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Goodbye Jesus

From Lutheran To Agnostic


OpenHeart

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When I was a little girl, every Sunday morning my family would go to church.  We were Christians; My parents, younger brother, and I were Missouri Synod Lutheran.  It is what held our family together.  We prayed before every meal.  We went to church EVERY Sunday, Wednesdays during Lent, and extra special services for Easter and Christmas.  My mother and I were occasionally in the choir.  My father was an usher.  We were involved.


I remember having a moment where I prayed to invite Jesus into my heart.  I think I was about four.  I remember a white church, and running through the hallways with my friends.  I ducked behind a corner, said a quick prayer (“Jesus please come into my heart, Amen.”), and then went back to playing.  


And I believed everything.  Wholeheartedly.  I believed in the God of the Bible.  That His word is truth.  That I am nothing unless I am covered in the blood of Christ.  That my sins, even sins of thought, could send me to hell.  That if I believed hard enough, and lived righteously enough, that I would be rewarded with eternal life in heaven...  I knew nothing else.


Ours was a military household, and one that upheld corporal punishment.  On almost a daily basis, I watched my younger brother get whallopped with a belt or a cutting board for misbehaving.  Consequently, I never set a toe out of line.  Instead, I poured myself into my religion and my studies.  Academically, I excelled - I graduated high school with a 3.9 GPA (and a sense that somehow I had failed). Spiritually, I craved love and acceptance.


When it came time for me to choose a college, I chose a Christian one.  I even found one of my denomination, and it was only two hours from home.  I could still see my family, and go to my home church.  I studied theology, singing, and acting.  I was very, very good at all of them.  


But my faith and the desires of my heart conflicted. I found myself surrounded by the things I loved most on earth, but I became desperately unhappy. My music classes were tearing my beloved music to shreds, turning beautiful sounds into charts, diagrams, and exercises. My theology classes were ripping my faith to pieces, telling me conflicting things simultaneously. A great depression flooded my soul, and I was lost... If this is where I belong, I thought, why am I so miserable?  I stopped speaking. I lost 20 pounds in three weeks.  I had to drop out. I was very, very depressed.


About six months later I met my husband. We had a whirlwind romance, from July 2001 to September 2002 when we were married.  


I had three criteria for a mate.  1) He must be Christian.  Preferably Lutheran.  2) He must not be in the military.  I didn’t want to move away from home.  3) He must have health insurance.  I have a bad knee and a blood clotting disorder.  After introducing him to the church, and finding myself with a renewed faith from teaching him, he converted.  Bingo, I had all three, and I snagged him.  I was 21.


But my husband and I never really got along when it came to my religion.   I wanted him to go to church more regularly.  He wanted kids.  He wasn’t living up to my standards as to what a Christ-head of a marriage should be, and I felt that my own faith wasn’t up to par.  I had wholly unrealistic expectations, but they meant the world to me.


Things changed when we moved to California five years after we got married.  We started to look for a new church.  Once we started evaluating our beliefs, they started to not make as much sense.  I was incredibly homesick for my family and my home church.  Then we got pregnant.


There was no heartbeat at our first ultrasound visit.  We were informed that growth had stopped at six weeks.  I could wait for the pregnancy to terminate naturally, or I could take the first available appointment for a D&C on Christmas Eve.  In the interest of feeling like a walking tomb for the least amount of time, I chose the latter.  Then I dyed my hair black with blood red streaks.


My Christian family and friends tried to console me.  They told me that there was a little angel out there in heaven, waiting for me to come home to him or her when it was my time.


Is there a soul out there?  That was a horrifying thought to me.  A ‘person’ so to speak, with no name, that never had a heartbeat, and whose only history with me is that I hated it and then it died.  …  


I had wished that fetus gone SO HARD.  I wasn’t ready to be a parent - not away from my home church, not when I was questioning my faith.  


But after the miscarriage, my husband told me that he was no longer a believer.  In fact, he had turned atheist.  My Christ-head of my marriage had rejected Christ.  I no longer had someone to lead me.  My partner in Christ was no longer my partner.  My faith was truly in jeopardy.  I was living with, married to, having sex with, a non-believer.  It was my worst nightmare.


While I was pregnant, I found out that I truly did not want to have children.  Christian or atheist husband, I did not believe I was fit enough, in the sight of God or anyone else, to have a family.  But my husband wanted a child.  I could only think that I cannot have a family in a house divided, raised in doubt.  Doubt meant hellfire.  No Luke-warm Christians, the Bible said…  The family needs to have a strong Christ-head, and a faithful wife.  This family had neither.  


Then came the issue of my relationship with my hubby.  I wasn’t sure I loved him anymore.  How could I bind my soul forever to someone destined for hellfire? Depression gripped me fiercely.  I started to not care if my life was ruined by a child I didn’t want - I figured it had gotten as bad as it could get, how could it get any worse?   


The day after we found out we were having a boy, I was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts.  Somehow giving this fetus a sex had made it all too real - I was having an unwanted child, with a man I wasn’t sure I loved, in a marriage I couldn’t get out of, because I didn’t believe in divorce.  I felt trapped.


I wrestled with the idea of a whether or not I was carrying a soul until my son was born.  They cut him out of me against my will, and when my husband presented his son to me, I didn’t want to look - as if looking at the baby would somehow fix the problem that I now had another soul to take care of, when I so obviously could not take care of myself.


I was hospitalized again after confessing to my old pastor my desire to take a bottle of pills.  

I couldn’t reconcile my faith to my life.  I had been a good person.  I lived a righteous life - Why did I have to be miserable?  I started to think that maybe only the suicides go to heaven.


As time went on, my husband and I drifted.  In an effort to revitalize our marriage, he told me that he wanted me to experience variety in the bedroom.  I was flabbergasted.  Christianity said that what he was talking about was adultery, plain and simple.  But my husband was no longer Christian, and I wasn’t sure I was, either.


So we tried it - we went swinging.  And by and by I fell in love with another man.  Another married man, who fell just as hard for me.  And when I told my husband, and my lover his wife, both spouses agreed to let the lovers love...  We had fallen into polyamory.


I started thinking about the things that polyamory is based on - the ideas of equality, respect, honesty, and love - and I began to look at the world through different eyes; those of a skeptic.  I had been taught my whole life that I could only love one man for the whole of my life. But I learned that that was based on a religious belief, not fact.  My heart has called me to love more than one.  I do love them both, dearly, and I want them both in my life.  Christianity would not allow that.


I don’t believe we choose who we fall in love with. We don’t choose where or when.  And I don’t believe we can choose how many times we fall in love, or that we should hold back from loving as many people as our heart calls us to.


Since I left the church, I've learned a lot of things, and I think I'm growing (albeit in more of a floundering manner) as a person.  In particular, I've learned a lot about love.  The Christian church talks a lot about love.  Talk, talk, talk.  Love, love, love.  They think they know what it means.  And maybe they do, to an extent.  But now, outside of the church, being looked down upon by my Christian fellows, I do not feel the love.  I feel diseased.  I know that the Christian mothers, if they knew of my agnosticism and alternative lifestyle, would grab their children and politely tolerate my presence until I went away, and then they'd tell their little ones to pray for the poor, lost soul (but not to interact with me lest the disease of anti-Christian thoughts happen to be transmitted via proximity).  It's a disgusting feeling.  And I don't think that's love. 

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Welcome to the boards. Thanks for sharing your amazing story :-)

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Welcome!

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Welcome.  Your story was moving.  Thanks for sharing and I wish you the best with your recovery from religion.

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Sister OH! Wow. Thanks so much for sharing your story with us. Please stick around here. Keep learning, keep thinking for yourself, and keep loving! Glory!

 

Love is ALL! I don't usually post videos in the testimonies forum but... I think this is appropriate. Hope you enjoy it. :)

 

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Since I left the church, I've learned a lot of things, and I think I'm growing (albeit in more of a floundering manner) as a person.  In particular, I've learned a lot about love.  The Christian church talks a lot about love.  Talk, talk, talk.  Love, love, love.  They think they know what it means.  And maybe they do, to an extent.  But now, outside of the church, being looked down upon by my Christian fellows, I do not feel the love.  I feel diseased.  I know that the Christian mothers, if they knew of my agnosticism and alternative lifestyle, would grab their children and politely tolerate my presence until I went away, and then they'd tell their little ones to pray for the poor, lost soul (but not to interact with me lest the disease of anti-Christian thoughts happen to be transmitted via proximity).  It's a disgusting feeling.  And I don't think that's love. 

 

 

I don't think it's love, either! It's conditional and seems fake.

Thanks for sharing your story; you're definitely not alone. smile.png

 

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Welcome.

 

No, what Christians generally describe as love is nothing of the sort.  It's just the expression of support of a prejudiced mind for that which it finds acceptable.

 

As to polyamory - I respect anyone who has that much energy!

 

Keep thinking for yourself and living your own life as you see fit - and feel free to shout on these forums if you feel the need to let off steam.

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Open heart, your story just confirms how fucked up one can become because of religion. Thank you so much for sharing this personal story. You stay here with us and continue posting all your thoughts and concerns. Not much shocks us anymore when it comes to what christianity can do to people..

 

Looking forward to hearing  more from you!! You never have to be alone again in this! We've got your back hon!

 

*hug* 

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Welcome from me, too, OpenHeart.  Thank you for your story.  Deep down I think everyone's story resonates with everyone else's, even as all our details differ.  Hope to hear more from you!

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(((welcome open heart))) I appreciate your story, and it's interesting how the details of everyone's stories, seem similar to each other. Nice to have a place to share, and feel 'safe,' so to speak. Looking forward to reading most of your posts. <3

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Hi, OpenHeart. Have you ever tried psychotherapy? It sounds like you were suicidal in the past, and even though you are happy right now, maybe you will become suicidal again later? Just a suggestion. I hope you find time to post some more thoughts.

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I wasn't expecting the O. Henry ending, but I'm glad you overcame suicidal tendencies. 

 

The church gives you grounding, but it is an entirely false sense of grounding that sets people up to fall when they ever have to actually deal with real crises. So the security and comfort you felt during childhood and your teen years was an illusion created by the authority figures in your life. The emotional crisis you went through more than once as an adult was a denial of this, because you were taught that "God" will be there for you in times of trouble. And "God" was absent. Accepting and understanding this is a sign of maturity. 

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Hi, OpenHeart. Have you ever tried psychotherapy? It sounds like you were suicidal in the past, and even though you are happy right now, maybe you will become suicidal again later? Just a suggestion. I hope you find time to post some more thoughts.

 

Yes, I am currently in psychotherapy.  I've had a rash of bad luck with them, but I think I've finally found a good 'un.  I'm keeping her (and crying in her office every other week whenever God comes up) until further notice.  :)

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