Skip to main content

A Fork in the Road

By Neal Stone ~

So here I am now. At one of those moments in life you hope to never go through. Divorce!

Several days ago the wife and I talked and decided it was best to separate and move on. So far we haven’t done the official paper work as we are waiting for the next payday. I won’t go into the details as what lead to this. But we did agree to remain friends and am staying at the house in the spare bedroom until finances allow me to leave.

Otherwise we are now starting to live more independently of each other. I also start counseling soon as well to finally try and resolve some things.

But what is on my mind is how friends and family will react. I already know that my lack of belief in god will probably come up. Christians especially will point to that fact and place blame there as well.

I can think of many divorces involving Christian couples and they were anything but peaceful. One such divorce got nasty and the part of the cause was the husband got took by someone he knew was a lying crook. His wife and everyone he knew warned him he would get screwed. But he chose not to listen because “He knew what he was doing”. He lost everything, house and his wife left him.

Then we have a church in Lacey that has had so many divorces and remarriages within the church I swear everyone there is related somehow. I KID YOU NOT!!!

Am I being unfair? NO! These people claim to have the living god who created the universe in 6 days living inside them. Yet their lives are no different from mine or yours. Plus you only need faith the size of a mustard seed to move an entire mountain so I would think anything else child’s play! Compared to a mountain how much faith is needed to find a job or save your house from foreclosure?

So how can they blame my lack of belief for the divorce? I mean…REALLY!

So what did lead me down this path? What really caused the harm in my life? RELIGION! I was raised in a fundy home (Baptist) with a very strict teaching. You lived for one thing to serve god and the church. I never had a social life as a teen or young adult. Even now am socially awkward.

One reason was because of my step-dad. He was very controlling over me. If I talked to the neighbor kids I got interrogated and questioned about what I said and what they said. I wasn’t allowed to have friends over very often or be friends with the neighbors. I would discover in later years he had something to hide. But that is for me and the counselor to discuss.

To make things even more complicated I was very anti-worldly anything including counseling. I was held back mentally, emotionally and in all areas of my life. Many of my friends turned out to be controlling or bullies looking for someone’s shoulder to stand on. I was nothing more than the tag along. And now at 46 yrs old I am finally getting counseling.

Makes you wonder where this powerful god is if his own can’t rely just on him and fail anyway when they do?

But here is the kicker. There are no sleepless nights and crying out to god. No asking god why and no “God has his reasons” thoughts. None of that which I learned in church is a part of this for me. No more leaning on Jesus (oddly I always fell over when I did) or reading the Bible for answers. None of that at all!!! And it’s good because I am at peace and dealing with it. Instead of faith magically answering everything I am instead looking for real answers to deal with all that comes with divorce and serious life changes.

No more false answers and false hopes. No more listening to some pastor giving me some pointless useless generic answers like “Just read the Bible and pray more”. Of course many churches will still ban me from serving or teaching since I am divorced and of course I am NOT distraught at all about that. LOL.

The gal who did the initial intake over the phone for counseling told me I had an incredible life story. Trust me, it will be told once all is done. THERE WILL BE A BOOK! And yes I will be blogging again at this site.

The counselor is a Christian but Christian counseling is optional. I really did like him and he was good not to push Christianity on me. The only time it got discussed is when I brought it up. He helped me make some realizations that I never saw before. It’s nice to meet a Christian who isn’t pushy about sharing Jesus or Christianity. Yes, they do exist. LOL I know a few.

So now is the time to seek answers and move forward. To finally deal with unresolved issues and take life head on. I really do have hope for my future and life. I stand at the cross roads deciding which direction to take. It’s up to me now.

I will be blogging on my experience with the counseling. I plan to title it “Fire in the Mind”.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro