Breaking my mom’s heart in Musings

I told my mom. In an email because I express myself better this way. I told her I’m not a Christian. I told her I don’t believe in the God of the Bible. I told her a snippet of what I think is wrong with the core message of the Bible and why I think it helped lead to my abusive relationship.

I wrote a lot more. About how I wanted to be honest with her because we are so close and it was tearing me up not to tell her. That I don’t blame her for raising me this way but that it’s not how I’m raising my daughters. I typed with sweaty hands, a racing heart, and with tears running down my face that I didn’t want this to come in the way of our close relationship.

She wrote that she was overwhelmingly sad and that her heart was broken. That we would talk later when she had time to process. But that she still loves me and that will never change.

Overwhelming sad and heartbroken. I keep seeing those words in my mind. Feeling them in my heart. Who, at any age, wants to make their mother sad and break her heart? But then I was reminded by someone in a Facebook group I’m in for Ex Evangelicals that I didn’t make her sad. It was her own expectation of me that made her sad.

She expected me to do exactly what I’ve done in my life so far. Go to college. Get married. Have babies. And the whole time go to a local church and believe in God. Except for perhaps the time I told my mom I wasn’t a virgin before I got married, this is the only time I have truly disappointed her.

For my whole life I have wanted to be more like my mom. She’s loving and gentle and kind with a fiery spirit underneath. She cares about justice in the world. She was never a Christian who just spoke about the Bible but one who really did live her life by it.

I have always painted her as a saint especially since my dad was not (another entry for another day). But as I’m getting older and raising my own children I’m seeing things I want to do differently. The biggest thing? I don’t want to have any expectations of my daughters.

I want them to be happy, kind, well adjusted humans. Other than that their choices should never make me overwhelmingly sad and heartbroken. I want them to chose who they love, if they go to college, what career path they go down, where they live, if they want to get married, if they want children, what they believe.

I wasn’t really given a choice on that last one. It’s funny thinking back because I always thought I chose God for myself. But Nathan and I talked about how we really weren’t given a choice. It was an expectation that we would be “saved” and dunked in the water in front of the church just like we saw so many others doing. The path was put in front of us and of course we didn’t think anything of it at the time. It was normal.

And now I’m at this place where I’m realizing how not normal a lot of it was. It is so similar to the shows I have watched where people were coming out of cults (though admittedly less extreme) where they come out and realize the world wasn’t anything like they thought. Where they have to deconstruct and reconstruct their belief system.

I hope my mom and I can come out on the other side of this. Maybe we won’t be as close as we were. But I know I did the right thing by telling her. It was one of the hardest things I have had to do but I’ll get through it. In the meantime, thank you for all the kind words and support through my journey. I really appreciate it more than you know.