Making the Cut — Part 4: The Real World

My separation-from-religion experience

This is the fourth part of a 6-part series chronicling my journey away from religion. If it offends you, I’m sorry, but you really shouldn’t let other people’s experiences trouble you. This is my experience and isn’t intended to discredit your experiences or beliefs in any way. My journey is mine and your journey is yours. I respect them equally.

Part 4: The Real World

One week every summer my siblings and I were sent away two at a time to stay in the country with our grandparents. It took a two-hour backseat car ride to get there, but it was always worth it. Since we are 15 months apart in age, my older brother and I were paired for these annual expeditions. My mother’s parents were nothing like my mother. They were interested and happy. They read books, played card games, smoked cigarettes, and ate coffee cake for breakfast.

Our three cousins lived down the road, just past the farm. My mother’s sister and family carried the scent of pig dung wherever they went, but that’s not why they were a complete mystery to my young brain. Our cousins were not much older than me, but still they listened to rock music on the radio, watched television, and read comic books. They wore swimsuits and swam in the pond; they road motorbikes down dirt roads. Playing with an ouija board, staying up until after dark, and romping in the corn silo without adults around were everyday events for them. And, like a pull toy with a string, my brother and I were always close behind.

After sunset, while falling asleep on the pull out couch in our grandparent’s tiny den, my brother and I would whisper about our day while the pond frogs’ voices thundered through the windows. I had questions about target practicing with rifles and smoothing Arizona stones on the polishing wheel with grandpa. And he had all the answers about working antique sewing machines and quilling paper into owl shapes with grandma.

This place held no guilt, yet swelled with contaminated surprises. Their lives seemed to move from moment to moment without the influence of holy ghosts or evil spirits. Was this the worldliness I had been warned of from the pulpit? Were my ever-fascinating grandparents and cousins a part of what made the world such an evil place that father had to keep us separated from it at all costs?

Each year as the car backed out of my grandparent’s driveway, I would wave goodbye with dripping happiness. This childhood place was oddly absent of god and religion yet not overthrown by evil either. I wanted to stay in a place where there were no scripture passages to memorize and no 2-hour church services to sit through. On those rides home I would imagine what it was like to wear a swim suit or play a card game. And I’d try desperately to find the inherent connection of these forbidden things to the evil they must possess.

I didn’t know yet that my christian upbringing would push me to believe a college education is what lures christians toward the world and away from The Body. I didn’t know yet that my brother would leave The Body soon after starting college, proof to us all that secular education was indeed a direct path to the world. I didn’t know that my two beautiful daughters — the products of christian education themselves — would come out as lesbians and make themselves comfortable in amazing relationships.

As a child I didn’t notice how The Body had dug large holes of theology and planted my childhood brain deep into the spiritual sod. The merging of my mind with their belief system appeared seamless, no slits suggesting separation, no perforation to offer a point of disconnect. And, as I grew up contemplating all possible paths my future could take, each one led back to The Body of Christ. No part of the world — not even my grandparent’s simple world — was an option. I saw no other way forward for my life. The burden of god’s truth was the only discomfort I had ever known and the only option I could foresee as I considered the double-stitching between my life and my religion.

As I reached adulthood, religion became a satisfying haze around me, one I never wished would clear. I had buckled under the weight of my christian upbringing and it would be years before I could even image who I could be if separated from my beliefs of god and church.

Making the Cut — Part 5: Pulling at the Seams

Pulling at the Seams

At 45 years old, I found a lump of cancer. Turns out there were three cancer lumps. I didn’t know it then, but separation from The Body had commenced. For me cancer was not a gift, not a blessing. But it did write the book on life perspective, and for that reason, I’m grateful I took the time to read it . . .

Don’t miss Making the Cut: Part 5

In case you missed the beginning:

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In peace and light,

Joolz