Christianity Unraveled

February 9th, 2020

Today is Sunday, February 9, 2020. Three minutes ago I received a text from a friend that I had gotten to know quite well over the past year, and feelings of both sadness, gratitude, and fear filled my heart. Two minutes ago I sat my phone down, walked over to my window where the snow was wandering around in a dancing frenzy, and tears slipped through my eyes. One minute ago I walked to my desk, opened my laptop, and pulled up my blog to write with the hope that the snow in my head will stop acting like the snow on the other side of my window.

"Hey! Just checking in, didn't see ya this week at cru or church so just wanted to wish you well and hope all is going good for ya! <3"

So innocent, so caring, so pure. . . and yet, my heart feels conflicted, being wrenched still with gratitude and sadness and fear. Gratitude for a friend who cares enough to notice when I am gone. Sadness for both me and her as I hoped no one would notice and now she has had to enter this absence with me. Fear that she has noticed, and now I am afraid that others will. And I am afraid that others have.

I am afraid that people are feeling these same emotions because of me as well, and yet feeling them in different ways. . . Such as gratitude that I haven't completely left them all and that I still go to Christian events every so often. Sadness that I am no longer attending said events with such love or frequency as before, and sadness that I seem empty and hollow each time I go. Fear that I have abandoned faith completely and that I shall never return, and fear that they can do nothing about it besides pray and reach out to me to show that they still care.

I am stuck in the middle of not wanting people to care about me while still wanting them to. I feel trapped in my desire for not having a group to pray over my soul without me knowing and my desire for the opposite to be true. I am pulled in two directions by thinking my Christian friends only still show that they care because they are trying to bring me back to Christianity and thinking that they actually care about me because I am simply a person they care for.

I think this is perhaps one of the hardest parts about questioning faith – it led to questioning everything, especially people and their motivations toward me. I feel uncomfortable talking to people I was (and still am?) friends with because I don't know if in the back of their minds they are thinking about my unbelief and about how they can no longer be as close with me as before. I feel trapped each time I want to share but then don't because I no longer know if I feel as though I trust them. It is honestly so hard to trust anyone anymore with myself. I can hardly trust myself.

I haven't told anyone besides you all, reading the words on this blog, about where I actually am at concerning faith – not even my partner. Each time, it feels as though I just skirt around the topic and end with "Oh, you know, I have questions and doubts and I don't know exactly what I can believe in, but I believe in God and Jesus. I just don't know exactly how it all works, but I'm not certain anyone does or will. We just have to trust that if Jesus was right about being the Truth, then he will still be the truth at the end of the question."

Maybe I say this because I want it to be true. It's easier to say what you want to be true than to say what is actually true. It's feels more comfortable to tell them that I still have doubts but that I am working through them instead of telling them that I have doubts that I just stopped working through because it's been too much for me to handle. It feels more comfortable to tell them that than to tell them that I have currently given up. It feels more comfortable to tell myself that I haven't given up.

It's been an hour and I still haven't responded to my friend. I don't know what to say or what to tell her, and I feel stuck between giving her the real or the mispronounced truth. I feel as though she deserves the truth, but I know that in the end I will only give her the mispronounced one. After all, how can I give her the real one when I can't even admit to myself which one is real?

Her extension of care truly made an impact on my heart, and I am at a loss. Nothing really seemed real until then. Before, my offering of my doubts was in my control. Now, I know that it is noticed.

When she noticed my absence and offered her love and care, I think I realized that my doubting no longer is contained within myself. It has been noticed, and I cannot control that. What's more, I don't know if I want to be able to control it anymore.

This all reminds me of my depression five years ago. I wanted people to notice and offer their care, but I didn't want to tell them the truth. I wanted to continue lying about how "Yeah, no I'm actually fine. Thanks for asking though." I wanted them to see me without me having to tell them. I wanted them to reach out to me and tell me that they knew something was wrong and that they would love me and continue to be by my side despite if I told them what I was feeling or not. But nothing is that easy.

Healing requires truth. But more than that, healing requires speaking the truth into yourself, into another person, and into the world. It demands to be heard.

I just don't know if I can let it be heard just yet.