I'm not studying right now, but I am living my path.
I was raised without much religion. I never attended church until I was old enoug to take myself. My father is Deist, my mom has never discussed religion with me. They were both raised catholic, but neither has attended church since they were teens. We celibrated christian holidays and our parents told us we were catholic (which I now feel is an out and out lie). My father read us bible stories about the holidays, and we had bibles and prayer books and such around the house.
As i got older, and my brother lived in Okinawa for 4 years, and then I lived in Japan for another 4 years, and my parents went to visit each of us, there were also Buddhas in the house, and my mom even kept one by the door and made offerings to it and asked favors of it.
When I was 13 I took a cultural geography class. A big part of the class was on the major world religions. I thought that of all of them Buddhism sounded the most likely, but I had already founded a simple religion of my own, and was quite devoted to it.
At 16, I took up yoga and meditation. I've practiced ever since with varying regularity.
I started attending presbyterian church on easter and christmas with my friends in high school, and continued until I joined the navy at 21. I sampled the chapels' offerings occaionally at different bases where I lived over the next 5 years. I attended nondenominational services regularly after I was married. I was looking for a community in which to begin my family. DH thought that was a weak reason to choose a religion. He didn;t get in my way, but did not support me either. I gave up church because it did not contirbute to a harmonious home, I got tired of the pitying looks when I told ppl that no, dh wasn't deployed, he was just a recovering catholic and not comfortable in church. I never believed much of what was taught.
We lived in Japan for 4 years (including the 3 or 4 month stretch of regular church going). The whole time I was there, I had been going to temples and shrines and enjoying meditation and rituals there. After we came back, I really missed the temples. The more I thought about it, the more I missed it.
I started reading about Buddhism. Very vague, general stuff. I found that it fit beautifully into my own personal philosophy. I realized that I wasn't leaning in a buddhist direction, I actually was a buddhist.
Dh considers himself to be Shinto. We have discussed the teachings of Buddhism and for the most part we agree with them. there is still a great deal that we don't know, and as soon as I graduate I will begin my studies. We plan to have Ben trained as a monk around age 4 or 5. Derek is a martial artist and had a close friend who had been trained as a monk at that age. There is a large Laotian and Vietnamese community here, and there is a sizable temple out in the country somewhere. We've made numerous attempts at finding it, but as yet to no avail. I'm hoping that once things calm down around here, I can get involved in the temple.
It is good to find other moms here who are in a similar place.