A Decade+ of Questions
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I’ve spent the last ten or so years re-examining every part of my life. I’ve questioned my place in the world and my place in the church. I’ve wondered who is staring back at me when I look in the mirror and re-introduced myself like an old friend. My commitments and obligations ran up against my anxiety, depression, and ADHD and when I crashed and burned I wiped the slate clean. I journaled a lot and then I stopped journaling at all. I prayed and, when it felt like God had stopped listening, I stopped praying. I went to seminary. I graduated. I learned to live with chronic pain and fatigue. I redefined my ideas of parenting and began to design the life I wanted to live, not just the one that was easiest.
All of the upending of life has impacted my faith, but I haven’t known how to talk about it. Truthfully, I haven’t known where to begin. How do you talk about questions when you’ve only ever talked about the answers? It’s truly a pandora’s box and I’ve been afraid of what might happen if I open it.
And yet…
I know I was only able to be vulnerable when someone else went first.
And I know sometimes we’re waiting for someone to give us permission.
Or for someone to ask us the question we’ve been avoiding asking ourselves.
I don’t have any more answers than when I started, but I’m certain I’m not the only one who has been in search of a more expansive faith: one with the space for infinite questions and enough room to hold all our grief, all our hurts, and every part of ourselves we were taught to believe was too much, too little, or too *insert insecurity here* to belong.
I’ve got over a decade’s worth of questions to share — some answered, some not — and I hope they might give you some measure of freedom to ask all the questions you’ve been too afraid to ask, too.
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For a few books to help you feel less alone in your grief, check out BeckyLMcCoy.com/GriefLibrary
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