Where the path leads

Ed Babinski's Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists (Babinski 1995).  I noted this while reading:  Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary by Kenneth W. Daniels

I started digging around to see if any of my Library sources had the book.  To my joy I found several other titles on this topic.  "Leaving the Fold".  I even found a couple copies of Babinski's and a copy is on it's way through the inter-library loan program.

I checked out a copy of :

Leaving the Fold by Marlene Winell (Nov 18, 2013)

'god' must have had Marlene write this book just for me!  That would be the first that "god" actually did anything for me.  Too long I talked to 'god' in my sub-conscious not realizing the other end of the phone cord plugged into nothing.

I'm finding this book hard to put down.  I think I'd add this to my most important reading list.  I'm searching still for words to describe the years of silent horror when no words could be formulated to describe what was going on inside of me.  I'm not quite as comfortable with 'leaving the fold' as I thought I was.  I think a lot of processing will continue to happen in my life over the days, months, and years to come.  I'm kinda still on the outside looking in wistfully, thinking that perhaps the journey might have been easier had I stayed on the inside.  My brain tells me differently, my heart, well it still hurts very deeply.  The cycles of grief, anger, regret, hope, and now freedom of thought seem to happen all at once at times. 

I ponder my path.  To-date, it's been a wending one.  Sometimes I backtrack, sometimes I surge forward, some times I feel like I atrophy.  It's all good.  It's my journey.  I'm learning to trust myself.  This is huge progress.  To allow for self-esteem, to treasure my innate compass is simply astounding progress.

The birth of my son was a huge turning point in my life.  Between May 2005 and June 2005, I came to grips with where my path was leading me . . . out of the fold!  I did not think of it such stark terms then, but I was simply being true to myself.  I saw for myself that I had to be true to my own principles.  They were "God's principles at the time" but they were really simple fundamental human principles that provide the moral compass for all living humans, regardless of creed, or no creed.  I knew lying to be wrong.  Deception to be something abhorrent, not because god said so, simply because dis-honesty is not tenable.

Rick Neville lied to me.  He could not admit to his deception.  I found that this was an irreparable breach.  Not the lie but his inability to take responsibility for his deception.  I recoiled in horror at the glimpse of living my life unable to take personal responsibility, having to make excuses, having to control and manipulate people to my own ends.  I saw clearly that I could say and do anything I pleased as a Christian minister, all the while understanding deeply that I would be living a lie in order to promote a broken, and untenable ideology.  I simply could not do it.  I chose at that moment to be damned eternally rather than live a lie.  Thankfully I now understand better there is no damnation beyond that which we impose on ourselves in this life.  I make my own heaven or hell in this life.