I recently learned about Nichole Nordeman’s music. She has deconstructed and put out some really inspiring and thoughtful work. I went to church this Sunday, and though, coincidentally, the sermon was about doubt, it felt dismissive, manipulative, and restricting.

Paraphrase and gross over-simplification of a snippet of the sermon: genuine questions are ok, but if you refuse the answers given, if you heard the message, attended church, but refuse to “bend the knee of your heart to the King,” you have “the worst that hell has to offer awaiting you.” Nice. Ask questions, accept our answers. You can’t? You must be refusing. Hell it is.

Though my husband will argue that we heard 2 different sermons, as someone who is IN the pits of deconstruction and doubts, this sermon did not *spark joy* and I did my best to stifle any and all criticism and cynicism while listening. Honestly, I do not expect joy to be sparked from a sermon on doubt, but hope in the midst of confusion, understanding of the deeply unsettling, incontrollable nature of doubt, and no threat of hell to force you into a quick decision seems like a kinder, more effective and less isolating approach.

Today I listened to some of Nichole’s songs, and they gave me fresh hope and validation.

This quote, Nichole’s reflection on her journey, really struck me: “When you’ve already survived something, you say nice things about it, but when you’re in the middle of surviving something, you say real things about it.”

It wasn’t until I started being completely honest with my thoughts and feelings that I began to feel the most free, most genuine, and most alive than I’ve ever felt before.

Those thoughts and feelings weren’t always happy, comfortable to admit, or even close to what I was taught as “correct”, but someone once said “the truth will set you free,” so I allowed myself to be honest. As brutally and painfully honest as I could be.

Instead of suppressing questions and doubts out of fear, dismissing them as “thoughts from the enemy”, or bypassing them with toxic positivity(“give it to God, let go and let God, God will make a way”) I faced them head-on.

I said scary and sacrilegious things out loud– not because I’m a rebel saying things to be “cool” or asking for attention, but because they were my actual thoughts, my genuine questions. David writes “I cried unto the Lord with MY voice,” and so did I, with my whole voice of my whole being because the Divine isn’t scared of my questions, intimidated by my inquiries, or offended by my confusion and pain, “…a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” (Psalm 51:17)

I embraced my doubts and scary thoughts. 

I sat with them.

I felt them.

I cried through them.

I shook and still shake with rage because of what they have revealed.

I wrestled. 

I am still wrestling– and though I may come out of this wrestling match with what others might see as a limp, that limp is part of who I am. It is part of my whole self, my unapologetically honest self because I am not Jacob the trickster, I am Israel: the one who wrestles with God. Why would I ever want to be anywhere else? Why would I want to hide that from the world? I’m limping, but I LIVE. (reference to when Jacob wrestled with God and was given his true name)

I am officially sobbing as I come to this realization-like right now as I write this- tears, so many tears. I am not an “apostate, a heretic” who is deceiving, sowing dissension, and leading others into temptation. I am a human wanting to know not from a forbidden tree in a lush garden, but from the voice that is calling in the wilderness– calling those in the valley of dry bones to real, honest, abundant life.

Some days I wake up and wish I could be done with this. Wish my head would stop thinking and I could be “normal” and not deal with deconstruction. Not be triggered by, well, literally everything. It feels like too much sometimes and I want to say to the Divine, “pick on someone your own size!” Until I remember that I am made in the image of God- in the image of one who embodies wisdom, creativity, freedom, truth, and life.

And it is then that I am ok with my limp, my name, and my wrestling.