“We all have a God-shaped hole in us.” It comes from my mother on a Sunday afternoon after church. The malaise of Sunday seeps into our bellies full of pot roast. I am little, nine or so, and the statement makes sense. This hole, I am somewhat aware of then, and this God, it seems He has been there for my whole life. I have gone to church from the first Sunday of my life and have been raised by parents who profess this God as long as I have known them. So yes, the statement seems natural, inevitable, factual even, the first time I hear it. It remains this way for years. I go through middle school with the same faith, blind and unwavering. I switch from one private Christian school to another, surrounded by the same beliefs in remarkably similar people. I see teachers who pray, am tested on my memorization of verses, and grow sick of grape juice and stale crackers every Wednesday. The culture of Christianity engulfs me to the point that I am no longer aware of it. It becomes the air I breathe- never questioning, doubting or wondering. I go through some trials in the form of prepubescent bullies, but I never blame any of my struggles on the God I have now become so familiar with. I know everything about the religion. I am sure of it, nothing provokes it or prods it, there is no test to determine its validity, or storms to shake its foundation. It simply is.
                And then high school arrives. I attend Holy Names Academy, a Catholic, all girls, college preparatory school in Capitol Hill. At surface level, it all feels remarkably similar. The air I breathed before is still present; my lungs still inhale prayers and exhale portions of scripture. I walk the wooden floors with an air of peace and stillness, surrounded by statues of Mary and various saints I have yet to learn the names of. My teachers are kind, incredibly smart, and remind me repeatedly of my potential. I dive headfirst into an academic world I have never seen before. There are APs, honors, and a GPA that suddenly demands every second of my attention. I become entrenched in a drive for perfection that pervades all areas of my life, including my faith. My devotions become another chance for me to outperform, and I determine to finish the bible in one year for no reason other than to say I have done it.        Along with this ritualistic faith I develop, I am no longer surrounded by the silent devotion I have always seen in Christianity. A large majority of my classmates are only nominally religious, scoffing at the idea of a creator and frequently using His name in a milieu of other explicates. Even the teachers present the stories of Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark as just that, stories. They see the Old Testament as myths crafted by various authors to highlight key principles, but not truth. There is also a different air besides the monastic, contemplative one. In eleventh grade I begin to experience deep loneliness after my closest friend leaves me and I realize the rest of my classmates have formed impenetrable cliques. The hallways take on a new shade of isolation and pain. I feel unseen and unimportant, and it is this nadir that leads me back to the weathered blue-cover bible I hadn’t touched for a while. I fill myself up with a love I can’t seem to find in the people at school. I ask Jesus to be a friend to my soul when I sit alone on the cold floor of a hallway for more than one or two lunches. This religion thing becomes more than theoretical, it becomes actual, and necessarily so. Having been left, I can now begin to understand, though of course only an infinitesimal amount, the pain that Jesus must have endured in his time of betrayal. I lean on God in a way I had never done before, now beginning to see the meaning of the verses I had so dutifully memorized all those years back. Though it is dark and at times I don’t feel the sun will ever warm me again, time heals, and I find new friends the last year of high school.
                Though it is Catholic, and cliquish, and academically arduous, I grow in my faith at Holy Names. The God I learned so much about before becomes more of a reality in my heart. I am also exposed more fully to the realities of our world during my time at Holy Names. I see films about mass incarceration, fast fashion, plastic. I attend assemblies devoted to Martin Luther King, where students preform spoken word and sing the black national anthem. I am part of the Multicultural Student Union and still have distinct memories of the time I am first told that I am a person of color while paddleboarding with a friend on the Puget Sound. I start to see divisions I had never noticed before, the subtle separating of groups in the cafeteria, stereotypes bland and insidious in media, my mind, and my teachers. It breaks my heart to see the blemishes of this world so up close and personal. But I never transfer this pain onto God. I trust in Him to heal the brokenness and to use me in the process.
               All this while, the only doubts I ever feel about faith are in my abilities. I worry that I don’t read enough of my Bible, that God is speaking, and I am too busy to hear Him, that I don’t serve enough in my community. It becomes another deficiency I see in myself- that I somehow don’t measure up as the ideal Christian. But despite that, I still feel the love of God, so deep and constant, at the very bottom of my soul. I trust in this shalom to decide where to attend college and to have enough courage to begin anew. 
             It is not until my freshman year of college that everything grows fuzzy. It is hard to pinpoint an exact cause, but the doubt came on suddenly and totally. As I started to learn more of the world, and particularly the world of Christianity, it became hard to stomach. I started to think more about passages in the Bible concerning women and realized what a degrading and humiliating picture it paints of them. They are silenced and forgotten time and time again.  I express this concern to my father, and his response furthers the pain I feel. He seems so blinded to the oppression of women and so brainwashed to believe it is okay. I don’t know how to understand this clash of generational upbringing. His own mother, my grandmother, despite providing for her family with three jobs and simultaneously raising two children, still believes a woman should not be our president. It hurts to see this supposed kingdom of God where women are called to do nothing more than raise children, tend to the home, and meekly attend church as silent and shrouded observers. I can’t come to terms with a God who would allow such injustice. I recognize now that most of the brokenness in gender relationships is a result of humanity’s sin. But I still struggle with the fact that it is the Church of all peoples who continues to perpetuate this sin so blindly.
And then I begin to think more about the Church and race. All the years it upheld slavery and actively slaughtered black people are extremely disturbing to say the least, but it is more of the present-day injustice that hits me hardest. I begin to realize the silence on mass incarceration, police brutality, and the plight of immigrants that is rampant in so many churches, especially the ones I attend. I grow disillusioned and frustrated with the lack of diversity in many Seattle churches and the apathy they seem to have concerning racial injustice.
        As a woman of color, both of these areas of brokenness in the church place a massive dent in my faith. I know we are called to follow Jesus and not people, but it becomes hard for me to follow the same Jesus that these people also claim to follow. How can a religion that is truly rooted in love breed such hatred? The question is a black hole. It sucks into it so many things I never once doubted. If God is perfect and created all things, how did evil ever come into existence? If He is so good, why does the religion created after His son deny women rights and support hateful politics? The pretty image I had always dreamed of- God in the pink cotton candy clouds with a lamb to his side for dramatic effect- tears at the seams. God seems angry, cruel, unjust and hypocritical. I begin to feel guilty for these thoughts, and long for nothing more than to return to the deluded faith I had once held, though faith is a stretch to describe it.
            But instead of returning, I fill my hole. I run for miles more than usual, luxuriating in the utter exhaustion at the end of each one. I spend extra money on jeans and therapy. I mediate. I am miserable. The worst part being, it seems even God won’t fill the hole anymore. I complete the prescribed remedy for every Christian in a crisis- read my Bible, pray, and never skip a Sunday of church.
            Yet there remains a void in my soul. A deep and uncomfortable emptiness that permeates all of my being. It hurts especially in the moments before sleep, that now become long and arduous, filled with an incessant tossing and turning. When I drive I am jumpy, blaring the radio to mute my thoughts. I snap at those I love and sabotage myself in a million little ways. It feels like I am in a long, dark, and possibly infinite, tunnel.
            There is no dramatic metanoia. No burning of a bush or blinding of my eyes. But slowly, and hesitantly, my faith makes a return. I believe it is love that first rebuilds it. The love that God never takes away from me, but always leaves in the deepest, furthest corner of my soul. This love finds its way into the sticky faces of the children I work with, the ethereal blossoms of the trees lining my street, my own hands when they write or poorly pluck a tune on the guitar. It is slow, soft, and constant. It doesn’t let me feel alone even when I want to, it doesn’t let me leave even when I wrestle and claw at it. It is there. And it is why I come back. Because I realize a God capable of that kind of love is capable of everything.
            My struggles with race and gender do not come to  an end- I still question the injustice in the world. But I start to realize that God has placed this anger in me for a reason: it is there not to drive me away from a faith, but towards a faith, one that is put into action to help heal the pain sin has created.

            The average adult generates 3-6 pounds of ashes after cremation. At the end of our earthly life, this is what remains. All of our thoughts, relationships, experiences, possessions, are found in the 4 pounds of dust we leave behind. I believe that for this short earthly life before the heavenly one to come, God has called me to bring meaning beyond these ashes. The world is scary and big, and God can be a confusing thing. But I believe what He offers us more than anything is love. A love limitless and persistent, at once grand and small. And our purpose, matter how we do so, is this: to fill all the world with His love.