So at some point in their lives, I think that many women have probably lied about having a boyfriend. You’re in an awkward situation, somebody you would rather not have ask you out is asking you out, and you panic. “I already have a boyfriend!” Lie. Oops.

I recently got placed at a temporary job for only three weeks. I was working with a group of guys who thought it was funny to give me a hard time in order to see if they could get a rise out of me. It was all fun and games, until this conversation happened:

Co-worker: “Do you have a boyfriend?”
Me: (responding to what I believed was obviously a joke) “That’s just ridiculous. You are clearly too old for me, and I’ve already heard you talk about your wife.”
Co-worker: “Ha. Ha. It’s not for me; it’s for my son.”
Insert the previously mentioned moment of panic…
Me: “Ummmm…yes. Yes I do have a boyfriend.”

Lie.

I didn’t think much about it at first. It was actually kind of funny. My fake boyfriend. However, even in such a small amount of time at this job, my friendships with my co-workers actually started to become genuine. We started to ask questions about each other’s lives- families, friends, weekend plans- and inevitably, the questions about my boyfriend came up. You know, my boyfriend who wasn’t real. The guilt started to creep in.
I swear it was harmless! I didn’t mean it! I just said it, before I even knew what I was saying! No matter what the reason for telling it, this seemingly harmless little fib was now obstructing genuine relationships. Just because I was trying to avoid a little awkwardness. I found myself wishing that I hadn’t underestimated how genuine these people would be in their attempts to get to know me. I was sad that I hadn’t been more genuine in my attempts toward them.

I knew what I had to do.

Yes, I broke up with my fake boyfriend.

Thank you in advance for your deepest sympathies. Thankfully, it was a clean break, mutual, and the best for all involved.

Consolation gifts and chocolates will be accepted.

While we’re on the subject, the guys I work with are now convinced that the reason I’m not dating is that I don’t hunt or fish. So if anyone is offering lessons, please let me know.

i’ve seen children orphaned by incurable disease
crippled nations with too many mouths to feed
i’ve seen families broken by infidelities
and yet, i can see.
i was blind but now i can see.

i cry out for this world to be comfortable
to be fair, to be just, to be good
or maybe just to be easy
if you’re real, it would be what it should
this deep ache for mercy makes my heart heavy, heavy
when i’m quiet it makes my heart sing
this reminder that i don’t belong
also promises i will go home
there’s a promise that i will see home.

i see children go hungry
for worship of money
i see mothers alone
and we pick up our stones
and yet, i can see.
i was blind but now i can see.

i see through a glass that is darkened by flesh
these shadows that whisper of Goodness
these glimpses too often drowned out
by graphic displays of our human weakness
reality clashes with Reality
what is clear with what remains a mystery
what is fair with unreasonable mercy
i can’t see! but i’m not blind like i used to be
these shadows promise that when i arrive home
i will finally know as i am known
they promise us we will see home.

So I took another step toward the elusive peace and answers I had been not-so-actively pursuing, and I headed to the beach. I was committed to being quiet and still and contemplative for the weekend- something that had been very much lacking in my life lately. On my first evening there, I walked down to the beach. I found a good sitting place and watched the waves rolling out and back in. I thought about this ten year struggle with faith I called my “Christian walk”. I thought about how lately, God seemed awfully far-fetched. Christianity seemed a little supernatural for my taste. So you’re saying that this guy, God in human form, was brutally murdered, took on all punishment for every bit of ungodly behavior in the world, came back to life, and then went up to heaven to wait for us to join him? Does anyone else feel a bit foolish for claiming this as the meaning of life? As Don Miller so aptly put it, as if Christians were like that Star Trek fan who has not yet realized that the show is not real?

I looked out at the ocean some more. “The size of the ocean seems awfully far-fetched, too,” I thought. There are blue whales swimming in there that are so big that their tongues weigh as much as an elephant and some of their blood vessels are big enough for me to swim through them. (Although I’d rather not.) I thought the fact that our bodies work- that our hearts beat and blood flows and brains think- that also seems far-fetched. And what about gravity? Come on. An invisible force from within the earth that draws us all to the ground so that we don’t float off into outer space? If that’s not something from the Sci-Fi channel, I don’t know what is.

I guess what I meant by “far-fetched” was that I couldn’t comprehend it. What if I stopped believing in gravity because I just didn’t get it?

At this point in my peaceful contemplation on the beach, a man playing a set of bagpipes walked by. As if it was completely normal. Really. It happened. This has no spiritual significance, but the randomness of it was remarkable. Incidentally, while we’re on the topic of randomness, on my walk home later that evening, I saw a man wearing a tuxedo watering his lawn. A tuxedo. Who does that? When I commented on his odd choice of landscaping outfit, he sprayed me with the hose. He never did explain the tux.

After smiling at the bagpipes, I sat there on the beach wondering if I should indeed stop believing in gravity. But I knew that my struggle with faith was different. It was more personal. I could not laugh it off and be okay with it like I could with things like the depth of the ocean or the intricacy of the human body. I sighed. I felt reconciled to this state of limbo- not wanting to reject my faith, but feeling that I could not continue to claim it with any integrity because of these huge, ever-present doubts.

A song that a friend of mine had recently recorded and posted on her web page for struggling friends came to mind. “I said it takes faith/ and perseverance/ to live the life/ that you have been given/ but you’ve been given life/ with divine breath inside/ so breathe deep tonight, my friend.” (You can hear her sing it herself at www.youtube.com/alicerouse.) I smiled at memories of her while tears started to make their way down my cheeks. I felt so stuck. I didn’t know if I had any more faith or perseverance left, or if this journey was even worth the struggle to find them within myself anymore.

As I sat there, the word “ACCEPTANCE” suddenly imprinted itself on my mind. The reality to be accepted was this: I had a hard time believing that Christianity made sense. I had an even harder time throwing all of my trust into something that by design I could not comprehend or see completely. A lot of days, I didn’t even want to try- I preferred relying on my own understanding of the world, even when the results were painfully lacking. This might not have been the most attractive place to be, but as a wise friend of mine had taken to saying, “This is what is.” It was Real. I could look ahead with hope to a time when I would stand on more steady ground, and I could continue to try to seek out a deeper understanding of Truth, but today, this was Real.

I chuckled at the word “acceptance”. Wasn’t it the last stage in the five stages of grief? I felt like I had just witnessed the death of an evangelical.

Although “evangelical” is not by definition a negative term, for me, this term had come to mean that I should know the right answers and believe them 100% of the time, and not only should I know them, but I should always like them. I felt wrong to be having any doubts, and when those doubts had become so strong, the only option in this black-and-white religion that I had built for myself was to walk away completely.

So when I say “death of an evangelical”, I mean that I was seeing the freedom of a new way to approach Jesus- approaching Him with honesty. I was trying to look at the Jesus I hoped was not just a figment of the church’s imagination and say, “This is all that I have. You already know that. You know that I often doubt more than I believe. You know that I think this is all crazy talk half the time. If you are Real, please, please help me to believe it more. I have to depend on you to do it, because I am woefully out of ideas to fix myself.”

I knew that this “evangelical who needed to know all of the answers” in me probably would not stay in the grave, but for that night, I had a taste of a long-awaited peace that felt Real.

I stood up and started my trek home, wondering if others walking the beach that night thought that I was moved to these tears by the beauty of those random bagpipes.

you ask too much
you ask too much
you ask too much when you ask for it all
you ask too much

when you speak it’s as if it’s in riddles
that are too simple for me to solve
then i strain my ear while i try not to hear
the clues that you whisper to me
you want to take everything from me
i suspect i would be better off
but with white-knuckled grip i continue to sit when you tell this lame girl now to walk

you ask too much
you ask too much
you ask too much when you ask for it all
you ask too much

you ask too much
when you ask me to trust
this voice that i hear are you really real
you ask too much

i want to make sure that i’m still safe
are you a rock or just a fanciful escape
how can i throw all my weight on something i can’t understand
if you’re so strong i need you to pry open my clenched hand

i think that it should be more simple
more easy to see and to choose
but i stand here perplexed and unable to step
into life that requires me to lose
i think that i want to see clearly
but i clutch this veil covering my face
i hate what i wear but i’m stuck in the fear of what i might see in it’s place

you ask too much
you ask too much
you ask too much when you ask for it all you ask too much

i don’t have much
but what i have i’m able to see and to touch
so you ask too much when you ask for it all
you ask too much

Doubt had become a common theme in my life. I was getting ready to begin my senior year in college, and I had surrounded myself with other evangelical Christians who were excited about Jesus. The problem was this: I wasn’t that excited. Sure, I knew how to say all of the right things. I led a Bible study, and heck, I had even been asked to be the student leader of the campus ministry where I had been an overly active member for three years.
My secret was that I was so overwhelmed by doubt that I questioned the validity of half of the things coming out of my mouth. There didn’t seem to be a place for that in the circles I was running in. Nobody else was talking about a struggle with a doubt so strong that they sometimes felt as if they were drowning. I just needed to pray harder, read the right books, have my daily “quiet time”. I would be back to “normal” soon.
At the end of the summer, I went on a backpacking trip to Maine. Surrounded by nature that was breathtakingly beautiful, I kept waiting to feel God’s presence. And…nothing. The painful, dark doubt crept into my mind for the first of many times to come: maybe God made me think He loved me just to get to my family. Now that they are all Christians, He’s done with me. Maybe I was never “chosen” in the first place.
I had first “prayed the prayer” in 1998 at a Christian retreat. Since then, every member of my immediate family in North Carolina (my sister, mother, and stepfather) had become believers. But four years later, I wasn’t so sure that my initial step of faith had been very Real after all.
I struggled all week in Maine, fighting back these doubts that were growing uncontrollably like weeds choking the last bit of life out of an abandoned garden. Then one morning, I woke up before everyone else (a small miracle of its own, considering my tendency to sleep in whenever possible). I looked up at the mountains and across the crystal clear lake where we were camping, and I finally said out loud the words that had been hesitantly forming in my mind all week. “The only reason I still call myself a Christian is that it would be too hard for me to go back to school and not be one.” My heart sank with the knowledge that I couldn’t settle for living that lie. Again, I spoke aloud, not sure who I was actually speaking to: “So I’m not one. I am not a Christian. God, I do not believe in You anymore.”
Suddenly a verse I didn’t remember ever learning seared through my mind, “if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” (2Tim 2:13). I almost fell to my knees. This felt Real. I finally felt something true. And I was overwhelmed with thankfulness.

When I went back to school, I sat at a meeting listening to person after person share about their amazing summer mission trips and how much they had learned about God. Toward the end, I looked at the faces of the people remaining silent, and I wondered if any of their stories were like mine. Always one to enjoy a good, dramatic moment, I spoke up and said, “I had a terrible summer. I decided that I didn’t believe in God.” I relished the surprised expressions for a brief, self-indulgent moment, and then I told the story of my summer: of hearing from a God who would not let me walk away, as undeserving as I was in that moment of denial. Afterwards, some people did admit to me that their stories were similar to mine. Or even if they could not directly relate to my experience that summer, they thanked me for my honesty and called it “refreshing”. I hoped that in sharing my story, I was stepping between other Believers and the loneliness of a struggle that had taken such a firm hold on me. I could offer them some hope as someone who had been there and had made it through triumphantly.

Looking back, I don’t know whether to call it optimism or foolishness. I didn’t know at the time that this experience would be one of many low, low points on the rollercoaster of my faith and that I would come to doubt the reality of that moment in the mountains of Maine as much as I had doubted everything else. It was not finished.

i say i believe
but my heart always falters
Lord do i know you or an image of you
i try to be still
but my mind loves to wander
beautiful pictures are only dull echoes
that ring in this hollow solitude
hands scarred and empty from these futile pursuits
are weary and lifted up
desperate for truth

i believe
overcome my disbelief
i want to believe
take this doubt away from me

i know something’s real but i can’t put my finger on it
no matter how compelling the accounts that are told
i try too hard to imitate the emotion of the teller
again i’m left with nothing i can tell of my own
if you’re real your touch should be more easy to recognize
your presence should be as plain as day and night that you have made
i’m tired of life’s fantasies, i just want reality
could i have spent all my time looking in the wrong place

i wish you would put your concoction of mud on my eyes
cure my blindness
show me truth from the lies

Oh, Jesus. Please, please let Your promises be real. Come quickly.

Today, I went to church. I got all the way to the parking lot. And then, after this valiant attempt, I made my roommate get out of the car and go in without me.
Earlier this week, I was feeling ready to at least give God a chance. He has been a pretty important part of my life for quite some time now. The least I could do was to show up and see what would happen before tossing Jesus like a bad rough draft and starting over.
Today I started to feel anxious. I thought that maybe if I read my Bible, I would feel some sort of encouragement- some sort of something. I picked up my familiar copy and thought, “Here I am, God. All yours for the inspiring.” I flipped around, read the most well-worn pages- Psalm 27, Isaiah 53. Nothing. I could not muster belief in a single word of it. My head sank under the weight of the disappointment, and there I waited. I had waited like this many times before. I didn’t expect the doubt to go away. I just waited for the familiar sting of discouragement to fade enough for me to get up and go on with my day. But the sting doesn’t really fade.

When I lifted my head, the beginning of Isaiah 55 caught my eye:

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.”

This invitation was like a word directed straight at my soul- an empty-handed soul who desperately needed to hear that I was wanted, even with nothing to give. Sadly empty hands were all I had. I got up and got ready.
And I got close. Closer than I had in a whole month. I just couldn’t go in. I was scared that I would sit through the service and feel nothing except that ever present, nagging doubt. I was scared that I would not be able to take communion, because I would feel like a liar. I was scared that rather than hearing God, another couple of hours sitting in that sanctuary would serve only as another reminder of His silence. The silence that seems to say more and more that like a fool, I am waiting to hear a voice that is not coming- a voice that is not actually there.
I think it might seem odd for me to be so distressed by this. Megan, If you don’t believe it, you’re just not a Christian. Stop going to church and move on with your life.
Something in me won’t allow me to let go that easily. I don’t know if it’s habit or fear of change, or if it’s something more Real than that.
I’m not ready to let go, but I guess I’m not ready for church, either. It’s too dear to my heart to go and not mean it. To eat that bread and drink that wine and not mean it.
Or maybe it’s pride. I don’t want people to know that I am having a crisis of faith when I cannot make myself go to the table to take communion.
Maybe it’s both.

i am sick
i’m sick with thoughts that won’t be still and won’t be tamed
they don’t come to destined conclusions
they don’t have a path at all
i am sick of voices in my head that don’t make sense inside my heart

and i cry and i pray and i sleep it off
i reason myself well
and i fret and i doubt and i curse the sun
for leaving me by myself
another sunrise is too much to take awake in this dark room
and i’m staring at this cord in my hand
without the courage to pull

shoulda coulda woulda
why didn’t you why can’t you why won’t you
why don’t you how could you
what are you going to do
i can’t i won’t i must i know i have to
but i don’t think that i can
i trust i doubt i’m turned around
i can’t i can’t i can’t i have to

i’m awake
i’m getting used to being up before the sun
but i’ve never watched the sunrise
i’m too scared to lift the shade
i’m still pretending to be sleeping but the sun knows i’m awake