Reflections
-
Be Present for Joy
Joy isn’t always in the present. But it isn’t anywhere else, either.
Joy doesn’t live in the past, or the future. This little millisecond sliding through time, splitting the future from the past is all we have. Trying to fight that kills any possibility of joy.
I say this in the middle of extremely dark and terrifying times. It’s because of those very times that I say this.
I would love to be in another timeline as much as the next person, but we need to stay present and try not to dissociate or long for the past or mentally speed ahead to a better future.
I am not advocating for toxic positivity. Injustice is infuriating and rightly so. Grief and rage are warranted and needed. But we can’t live on rage alone. Without any joy, we die.
During these dangerous and evil days, finding joy in the present often requires zooming way in, up close and looking at our day under a microscope. Zoom in on the building blocks of life that are easily missed. Zoom in to feel the warm sun on your face. Zoom in to enjoy the dew drops on a blade of grass. Zoom in to relish the tickle of curly toddler hair against your neck, their little heartbeat against your chest. Zoom in to the buzz of crickets on a still night. Zoom in to a loved one’s laugh. Zoom in to meditate on the smell of muffins in the oven or the takeout on your counter. Breathe.
Anxieties are high. My own is through the roof. But I try my best not to let it take any more from me than is necessary. So I ground myself and try to focus on what I can control and what I love and not give up my joy voluntarily.
There will be moment where joy is impossible or inappropriate, but don’t let them take over more than their rightful space.
What can you find in your microscope today that could bring you a little joy?
Sometimes joy is all we have.
-
The Meaning of Christmas
Is Christmas meaningless without Christ?
Some of my most cherished childhood memories are with my family at Christmastime. Baking cookies, decorating the tree, putting up lights, singing songs by the fire, attempting to create the longest paper chain, attending the candlelight service… It was a magical time full of fun, togetherness and deep spiritual meaning. My parents worked hard to make the Christmas season special and they succeeded. Their only crime was their misguided sincerity and loyalty to a high-control religion that sprinkled the season (and our entire lives) with toxicity.
Christmas is meaningless without Christ, I was reminded over and over.
It is silly for non-Christians to celebrate Christmas, I learned. Non-Christians only celebrate Christmas for the gifts or as an attempt to co-opt and sabotage sacred traditions that don’t belong to them. Non-Christians are lost, confused, and attempting to distract themselves from their own emptiness.
Intended or not, the message many Christian children receive is that there is no value in celebrating friendships and family or warmth and light during a cold, dark season, because nothing matters except Jesus. The implication was that happiness and pleasure and love and generosity are not worth appreciating on their own; you need to tack Jesus onto everything to make it worthwhile.
Fearful outcries warned that any celebration of Christmas not within the confines of Christianity was an attack on Christian values and truth itself.
A narrow meaning of Christmas was drilled into my head from an early age, and I now argue it is a shallow one.
“Apart from Christ, what’s the point of Christmas?”
Now I can confidently say that sometimes just celebrating being alive is enough. Life and love and being together is plenty to commemorate and set aside as sacred and holy.
The relationships that warm our hearts throughout the cold winter bring meaning and purpose I never felt while in the church. Dedicating time in our busy schedules for those who have our backs fosters a hope we only talked about in Christianity. The carefree bliss of the holidays spark a happiness I never knew when burdened with religious obligation and shame.
The holidays are ripe with meaning for me. We too, are celebrating light in the darkness. The only difference is where we believe that light comes from – oppressive rules or warm relationships? Pious duty or radical hospitality?
I believe the simple beauty of life is worth noticing and focusing on. That’s what makes ordinary things transcendent and extraordinary. Bright red holly berries against sparkly white snow, children’s faces lit up with glee, tasty food crackling over a fire, lending a helping hand to those in need – our response to the call to pay attention determines whether or not miracles exist.
There is so much to love about life even in dark and uncertain times; there is always hope if we are willing to nurture it. Isn’t that what the Christmas Story is all about? Choosing to seek out, interact with and celebrate the existence of light and love and hope no matter the circumstances. This is innately human and sacred and good.
And to me, that is the beautiful meaning of Christmas.
-
To Believe or Not to Believe…
I stopped believing in God long before I stopped believing in Christianity.
Though I didn’t possess the self-awareness at the time, I no longer believed God was good, or that God believed in me.
It wasn’t a choice as much as a natural consequence of what I experienced, and it came to fruition some years before I fully left.
To believe, or not to believe… honestly, it’s an easy question.
Safety in the church had only ever been possible through extreme hypervigilance and precise showmanship.
It had been consistently demonstrated to me that God was someone to fear, to appease, to flatter even, in hopes of being spared.
After all, the very foundation of Christianity is built on the idea of being undeservingly saved from the wrath of God.
For two and a half decades my prayers were carefully crafted and recrafted, fervently offered and recanted. My prayer life was ruled by the terror of having said the wrong thing, or the right thing the wrong way. Or maybe I said it too many times or not enough.
I agonized over finding the sweet spot between praying faithfully with the persistence of the widow, and babbling on like the pagan. Pray without ceasing – I had better intercede once more. But what if I seemed desperate and cynical? What if my motives were wrong? Did I have to want something purely out of selfless altruism? Did I have to prove my request a noble cause? Or was it okay to want something just because it made me happy? What if a fleeting thought angered God and I was given the opposite of what I asked for, as a punishment?
Spiraling into panic became a spiritual rite, a holy ritual.
My faith mentor in college once asked me during a season of particular desperation: “Do you believe God wants to give you good things?”
I think she meant it more as a rhetorical question, an attempt to help ground me in a place of trust.
Praying fervently through a vulnerable housing situation with terrifying potential outcomes had worked me into quite the frenzy.
“Do you believe God wants to give you a good things?”
Suddenly, that’s when I knew.
“No. I don’t believe God wants to give me good things. At least not reliably.”
Why would he? Out of some cosmic goodwill? On a whim? Feeling particularly chummy today? Why would I believe God wants to give me good things, when I don’t have the track record to show for it? Why would God want to give me good things when his people were stingy users who made me earn my right to exist? Why would I believe God wants to give me a safe, stable and affordable housing situation where I can thrive, if I’m so sinful, bad and broken that I don’t even deserve love?
If I’m just filthy rags, why would I deserve anything more than mere survival? Actually, why would I even deserve that? Apparently I am entitled to only death and torture in hell. Why should God give me good things while turning a deaf ear to the grieving mother whose child is dying? Why should God give me a nice place to live but ignore the pleas of families who are starving? No, I really don’t believe God wants to give me good things. I think the best I can do is hope my prayers somehow hit the magic combination, because as an evangelical that’s all I know how to do.
My mentor seemed very surprised by my response, but thankfully gracious. She urged me to choose to trust that God wants to give good gifts to his children and to rest in that reassurance.
But it was too late at that point. I couldn’t undo my epiphany. However, in obedience I mustered up my courage to believe anyway. Interestingly, my prayed-over housing situation ended very poorly despite my due diligence in every place I had agency, and the consequences still negatively affect me financially today – a decade later.
I was beaten down by the adversity, but not shocked. As a faithful congregant I learned long ago I don’t deserve good things. God gives and God takes away – seemingly nonsensically – and I need to be grateful regardless. God uses extreme suffering to make us more submissive and loyal, so logically good gifts aren’t in line with that goal. “Blessings” make a lot more sense as a result of chance and privilege than divine favor, unless God is an asshole playing favorites.
As a good Christian girl I dutifully accepted I am nothing apart from God. I’m damaged and worthless, I don’t deserve love or mercy or to live in ease. God chooses my fate based on my holiness not my happiness. This was drilled into me incessantly since infancy.
If I don’t deserve heaven, why should I have an abundant life on earth? If I don’t deserve God’s love why would I deserve a person’s love? Why would I expect to be adored by a partner or valued as a friend? Abuse makes way more sense. Why should I expect to receive respect in the workplace? Standing up for myself seems silly in that context. If God brings hard times to make us more like him, why would I ever expect to be given joy and good things? Wouldn’t that undermine the cause? With so many millions of people suffering and dying in the world, why would I expect God to hear my prayers and not theirs? And if God did, is that something I could really feel good about?
Oh wait, that’s right, “God works in mysterious ways” and supposedly that solves everything.
In the 10 years that have passed since that fateful conversation with my mentor, I have been seriously abused by a partner, gone through a devastating divorce, been abandoned by the community I poured my blood, sweat and tears into, been used and then tossed aside when my volunteer labor was no longer needed. I fell in love with the most amazing person only to have him snatched away from me shortly after when he was killed in a tragic accident. I have been harassed and mistreated by the church yet again during the vulnerability of my grief, I was refused help when newly widowed because I wasn’t the “right” kind of Christian, large sums of money were stolen from me by Christians, I’ve experienced multiple serious health scares, slogged through anxiety and depression and PTSD. I was illegally retaliated against at my job, sexually harassed by another boss, betrayed by my closest friends one after another… After so much heartbreak I found a beautiful partnership with a fellow widow but we’ve had to work hard for our happiness, fought for survival in an unfair economy, lost our first child due to miscarriage… Oh, but God wants to give me good things! Great news! What’s the hold up, I wonder?!
My husband recently pointed out to me that whenever we go hiking together, I always walk on the side of the trail, almost in the bushes or rocks or whatever obstacles are there. When he asked me about it, I just shrugged and said it was natural for me to try to get out of the way so I didn’t block the view. After we processed it together, I realized that my opinion of myself is so low I don’t even believe I deserve the physical space my body takes up. Walking on the side of the trail is just a subtle manifestation of the mindset the church has trained into me, one that seemed so normal I didn’t even notice. I’m always stepping out of the way and making myself small and quiet and compliant. I’ve been trained to always anticipate other people’s needs and be quick to meet them and make them happy. I am very unfamiliar with my own needs, let alone confident in meeting them. It’s my purpose in life to always be grateful even if my prayers are met with stubborn silence or “NO” or I receive something dreadful. My duty is to praise God and be thankful and smile even when I am worn down over and over and slowly dying inside.
The short of it is I don’t matter.
Oh, but have you heard? God wants to give me good things! And apparently he is all-powerful and nothing is stopping him. So I guess he is just choosing not to. Apparently this merciful God turned a blind eye when my soulmate lost his life. Apparently the Great Gift-Giver took a vacation day when a pandemic swept our world killing millions and destroying the livelihoods of millions more. Apparently the Almighty Heavenly Father felt ambivalent about whether or not my baby ever got to see the light of day or meet her father.
So yes, while the indoctrination took a while to fully unravel, the first tug of a string was the shift to believing in God’s existence but not in his goodness.
I realize now I stopped believing in God long before I stopped believing in Christianity, and giving up the latter was more about coming to terms with the former.
To believe, or not to believe… Unfortunately, to me that’s an easy question.
Can you blame me?
-
For Those We’ve Loved and Lost through Deconstruction
To the best friend of over a decade who started treating me like a project.
To the childhood favorite aunt, who I’m now afraid to share my address with.
To the parent with whom I long to have a deeper connection, but conversations remain either surface-level or spiritually hostile.
To the former mentor who is worried about me.
To the friends who were important to me but ignored me in a time of need because they didn’t want to support my “lifestyle”.
For all the relationships we cherished that will never be the same again after deconstruction, because they just couldn’t accept us as we are:
—
You don’t have to miss me; I’m right here.
You don’t have to mourn me. I’m still the one you loved all along.
Don’t worry about me. I’m doing better than I ever was.
There’s no need to rescue me from my own thoughtful decisions.
Please, just see me, hear me, know me. Like you used to.
Rip off the mask of your own making. It’s me underneath!
You’re drifting farther from me every day and yet I am the one who has fallen away?
I didn’t know love was supposed to ebb and flow like the tide.
I don’t think this is the lesson you wanted to teach me, when you said God was using you to be a blessing.
Your true colors are darker than they once seemed.
What a heartbreaking legacy.
Did you ever actually know anything about me, besides my theology? Or are they one and the same to you?
Did you actually like anything about me that wasn’t just my religion? Because that’s all that has changed, and yet now somehow I’m a stranger to you.
I’m pretty sure you were drawn to my truth-seeking, my tenacity and courage – all reasons I ended up here.
Yet the gaslighting says I’m a monster.
Now that I’m dead to you, did a little part of you have to die too?
Or do you really prefer a bird in a cage? A shiny toy in a box? Never changing. Never learning. Just endlessly the same for your own entertainment.
I thought Christians were the experts, but let me tell you, that isn’t love.
You’ve changed too, you know. And I have loved you through it all.
Even as your disdain and judgment grew, I tried to stay close to you.
But now I have lost you –
All for loving myself the way I thought you did.
-
Autobiography of a Homeschooled Girl
My first day of public school was my first day of college at 18 years old.
Not everyone can say this, but overall, I’m glad I was homeschooled.
I do have some criticism for how my parents went about it, though, and there are some definite lasting negative effects. This is mainly because of the church influence.
I say I’m glad because aside from church trauma, I had a happy childhood. I probably also would have been happy if I went to school.
But as a kid I loved homeschooling because it helped me learn how to be self-motivated as I could get my schoolwork done early in the day and have more free time. I liked spending fewer hours in a formal, structured setting. I got to learn hands-on and have unique experiences. My parents took us on field trips, cross-country road trips and camping trips during the school year. My younger sister and I would just bring some schoolwork along for the ride. I’m thankful for the flexibility and enrichment homeschooling afforded me.
We lived far from the schools and without homeschooling I would have spent hours each day on the bus. I lived in a beautiful rural area with lots of woods and beaches and I got to spend much of the day exploring, riding my bike, climbing trees and running along the waterfront because I was able to get my work done quickly.
I did have friends, and I participated in weekly kids activities that were a lot of fun.
I was a bit introverted and liked not having to feel too overwhelmed socially in order to learn. But in all fairness it’s a “chicken or the egg” situation – which came first? Homeschooling or my shyness?
I performed well academically and I scored high in annual testing (I believe it’s legally required in the US, but some homeschool families still don’t do it). I always tested above average for my age. When I went to college I got good grades, joined Phi Theta Kappa and graduated with honors, so I didn’t suffer there.
Now for the criticism.
Public schools and daycares were vilified in the community I was raised in. The way they talked about it terrified me, making me very thankful to be homeschool. Frankly, they made school sound like a weird mix of the military and an asylum – strict teachers, grueling assignments, mean bullies, cold dark halls, stiff clothes, uncomfortable desks, long hard days, not to mention being ridiculed for your faith and being surrounded with drugs and violence. Now as an adult when I talk to people who attended school as kids, most of them laugh and say this was far from their experience and that they loved school. Sometimes I still catch myself feeling surprised by their positivity.
The criticism I have here is the unfairness and inaccuracy with the way school was portrayed and how it led to unnecessary fear. I grew up terrified of not only schools but the kids who attended them. My sister and I called them “school kids” and we thought they were scary and mean. We could usually tell when we saw other kids if they were familiar fellow homeschoolers or “school kids”, who we usually avoided.
One of the biggest concerns I’ve heard from the general public toward homeschooling is a lack of socialization. Growing up, my sister and I were great at talking with adults and interacting with younger children, usually better than our publicly educated peers and my proud parents pointed this out. They weren’t wrong. But while we excelled socially with adults and littler kids, we struggled more with kids our own age, especially if they seemed different than us. I’ve seen this to be a common homeschool experience.
One of my biggest criticisms for the way I was homeschooled, is that all my friends, all the activities we did, all the people I ever interacted with, were also conservative Christian so I had zero diversity in my life. Everyone and everything I ever encountered closely was a clone of what I already knew. Even with the traveling and social activities, I was very much in a bubble. Every event during the week was at church or with church people. It was a form of isolation, but I think my parents truly thought they were protecting us.
I also had almost zero exposure to important cultural media or events. Even now in my 30’s I’m often still learning for the first time about things that profoundly shaped my peers and even our entire society – things like movies, music, kids TV programs, and even social, political or economic events that were a big deal. As an adult I’ve studied major world events that I lived through from a historical perspective because I didn’t know they were happening at the time.
We lived in a rural area but it wasn’t so remote that my parents couldn’t have taken me to programs at the library or enrolled me in art classes or sports at the local school. We went into town a few times a week, it could have fit into our lifestyle. We did participate in a weekly homeschool co-op that had a variety of fun activities that felt fulfilling at the time, but it was also part of the church and I realize now how narrow my existence was.
Being raised religious wouldn’t have had nearly the damaging impact on me that it did if I had been able to see different ways of living and thinking and know that our religion was one expression of many in a big beautiful world.
Instead, our church and parents used an “us versus them” fear-mongering approach. Being “sent to school” was actually used as a threat to control our behavior. Every year as fall approached my sister and I were nervous about whether this would be the year our homeschooling utopia came to an end. My mom would make little comments about not being sure how long they would homeschool and it created an underlying anxiety for us. I remember clearly one time my sister and I were bickering in the car and my mom told us she was going to enroll us in school as a punishment and the teachers would make us behave. She actually drove us to a nearby elementary school and she said she was going to walk in and sign us up. We were horrified! At the last minute, parked in front of those big glass doors, Mom said, “I guess I’ll give you another chance, but next time you might not be so lucky”. I think the church’s intense emphasis on behavior control is probably what led her to think she had to use methods like that to keep us in line.
After teaching us the basics like how to read and write, our parents were fairly hands off with our day-to-day education. My mom bought us school books at a local homeschool bookstore and gave them to us and we were expected to go through them on our own. My dad would help us with math sometimes in the evenings but that was about it. I suppose this approach might have been because they trusted us and we didn’t take advantage of that. I did well and self-teaching is a skill I’m grateful for. I also acknowledge my privilege – not everyone could learn easily without a more robust support system.
Thankfully the curriculum I had growing up was mostly secular. I’ve heard horrific stories of homeschool “curriculum” that was basically just Bible verses and etiquette lessons or no lessons at all. My best friend had to teach herself how to read at age 9. I’m glad that wasn’t my experience. Some of my science books were Christian-based but luckily they was less extreme than some and the only glaring gap was evolution.
Math and science were my weakest subjects, which is common in homeschooling. I usually tested average or barely above average in those subjects while I tested much higher in everything else. I also had to work harder in math and science classes once I got to college. I’m honestly not sure if I’m less naturally inclined toward math and science or if this is because I was homeschooled. I do think the reason it’s so common for homeschool kids to struggle in those important subjects is because those are more difficult to teach to yourself, especially when there’s no tutoring support available.
I LOVED college, but I was still scared spitless when I first went. I’ll never forget what it felt like – it really sounded like everyone was speaking a foreign language because there was so much I didn’t know about the outside world. I learned how to nod along and laugh on cue and studied social cues to fit in. However this learned coping mechanism has a negative effect on me today, 15 years later, because it can foster shallower relationships and miscommunications.
That first quarter of college was a whirlwind – I gradually warmed up and was happy as a clam. I gained confidence and learned leadership skills and discovered what it feels like to be a valued member of a vibrant and accepting community. College is also when I first started my slow process of deconstruction. It didn’t take much to notice reality was more complex than I had been led to believe.
To conclude, I don’t hate homeschooling. I think it can be done well, or very poorly. Homeschooling when done poorly is a huge disservice to children, and frankly, child abuse. I don’t think homeschooling itself is the problem in a lot of cases, but rather the religious indoctrination that fuels it. Unfortunately homeschooling has been a favorite tool for abusive religion and a great cover-up for abusive families. I believe my childhood would have been perfect if I had been homeschooled free of indoctrination and fear and with exposure to other lifestyles and beliefs. Once again, religious exclusivity shows itself to be the problem behind many social ills.