What forms does it take? What shapes and patterns? What stories reveal and explain it? What does leaving look like for you? Is it geographical, familial, spiritual, personal? Did you leave or were you left? Did you leave because you were left behind by family, community, friends, church, even God? Do you feel forsaken by the very God who knows what it’s like to be forsaken? You know what it feels like to be abandoned. And so does God.
—
It’s different now. Over five years in to some kind of deconstruction and I no longer feel it so intensely. The strong emotions subside. It’s now just reality. You get used to it, being gone. Like before, you get comfortable and complacent, just as much here as back there, where you were before you left. So, you must now also leave the place where leaving brought you. It never stops—the growth, change, and movement of leaving—and you must accept the possibility that leaving may bring you full circle, back to what you left. Going back is nearly as terrifying as leaving. The thought of it makes you afraid and anxious all over again. But it also wakes you up, stirring you from slumber.
The most good you can do may be on this side, the “outside.” Or it may be back there, on the “inside.” If you do go back, you might have learned and gained here whatever it is you need to take with you. Only you can know. And only go if or when you’re ready. Might you be, someday? Just as you had to accept and take the hand that led you out, so you may be asked to accept and take the hand that leads you back.
A leaving, once fresh, can become its own stale complacency, another tired religion or new fundamentalism of its own. Just as the universe is never static, neither can we afford to be.
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Personally, after more than five years of separation from most spiritual disciplines and formal Christian community and the like, perhaps I am now distanced enough to approach from this side, the outside, with a wider view and keener vision, able to reenter, if only somewhat, free from some of the weight and unnecessaries. Can you also approach, hesitantly but curiously, like a child? Is it possible to have faith as if for the first time? I hope so.
—
I say none of this lightly: Leave for as long as you must, even if it’s for good; however, be ready to return if or when the desire or call comes. Sometimes leaving is also a return. While going back might be just as hard and painful as it was to leave, it may be just as necessary.
You learn by going where you have to go. Even if it means going back.
