You know how there are events in your life that you use to gauge different seasons? Usually they are big events like having a child, buying a house, getting married, a death, or a diagnosis. You know, like milestones that can be happy or sad. Breast Cancer is the first milestone I have entered into without religion. This feels important to tell you – I’m no longer a Christian. Maybe this will come as a surprise to some of my readers who have known me for awhile, because I was the poster child for a good Christian woman and I didn’t know how to talk unless God/Jesus were the topic or Christian spirituality could be extrapolated out of the topic. I was so good at being a Christian.
It took me about 10 years to deconstruct the faith that I was indoctrinated with as a child. It was painful and scary and honestly not something I intended to do. Things just kept on not adding up and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Now, I don’t think that the religion I was raised with is bad or wrong, the vast majority of my good memories are steeped in Christianity. I don’t want to argue with any Christians in the comments about my beliefs, mostly because it’s a waste of my time but also because I no longer feel like I have to know and be able to argue what I believe. I am comfortable with being wrong but I’m no longer comfortable with making other people wrong. What I was taught was “love” as a child I have discovered is actually pretty hateful and I just can’t live that way anymore. I don’t blame my parents, especially my mom, for how they raised me. I know that they were doing what they knew as right and loving. They didn’t want me to go to hell so I was told terrifyingly not age appropriate stories that were supposed to communicate that God loved me. I figured out how to thrive in that environment and that was by people pleasing and being deeply religious, those two survival mechanisms would get me noticed and give me the attention that I craved. My story isn’t unique. There are so many others who have walked the painful journey of deconstructing a faith that was literally baked in from conception.
Being diagnosed with breast cancer was the first big milestone after I had come to the conclusion that I am no longer a Christian. I was taught and believed that the only way to get through the trials of life, especially trials like cancer, was to solely depend on God/Jesus/Holy Spirit and examine my life for sins that could have gotten me in that situation. This time around I didn’t need that. I didn’t feel alone. I was with myself and I had the support of the people who love me. Instead of asking and begging God to be with me, I was relying on myself and the love of others. Really I’ve always been the one to be with me and the love of others is a gift to me. I just needed to make it through every day ahead of me and maybe there would be days that were more than just making it through, maybe I could live a fulfilled life despite breast cancer and because of the love that others have surrounded me with. That’s really what was keeping me calm, I knew I could handle whatever was required of me to get to the other side of this diagnosis because I loved myself enough to get through and others loved me enough to help me get through. I knew “we” could get me through it. Sure, I was SUPER disappointed that I had to walk that walk and suffer in a way that cancer can only make you suffer. That reality was a flaming pile of shit. I felt disappointed and a reasonable amount of fear (come on, I’m a person) but I didn’t feel hopeless. I’ve always had hope.
I’m not sure how long it was after my diagnosis that I had the realization that this was my first crisis without faith (at least the faith of my childhood and early adulthood ). I do remember I was on a walk with my three youngest and I was literally in heaven. Breast Cancer couldn’t change the fact that that moment was heaven to me, that my children are the delight of my life, and that I was outside on a gorgeous day with sun shining through the trees with a golden light, a bright golden light that signals that summer is coming to a close. I wasn’t going to let cancer change that beautiful moment. As I was walking and watching my kids ride bikes and laugh, it dawned on me that this was my first really big crisis since I had deconstructed. I’d made it through to the other side of the crisis of my faith and now I was realizing that this was my first really big crisis since then. I really did have faith, it was just in myself and the love of others that were going to get me through this. I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, cancer is a crisis, but cancer afflicts so many people and I just happen to be one of those that it afflicts. This suffering I was preparing for was not uncommon and I could get myself through that suffering and maybe find incredible value in the process. When I stopped believing in the God of the Bible and the way I was indoctrinated to think about him, I looked back at every hard time I could remember and the only common denominator was that I was there and I had made it through with the help of people who love me. We’d get myself through “it” again and that gave me hope.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say that this was my first crisis without religion? I have faith, I have faith in myself and the love of others. I no longer need religion to express my faith.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes we learn to recognize beauty and sometimes we are taught what beauty is. Then after learning to recognize beauty you slowly realize that what you were taught was beautiful isn’t beautiful at all…or something like that.
And now that I have caused some of you sadness, I’m going to leave you with photos of flower arrangements that I’ve recently created. I think they are beautiful. You may not and that’s okay. I don’t want you to worry about me. I love you.
