An Open Letter to My Past

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*** NOTE: If you just want to read the letter, scroll down to the bolded area that starts: “So, this is my open letter to my past self, my past faith communities, and my past faith…” Otherwise, please read as I give context to why I wrote this open letter. ***

This is something I should have written a while ago but I didn’t know how to begin something so vulnerable, raw, and honest.

But now I have clarity in what I need to write and, more importantly, why I need to write it.

So, for those of you who know me but don’t have a clue what is going on in my life over the past several years; you will either find this post bewildering or irrelevant. But for those of you who have witnessed a peek (or more) into my life during that time, then you will have some idea of what I need to say.

For the past several years I have undergone what many call spiritual deconstruction. I won’t bother to go into details because I have written on this concept previously on my website which you can choose to read if you are interested. Basically, what spiritual deconstruction is in a nutshell is the dismantling and examination of spiritual belief and either discarding or keeping that which speaks most authentically to you and what provides the greatest human flourishing in one’s life. It’s deeply personal, many times painful, sometimes excruciating, and overall difficult and exhausting work. For me, this started when I was in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) to learn and train to become a healthcare chaplain in 2011. Since that time, I have had moments of progression, stagnation, and regression in all areas of my life: spirituality included. Spiritual deconstruction is not a linear movement. There is no beginning, middle and end. It’s not nice and neat with perfectly drawn lines and orderly structure. It’s deeply messy work. For me, it’s not a work I sought out. I didn’t wake up one day and say, “Hey, I feel like deconstructing my entire spiritual identity today.” It just happened. I see this as a movement of growth. As life moved along, I chose to move along. As I was faced with differing beliefs, values, morals; I decided to openly examine those. As I decided what spoke most deeply and personally to my own existence and flourishing, I honored what my spirit told me.

These are not easy movements, decisions, and paths to take. For me, it has come at great cost: not in all areas and in all ways, but areas and ways that mattered to me and caused deep pain and a deep sadness. It caused loneliness, despair, anger, depression, bewilderment, distress, crisis; and above all else: grief.

So my deconstruction process began in CPE and in that time, it was the first time in my life where I was truly exposed to various views of religion and spirituality that I was not accustomed to or aware of. Also in that time I was serving in a church as a youth minister. I would preface that my late uncle was a major influence in my childhood who talked eloquently about various philosophies, religious beliefs, and many other subjects. The man was bright, brilliant, loving, and warm. I miss him dearly and I think if there is an afterlife he would be looking down at me saying, “Damn, so proud of you!” So I didn’t fully complete CPE (way too much to unpack here) and instead took a youth ministry job in South Carolina. It was a disaster. I moved back to Georgia and took another youth ministry job. There was a lot of good and some not so good in that experience. I resigned from that position in 2016 and decided I would leave the pastorate and ministry altogether. So, I grew up going in one direction and belief system, then CPE was a catalyst of my deconstruction. Instead of being true to myself and my journey, I was scared to death and ran back to what I knew, what was familiar, what I thought was comfortable. But it wasn’t comfortable, it was awful. I felt like “new wine in an old wineskin”. My spirit, my mind, my entire self no longer fit the faith of my past and the collective community I had built up attending church most of my life. Between the time I left the pastorate in 2016 till I took my first chaplain position in 2017. I would say it was the most hopeless year of my life. It was hell. I felt like a shell: empty and unfeeling.

Moving into hospice chaplaincy in 2017 became a refreshing, fulfilling vocation that I still am honored to serve in up to this day. It was what I most loved about being a minister without much of the baggage of what ended up causing significant distress in my life and identity. During this time I had no desire to go to church again. I was done with that former construct and understanding of spirituality. But I continued because I honored and still honor my wife and her faith and her identity. I choose to love her and support her while I still maintain a separate identity. That’s marriage for us, and I wouldn’t have it another way with anyone else. She has and continues to be my rock and compass in all things.

Fast forward to 2019 and I leave my last faith community of my past self and spend some time outside of church before entering a new and current faith community: one where I am still challenged, have moments of discomfort, and maybe moments of disagreement: but this is the first and only one that has allowed me to be my fullest self. They have honored where I am and have loved me all the way through. They’ve given me a fresh perspective of what a faith community can look like: one where there is no conformity or conditional fellowship. I’m thankful to them and I am glad to be there now.

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So, this is my open letter to my past self, my past faith communities, and my past faith:

Dear you, me, all of us;

I’ve hesitated to write this for many years because one I was not ready and two because I finally have the hindsight and foresight to know what I need to say.

I’ll begin by saying that I don’t need a response from you and that any critical reaction is one that I won’t entertain or inhabit. I say this not because I can’t think critically or handle criticism, but because of the opposite. For almost 10 years I have undergone a very thorough and intense deconstruction and I don’t believe you could offer me something that would make me ever want to go back to the way things used to be. I’ve fully processed this whole situation and I am content, satisfied and have an deep sense of freedom and relief for the first time since I can remember.

With that being said, if you want to reach out to me in good faith you certainly can and I would welcome that. Please come with love and respect, because if you can’t come in that posture don’t bother coming at all. The immense pain and grief I have felt since leaving my past faith, past faith communities, and feeling an overwhelming collective of almost everyone I have known abandon me, ridicule me, criticize me, or otherwise either proverbially damned me to hell or call me every name in the book is one pain that you need to know is real and it sucks. I still at times have intense feelings of anger and sadness from this past trauma and I still have to work on processing these feelings and honoring them so I can find wholeness and peace.

Now I take responsibility for the movement of my life, the choices I’ve made, and the beliefs I inhabit. But, what I will say is that the “friendships” I thought I once had with hundreds of people after sharing my heart, my wisdom, my love, my entire being to the best of my ability only to realize that many of these perceived “friendships” were absolutely fake is what hurts the most. I’ve realized that these “friendships” were predicated on a common sense of belief. My walking away from that, alone, caused the majority to, in essence, “ghost/cancel/abandon” me. That’s wrong and it shows a fundamental and complete lack of humanity and basic decency. I am thankful for the very few who have extended agape love to me throughout this entire time.

So, I’ve moved on in many ways by creating rituals to discard the physical and non-physical aspects of my past to create a better future for myself. The one and last thing I have not done is say “goodbye”. It’s a ritual I was afraid to do for so long but I need to do it. It will be a symbolic end of my past faith, many in my past faith communities, (particularly to those who have hurt me), and to my past self. It will allow me to move on and form a new community of friends who actually care about me and who I am despite our beliefs. Most of all, it will help me to finally, once and for all, to let go.

This is goodbye. I thank you for being there when I “fit into your mold”, “belonged in your club”. I thank you for allowing me to move through life the best I knew how with the limited knowledge I had. I thank you for showing me that I need to move on. I wish you well. I really do. I don’t wish you this pain and grief I’ve experienced. But if you ever do, know that I intimately know how that feels and that you can come to me. I’ll listen and hold your pain and grief with you. But if you don’t, that’s ok. Be well. Goodbye.

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