What Remains

I read a post the other day that stopped me cold.

Not the article itself, but a reflection from a friend who shared it.

She posed a quiet, pointed question alongside it:
Why is it so hard to be honest?

The article was written by a man she clearly admires, someone I don’t know.
He was writing about the tension of being both a gay man and a person of faith.
About the years spent trying to reconcile two parts of himself that religion told him were incompatible.

His voice was calm. Clear.
He wasn’t defending anything.
Just telling the truth as he has come to know it.
Standing in the space between love and doctrine. Certainty and grace.

But what struck me most wasn’t the article.
It was what happened around it.

I made the mistake of reading the comments.

Some were kind. Others cautious.
And then there were the ones cloaked in scriptural concern.
Soft in tone, sharp in implication.
That familiar blend of just speaking the truth in love
which usually means
you’ve gone too far.

That’s when my friend’s question hit me again.
Why is it so hard to be honest?

Because honesty is unpredictable.
Because it threatens categories.
Because once something vulnerable is named, it invites response.
Opinions. Corrections. Concern.
Even silence can speak volumes.

And we learn quickly what kinds of honesty are welcome,
and what kinds are not.

My response had nothing to do with the man who wrote the article.
I don’t know him.
But I know the pattern.

A person speaks the truth of who they are
and the atmosphere shifts.

What could have been a moment of shared humanity
becomes a referendum
on whether that truth is acceptable.

That thread stirred something in me.
A familiar ache.
One I’ve carried for years.

It reminded me why I’ve always struggled with organized religion.
Not because I reject faith
but because I believe in it too deeply
to accept what so many institutions have done with it.

I grew up in a religious household.
Church wasn’t forced. It was just there.
Woven into weekends.
Woven into language.
Woven into me.

We prayed.
We believed in God.
In being good. In being kind.
It wasn’t fire and brimstone.
No one shouted from pulpits or threatened hell.

It was quieter than that.

A kind of spiritual osmosis.
Belief by absorption.
Not questioned. Just lived.

And for a long time, I didn’t think to challenge it.

In many ways, it gave me meaning.
Ritual. Rhythm. Reverence.
A sense that life was held by something larger.

I learned how to be thoughtful.
And agreeable.
How to suppress the parts of me that didn’t fit the frame.

But I wouldn’t have called it a conflict.
Not then.

The edges didn’t show up until later.
Late teens. Early twenties.
The years when the mirror sharpens.
When the language you grew up with
starts to sound foreign
inside your own body.

You hear a familiar phrase
from a pastor, a friend
and something inside you bristles.
Not in defiance.
In recognition.

This no longer feels true.

That’s when the cracks started.
Small. Subtle.
But steady.

I’d sit in services and feel the distance grow.
Between the words being spoken
and the truth I felt in my gut.

I’d hear talk of love, grace, belonging
but only for those who believed the right things
loved the right people
lived the right way.

The God I was raised with hadn’t changed.
But I had.

And the deeper I went into myself
the more I realized how much of me
had been shaped by expectations
I never consciously agreed to.

There’s grief in that.
Not because I want to go back.
But because I remember
what I hoped religion could be.

I still do.

But I’ve started to see
that the structures meant to bring people closer to God
often do the opposite.

They protect belief
at the cost of honesty.
They manage behavior
instead of making space for mystery.

That’s where the conflict lives for me.
Not in a rejection of faith.
But in a longing for something real.

It’s a strange thing
watching something meant to offer hope
become a source of fear.

Not the fire and brimstone kind.
The quieter kind.

The kind that makes you rehearse your questions
before you ask them
if you ask them at all.

The kind that teaches you to doubt
your own clarity.

It happens slowly.
Almost invisibly.

Religion becomes a performance.
You’re welcome
but only if you play by the rules.

You don’t have to believe everything
you just have to act like you do.

Keep your doubts quiet.
Keep your grief tidy.
Keep your identity within the lines.

Over time
I started to see the shape of it.

A culture built on the fear of being wrong.

Not just theologically
existentially.

An unspoken belief that if we loosen our grip
even a little
the whole thing might fall apart.

So everything gets guarded.
Protected.
Sanitized.

Even the sacred.

What that produces
is surface-level connection.

People saying they’re fine
when they’re not.
People nodding in agreement
while something inside them pulls away.
People performing belief
instead of embodying it.

And eventually
people leaving.

Not because they’ve lost faith.
But because they can’t practice it honestly
within the system that claims to hold it.

You hear it all the time
they left because they came out.
They left because they got divorced.
They left because their questions made others uncomfortable.

But often, they didn’t just leave.
They wrestled.
They grieved.
They carried shame alongside their theology.

Not just for disagreeing
for disappointing.

Not just wrong
unworthy.

That’s where the system fails.

It fails when it treats difference as danger.
When it treats doubt as weakness.
When it asks people to choose
between honesty
and acceptance.

And it fails most
when it forgets
that real faith
isn’t afraid of questions.

It makes room for them.

The man who wrote that article
he wasn’t angry.
He wasn’t tearing anything down.

He was simply telling the truth.

And still
it drew responses.

Not because what he said was wrong
but because it made people uncomfortable.
It threatened the illusion of certainty.

And that’s the irony.
Organized religion speaks of love
but so much of it is shaped by fear.

Fear of getting it wrong.
Fear of letting people think for themselves.
Fear that if we let go of control
the truth might not hold.

But truth doesn’t need protection.
People do.

And when we build systems
that silence those who speak honestly
we don’t just fail them
we fail ourselves.

We lose the chance
to grow
to question
to become more human.
And maybe
more holy too.

I don’t long to go back.

Not to church.
Not to the language or the structures I was raised in.

I don’t miss the songs.
I don’t miss the certainty.
I’m not searching for a way to return.

But I’m not angry.
I never was.

If anything
I was confused.
And under that
maybe a little sad.

Sad that something meant to be expansive
could feel so narrow.

Sad that faith
something that should invite deeper presence
so often felt like something
I had to perform.

What I feel now is clearer.

Not resolved.
But less tangled.

I no longer expect
the places I came from
to be the places I grow in.

And I’ve stopped
trying to make meaning
fit into neat containers.

Still, I listen.

To sermons.
To scientists.
To poets.
To people of all faiths
and no faith at all.

I’m drawn to questions
more than answers.
To metaphors
more than doctrine.

Something in me
still leans toward meaning.
Just not the kind
that needs to be defended.

I don’t dismiss religion.
I see the threads of wisdom in all of it.

I just don’t grant
exclusive authority
to any one system.

I find the sacred
in places that aren’t labeled.
In a passing thought.
In a piece of writing.
In a question that lingers.

The grief I carry
isn’t about leaving.
It’s about the silence around the leaving.

The way so many walk away
quietly
not out of rebellion
but out of reverence
for something more honest
than what they were handed.

There’s sadness in that.
But there’s hope too.

In the spaces that are opening.
In the conversations that no longer require permission.

In the ones telling the truth
without needing it to be tidy.

What draws me now
isn’t belief.

It’s integrity.

Not certainty.
Presence.

The willingness to stay curious
even when things don’t resolve.

That might not be
what I was taught to call faith.
But it feels real.

And real
is enough.

What I’m learning to trust
is quieter than anything I grew up with.

It doesn’t speak in absolutes.
It doesn’t ask me to perform.
It doesn’t need a name.

I’m learning to trust
what feels honest in my body.
The stillness that arrives
when something true is spoken aloud.

The clarity that comes
when I stop trying to explain myself.

The peace
of not needing to prove anything
to anyone
not even to myself.

I’m learning to trust
the questions that don’t go away.
The ones I’ve carried for years.

Not because I want answers
but because holding them
has made me who I am.

Because they remind me
that wonder
isn’t a problem to be solved.

I’m learning to trust
presence over performance.

Not showing up
as someone who has it figured out
but as someone willing to stay awake
to what’s here.
To what’s unfolding.
To what’s asking to be seen.

And maybe most of all
I’m learning to trust
that the sacred
was never meant to be managed.

That whatever is real
whatever connects us
moves us
holds us

doesn’t require a title.
Doesn’t need a system.
Just attention.

This isn’t a call to tear anything down.
It’s not a sermon.
It’s not a manifesto.
It’s not an answer.

It’s just where I’ve landed.
For now.

A place of quiet clarity.
A refusal to perform certainty.
A slow return
to what I feel
what I think
what I believe
without asking for permission.

What I’m learning
maybe more than anything
is how to unlearn.

To notice the inherited scripts.
To pause before repeating them.
To stop asking systems
to validate
what I already know.

That’s the heart of it.
Not arriving at new beliefs
but letting go
of the need for belief
to be approved.

Not rejecting what I was given
just gently releasing
what no longer fits.

Trusting my own discomfort
as a kind of wisdom.
Staying with the tension
instead of trying to fix it.

That’s what I mean by freedom.

Not walking away angry
but walking away aware.

No longer outsourcing meaning.
No longer translating myself.

And if all that leads to
is more honesty
more presence
more room to be

I think that’s enough.

Actually
I think it’s everything.

Always remember to JUST BREATHE.

The Unscripted Mind.

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Let it spark a question in someone else.

Just Breathe, The Unscripted Mind website.