker suggested I buy a Quran and read through it, to better understand more about Islam. As I did with my first book, I bought a Quran translated by an American convert, who adds footnotes and backgrounds to the Quran, making it much easier to read and understand to someone that Islam is not really known to.

Since reading the Quran, I've discovered so much about Islam is not really that different from Christianity, and the're even parts that I prefer over Christianity, especially in regards to women. I know, crazy right? But that's part of the reason I doing this blog, if I can make even just a few people take a second look at Islam, I will I have accomplished something.

I haven't converted yet, but I do feel it is coming. And I want to share with people my progress and journey to this point and from there on. Maybe even help people wanting to do the same. How do your parents react? What about friends and siblings? What part of my life changes, if any, because of it? Am I doing this for myself? And most of all, why? I've asked myself and experienced all of these questions, and the're a ton of different responses and answers.

I'd also like to touch on the many stereotypes of Islam, and how many of them can be dispelled by personal experience and (my favorite) historical events and people. And also, I want to discuss what it is to be an American woman choosing a path that many would not agree with and most can't even wrap their heads around.

I really hope this blog works out and I look forward to seeing what people have to say.