120423 Agnostic Advent: Myth #4: "It's a phase"

Myth #4 "It's a phase" 

I think this one is more of a misunderstanding than myth. But it is the one that might boil my blood the most.  I feel like everything in me is dismissed when someone tells me that what I am experiencing is just a phase.  I remember well when a former girlfriend told me that very thing referencing my absence from the institutional church.  

"Ruby, you will be back.  It's just phase you are going through.  And when you do come back, you are welcome to come to my church."

And when it became obvious that it wasn't a phase… the friendship ended.  A friendship of twenty seven years ended because she was around for the bitterness stage of my exit from the system of Christianity.  That was years before I buried Jesus.  If she knew about that now… I can only imagine her response to me.  For almost fifteen years, we have lived only a ten minute drive from each other, in neighbouring towns.  Every time I am tempted to reconnect, I remind myself that I was still technically a Christian when she ended our relationship and now I am not.  

That expressed bitterness against the institution of Christianity was a phase… that part isn't a myth.  I am thankful that she was the only one I dumped my bitterness on.  Had I been like that to my family and other friends… I would be a very lonely person right now.  No one wants to hear what I subjected my friend to for four years.  I am amazed she held in that long.  Had she dug a little deeper into my story, she would have found pain more than anger. Maybe because she saw it all as a phase, she hoped I would climb out of the hole myself instead of climbing in herself to see what was really happening.  

Change is inevitable  on everyone's journey.  Maybe life is full of perceived phases.   But it was Rob Bell that taught me something I carry to this day.  

"Life is lived forward. We can't go back, we can only go forward." RB