My Wrung Out, Grieving, Questioning Heart
when your theology isn’t holding up anymore
My recommended song to pair with these words.
As I’m writing this, the sky is just beginning to lighten. The moon is setting in the west. My office is chilly and my fingers don’t want to move. I’d rather be in bed under double layered blankets. I’m sitting here shivering out words instead.
I haven’t been able to write lately. It’s as though the skill has left me for someone else and I’m the abandoned lover wondering where it all went wrong.
Maybe it’s election fatigue and watching people who claim Christ gleefully shred one another online.
Maybe it’s getting up the guts to finally go to multiple doctor’s appointments and be poked and tested and be told, “There’s not really anything we do for you here. Maybe you’ll find answers for your debilitating health issues outside of this system? No, they won’t take your insurance. Give it a try! Also, you now have a $1,400 ER bill on your account. Good luck!”
Maybe it was seeing my homeland of Appalachia get decimated by Hurricane Helene and then watching the world stop talking about it 3 days later.
I am tired and angry and writing about what’s making me tired and angry feels too vulnerable to attempt. This is my attempt anyway.
The man-made theology I was grafted into isn’t holding up anymore. As I was crying to my husband for the third time this week, a metaphor formed in my brain and sharing it gave language to nameless things I’d been carrying all year.
This was the metaphor:
Imagine my theology as if it were a boat1 passed on to me from past generations. This Theology Boat wasn’t necessarily all bad but it certainly wasn’t all good either. Namely because it was nailed together with various misinterpretations of scripture cherry-picked out of context to fit a particular worldview.
In this Theology Boat I was told there was only one (mostly literal) way to interpret Scripture and asking questions outside of that was a heretical slippery slope. In this Theology Boat I was told to homeschool my kids if at all possible because any alternative was letting them ‘be raised by the world’. In this Theology Boat, I was taught to always, always vote Republican no matter what. In this Theology Boat, I was told that the highest fulfillment of my life would be choosing to be a stay-at-home mom. In this Theology Boat I was told that I couldn’t lead, that was my husband’s job—even if it meant it slowly broke him to bear that burden and it broke me to believe I wasn’t allowed to help him carry it. In this Theology Boat I was told God loved me but didn’t like me very much.
I became an adult and everyone said to climb into this boat and sail into my own life. And I did. But then life happened.
I survived postpartum depression twice. I was diagnosed with a chronic illness. Multiple financial crises piled up for our family and the dream of having a home we could all thrive in withered to ash in our hands. All the while, I tried to stay in my little Theology Boat even though it was making me resent God. I was told everything would be ok if I believed the “right” things. And if I did the “right” things everything would make sense because God is good no matter what.
That’s a great line to sing from a hymnal on Sunday morning. It doesn’t land as well when you’re spitting salt spray out of your mouth in the midst of storms that are breaking your worldview into flotsam and jetsam.
The final holes were punched in my Theology Boat in the last four years. Instead of watching the Christian spaces I’d been in respond to covid and the mounting racial/political unrest in my country with repentance, empathy and lament, it was met with mockery, scorn and arrogance. These people were supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus, right?
And it wasn’t just 2020. In the past four years, I experienced seismic shifts in personal relationships. I thought I’d always be safe with certain people, but instead was betrayed and left gutted in ways that took years to heal from.
I began to realize my Theology Boat wasn’t holding up. It was quickly taking on water, the mast had started to crack, the sails were shredding. Nothing I could do to patch things up was making it any better. Eventually, I had to jump ship. The whole time I was terrified to let anyone know because I was afraid people around me would recoil in horror. They’d believe I’d abandoned God altogether. What they didn’t know was that Theology Boat was going down and taking me with it. I didn’t abandon the ship to abandon God. I jumped into the waves to find God.
These days, I’m out here floundering and my feet haven’t found anything solid yet. It’s weird and messy and exhausting. I don’t want to climb back in that broken Theology Boat but, my goodness, do I miss the way it felt safe for a while.
I’d been asking questions privately for a while. What if the Genesis creation story isn’t literal? What if I don’t always have to think of God as male or any gender at all? Why shouldn’t women proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ from behind a pulpit? What if America was never great? What if you can’t pray hard enough to rid yourself from chronic mental/physical health issues? What if you don’t have to be ashamed when you’re not healed? What if I was wrong about the ‘tenets of my faith’ and that’s ok? What if the way I take my stance is just as important as the stance I take? What if we’re all not worthless worms but made in the image of God regardless of our belief system? What if I see myself and others through the lens of that truth first and foremost?
These are questions that have scared me in the past but they don’t anymore and I’m speaking them out loud. I hope they don’t scare you. Some of them I have answers for, some of them have just brought on more questions.
God is big enough for our questions and the wrestling that comes with them. When Jesus told us he would never leave us or forsake us, I believe him.
I’d love to say I finished this post on the same chilly morning I started it. The truth is, it’s taken me days to cobble these words together. Life hasn’t stopped just because I’m trying to write again.
I’ve needed to catch up on laundry. We had extended family over for dinner. I took many solo hikes with my dog. I have to wake up every weekday and get two children through 5th and 2nd grade simultaneously. And I’ve lugged my wrung out, grieving, questioning heart through every bit of it.
It’s evening now. The crickets are singing to the stars. I’m in my office wondering what to write and what not to write hoping whatever ends up on the page lands in front of tender eyes. Being honest is terrifying.
I may be out here in the wind and the waves but the One whose voice they obey hasn’t abandoned me. Maybe God never needed the boat to keep me safe from the waves. Maybe God wants to hold my hand and teach me how to walk on them instead.
Thanks for reading this free post from The Redemptive. This space continues to the best home for my writing and I only want to pour more into it as we end out the year. If the work I do here sounds like something a friend you know would enjoy, please consider sharing this post with them. And as always, I’m so glad you’re here.
Forgive me if this “theology boat metaphor” originated from someone else. I’ve tried searching for it to make sure I’m not accidentally (subconsciously?) plagiarizing another person’s original thought. If I do find that someone else penned this before me and I’d unintentionally forgotten who, I’ll happily update this post and properly credit them.
All the same over here, friend, so solidarity. We visited a church for the first time since we moved (and honestly, the first time in multiple years), and i was nervous and anxious all the way leading up to it until I walked through the doors. It's a contemplative sort, anabaptist, humble and, whoa, so Jesus drenched (every other word of the sermon was the name of Jesus, not gospel or theology or word or culture or sin or whatever other trigger words turn us off). It felt so helpful, so hopeful. I hope there is a place like that soon for you. Much love.
“I didn’t abandon the ship to abandon God. I jumped into the waves to find God.”
LOVE this quote. I’ve asked many of the same questions, and it can be scary. I really appreciate your honesty. I’ve somewhat come out the other side of many of these questions (not that I’m truly done), but I’ve found God to be a truly safe place to ask my questions and find real truth. I was afraid of an abyss but instead I found deeper communion once I was able to ask God the questions I was trying to suppress.