Lost

I have spent the past four years grieving that which I have felt robbed of. I have spent many hours mourning that loss. The anguish. The pain. The trauma.

I haven’t attended church for three years. Church was a central part of my life for decades. I had never envisioned that my life would be without church, without Christianity. A lifer. That’s me.

I couldn’t understand how anyone could walk away.

And yet.

I now find myself wrestling with whether I still believe. I want to believe. I do. But I do not know how to get back to what once was. I have felt lost. An unanchored boat drifting on the ocean current.

I know of so many who have fallen away from that path. From those who have flat out rejected the path to those who are still circling the edges.

I realized something just recently. Have I have been searching for something that no longer exists? Maybe I am not supposed to go back to what once was. Perhaps that time has passed?

I do not want to give up on faith completely. I just know that I cannot go back to the old wineskin. We are a funny old lot. Only changing the outside yet thinking we have changed the whole.

I feel like I have been purged of many of those things that I had wrongly associated with Christianity. That form is now ashes.

I no longer care about the buildings. I have lost interest in the programs. I don’t care for the platforms and titles. The idols “calling”, and “ministry” have lost their sparkle.

Oh, to have something pure, simple and true.

What was it again? Loving God and others? Serving the widow and orphan? How did we make it so complicated? What happened to the simplicity of faith? What was it Paul said? Wasn’t it something about foolishness to the gentiles?

The faith presented to us was too simple. We had to add layers upon layers, steps upon steps. That way we could pride ourselves on our knowledge and achievements. We became the Pharisees we loved to scorn. So many millstones around so many necks.

I don’t care about all those rules anymore, or the rights and the wrongs. The attainment of knowledge or position. What does that mean for me practically? I still don’t quite know. But there must be something different than what I thought was normal. More substantial. More authentic. More real.

Now even though the questions remain, there resides a sense of calmness, peace, shalom.

Knowing that maybe I am not lost. Maybe I am finally found.