Doubt

"I have nothing but your generosity to put my hope in. Nothing. For I stand at Your door holding broken scraps…and yet you open. Save me from this storm. I am the most helpless of all your slaves. And I’m lost. Wandering in the middle of a forest trying to find my way. But all the tress look the same, and each path just leads back to the beginning. No one finds their way out of this forest—except whom You save. Save me. For truly, truly I cannot save myself."

I saw this posted today...and I felt like it was speaking for me. Everything I have learned, (and not learned), felt, experienced, thought...at this point is on the shelf..above me...and I am looking at it and wondering if it has all taken me to where I thought I wanted to go. And the truth is...that I am no longer sure.

In a few days I will be able to fast again inshallah...I almost feel like a traitor though. Because my heart is not in it. I feel like I am fasting to keep a connection with the religion I chose but have grown so distant from. And not for the reasons I should be. Here in my last post I said that Muslimness and my life were now one...and now, a week ,later..I don't feel like a Muslim anymore. I don't feel my values reflected in the community, in don't feel like a part of it either. I am beginning to wonder if I ever really was.

I am so confused about so many things. I feel so hopeless and so lonely and even though I know there are a lot of others who feel like me, and many others who need and crave the community I also seek...but it doesn't change anything. That community does not exist...and the one that does exist here has slowly but surely pushed me out the door and let it smack me in the butt on the way out. I have to admit, I am a little stunned at how easy it was for it all to get to me. I thought I was stronger than this. I thought I had so much more fight in me. But I don't. Why stick around somewhere you are not wanted? It's just dumb. And it will hurt me I'm sure more than it will help. In fact, that is the whole reason I have taken a step back from all of this lately. The only community iftar I have attended resulted in me leaving in a hurt and angry hurry because a close friend of mine took a comment made by another sister and turned it into something it wasn't and ended it with her calling me a racist. I almost didn't go that night anyway..but I did..and I was really sorry I did. I have avoided the mosque entirely because it stirs up strong, awful emotions that really hurt. And the masjid should be a place where one finds peace. But it is not anymore. Not for me. And I hope and pray I can find my way back to the Islam that I love so much. I pray that my heart and eyes and ears have not been sealed.