Every day, before sunrise, Zubaidah Gibbs wakes to pray, then spends hours more singing praises to God under a tree outside her home. She reflects on the setting and thanks God for the beautiful environment around her in this small Southern town.

But this Muslim woman wasn't always at peace with herself, or her religion.

Her 55 years have been a journey from wanting to be white to being proud to be black; from the urban North to the rural South; from studying religions to finding a community in Islam.

As a young girl in the 1960s, "I would have done anything in the world to be white with blue eyes and blonde hair with small lips," Gibbs said. "I didn't hang out with girls who were dark like me, because I felt like they were ugly like me."

She became more comfortable with her race as a teenager, when she heard a different message: James Brown singing "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud!"

"I was, like, 'Wow, this is interesting,'" she said. "I started getting rid of [my relaxed hairstyle] and accepting my hair natural, and I was a little bit more comfortable with myself."

But her pride in her roots didn't fill the void she felt in her heart. She was still searching for connections that transcended ethnicity. Her mother, a Christian, encouraged Gibbs to visit various churches around her home in New York, some led by Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses and Catholics.

She was 17 when a blind date with a Muslim man ended at a mosque.

"I heard the adhan [call to prayer] playing, and I saw the people with their long garbs on, and the sisters -- and I just didn't want to leave," she said.

That same year, she embraced Islam, attracted to the message of peace and its disregard for color.

"Islam helped me to identify with the beauty within as well as outside. ...It balanced me out because now I understand who I am as a human," Gibbs said.

Gibbs' spiritual journey had only begun. At age 42, she moved from New York to South Carolina to escape the crowds of the city with her four children. She didn't know of a mosque in the little town where she'd settled, Moncks Corner, but was reluctant to go 30 miles south to Charleston. So, she prayed about it.

One day, Gibbs said, she saw men in kufis, traditional African skullcaps, building what looked like a little house on what had once been known as the "whites-only" side of Moncks Corner. She discovered it was to be a mosque, just as she'd prayed for.