Finding my footing: Re-discovering God after leaving Christianity, Pt. 2
While writing Part 1 of this pair of blog posts, I focused on some of the themes in re-discovery that I feel the most positive about. I like where much of the rediscovery process has gotten me — I feel like I make more sense, like I’ve been able to drop many of the contradictions and confusing pieces I was glued to while within the church.
After finishing that blog post, I realized I was leaving out a significant part of the re-discovery process, and that was when I knew I would need a part 2.
This part is going to be a little bit more personal, and a lot sadder.
The thing about re-discovering God on my own has been that ultimately, God feels a lot more distant. I really don’t feel like I have that extremely personal, close relationship like I once felt that I had. Maybe part of it has been that I have moved away from humanizing God — I don’t think of God as being a human male anymore. So, it’s kind of hard to picture what God is. And it’s hard to really love and bond with an entity that’s so vague. I can love God’s creations and I can love the life God gave me. But I’m having trouble actually feeling all of the warm, positive, feelings that I would like to feel — affection and awe, namely.
Maybe I’m holding onto a lot of anger and pain. Maybe it’s hard to feel affection and awe when things have been so difficult and I’ve watched so many people and things I love crash and burn in violent and heart-rending ways. Maybe it’s hard to feel faithful and optimistic when I’m not really sure how faith plays into things, how it can exist outside of a double standard or a superstition. But these are aspects that I’m really missing, and they are big ones.
I would give anything to feel God around me again. I hope that I will one day. But I haven’t yet, and I believe that is a clue nudging me that I must have something really wrong, still. This can’t be right, I don’t think.
