Losing God was one of the last things I let go of in deciding that I was done with Mormonism. Believing in God was an island of certainty in the world for me. As long as there was a God, there was a reason, someone in charge, something to point to when things didn’t make sense. I was one rope, and God was another, belief in Him was the knot that held things together.
I remember one sunset at the beach with friends. We’d built a bonfire and ran along with the tide for hours. I remember as we gathered our things, shook sand out of towels, the last of the colors giving way to night, I went to cover the coals of the fire with sand. I stood above them, surprised to see that this pile of material that blazed so brightly in the hours previous was not anything capable of that now. I’d seen the fire, felt its heat, but here it was, a blackened husk of itself. I remember standing over this heap of coals in the sand, the last bits of orange now gone, and covering the evidence of what had once been there. I lingered at the pit, turning my head so no one would see me cry. This was when I knew that God was no longer what He once was to me. This is when the knot came undone and for the first time I could recall, I held two limp lines of rope in my hands. The knot had come loose, slipped and along with it, my belief in the God who had raised me. The sunset finally pulled itself beyond the horizon and night took its place above me. It was still too early to see the stars that were surely there.
Losing God, or the form of God you once knew, is not a small thing. You might have no idea how to piece the two pieces of rope back together, or how to re-create what was at the center before. You don’t need to. Your holiness is not dependent on your understanding of a specific God. You can set the two pieces of rope down if you want to. You can pull the fibers apart and tie a hundred smaller pieces together to make something that looks different, and serves a different purpose. You can re-tie the ropes. You can put them in a box and return to them later. You can set them down and never pick them up again.
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