Deconstructing myself

On grief, God, and my midlife return to faith

At this moment five years ago, I was most likely already crying, about to start crying, or just finishing up a good jag of crying.

A few months earlier, I’d gone through a disappointing breakup, a year or so after finalizing a divorce after twenty years of marriage.

And—understatement ahead—I wasn’t taking it well.

2019 me. A lot of tears spilled below those killer bangs.

I’d stayed a step or two ahead of experiencing the true devastation of the divorce for as long as I could, distracting myself with work and dating amid the exhausting effort of trying to piece together a new life for my kids and myself out of the rubble of the old one.

But in the end, the sorrow caught up with me. (It always does, doesn’t it?) My defenses weakened in the aftermath of the breakup (with a guy who, in hindsight, was totally wrong for me anyway), I finally cracked open a window and let Grief in.

I hoped maybe she’d pay me a polite visit of a respectable length, but instead, she moved in and made herself at home. I was too exhausted to tell Grief to leave, and on some level, I think I knew she had a job to do. So I let her do it.

Grief was thorough and inconveniently persistent. She accompanied me everywhere. I left social situations depressed. I cried while walking the dog. I cried (a lot) while listening to music or watching movies. I cried myself to sleep (but I slept like a baby.)

I liken that feeling to a sort of emotional freefall. Terrifying at first, but once I got used to the feeling of falling, I was able to look around me and see the world with remarkable clarity. I became quieter, more introverted. I began viewing old habits and assumptions through a different lens. I reconsidered many of my relationships. I spent a lot of time alone with a journal. I signed up for a 60-day yoga challenge. For the first time in years, I began praying.

And then, one day, I walked into church.

It was a different kind of service from what I was used to. No hymns or worship music, no hands in the air (a relief for this cradle could-have-been-Catholic turned mainline Protestant). Just a good message, shared with intelligence and a total lack of assumptions about who I was and why I might be there. I sat in that darkened auditorium and wept (to be fair, that clearly wasn’t that unusual for me in those days) realizing that God was yet another thing I’d been running, from but he’d somehow found me anyway.

(Grief is a sneaky one. After I let her in through that barely-cracked window, I think she went and threw the front door wide open, without even asking, to let God in.)

Faith had felt completely natural for me as a young person, but later became inconvenient to the worldview I was trying to construct. I’d squeezed God out to the margins, but when I found he wouldn’t obediently stay there, I worked angrily to squeeze him out even more.

God annoyed me and I wanted him to shut up. But I didn’t want him all the way gone. I just sort of wanted him to let me out of the car a block away from the school and watch me to make sure everything worked out.

Christians annoyed me and I wanted them to shut up. But I also watched them enviously, like the girl who acts too cool for the party but secretly wishes she’d gone.

It was all a total self-imposed mind job that did nothing except create more work for me, with lackluster results. As any parent of an adolescent knows, you can’t give a hug from a block away, and a heart-emoji text just isn’t the same thing. And as any adolescent knows, you can’t enjoy the party if you don’t accept the invitation.

These days there’s a lot of talk of “deconstruction” in faith circles. But in my case, it was me who was deconstructed.

I’d been living for years with my heart, soul, and body running in different directions, at odds with one another. The strain was making me come apart at the seams.

And when I finally gave in and fell apart, there was room for faith to slip back in between the cracks, and to stay there while I rebuilt around it.

Back when I was so sure I had it all together, God had stopped making any sense. When, in freefall, I realized that actually I had absolutely nothing together, I circled all the way back around. He was the only thing that made sense. I just hadn’t been able to see that before through all the confusion and chaos.

Sitting in that auditorium, I can only describe it this way: all the different parts of me finally lined up. My intellect got the message that my heart had been trying to point it to for a long time. There was no altar call. Just a simple acceptance of something that had always been true, but that I’d shoved out of my own view.

Which isn’t to say that everything since has been simple. Returning to a life of faith well into adulthood has meant having to grapple with some perplexing things, like the fact that the belief system I’d created around myself was actually full of holes and inconsistencies—something I’d long accused “religious” people of being, ironically.

It’s also had to mean re-learning many things I thought I already knew, approaching learning with a beginner’s spirit. (Not easy for me, a recovering know-it-all who is often on the defensive.)

Five years after the teary Sunday I referenced earlier, I’ve had the privilege of getting to speak at that same church multiple times—including last Sunday. In last week’s talk I share the complication of diving back into the Bible as an adult and realizing that most of the people in it are deeply flawed, not the spotless heroes you may have remembered from your Sunday School days.

In my talk I mused over why the Bible, as a dynamic story that offers truth, hope, and belonging (along with a consistent undercurrent of humans being human) is so much more than a textbook.

You can watch the video above - I come in at 9:42, but the opening songs are definitely worth listening to! - or you listen to my most recent episode of The Tea’s Made podcast, to hear just my talk without the music.

This whole post may have surprised (or annoyed) some of you. I get it. I’ve been pretty quiet about my return to faith online, both because I’m so sensitive to the casual arrogance that can sometimes accompany “Christianese” when spoken in public places, and also because I’m still, in a lot of ways, being put back together.

I’m still learning and seeking and figuring out my own identity in this greater world. While I love come-as-you-are gatherings (like Storyline) I’m also intrigued and moved by more liturgical, sacramental practices. I find myself turning to a variety of voices, like

Tsh Oxenreider

,

Paul Kingsnorth

, and

Kristin Haakenson

, whose writings on beauty, nature, and ritual are helping me coax out some of my the long-buried whisperings of my own soul. (I seem to have an especial soft spot for Catholic and Anglican writers, but I also follow a few Evangelicals—though I admit, I am still deeply uncomfortable putting my hands in the air to praise music and cannot see this ever changing.)

I have no idea what any of this says about me or where it may be leading me. For now, I’m trying not to stress about my “identity” too much.

There’s no hurry; I’m just enjoying the journey—and basking in the simplicity of wholeness that couldn’t have happened until I allowed myself to come completely apart, let faith back in through the broken parts, and began the lifelong work of reconstructing around it.