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Severed Maps: New Horizons Ahead
They cling no more or I refuse to let them. Guilt, nostalgia, shame hang like spider-strings, thin. Glinting threads from a life I’ve pried open. I pull, they stretch. I breathe, and they fray. I mourned the architecture of belonging. Hymns that lulled me into an easy prayer, promises that paved fear with tidy answers.…
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From Deconstruction to Reconstruction: Finding Value in the Pieces
Part Two The emotional arc of deconstruction didn’t peak in a single feeling. It was cyclical. There was anger, grief, release, then emergence. Each lasted as long as needed to process their phase. The anger, oh the anger! The anger arrived first. It was at times hot, sharp, and insistent. It turned attention outward and…
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From Deconstruction to Reconstruction: Finding Value in the Pieces
“The day I admitted I no longer believed felt like jumping off a cliff. But the fall didn’t kill me. It taught me how to fly.“ I didn’t think losing my faith would leave me empty. Empty was the word they used, a shorthand for the fear that leaving would hollow me out, a warning…
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Fearless and Free: From Panic to Power
Part Three After the baptism, I was helped out of the tank. I was then wrapped in a clean, dry towel and led back to the bathroom. I changed back into my Sunday best dress clothes. Now that I was baptized, did that mean I couldn’t wear these sinful clothes anymore? Would my mother have…
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Fearless and Free: From Panic to Power
Part Two It was a pivotal, terrifying moment in my life. The fear I felt that day still lingers, a constant reminder of how deeply that experience affected me. The air in the church was thick, charged with emotion. I could feel the pressure of the moment, like the weight of every saved congregant’s expectations…
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Fearless and Free: From Panic to Power
Part One I was scared. We all were, or at least I thought we were. But one thing was for sure, I was terrified. He stood there, a striking figure. His shirt was a glaring white, nearly blinding, with a jet-black tie wrapped tightly around his neck. The electric blue suit he wore was something…
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When Obedience Isn’t Faith
Part Four Growing Up Apostolic — and the Quiet, Unnamed Journey of Leaving Without Leaving All at Once “Any religion that doesn’t allow questioning and curiosity is dogma.” Without knowing it, I had stepped onto a path I didn’t yet have the language for. I didn’t know to call it deconstruction. I didn’t know others…
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When Obedience Isn’t Faith
Growing Up Apostolic — and the Quiet, Unnamed Journey of Leaving Without Leaving All at Once “Any religion that doesn’t allow questioning and curiosity is dogma.” Part Three She was large, physically imposing, and had a stare that could strip paint off walls — or as I often thought, stare Jesus off the cross. She…
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When Obedience Isn’t Faith
Growing Up Apostolic — and the Quiet, Unnamed Journey of Leaving Without Leaving All at Once “Any religion that doesn’t allow questioning and curiosity is dogma.” Part Two It was during my adolescent years that the church’s Women’s Department began organizing special classes for the teenage girls — some sort of purity class, though I…
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When Obedience Isn’t Faith
Growing Up Apostolic — and the Quiet, Unnamed Journey of Leaving Without Leaving All at Once “Any religion that doesn’t allow questioning and curiosity is dogma.” I don’t rememberwhere I first heard this quote, so I can’t give credit to the individual. But when I heard it, it struck such a deep chord within me.…