A Brief Essay on Loneliness after Letting Go
Sometimes it gets lonely when you let go of your community of faith and you realize that you have very little support. The support you may get from folks who are still in the Christian community comes with a healthy dose of, “If you were still in Christ, you wouldn’t have these problems”, as if coming back to faith will instantly remove the challenges you are facing.
That level of backhanded support makes me reticent to confide in folks who are practicing Christianity because the conversation will invariably go back to Christ being the solution. As someone said, “I would rather struggle with the uncomfortable truth than rest in a comfortable lie.”
It’s difficult to find support in a world where your skin color brings a plethora of biased stereotypes along with a country increasingly doubling down on bigotry. Due to the existential danger of being black in the United States, black folk have found refuge within their families and the church. When you lose one or both of those support networks by defying the status quo, life becomes lonely. Yet I must find the strength to keep living, because I am too curious to see what happens next.
