Gasping For New Life

The faith that emerged after the waters receded

Hello friends, Colette here.

Do you remember the moments when your faith began to crack, even collapse? For me, it wasn’t church politics or culture wars, it wasn’t even getting fired from a church or the rise of Christian nationalism. It was grief. Slow, silent, unstoppable grief. The kind that doesn’t acknowledge your theology, it just drowns it.

The sirens always seemed to go off at night. Our routine was set: get dressed, grab a few games and snacks, jump into the car, and head to high ground. Growing up in Sitka, Alaska, tsunamis are a part of life alongside regular sightings of bald eagles. Some of my most vivid memories are walking into the high school gym and seeing a crowd of friends and strangers huddling around tables or fast asleep by a wall. You don’t have much time when the sirens begin to wail, so you move quickly, grabbing only what you can carry. We all looked disheveled, but we were safe.

Photo of Sitka, Alaska by E Orlando on Unsplash

Tsamani’s are as sneaky as the “T” in its name. Often, they are caused by earthquakes in the middle of the ocean. The ground shifts, displacing a large amount of water. Then slowly, gradually, the ocean builds, picking up pace, ready to blast straight into anything in its wake. The shoreline often recedes like a rubber band being pulled back, the silence is eerie as you wait for the snap. During my time in Sitka, rarely did they hit our shores, but when they did, the landscape was redrawn. What once was familiar is gone, and a new shoreline takes its place. I never knew that memory would become a metaphor for grief, the kind that levels everything, and somehow makes space to rebuild.

Growing up in Conservative Evangelicalism, the fault lines became familiar. It didn’t take much time for me to realize I was fighting an uphill battle as my gifts for teaching and leadership grew. There wasn’t a place for me but I stayed, attempting to make a few dents in the complementarian tower. But it wasn’t just about sexism in the church, it was the “worship wars” of the early 2000s¹. It was my husband and I being fired as youth pastor’s when we focused on ministering to “rebellious-spirited” youth.² It was the tiresome routine of Sunday mornings, evenings, and Wednesday nights. It was the “us vs them”, the “Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames”³ plays, the toxic purity culture⁴, and, and, and - you get the picture. And yet, those things only cracked the surface. They didn’t break my faith. All those things can be explained. Blame the people. Blame the institution. But a wave was coming and there would be no warning.

I don’t want the fruits of the Spirit, I want a fucking baby!

- Direct quote, at the peak of my grief.

I never thought I’d experience infertility. Everything in my body said things were working as expected. When the news came that I had the ovaries of a 45-year-old (at age 35), I was devastated. For the next eight years, we battled to grow our family, emptied our bank account, and traveled to Prague (twice) for more affordable care. We tried just about everything, but the tests stayed negative.

The quote above came flying out of my mouth as I stood in a friend’s kitchen in full lament. I was done with transactional faith. No more prayers spewed into space. I was undone. There were no warnings. No sirens. No high ground. Just water, everywhere.

I also didn’t have anyone to blame. No person. No institution. Just God.

When the grief came, it was a flood of confusion. Doesn’t God want to bless me? My prayers were dripping with lament. Desperation turned me into a beggar, shuffling along the sidewalk with a sign reading “Will tithe 20% for a baby.” All the tools of faith I had acquired through years of ministry and education turned to dust overnight. God’s silence became unbearable as the landscape of my theology washed out to sea. Call it deconstruction. Call it a faith crisis. I call it an awakening. This was when my faith began to change, not out of rebellion but out of survival.

Grief washed everything I thought I knew about God away. For a while, I didn’t try to rebuild. I stood in that spacious place and studied the new landscape. Some beliefs were gone completely. Others remained, changed. And a few were uncovered, truths I hadn’t noticed before. God’s silence no longer felt like absence, but Presence. God the Father also became God my Mother, tender, wise, holding me in my undoing. Eventually, the water around me began to still, and I was afloat in the Divine. I began to walk a more contemplative path. Breath replaced words. Stillness replaced service. Creation replaced institutions. Where there were once answers, now there is Mystery and strangely, that feels more like faith.

It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad... No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary and even good part of the human journey.

Richard Rohr, “Falling Upward”

I wouldn’t wish this wave upon anyone. But I am grateful for the shore it brought me to. Like a second baptism, I went under with one version of God and was resurrected to a new faith. When I was 13, I chose to be baptized. I said all the right words and promised to be faithful to God. I did not choose this baptism. And no amount of words or good deeds could keep it from me. It wasn't clean or ceremonial. But it was holy.

The wave came. I went under. And like the waters of baptism, it washed away all that needed to die. I returned, gasping for new life.

For those still underwater

I want to acknowledge that hearing words like “awakening” and “good” might be triggering. I get it. My grief remains. I still avoid things like baby showers and kids’ birthday parties. The waters didn’t wash away the pain of loss. Instead, they made the unraveling sacred. I no longer see my grief as a lack of faith but as a part of it. They are as joined as the sand is to the sea. I have no shame in my anger towards God, nor do I feel a failure in my inability to rejoice in my suffering. In my own way, I underwent the pains of labor to birth myself anew with Mother God as my midwife. I see the good now but the good includes the pain. It always will.

Like the waters of my first baptism once marked my belonging. These drops of sorrow now mark my becoming.

Holding you gently in the waves,

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1. The “Worship Wars,” as I like to call them, were essentially a battle between hymns and praise choruses. I experienced my first church split when the new pastor fired the existing worship leader. Bye bye, trumpet solo in the middle of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and hello, gentle swaying to “I Can Only Imagine.”
Side note: My youthful, overly confident self stepped up to lead worship (unpaid) for the next four months until they hired someone new.

2. “Rebellious spirited youth” was a direct quote from the head pastor who fired us. Apparently, “ministry” only included the homeschool kids already attending the church and not the kids who skateboarded in the parking lot.

3. If you’re unfamiliar, Heaven’s Gates, Hell’s Flames was an evangelistic drama designed to scare the hell out of people (literally) into accepting Jesus. My friend Ben played Satan for a few years in a row, and we’d go watch his performance, completely unaware of how messed up the whole thing really was.

4. I went to so many youth rallies about staying pure until marriage. The message was clear: you don’t want to become someone’s chewed-up gum or a rose with no petals, so, no sex for you! Wait until marriage and it’ll be the most amazing thing ever! Side note: I signed (and laminated) my purity contract, which (spoiler alert) did not magically lead to great sex. No one at those conferences mentioned that good sex, like a good marriage, takes work. Shout-out to marriage counseling!