Scars
By Tania ~
Life wounds all of us. In a hundred ways, we get hurt.
Life throws things our way, and we ache, we cry, we stumble through the day or the month or the many years and just try to not be overwhelmed by the sadness, the anger, the confusion.
If we're lucky, if we're resilient, if we're patient, if we're surrounded by people who let us share and overshare, if we're able to find purpose, if we're able to find the right combination of meds or meditation or mediation -- if we are one or all of the above -- the wounds don't last forever. They scar.
And that's when we can learn, grow, help others. We cannot do that when our wounds are scabs.
At the risk of sounding overly dramatic or sentimental or gory or what have you, I use this as an analogy for my deconversion journey.
It's been four years now since the start of my deconversion. Four years ago, I was that girl. That girl who went to church every Sunday morning when she wasn't working. That girl who "knew" the meaning of life and what happens after we die. That girl who felt uplifted by all things God and Jesus. That girl who underlined parts of the Bible that she found especially meaningful -- black pen, red pen, blue pen, depending on the emotion evoked by the verses. That girl who played piano imperfectly but was okay with it, because God was pleased with a devoted Christian girl who loved Him dearly and had good intentions in her piano-playing attempts and that's all that mattered.
And then a dozen life events happened...and that faith began to crumble...and it hurt much more than I would have imagined it would hurt. When we have love something, someone, some place, some experience, and that gets taken away, we are left with pain. It can take a long time to work through that pain. It is only recently that I've been able to remain relatively detached from my Christian experience. I no longer become overly emotional when talking about it. I no longer have a sense of deep longing as I walk by a church. I know when to call it quits and just watch a funny Youtube clip instead of dwelling on yet another religion article.
We have to let go. We have to let go. We have to let go.When we're still in that place of confusion and upheaval, most of us probably approach "Christian" things cautiously, hopefully. It's still an area of uncertainty... maybe we'll go back...maybe it's "we" who are the problem...It's still a scab, this part of the process.
And then time passes -- time, the healer.... And we read, we Google, we become friends with -- shocker! -- agnostics and atheists, we start attending the "spiritual centre" instead of church-church.
A few weeks ago, I was looking through some paperwork and saw a little note I'd written about a year ago, stating that I'd attended a "regular" church service that morning and walked out about 45 minutes into the service. So, I was still trying, giving it a chance a year ago. Re-visiting. Sorting through it all. And then getting angry, and getting sad, and spending the rest of the day trying to make the pieces of the puzzle fit.
I'm learning that sometimes some things don't get fixed. We cannot go back to how things were. We have to let go. We have to let go. We have to let go. That wound has been revisited a thousand times, but it's not getting better -- it's getting worse, or it's staying the same, and it's just the same cycle over and over.
And then more time passes, and life happens, people come and go, we uproot by choice or by chance, other things occupy our minds...We revamp.
And one Sunday morning, we're at a new restaurant in the city, eating eggs benedict and drinking coconut green tea, reading a book, and we're okay -- happy, even.
The wound is still there. There is still some sadness, some fond memories, some wishful thinking. There will always be something to work through. But healing has been happening and it continues to happen. The scarring is taking place, and we realize we're okay with having that scar.
Life throws things our way, and we ache, we cry, we stumble through the day or the month or the many years and just try to not be overwhelmed by the sadness, the anger, the confusion.
If we're lucky, if we're resilient, if we're patient, if we're surrounded by people who let us share and overshare, if we're able to find purpose, if we're able to find the right combination of meds or meditation or mediation -- if we are one or all of the above -- the wounds don't last forever. They scar.
And that's when we can learn, grow, help others. We cannot do that when our wounds are scabs.
At the risk of sounding overly dramatic or sentimental or gory or what have you, I use this as an analogy for my deconversion journey.
It's been four years now since the start of my deconversion. Four years ago, I was that girl. That girl who went to church every Sunday morning when she wasn't working. That girl who "knew" the meaning of life and what happens after we die. That girl who felt uplifted by all things God and Jesus. That girl who underlined parts of the Bible that she found especially meaningful -- black pen, red pen, blue pen, depending on the emotion evoked by the verses. That girl who played piano imperfectly but was okay with it, because God was pleased with a devoted Christian girl who loved Him dearly and had good intentions in her piano-playing attempts and that's all that mattered.
And then a dozen life events happened...and that faith began to crumble...and it hurt much more than I would have imagined it would hurt. When we have love something, someone, some place, some experience, and that gets taken away, we are left with pain. It can take a long time to work through that pain. It is only recently that I've been able to remain relatively detached from my Christian experience. I no longer become overly emotional when talking about it. I no longer have a sense of deep longing as I walk by a church. I know when to call it quits and just watch a funny Youtube clip instead of dwelling on yet another religion article.
We have to let go. We have to let go. We have to let go.When we're still in that place of confusion and upheaval, most of us probably approach "Christian" things cautiously, hopefully. It's still an area of uncertainty... maybe we'll go back...maybe it's "we" who are the problem...It's still a scab, this part of the process.
And then time passes -- time, the healer.... And we read, we Google, we become friends with -- shocker! -- agnostics and atheists, we start attending the "spiritual centre" instead of church-church.
A few weeks ago, I was looking through some paperwork and saw a little note I'd written about a year ago, stating that I'd attended a "regular" church service that morning and walked out about 45 minutes into the service. So, I was still trying, giving it a chance a year ago. Re-visiting. Sorting through it all. And then getting angry, and getting sad, and spending the rest of the day trying to make the pieces of the puzzle fit.
I'm learning that sometimes some things don't get fixed. We cannot go back to how things were. We have to let go. We have to let go. We have to let go. That wound has been revisited a thousand times, but it's not getting better -- it's getting worse, or it's staying the same, and it's just the same cycle over and over.
And then more time passes, and life happens, people come and go, we uproot by choice or by chance, other things occupy our minds...We revamp.
And one Sunday morning, we're at a new restaurant in the city, eating eggs benedict and drinking coconut green tea, reading a book, and we're okay -- happy, even.
The wound is still there. There is still some sadness, some fond memories, some wishful thinking. There will always be something to work through. But healing has been happening and it continues to happen. The scarring is taking place, and we realize we're okay with having that scar.