Moments of Healing

I am not someone who typically adheres to traditions- or at least not any popular ones. I don't observe any holidays- in fact, I don't even really "observe" Halloween as I was not allowed to participate in it as a child. Most of the time, these days come and go and I live my life none-the-different. This is quite different from my religious upbringing, where we were certain to observe several religious holidays and participation in national holidays was essentially mandatory as a part of our patriotic identity.

But there are a few events in life that are hard to get away from; New Years is one of them. I don't read any meaning into New Years and I've never really attempted any resolutions before- I prefer to see the capacity to change as a matter of will and determination over that of convenient timing. But even so, it's hard for me to not participate in the "great alignment" of our culture around the new year. Fiscal years can revolve around them, obviously the calendar does, the depth and darkness of winter often feels like "the beginning" of a cycle for me in the sense it feels more like "condition zero" more than "the end".

Regardless, we chunk our lives by years. We associate those 12 months of our lives like chapters that bear the name of the year. For instance, 2020 was the year of Covid and everything was weird; 2014 was the year I met my wife. I think of 2023 and 2024 as the years I really began to flourish as an individual, finally feeling like I've started to become the person I existentially "am". Looking back on 2025 , I believe I will look back on this as the year I finally started to heal.

The household I was raised in didn't believe in psychology. That feels like a weird thing to say, because it's weird to think of someone not believing in something that seems to obviously exist and help people. Or to believe that its foundations are flawed, so it can't really help people. For clarity, I was raised to believe that psychological issues like depression, eating disorders, addiction, etc. were rooted in "sin" and psychology can't cure sin (only Jesus can do that), so psychology isn't a viable means of healing.

It's really hard to express how damaging that belief structure was for me as a kid. I was so depressed as a teenager. I can't tell you how many times I deeply, yearnfully in my soul simply wanted to never exist and to disappear from the cosmos entirely. And then, because of my upbringing, I was raised to believe this was somehow a sin problem, and I needed to love or trust God more. Or have more faith in God's sovereignty. Or whatever. This, of course, was only compounded by the idea that I was, because of the nature of committing sin, pissing God off, stirring a profound sense of divine guilt in myself.

The crushing weight of resenting my existence every day was not bad enough. It had to be compounded by the guilt of disappointing and performing sin against a God that could punish me forever for it. And it's not easy to actually believe these sins are forgiven by God, because a lot of time was spent doubting God, wondering why I was born to suffer and feel this way.

It's not easy to talk about this, because in my mind I still feel this Christian voice in my head primed with an arsenal of retorts or comebacks, explaining how I'm really just misunderstanding X, Y, or Z, or this really means that, or whatever I might say to suggest you just don't believe right. Sometimes, it's just hard to express the excessively painful and ensnaring spiderweb of mental logic you can fall into when you believe in fundamentalism, and the only way you can really understand it is to have personally experienced it. But let me return to the point at hand.

I wasn't allowed psychological help as a kid. I knew I desperately wanted it. I knew I would have done almost anything to get depression medication as a kid, because I was so desperate to feel better than I did. But my parents never would have allowed it. The only counseling available was biblical counseling, and I didn't want that, so I suffered in silence.

Eventually, my deconversion happened. Then I got married, graduated college, got a job with insurance, and I was finally able to start getting some of the help I was unable to utilize as a teenager. One of the most helpful things I have found in since then is the value of a therapist. Simply having someone I can talk to about anything, with the comfort that any of my secrets or disclosures are safe with them, is liberating. I've had many incremental breakthroughs in therapy, slowly chipping away at these psychological barriers I've built within myself.

After a few years of that, at the beginning of this year (2025) I began to realize that some of my deepest, rawest feelings weren't being addressed and I didn't understand how to really handle them. Some of my psychological wounds were too deep for the type of therapists I was seeing, so I knew I had to take another step, start therapy over again, and try to find someone more qualified for my needs. In the end, I came to the conclusion I needed someone with training in depth psychology that was trained in addressing deep, psychological wounds, so I found someone new and began treatment.

I'm about eight months in, and the results have been tremendous. Despite the fact I've been in therapy off-and-on for about 10 years - and I've discussed my religious experiences in therapy more times than I could ever count - I've never made more progress in dealing with those wounds than I have this year.

This is how I know.

Earlier tonight, I was at out with friends at a restaurant and an older woman eagerly approached me to ask about my tattoos. Despite their rather personal levels of meaning, I don’t mind talking about them. Her interest in them was genuinely observable, and she wanted to "hear my story behind them", so I was unusually thorough in my account of them. I mentioned their relevance to ideas from Stoicism, Spinoza, and Nietzsche. I threw out words like substance monism, assuming - for some reason - that she knew what that meant (she did not). I also explained the ideas and symbology behind them, my journey from evangelicalism to today, and how they represent my personal evolution and journey of meaning making (which I don't think I had ever fully explained to someone all at once before, and certainly not a stranger).

After I explained, she told me she lost had a son to suicide who was very much like me: a long-haired, youngish adult covered in tattoos. I believe I struck a powerful memory cord in her and, perhaps, offered her some type of momentary connection to someone she has likely felt so cut off from.

Then, she needed to be sure to tell me that "God loves me." Although my backstory did not hide any opinions or beliefs about of the negative impact my upbringing had on me, and my general disbelief in a conventional understanding of God, she was sure to tell me several times that "God exists, He is real, and He loves you and cares about you" with tears entering her eyes. Truthfully, I think she was projecting her son onto me in that moment, but I didn't want to be rude or unkind so I said "thank you" and let the conversation wrap up as she left the restaurant.

Since I deconverted 11 years ago, I have typically not responded to these types of encounters well internally. While I respect someone's right to believe whatever they want, I don't like those beliefs being impressed on me. I spent... years of my life looking for God. Countless hours praying. Praying face first on the floor. Singing thousands of songs and hymns. Orienting everything in my life around the idea of the evangelical God of the Bible. And eventually, after so many years, I simply stopped believing in him. I never found that cosmic, divine love. I know I certainly imagined feeling it countless times, but in my core of beings, I don't believe they were ever anything more than extremely compelling imaginations.

So, when someone says something like "God loves you", I tend to think back to all of the anger I felt in those first years of my deconversion. Reconciling the pain and suffering in the world with ideas of God. How many countless hours I've spent processing metaphysical arguments about the existence of God and the problem of evil. It really used to make my blood boil. In part, it's because in the deepest core of my being I felt betrayed. I was raised to believe something that I eventually determined to not be true, but these beliefs were given by the people I trusted most in my life. Even worse, extensions of those beliefs harmed me. Emotionally, psychologically, and in my worst of moments, I would manifest those pains physically.

But tonight was different. No, I did not enjoy her telling me those things, but I also didn't get too bothered by them either. I won't tell you I was "non-reactive" to them, but for the first time, I was pretty close to genuinely being unphased by it.

What once was a gaping, painful wound that spoke to the core of my being, tonight felt like a scab tugging on my skin. The wound is closing and I am healing. I am no longer identified by my wounds, I am identified by my ability to move on.

I am thankful for this reflective moment of healing.