#beenwriting

This will be #Smaug sooner rather than later cause I am so annoyed at myself for lagging so far behind on it. #crochet #heidibearspattern #willbeadragon #beenwriting

Welcome! If you’re new to my blog, here’s a bit more about my history. Thanks to the wonderful Amy at Messy Middle for hosting these conversations! (She’s still accepting submissions if you are interested!). “Eventually, I realized that the sense of safety in my home evangelical community was only possible because they excluded people who were different or who threatened their idea of how the world worked – including people who didn’t “get the victory” in whatever their struggle was. There was no room for beauty in a messy, flawed world, only in God’s perfection, and that led people to overlook, write off, and even worsen the struggles of everyday people, especially marginalized ones. Their “toolkit” for facing the world only worked in very limited circumstances, and they fought tooth and nail to preserve those limited circumstances so they didn’t have to change their beliefs. “Once I saw that, I couldn’t be part of it anymore. That safety and certainty comes at too high a price for me now.There are forms of faith that don’t exclude other views, and those can be really wonderful. But because so much of my upbringing was focused on believing the right things out of fear, I decided to intentionally let go of belief for a while. I think the things that are real and good and healthy will come back to me on their own, organically. But I still experience a lot of fear and guilt about religion, and as long as that’s my primary motivator, I don’t think I can have a healthy or authentic relationship with faith.”