This post is a collection of journal entries from my sophomore year of college. I am sharing them in advance of the release of my new ebook “A Guide to Recovering From Fundamentalism Or: How I Recovered From Fundamentalism and Still Saved My Soul”. If you want to make sure you get a copy (for free) as soon as it’s released, make sure you are on my mailing list. 
I’m sharing these incredibly personal entries to show a moment in time: A moment when I desperately wanted to be close to God but felt like my very existence was a disappointment. This is what fundamentalism does.
I don’t know how to handle life. Life here, maybe life anywhere. I just want to be alone, but I don’t want to be alone. I don’t know what I want and I don’t know what I need. I can’t handle the perceptions. I can’t handle the expectations. I just want to rest. For someone to know me. To be okay. I need peace…..
I want to go home, but then I don’t fit in there either. Everywhere I go I am either a freak or an outcast. Or I am screwing something up. I always manage to screw everything up.
I can’t explain what it feels like to wonder if you’re gay. To wonder if maybe you were born that way. To explain that every comment someone makes or every joke or every accusations makes me more confused and hurts me more. To make people understand what all these thoughts entail and how they affect all of you. To make people understand the loneliness and isolation, the confusion, the questioning. I feel like I don’t belong anywhere.
I had a long talk with God. I’m such a loser sometimes. I don’t bother to pray or to read a lot of my Bible. And I say I am going into full time ministry. People want me to be open with them, but how can I when I know they won’t have a clue. Or when they’ll offer religious platitudes and optimism that I don’t need to hear.
God is so distant right now and it’s my fault. I don’t take time to pray. I read the Bible, but it’s for [an accountability group]. There’s so much to pray for but I forget, or don’t want to, or fall asleep. And I feel stupid just asking God for what I need and never praying any other time. So I guess I just stopped praying at all. And every time I pray I ask forgiveness for not praying and yet I do it again. I’m selfish and caught up in my dumb issues….Sometimes I just want to be held and told that everything is okay.
I have decided to pretty much start over in my relationship with God. Evaluate what I believe and deal with all my issues concerning God and everything else. I mean my life thus far has pretty much been a waste. I’ve never been consistent. I’ve struggled with everything. And I know starting over won’t solve things, but it’s almost like I need to start life over in order to deal and survive and move on. So now begins the journey. To figure out my life and my beliefs and my relationship with God. It’s not anyone else’s anymore. It’s mine. This is just something I need to do.
Through this time one of the musicians that most helped my faith was Julie Miller. Her songs cut through some of the haze. They spoke of the pain that I was feeling and presented a God who was loving and forgiving. Even when I couldn’t quite believe in that God, knowing that someone else did was really helpful. My favorite songs of hers are “Broken Things”, “All My Tears”, and “By Way Of Sorrow”.
You’ve been taken by the wind
You have known the kiss of sorrow
Doors that would not take you in
Outcast and a stranger
You have come by way of sorrow
You have come by way of tears
But you’ll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years
You have drunk a bitter wine
With none to be your comfort
You who once were left behind
Will be welcome at love’s table
You have come by way of sorrow
You have come by way of tears
But you’ll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years
All the nights that joy has slept
Will awake to days of laughter
Gone the tears that you have wept
You’ll dance in freedom ever after
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This is powerful stuff. Thanks for sharing!
Wow… thank you for making yourself so vulnerable. I am so struck by how much truth there is in the confession “God is so distant right now and it’s my fault.” As a former seminarian/public church person, I know that I would say some good Lutheran words about grace in response to that, but seeing it so bluntly makes me realize how often I have felt/continue to feel the exact same way. And instead it makes me want to have compassion to myself, to say “Maybe I’ve got it wrong, maybe it’s not that God is distant because it’s my fault, but because God is distant right now, I don’t feel much like praying or worshipping or reading the BIble.” I’m always so torn between my Pietist instincts and the theology I actually believe. Not sure what the resolution is, or if it’s just a tension that’s always there.