Part 5 of 5 of My Journey From Faith.
“It felt like I had poked a hole in the sky and realized it was only a picture of the sky—flat, painted, convincing. And behind it? Actual sky. Actual space.”
When faith finally cracked open, it wasn’t rebellion.
It was exhaustion.
I’d spent years trying to make the story hold. When the math stopped working, I didn’t throw it out; I tried to fix it. I thought maybe the problem was me—wrong theology, wrong denomination, wrong level of devotion.
So I went looking for a better version.
The ancient one. The stable one. The Catholic one.
Mass felt different. Calmer. Older.
The liturgy was like a river that didn’t need my paddling. It whispered: God is big. You are not.
And I liked that.
I loved that it wasn’t about the pastor or the music or the latest sermon series. It was about rhythm, reverence, continuity. For a while, it felt like coming home again—this time to something solid.
But even there, the cracks followed me.
The questions that haunted me in evangelical circles followed me into the pews of cathedrals. The rooms were different, the accents softer, but the script felt the same.
Every tradition had its language, its confidence, its way of saying we’ve got this figured out.
I could still speak the creeds—still feel their beauty in my mouth—but something beneath them rang hollow. The certainty was too loud. The humility too quiet.
It struck me that this wasn’t about doctrine at all. It was something deeper, woven through every version of faith I’d known: this unspoken agreement that being right was the point, instead of being good.
And once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it.
It wasn’t a single moment or decision. It was quieter than that. Somewhere along the way, the shape of belief just… dissolved. The God I’d spent my life defending started to feel less like a presence and more like an idea that no longer asked anything of me.
That realization broke something open.
It was an existential crisis and a homecoming, all at once.
It was terror and relief, grief and joy in the same breath.
It felt like I had poked a hole in the sky and realized it was only a picture of the sky—flat, painted, convincing.
And behind it?
Actual sky.
Actual space.
And for the first time, I saw the world as it really was.
The air tasted new.
The trees outside my window looked impossibly alive.
Every face I passed on the street carried a kind of sacredness I’d never noticed before.
I thought leaving faith would shrink my world.
Instead, it blew the ceiling off.
There was loss, of course.
I mourned the simplicity of certainty, the family of believers, the language that once explained everything.
But the grief came with its twin—joy.
A raw, untamed joy that came from realizing the mystery I’d tried to control had always been there, waiting for me to stop naming it.
I started to see that goodness didn’t need a label.
Love didn’t need permission.
Wisdom could come from anywhere, anyone, any moment.
The Bible once told me that the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom.
Maybe it’s actually attention—the kind that stays, even when it hurts to look.
Now, when I wake up, I don’t start with prayer.
I start with breath.
The light in the room.
The sound of the people I love moving through the house.
I haven’t traded faith for certainty.
I’ve traded it for wonder.
And maybe that’s what wisdom really is—
not knowing more,
but finally being willing to see.
Most days, I just hope to leave every person and every place I touch
a little better,
a little more seen,
a little more loved.
Maybe that’s what prayer really is.
