Life After Deconstruction: Where Do We Go Next?
Lately I’ve been thinking about the reality of life after deconstruction.
So what do I mean by deconstruction?
It’s the process of unlearning and relearning.
Of questioning what you’ve been indoctrinated with, what you grew up with.
Belief systems you held as true for so long suddenly cracked open.
It’s not just challenging those beliefs.
It’s opening yourself to the possibility that they might not be true.
Or not true in the way you thought they were.
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Life Before Deconstruction
Before my deconstruction, I was an extremely devout Christian.
And when I say devout, I mean devout.
I wasn’t just a “good church girl.”
I was a full-time missionary.
I lived on mission. Every day.
I couldn’t leave the house without feeling the weight of it.
Without needing to tell someone about the gospel,
about Jesus,
about the kingdom of God.
Gas station. Restaurant. Grocery store.
Living my “ordinary” life wasn’t enough.
I had to proclaim. Always.
I went to seminary.
I was part of a house church.
I lived and breathed Christianity as I knew it then.
My whole life’s purpose was to make Jesus known.
Expand the kingdom. Win souls. Give my life to the “cause.”
And I did.
I even lived for abroad for a year, in what we called at the time an “unreached people group.”
Learning the language. Immersing in the culture.
Doing the work.
That year changed my life.
In beautiful ways, encounters with people I’ll never forget.
And in painful ways, because it was there that the seeds of deconstruction were planted.
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When It Started Cracking
Living inside the machine of missions,
I saw the other side of it too.
The superiority.
The domination.
The subtle (and not-so-subtle) control.
The imposition of “truth” at the expense of humanity.
And I couldn’t unsee it.
So when I came back, I started questioning.
It wasn’t overnight. It was years.
Years of unraveling.
Years of pulling at threads.
Years of stepping away.
From church.
From reading the Bible religiously (even though I’d read it cover to cover more than five times).
I realized: the Word is in me.
In my heart. In my body. In my nervous system.
And church?
It’s not bound to a building.
Not even bound to a religion.
Church is love in action.
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What Deconstruction Cost Me
As I challenged what I once believed defined me, everything changed.
My friends shifted.
My environment shifted.
My sense of self shifted.
Because here’s the reality.
We humans tend to only accept people who look, think, act, and believe like we do.
We struggle to hold duality with compassion.
To hold tension with grace.
So when you stop fitting, whether consciously or unconsciously, you get pushed out.
Or you isolate yourself.
It’s not about blame.
It’s just reality.
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The “What Now?”
So what’s the point of this blog?
It’s that I’m here now, stuck in the what now?
What do you do when you gave your whole life to something,
and then realized you can’t give it the same way anymore?
What do you do when your whole purpose was expanding the kingdom of God,
and now you’re working a 9 to 5, paying bills,
trying to care for yourself…
but it doesn’t feel sufficient?
For years I told myself, deny yourself, deny your flesh, care only about the kingdom.
But the truth is: I care.
I care about where I live.
I care about my quality of life.
I care about my health.
I care about prosperity.
I care about succeeding.
And is God so narcissistic that He hates that I care?
That He only wants me to care about Him?
The answer is no.
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A New Way
It’s taken me years to realize this.
To love my neighbor, I must love myself.
To care for others, I must care for myself.
To have empathy and compassion for the world,
I must first have empathy and compassion for me.
It’s all connected.
It’s not separate.
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Still Searching
But I’m still here.
Asking: Where do I go next?
Where do all of us go,
the kids, the teens, the adults,
who gave our whole fucking lives to the gospel?
How do we live now?
How do we carry purpose?
How do we still feel like our lives matter beyond ourselves?
Because that matters to me.
My life mattering to humanity,
it matters to me.
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The Question I Can’t Shake
So this is where I’m at.
How can I live in balance?
Not building God’s kingdom at the expense of having no kingdom for myself.
Not building my kingdom at the expense of ignoring God.
But both.
Purposeful and prosperous.
A life that is sacred and sustainable.
How do I do that?
I don’t have the answer.
Maybe this is a cry for help.
Maybe it’s just me venting.
But maybe the answers will come simply because I’ve finally started asking.
Where do I go next?
