IS THERE A difference between being committed to one’s faith and being obsessed with it? This question is indirectly posed in Cameron Dezen Hammon’s debut book, This is My Body: A Memoir of Religious and Romantic Obsession, which connects the hope, despair, and desire that someone can feel about a love interest or God.
The memoir spans about 15 years of Hammon’s life and describes her relatable parenting, money, work, and marriage hardships. Equally relatable is her struggle with the approaches to these issues presented by a series of Houston megachurches for which she and her husband act as music ministers. These churches preach a hierarchical (as well as homophobic and misogynistic) version of Christianity in which obedience to God will lead to success and happy marriages. An inclusive feminist, Hammon doesn’t wholeheartedly subscribe to this doctrine, but neither does she know how to find meaning outside of it.
About her marriage, she writes, “I believe, or think I’m supposed to believe, that God will fix this. Fix us. Fix my loneliness, meet my needs. Or if God is not meeting my needs, then the fault lies with me.”
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