Prodigal, Nomad, Exile: On Leaving the Church

I've written before about growing up evangelical.

When I first read an article entitled Three Spiritual Journeys of Millenials/Snake People, I thought, that's me! Or more accurately, that's me and my two siblings.

That's because of the three groups they identified--prodigals, nomads, and exiles, each of us fit into a different category:

My sister was the prodigal. 

My brother was the nomad.

I was the exile.

David Kinnaman of the Barna Group defines each category as follows:

Prodigal: "Prodigals are 18-29 year olds who have a Christian background but have lost their faith, describing themselves as 'no longer Christian.'"

Nomad: "Nomads are 18-29 year olds with a Christian background who have walked away from church engagement yet still consider themselves Christians."

Exile: "Exiles are 18-29 year olds who have a Christian background and are still invested in their Christian faith but feel stuck (or lost) between culture and the church." 

My brother, sister, and I are all very close in age--only two years between us.

We have a lot in common. We have the same parents. We were all raised within the same Christian family in the same Christian evangelical culture. We are all third culture kids. We are all children of divorce.

All of us professed the Christian faith as kids and into our teenage years. At the time I read this article my sister no longer went to church or considered herself a Christian. My brother had once been involved in his church but no longer attended and participated. And I was a hanger-on, never able to kick the church habit completely, attending sporadically during college and then immediately finding my church when I moved to Los Angeles.

Now, several years later, our roles have shifted yet again: My sister is still the prodigal. My brother attends church and small group regularly. I stopped going to church in the summer of last year and have yet to go back. 

So now it would be: 

Sister = Prodigal

Brother = Transcending the three categories

Me = Nomad

As I mentioned, there have been gaps in my church involvement before--but this time feels different.

The break from what had been my church wasn't even fully intentional--it was more an accident of circumstance than anything else.

But a profound fatigue seemed to set in every time I thought about looking for another church home. 

I know that at heart, I am not a nomad, but an exile. I cannot get away from church, any more than I can get away from the longing in my own heart to belong somewhere, anywhere. 

I've joked about simply skipping this entire "leaving evangelicalism" journey and going instant-Lutheran, à la Rachel Held Evans (I was wrong--she attends an Episcopal church). But in my heart I know that it is not that simple.

I have to first untangle myself from all the flotsam and jetsam of my evangelical upbringing--to, as my dad says, "Take the meat and leave the bones."

In order to come home, I must first leave home.

And as I'm realizing now, it took me a very long time to actually leave--I would rather stay as an exile than leave home and start the journey.

I lingered for too long. I stuck around, even when it hurt. I complained and fretted and criticized and contradicted and sniped. And I bled, oh how I bled, denying my own pain. But I didn't leave.

And there were reasons to leave. There are always reasons:

• Sexism (not that all Christians are sexist, but that I always feel like I'm having to fight this battle within what should be a safe space)
• The gap between what evangelical Christianity believes and my own shifting sociopolitical beliefs.
• My former church never talked about systematic racism or inequality. 
• The excruciating nature of church dating

But now, due to extenuating circumstances, I finally left. I think everyone was a bit relieved, including myself.

It's no coincidence that I am currently reading Henri Nouwen's The Return of the Prodigal Son.

Return of the Prodigal Son -  by Rembrandt  Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons

I'm sure there are some people who don't have to leave in order to return. I'm not sure if I'm one of them. I wish I'd left sooner, partially because everything in my life seems to take a really, really long time. I'm like the reverse-energizer-bunny, the sloth of spiritual and emotional growth:

That will be me in 50 years, trudging home, finally ready to return.

In the meantime, I have all kinds of questions and very few answers:

Am I leaving the evangelical world or merely reinventing and redefining my own faith?
How long is this going to take?
Will I ever feel at home at church?
Will I ever get over my past experiences with church?
Will I ever stop getting sucked into the Christian music nostalgia vortex on youtube?
How did I ever think Carman was cool?

I don't know what coming home will look like. I only know that I won't be the same.

More on the journey:

On Sincerity and Being Raised Evangelical
Why is Church Cliquey?
Why is Church Cliquey, Part 2
Why is Church Cliquey? Part 3
Why is Church Cliquey? Part 4

The Church & Mental Health: Interview with a Therapist: Bryan Hall, Part 2

Photo: "Memorial Church" Don McCullough

Yesterday, I began a new series on "The Church & Mental Health." I'm interviewing Christian therapists to talk about the intersection of spirituality and psychology. 

My first interview is with Bryan Hall. Here is Part 2 of the interview. 

Bryan is a therapist who specializes in the entertainment industry. In this section, we talked more about family systems theory, domestic violence,  putting a smiley Jesus face on everything, and why the hot girl in AA is always the last to get sober. This interview has been edited for clarity.

BH: I get parents dropping their kids [teenagers] off, [saying], “Fix my kid. Tell them to stop doing drugs. Tell them to stop being angry." They think I'm just going to get out a bat and beat someone's head in so they stop doing this stuff.

...I know what's going on but I do therapy with the kid. What you find then is that it's not a “this kid” problem, it's a bigger problem.

"We need family therapy," so I bring in the whole family. And then what you find there is, this isn't a family situation, it's a couple's thing.

Because the kid is doing nothing more than acting out the unaddressed psychological issues of the parents. And sometimes these guys are preachers and sometimes they're cops. And sometimes they're like, “I'm not the angry one, you're the angry one.”

I've literally had parents right in front of their kids in the middle of a session call them “a piece of shit,” say, “If he would get his act together, this whole family would be fine. He's 95% of the problem," and sit there looking at me.

And I'm sitting there thinking, are you listening to what you're saying? No wonder the kid—I'd want to get high too, if I had you [as a parent].

And there few things that really—I'm not at all a violent person, but I hear that stuff, and it's like, we're on the 12^th floor right now, I bet I could throw you through this window and see what happens.

But I just have to sit there and be like, “Okay, okay.”

And then what you find is--I'll ask the parents, “Okay, I talked to little Johnny here for a while, and yeah he's doing some things that are not in his best interest. No one's going to argue with that. Never gonna say drugs are okay, anger—I get it. What about you? He told me about how you grew up, and his grandma and grandpa, your parents, and, wow, your dad was a really violent, abusive guy, he was drinking a lot too, huh. So what are you doing to take care of yourself?"

“Oh no no, I don't have time for that. It's all his fault--he needs to stop—I'm not gonna--”

So you get the parents--because by definition there's a power differential between the parents and kids--saying, “No no, we're not looking at our issues, we're looking at the kid's.”

And so you find that when you do couple's therapy, it's not a couple's problem, it's two individual problems. Because what happened was these two people never dealt with the issues of how they grew up.

And the mindset is, “Well, I've got 10 problems. You're hot. Let's get together—you've got 10 problems—and so we'll get together and cancel those problems out.”

Last time I checked, 10 plus 10 equals 20, and not zero.

So now, what really happens is—I've got my problems, you've got your problems, let's get together—oh, well now we're actually really connected, so I kind of have your problems and you sort of have my problems.

So now we're going to have this fire going on and this problem back and forth, but we can't say anything to the church because everybody's gotta put a smiley Jesus face on everything, right? We wouldn't ever want to be honest. Because God knows Jesus was never honest, he just went around lying about things.

And I get this all the time:

“Well, if my husband would do this and get his act together”

“Well if my wife would stop doing this--”

“My girlfriend that--”

So where I spend most of my time is trying to get people to look into the mirror:

"Well dude, hate to tell you this but the only person on earth you can control is yourself. The only person that she can control is herself. So you are 100% in control of your 50%. But no more no less. So you can't control her. You can't force her. At the very most you can scare the crap out of her."

I was magnetic north for domestic violence situations about a year ago. I don't know why, I just got a lot of them at once.

If you're some huge weight lifter dude--or maybe if you're not—you can scare the crap out of your girlfriend or your wife, beat the shit out of her, whatever, okay—she might do what you say in that moment—but in the long run, she's not going to like you, your kids aren't going to like you.

But she's too scared, she's too codependent, maybe there are economic factors, maybe there are kids involved. Maybe there are reasons that she doesn't leave.

In an average DV [domestic violence] case, it takes the abusee—and one out of five times it's the female that's abusing the male—an average of thirteen times leaving and coming back, before they leave for good.

So you would sit there and say, “What is your problem? This guy's beating you up. You had to go to the hospital. Why don't you just leave?”

Which is kind of the equivalent of talking to an alcoholic and saying, “Why don't you just put down the alcohol? Why don't you just stop doing it?" Oh no crap! I had never thought of that before I lost my house, my kids, and everything else.

So there's a lot more to it, but you can see how in that situation, the obvious person is the violent perpetrator. If you're the guy and you're beating up your girlfriend where she has to go to the hospital, that's easily seen.

What's not so easily seen is why does that girl feel so poorly about herself that she would be with this guy? Is she trying to fix him? And what you find is there's a lot of issues from the way [she] grew up.

So, back to your question, if everyone looked at themselves, then all of a sudden, people's level of overall health would change--it would go up. Then you would find much healthier relationships. Because if a person is unhealthy, by definition they cannot have a healthy relationship.

Again, they can be the pastor, they can be the worship leader, they can do all this fancy crap and look really good, and go home and beat the crap out of their kids. And that stuff goes on. Big name preacher, "oh praise Jesus" and all that, and their kids need to go to the hospital.

But, “Oh no, we're not going to tell anyone about this stuff, we're going to keep secrets. We're going to keep feelings buried."

There's an old saying one of my bosses likes, it goes: “Feelings buried alive never die.” And what happens is they come out in other very nasty ways. 

There are people that come in and say, “I want this guy to be like this and I want him to have that and I want him to be like this and have this list--” And that's fine.

I just say, okay, so if this guy came by right now, would you be his dream girl that had this and this and this together? They don't really like to think about that.

But there's an old Al-Anon saying that says, “2s don't attract 10s.” And there's a bunch of 2s walking around going,

“Well, I want this 10 as a girlfriend or a boyfriend.”
“Dude, you're a 2.”

And we're not talking supermodel girl with less attractive guy, we're talking about psychological-level functioning. So, okay, you want a 10, I get it. But right now you're a 2.

Go work on yourself. 'Cause all you're gonna get at this point are 2s. You can't figure out why your last 25 boyfriends have been such jerks? What's the common denominator there? I try not to be that blunt, but at the end of the day, that's the question. Because it comes back to: I gotta look at myself.

And if you're young, if you're hot, if you have money, if you're successful—you don't need to do that. Because there's always going to be somebody else to pick up the slack. There's always some other drug to do. There's always some other credit to get.

So when they say that the hot girls are the last girls in AA to get sober, that's true. Because it's only when they get old enough to where, “Oh, every last guy isn't throwing themselves at me to get me this or do that, well I guess something ought to happen here.”

...to be continued.

You can find Bryan at his website. 

Going to Therapy Changed My Life

Not my notes, but a pretty cool idea. Photo by Sacha Chua 

I first sought help for my brain because my body was killing me.

I had been experiencing severe pain and discomfort that seemed to have no tangible physical explanation. A few WebMD searches later, and I was either headed to an early grave or doomed to spend the rest of my life with a debilitating, painful disease.

The fear was overwhelming.

I signed up for therapy, online (Thank you, technology).

I had been thinking about going for years, but it was pain and fear that pushed me over the edge.

Going to therapy changed my life, and all I could think was, "Why didn't I do this sooner?"

Therapy is not a panacea: a cure for every kind of physical, emotional, spiritual or mental pain. But it has been a powerful, healing force.

So in case you've been thinking about going, or you went once and never went back, or you used to go, but stopped--

My intent is to address some of the barriers that kept me from taking the first step. Maybe you can relate.

I didn't go to therapy because...

1. No one in my family ever went to therapy, talked about going, or mentioned it as an option.

There are certain kinds of pain that are not okay to talk about. It could be physical pain--to be transparent, part of what propelled me into therapy was the way in which my family both did and did not respond to my physical (and by extension, emotional) pain.

It might be helpful to ask:

What kinds of pain are okay? Not okay?
How am I allowed to talk about pain?
What does empathy look like in my family?
Is there a distrust around being vulnerable? Is there an escape from it, such as humor, sarcasm, distraction, ridicule, ignoring, anger, silence?
How does my family treat vulnerability in general?

2. I had never experienced a major, identifiable trauma that would justify going.

There's a social stigma to seeking therapy: that something deep and terrible must be wrong with you. Well, I definitely felt like there was something wrong with me, but I had nothing to point to, to say, "This! This is why I feel broken."

There's a false sense of shame that tends to go with trauma, even vague, unidentifiable trauma. There's a false sense of shame around needing help. But shame doesn't mean there is something wrong with you--and neither does going to therapy.

If your buddy sprained his ankle, would you ridicule him for going to the doctor instead of playing full court basketball?

"C'mon! What's wrong with you! Why can't you keep up?"

Just like you wouldn't feel shame over going to the hospital for an infected wound or broken bone, seeking therapy merely means that you are human, and that it's possible that things could get better, could be better.

3. I had a traumatic experience with pastoral counseling.

Just as there is a social stigma to therapy, there can also be a spiritual stigma--the belief that God, the church, your pastor, small group, the Bible, and ten hours of prayer per day should be able to cure all that ails you emotionally and psychologically.

There's the belief that simply grasping the truth of "God loves you" and maybe a few cathartic crying sessions at the altar will bring healing to even the deepest, most ingrained sense of shame.

I really wish that were true.

I'm not completely discounting pastoral counseling or any of the spiritual practices listed above. But I have also experienced firsthand how damaging it can be to receive non-professional counseling that both goes too far and doesn't go far enough.

I believe the intent of my pastor was not to harm me, but to help me. However, emotionally it was akin to performing surgery without proper training, exposing a deep wound to the air and the elements, and then expecting my heart to heal itself.

It didn't.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking professional help outside of the church. There is nothing wrong with going to a non-Christian therapist, even if you are a Christian.

There is nothing wrong with being hurt because someone dug around in your emotional guts with a penknife and had absolutely no clue what they were doing.

I wish at the time that instead of shutting down because I was "broken" (and if not even God or my pastor or my spiritual community could help me, who could?), that I had sought out a professional therapist.

4. I thought I couldn't afford to pay for therapy.

This was a huge barrier for me.

Therapy is expensive. I had no health insurance. However, I was also unaware that there are many low-cost and affordable options for seeing a therapist.

I eventually found a non-profit organization in Los Angeles that provides sliding scale membership and counseling services. If it weren't for the availability of low-cost counseling, I don't think I would have ever gone.

Again, therapy is not a panacea. Not all therapists are created equal. It really helps to find the right fit.

If you are thinking about going to therapy, I hope that you take the leap. The barriers are real, but you are definitely, definitely worth it.



[If you would like information on low cost therapy options in the Los Angeles area, please contact me.]

Growing the F--- Up: What I've learned in my late 20s

Adults can still build blanket forts. Right?

When I was 14 and on a rafting trip in Nepal with my family, I did a survey of our fellow travelers that included the question, "Do you feel like an adult?"

All of the 20 and 30 somethings that I surveyed put, "No." [This was an actual survey. I wrote down the questions and asked each person to write down their answers.]

On that theme, I've been contemplating writing this blog post for a while now. And really, I have only one thesis or overarching idea here: 

Your late 20s is when the things that you've avoided dealing with start dealing with you:

This could be anything--a fear of public speaking, a problem with authority, that parking ticket from four years ago that you forgot to pay (oops), your $2 store shopping addiction, your overwhelming hatred for your job, the crap you haven't forgiven your parents for, your beef with God, your lack of a life outside of work, your dread of parallel parking, your out-of-control credit card debt, compounding interest on your student loans, the deteriorating state of your dental health, your aversion to brussels sprouts, your lousy choice in romantic partners, your friends all moving away, and I could go on.

In other words, if there is some area of your life that you have neglected to grow up in, that area of your life is going to make itself felt in a major, probably uncomfortable and possibly painful way (it will bite you in the butt).

If you don't start owning it, it will start owning you. If you don't take care of it, it will take you out. If you don't kick it in the ass, you'll end up on your ass. It's all the same advice, actually.

Why is this? I think in the first half of your 20s, it can be easy to coast on things like good health, natural talents and abilities, friendships you made in college, a solid education, an overweening confidence in your own potential, blatant naiveté, and youthful optimism (obviously, these are not true for everyone).

But unless life is a consistent downhill slope, it's impossible to simply coast forever. Eventually, you will reach a hill. I hate hills.

Like Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do." If what we repeatedly do is eat cheetos for breakfast and complain about a dead end job at the crayon factory, it doesn't matter how talented or healthy or privileged we are. The results won't be pretty.

In your late 20s, things can start to fall apart (or feel like they're falling apart). Things like your body. Or your relationships. Or your career goals and aspirations.

So let's talk about the roles of pain, fear, and grief in this process.

The Role of Pain

Pain is a sign that something is wrong. Where in your life are you feeling pain? Is it in your body? About your body? In your relationship with your parents? In your identity as a man or woman? In your frustrations about your job?

I think it's helpful here (borrowing from Dr. Henry Cloud) to distinguish between the pain of growth and pain that is just simply bad--the kind that screams at you: "GET OUT NOW." Pain can also helpfully point to underdeveloped or neglected parts of our lives.

For example, if you're feeling the pain of loneliness, this could point to a need to develop new friendships or nurture the ones you already have. Now is your chance to pay attention to what the pain in your life is telling you--whether it's, "Hey, maybe you should lay off the spicy Thai food" or "I would like to make new friends" or "It's time to leave this job. It's not going to get better."

For me, years of blithely confident good health gave way to panic when I started experiencing pain, discomfort, and, worst of all, tingling in my upper back and neck. I could barely stand to sit for the 8 hours a day required at my desk job. But although the symptoms (such as pain) were only then showing up, my guess is the underlying issue probably started a long, long time ago.

But it wasn't until pain showed up that I started paying attention.

[Note: Take care of your body. It is the only one you have.]

The Role of Fear

This is about more than just Instagram-fueled FOMO (fear of missing out). There's the fear of missing out on the important things we're meant to do in our lives, whatever they may be.

The fear of never writing that novel or screenplay. Of never making that film. Of never taking that risk to start our own business or apply for that dream job.

Recently, "adventure" has been a theme in my life, and I realized that adventure always involves risk of some kind. And where there is risk, there can be fear. However, the best kind of fear is not the crippling fear of making a mistake that keeps you from ever venturing out on that ledge. It's the kind of fear that pushes you to venture out in the first place.

Am I more afraid of screwing up or am I more afraid of never getting to do what it is I want to do? One kind of fear confines you to a tiny box in which you can almost guarantee you will never make a mistake. The other kind sends you out into the unknown where, yeah, I guess something terrible could happen, but also something wonderful.

Being confined to a tiny box of perfectionism is terrible.

The Role of Grief

When I started going to therapy a few years ago, I was unprepared for the intense waves of pain and grief that tore through me. I had so much unresolved pain over my parents' divorce (that happened when I was 13) and from feeling abandoned, unloved, and unwanted by both parents.

This is the kind of stuff that will make an appearance sooner or later if you leave it unattended. Unattended baggage is a dangerous thing. Given the right conditions, unresolved feelings won't just be a whisper in your subconscious ("You're not good enough," "You're a failure" ), rather they will start screaming for attention at the top of their lungs, forcing you to either pay attention or drown them out with busyness, distraction, addiction, etc.

Dealing with unresolved grief is pretty much the opposite of fun. But the consequences of not dealing with it can be even worse.

Now that we've discussed the roles of pain, fear, and grief, I've written some questions (I like questions) about different areas in life that you may or may not have grown up in. This is not meant to shame anyone or provide some arbitrary benchmark, but instead to say, "Hey, maybe you can work on this now before it gets too gnarly."

Mentally
Do you have your own personal definition of what it means to be mentally healthy? What does unhealthy look like?
Are you challenging yourself to grow intellectually?
Do you read books / watch movies / listen to podcasts that engage you intellectually or are you numbed out most of the time on junk?

Physically
How do you take care of your body and your health?
Do you eat your vegetables?
How much sleep are you getting?
Are you comfortable with your sexuality?
Do you recognize the physical boundaries between you and others and are you able to recognize when your boundaries have been violated or when you are violating the boundaries of others?

Emotionally
How do you deal with difficult emotions like fear, anger, jealousy, envy, shame?
How do you deal with pain, disappointment, and loss?
Do you know how to grieve?
Is there room in your life for joy and gratitude?

Spiritually
Are you angry with God? Are you angry with God and avoiding the issue?
If you go to church, why? If you don't, why?
How do you connect with God?
How do you connect with others in a spiritual community?
What does unconditional love feel like?

Relationally
Do you cultivate and nurture your friendships?
How do you deal with loneliness?
Do you feel comfortable asking for help?
How's your support system?
Are you an adult or a child in your relationship with your father? Mother? Siblings? Significant other?

Financially
Do you pay your own bills?
Are you spending less than you make?
How's debt treating you?
Are you saving for retirement? (ugh)
Do you give to people, causes, organizations, stories that you care about?

Vocationally
If you hate your job, are you doing something about it?
If you're not making enough money, are you doing something about it? (like asking for a raise)
What are you good at?
Are you pursuing your dreams or someone else's?
How do you deal with failure, mistakes, setbacks?
If you have a day job, are you honoring it by showing up on time, working when you're at work, etc.?
Do you have career goals? Do you have a realistic timeline for those goals?
What do you want to be when you grow up?

Three Confessions and a Funeral

My Uncle Paul died on July 3, 2014 at the age of 91.

I got an email from my dad asking me to go to the memorial service.

First confession: I didn't want to go. If I'm honest, that was my first thought.

My second thought was this:

"You're selfish."

I showed up to the memorial service. I was late and wearing heels that inappropriately CLACK, CLACK'ed their way down the aisle.

[I can't really walk in heels--even comfortable, conservative size 8W heels purchased at Payless.]

Selfish. Selfish.

I sat in a pew in Sky Rose Chapel--high vaulted ceilings, stone floors, over-cranked AC--and listened to an account of my Uncle's life narrated in Chinese. My Uncle Paul had served as pastor of South Bay Chinese Christian Church for 33 years. He became a Christian in 1950 and moved from Taiwan to the United States in 1969.

I read the bulletin.

Printed there were these lyrics in Chinese and English:

What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer! 

Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged--take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful, who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness; take it to the Lord in prayer. 

Second confession: Shoes.

I once "borrowed" my Uncle Paul's Nike sneakers when I had no comfortable shoes to wear home and "forgot" to return them.

Selfish.

But sitting in that freezing chapel, hearing and reading about my Uncle's life--and not only that, remembering the kind of man that he was--

Gentle. Incredibly gentle. Kind. Patient.

We weren't close, but I can remember him sending me off multiple times over the years after a visit or stay at his and Aunt Mona's house, always walking me outside to the driveway and praying to God for me in Chinese.

For my protection. For my blessing. For my safety.

A father's blessing. A father's gentleness. A father's forgiveness.

I cried. I cried because I'm me and I was at a funeral.

I cried because I had carried this burden of SELFISH for a very, very long time.

I cried because I had accepted this burden from someone that I loved (and it can be so hard to refuse burdens from those that you love).

I cried because in that moment I felt the gentleness and forgiveness of a God who does not condemn me. Who knows my every weakness and forgives me.

I cried because I felt like, "Hey, God wouldn't want me to carry this burden of SELFISH and I don't think my uncle would want me to either."

I cried because God is my father. And he is gentle with me.

Third confession: I'm still struggling to lay down this burden. And that's why I'm writing this.

Why You're Not Angry Enough

Because he's a really nice guy. One of the nicest you've ever met.

Because if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything.

Because you don't want him to think you're crazy, emotional, irrational, PMSing, or all of the above.

Because maybe this is God's will.

Because you don't want to scare the boys away.

Because what's done is done. You can't change the past.

Because if you're angry, you might start crying.

Because if you're angry, you might be told to "calm down," "don't over-think it" (too late), "you need to lighten up."

Because what happened to me wasn't all that bad.

Because God doesn't like it when you're angry.

Because if you're not nice, then you're a bitch, and you don't want to be a bitch.

Because women are allowed to be angry, but not too angry. [See, "And you'll scare the boys away," above.]

Because your parents did the best that they could.

Because anger feels like a destructive emotion, and you don't want to destroy anything (except patriarchy, of course).

Because you want to protect him.

Because you want to protect her.

Because maybe I led him on.

Because maybe I deserved it.

Because maybe it was my fault.

Because you don't want to "hold onto unforgiveness" or "allow bitterness to take root."

Because why can't you let go already and stop blaming other people for your problems?

Because anger hurts.

Because we don't talk about that in this house.

Because no one will ever love you if you're angry.

On Sincerity and Being Raised Evangelical

"Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He's gotta pick this one. He's got to. I don't see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there's not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see."
-Linus, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"

I've been drawn to sincerity lately. 

"As opposed to what?" you ask.

You may not have noticed, but I'm normally drawn to sarcasm, irony and snark.

It's weird. I've been doing a lot of sincere things recently. Sincerely. 

For example, I've been going to yoga. Have you ever tried doing downward dog insincerely? It's tough. 

I've also been listening to this song a lot. 

In addition, I went to a poetry writing group. The sincerity was as thick and oozing as blue cheese that's been sitting in a 70 degree office for three days. [This is not meant as a criticism of poetry groups or of this poetry group in particular. This poetry group is awesome.]

So, in the spirit of sincerity, I need to get something off my chest: 

My childhood was crazy--freaking insane. 

Can I just admit this? Can I just say it out loud? 

I don't even know who I'm looking for permission from--my parents, God, peers. 

Maybe my childhood was crazy in a generic fundamentalist-evangelical-culture-in-the-90s kind of way, and you grew up experiencing the same kind of crazy, and we can talk about it and laugh about it over an IPA or five. 

Or maybe my childhood was crazy in a very specific, unique way, the way that all families manufacture their own specific brand of nuts. Hard to say.

As a kid, I read everything and I believed almost as much.

I read Rush Limbaugh and absorbed the term "Feminazi." I also read the Book of Genesis and cried bitterly when I came to this passage: 

"To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”
-Genesis 3:16

This was not a single tear rolling down my face. This was curled up on the bunk bed I shared with my sister, clutching my Bible, I'm not sure I believe in God anymore tears. 

I was, like most 12 year-olds, very--well, sincere. 

And on some level, I believed that God hated women. I mean, just look at that curse. I'll take thorns and thistles for $1,000, Alex. 

And yet, in many ways I bought wholeheartedly into Christian culture. I out-did the most legalistic advice from Focus on the Family. I out-Phariseed the most stringent Pharisee. I believed deeply in the sincerity of my faith. And now I feel betrayed. 

I've watched my peers raised in evangelical Christian culture go to opposite extremes:

Type Y: Further entrenchment

Type Z: Complete rejection 

But I suppose there are also a substantial number of us in the middle--Christian, but not necessarily conservative. Maybe we support gay marriage or smoke pot every other Friday or don't think twice about dropping the F bomb. 

You know the type. 

Our Christianity is snarkier, more politically correct, more hip, more in touch with the inner cynic. We embrace doubt, irony, ambiguity, paradox, and "everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial."

Even as I reflect on the church of my youth, I find it difficult to relate to the incredibly "relevant" church I currently attend. There are things about it that I just don't get, such as: 

• Why is the focus of evangelism still on getting people to come to church? 
• Is that what this slick, well-produced video is for? 
• Was that guy in the video the same guy I saw in that All-State commercial yesterday?

And through it all, I'm drawn to the sincerity of the gospel. 

I'm still sitting in that pumpkin patch. It's cold. I'm tired. I want to go home and sleep in my warm bed. I don't feel cool or hip or relevant. I feel exhausted and beaten down. I feel ready to give up. 

Maybe then, the Great Pumpkin will come. 

Dear 15-year-old me,

You are fat.

Just kidding. Sort of. Later on, your family and friends will tell you that you went through a "chubby" phase. Subsequently, you will get a lot of comments along the lines of, "Wow! You've lost weight!" or, "You're skinny now!" Uh...thanks?

This will come as a surprise. No biggie. I'm glad you don't think you're fat. Cause you're not. 

You are pretty. 

Don't act so shocked. Attention from guys will come later, and I know you think you're safe in that baggy black sweatshirt, but it's okay to feel attractive. Dressing in an appealing way is not a betrayal of your identity. Attention is not always a bad thing. You don't have to hide.

Homeschooling is a terrible idea.

You will never get the "normal high school experience." And let's face it, you're not disciplined enough to homeschool yourself. You are, however, extremely stubborn.

Homeschooling is an awesome idea.

Going from Beijing-->World travel-->North Carolina will be one of the toughest transitions of your life. You won't feel like you fit in. At all. You will probably always be ambivalent about NC as a whole. You will probably always feel at least a little bit like an outsider. But, the 6-month period you spend in Beijing your junior year of high school will change your life--an oasis in the desert of adolescence. You will learn how to edit. You will spend the first of many late, lonely nights cutting video. You will love it. God help us all.

You are not a burden.

I don't even know how to begin to convey this to you. You are very independent, and that can be a good thing, but that personality trait is being twisted into something else--something that's not good. You are not on your own. It may feel like that, like you need to be entirely self-sufficient now that your parents are divorced, but that's not the case. Retreating into yourself so as not to impose on anyone is not the way to go. It will only leave you isolated.

You are hurting.

I'm sorry.

You are OK. 

I could tell you all about the messed up way you relate to your family, or how you're judgmental, self-righteous, bitter, and perfectionistic--how you hurt the people you love the most in the most cutting ways possible. But you know what, they forgive you later. You even forgive you. You are OK.

And you know what--I still think "The Outsiders" is a great movie.

Stay gold, kid. 

Sincerely,

Me

Inspiration: http://jezebel.com/5951005/would-your-15+year+old-self-listen-to-you