Looking to Land
Sometime in 2014 I became untethered.
I had a very stable situation growing up, and the two anchors that held it in place were church and school.
Growing up, I was at church all the time. My parents took me to all the events as a child, but I really got serious as a teenager. Anytime the church was open, I was there, usually at least three times a week. I read through the Bible multiple times and couldn’t get enough of it. Most of my closest relationships and primary identity was in the church.
My attachment to school was equally strong. I was good at it. Damn good. I was great at memorizing, could write decently, had a knack for puzzles, and an obsession with perfection, which is the ultimate skill set to dominate our education system. I knew exactly what the teachers wanted, knew what questions would be on the test, knew the tricks, and knew how to work the system. I’ve received less than 5 B’s in 12 years of education and none since seventh grade.
After high school I went to a Bible college–the perfect blend of my two anchors. I did great, continuing to excel at the education system, and also getting to learn more about serving in a church.
There were hints even at that time that I could tell something was amiss.
I remember the summer after I graduated high school driving by the building and realizing that no one cared what I was doing anymore. I didn’t have to check in. My name was up on a plaque somewhere, but other than that the system I had placed so much time and identity in couldn’t care less about me.
After graduating from undergraduate school, I knew I didn’t want to do any more. It just seemed unnecessary and I wasn’t sure why people wanted to go other than to feed their own ego.
Newly married, I was ready for a new challenge, which came in the form of India. The challenge was one part business and one part Hinduism. Moving to India to do business seemed exciting and important. Little did I know both of them would destroy my world.
On the business side, my wife and I tried to help another Bible college grad launch a company in Chennai. Turns out none of us had the slightest clue about how to operate a business. The rules were different and we had trouble navigating them. That other guy left India nine months after we got there. I was in a tailspin, trying to figure out this new game that controlled everything around me that I was not prepared at all. I started to get mad at why no one had ever taught me these things.
I eventually landed with a company that set the foundation for teaching me the real rules of business. I got to rub shoulders with some people who really knew the rules and had been preparing most of their life for it. I got to experiment on my own. I slowly learned the new system. But by the time I had the hang of it, I got fired twice and then sued. I stumbled around again for several months until I finally found a tiny niche within the business world that I had something to offer and have been trying to fake like I know what I’m doing ever since.
Then there was Hinduism. When it comes to other religions, Christians generally want to learn just enough about them to find out their weaknesses in order to exploit them in logical arguments. We took a strikingly different path and tried to learn about the Hindu lifestyle, appreciate it, and see if Christianity fit anywhere into it.
Turns out it doesn’t. Nothing except for this really small part of Christianity called Jesus. That small piece made sense and could fit, but everything else had to be schloffed off. Every last bit of what I’d spent 25 years dedicating myself to. Everything I assumed was true. I had to either get rid of it, forget India entirely, or lose my mind.
These two shifts, dropping all of Christianity except for Jesus and feeling lost in the business world after a perfect education experience, left me unsettled to say the least. I was confused, cynical, mad, lost.
Simultaneously, I experienced watching organizations I had thought I could trust crumble into a perpetual pitifulness: colleges, christian organizations, churches. In my darkest times, when I didn’t have a job, it seemed that God was toying with me, or had no interest in helping me.
Then it hit me one day; I was untethered. My anchors were gone. The educational system I had put so much trust in had utterly failed me and I started to see how much it failed others too. The religion (and affiliated political position) I had taken to be completely true started to seem arrogant, misguided, unrealistic.
I was free floating. Not falling to the earth like a skydiver, but floating out in space like an astronaut. I couldn’t identify any more with my former life. I couldn’t unlearn the hard lessons I had been through. I had unhinged myself from what had been my foundation for so long.
In 2016, we decided to move back the the US after six years in India. One of the many motivations being to reconnect with families and home culture as we raised our children. For those that don’t remember, 2016 was a pretty horrible year to pick to do that. That season pushed me further from what I had known and sealed that I didn’t have a home anymore. I was floating around.
So, since that time I’ve been looking for a place to land. I know the places I can’t stay anymore, but I don’t quite know how to get somewhere else. Like a dandelion seed forever floating up, I’m eager to find some solid ground, even if it’s a place I don’t seem like I belong. It doesn’t have to be forever, but at least for another season.
The last few years have left me more than pessimistic about if such a place exists. I had a pretty black and white world when I started out. Now I mostly see a lot of dark grey.
In How to Survive in Your Native Land, James Herndon says, “…one purpose of writing, like the purpose of talking to other people, is to demonstrate to yourself that you aren’t crazy.” I saved myself from one round of depression by writing my way out of it. I hope to do the same now.
These writings about education, religion, and politics are my attempt to let some steam out of my balloon, hoping that there is a place for me again.
A place where I can be a little wild and radical. Where I don’t have to worry about scaring people with what I actually think. Where people will challenge me to act and stop judging others. Where people try something new instead of sticking with systems that hurt everyone. Where we don’t shelter ourselves. Where we take care of widows and orphans and love our neighbor and wrestle with the truth that I am in You and You are in Me.
Does such a place exist? Am I brave enough to find it? Have I crossed the point of no return?
Lord have mercy.
