Skip to main content

20 something y/o lost girl

By Tess ~

If you told me two years ago that how someone that loves God so much can one day lose their faith in Christianity, I would have thought that would be impossible.... 2 years later, today at the age of 22, I am struggling to tell my family and friends that I no longer believe in God. When i think about telling them I worry about losing my best friends who are all Christians , disappointing my parents and losing the love ones around me. For the past year or so I had continued to go to church and small groups just to see my friends and pretend that I am a great Christian though in my mind bible studies, praying and worship means nothing to me. It has been a long time of pretending and I know that eventually I need to tell the truth. It's painful to think about the outcome and every time I think of telling them I cry. So instead I have avoid it.

It all started at the age of 19 when I went through some difficult times at university, stress and anxiety. I started making lame excuses not to go to bible studies every week and eventually chose to work on Sunday's so I can avoid going to church. At that point I knew I was struggling with my faith but never spoke out because I knew how judgemental people are and would gossip about it. So every now and then I would go back to church just so I can see my friends and pretend everything is fine.

At 20 I continued to attend church and bible studies each week. As months and months went by my friends' faiths continue to grow whereas my spiritual growth never changed for me. As everyone's spiritual life was growing closer to God meant that things in church and bible studies were changing. People started taking turns leading bible studies, church session were interactive and started praying out loud in group which puts pressure on me and this made me feel uncomfortable. End of 2014 I went on my first trip overseas to Europe to get away from things. I came back in December and the next few months was summer holidays. Church was quiet and no small groups. Just non related church hang outs with friends.

February 2015 came along quickly, school started which meant small group and regular church times started again. This point I still attended church but definitely knew I was an atheist. I completed my last semester at Uni and was the hardest couple of months with stress and the thought of self harm, but only just thoughts. I know that if I continue to live my life as a lie to my family and friends, I would not be able to take it anymore. In March I applied for a job in America and knew it was a perfect time for a gap year after I graduated and to get away from my current life. I left for my gap year in July 2015 and have never been happier. No stress of impressing my friends or family of pretending to be a good Christian going to church and small group.

I am now 22 still on my gap year travelling. It's March 2016 , been on my OE for 8 months and I have two more months before I return home. Currently I am on the train to Budapest writing this holding back tears. I have tried writing this in words many times in the past but have always failed and end up crying instead. I have come to the realisation that time is running out before I return home to face reality.

Telling the truth is always the hardest, knowing that this may upset people and may even lose the close relationships with family and friends. Lots and doubts and questions to face as this has always been a secret kept to myself for 2 years now.

But wish me luck!!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

THE FRIGHTENING FACE

By David Andrew Dugle ~ O ctober. Halloween. It's time to visit the haunted house I used to live in. When I was five my dad was able to build a big modern house. Moving in before it was complete, my younger brother and I were sleeping in a large unfinished area directly under the living room. It should have been too new to be a haunted house, but now and then I would wake up in the tiny, dark hours and see the blurry image of a face, or at least what I took to be a face, glowing, faintly yellow, high up on the wall near the ceiling. I'm not kidding! Most nights it didn’t appear at all. But when it did show itself, at first I thought it was a ghost and it scared me like nothing else I’d ever seen. But the face never did anything; unmoving, it just stayed in that one spot. Turning on the lights would make it disappear, making my fears difficult to explain, so I never told anyone. My Sunday School teachers had always told me to be good because God was just behind m

The Blame Game or Shit Happens

By Webmdave ~ A relative suffering from Type 1 diabetes was recently hospitalized for an emergency amputation. The physicians hoped to halt the spread of septic gangrene seeping from an incurable foot wound. Naturally, family and friends were very concerned. His wife was especially concerned. She bemoaned, “I just don’t want this (the advanced sepsis and the resultant amputation) to be my fault.” It may be that this couple didn’t fully comprehend the seriousness of the situation. It may be that their choice of treatment was less than ideal. Perhaps their home diabetes maintenance was inconsistent. Some Christians I know might say the culprit was a lack of spiritual faith. Others would credit it all to God’s mysterious will. Surely there is someone or something to blame. Someone to whom to ascribe credit. Isn’t there? A few days after the operation, I was talking to a man who had family members who had suffered similar diabetic experiences. Some of those also suffered ea

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

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two

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

Reasons for my disbelief

By Rebekah ~ T here are many layers to the reasons for my disbelief, most of which I haven't even touched on here... When I think of Evangelical Christianity, two concepts come to mind: intense psychological traps, and the danger of glossing over and missing a true appreciation for the one life we know that we have. I am actually agnostic when it comes to a being who set creation in motion and remains separated from us in a different realm. If there is a deistic God, then he/she doesn't particularly care if I believe in them, so I won't force belief and instead I will focus on this one life that I know I have, with the people I can see and feel. But I do have a lot of experience with the ideas of God put forth by Evangelical Christianity, and am confident it isn't true. If it's the case god has indeed created both a physical and a heavenly spiritual realm, then why did God even need to create a physical realm? If the point of its existence is to evolve to pas