Chapter 11: Dealing With Regrets

"How could I have been so stupid?" "How could I have done that?" Had these thoughts lately?

 

 

 

I think this has been the hardest part about leaving the faith-realizing the mistakes I made and the people I hurt while on my divine mission to save the world.

 

One very twisted teaching in fundamentalist churches is “save the lost at any cost.” You probably know what it’s like to feel enormous pressure to convert unbelievers over to Christianity. “Make every place you go your mission field”, I was told. The consequences of passing up an opportunity to convert someone could be grave indeed. Just imagine your best friend burning in hell, screaming “Why didn’t you tell me about Jesus??” Churches thrive on scare tactics, and that’s definitely one of their doozies. I didn’t want anyone to go to hell on my watch, so I became a salesman for Jesus.

 

 I don’t want to spend a lot of time listing my regrets because, frankly, it’s still much too painful. I will say, being a Jesus salesman meant that I had little respect for non-Christians and you can imagine what kind of relationships that produced. During the height of my psychotic stage of evangelism, I sent a letter to a family member pleading with him to accept Jesus. It was one of the weirdest, most psycho-Christian writings I have ever produced. Like Christian television on speed. The good news is that I eventually snapped out of my psychosis, realized my wrong-doing and apologized for the letter. He quickly forgave me, and our relationship is much better now.

 

Another relationship I was able to mend was with a friend whom I abandoned after he came out to me as being gay. I took me a while to get in touch with him because he wasn’t returning my phone calls (Could I blame him?) but I finally found him online and sent him a message saying how sorry I was for not being a good friend to him. It was an apology I had been rehearsing for 6 months over and over in my head. The next day I received his reply in my inbox: he forgave me. Tears of joy and relief streamed down my face after I finished reading. He gave me a second chance, a clean slate, and we’ve started building our friendship back again.

 

I don’t enjoy telling you about the stupid things I’ve done, but I do so to give you hope that relationships you may have damaged due to your Christianity are not beyond repair. I was surprised to find out that others could be so forgiving of my screw-ups. They not only relieved me of my guilt, but also when they forgave me, it gave me the strength to forgive myself.

 

Of course there were many other times when I did dumb things in the name of Jesus, so many that it would be depressing to start thinking of them all. The above two people I mentioned are the only ones I have been able to reconnect with; the rest have long since moved on with their lives and left no forwarding address. Once again, I don’t blame them. I don’t want crazy people knowing where I live either! Maybe someday our paths will cross again and I will get the chance to apologize and tell them how I’ve changed…but I know that may never happen.

 

To deal with the guilt attached to situations I cannot make amends for, I have found one ritual to be very therapeutic. I highly recommend trying this. Take a sheet of paper and write down your regrets about one thing. Write down everything you said, felt and did and why you regret it. Write until you have nothing left to say. When you are finished, take that paper and rip it into a million itty-bitty pieces. Destroy it and throw it in the trashcan. That’s a little ceremony I do when I start obsessing about my past, and it makes me feel better every time.

 

Another thing I do if there’s no paper handy is close my eyes and picture the person I hurt saying to me, “I forgive you. Don’t worry about it. I have moved on with my life and I want you to do the same.” I replay it over and over until I feel better.

 

I have always been hard on myself, regardless of my religion, so this really drives me crazy. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know when this is supposed to get easier. At this point, it’s still hard for me, and the best thing I can do is take it one day at a time. As my online friend Brian told me:” your past can only haunt you if you let it..”

 

One last piece of advice: don’t beat yourself up about your past. It’s an easy trap to fall into because we feel we deserve a good lashing. I have sung the “How Could I Be So Stupid?” blues a million times, but listen to me when I say it doesn’t help anything. The best thing you can do to help yourself heal and move on with your life is to cut yourself some slack. Think of it this way: you did what you thought you had to do at the time. You were under extreme pressure to conform to the standards of churchianity, and you just did what you had to do. You’re a different person now and you know better, but at the time you didn’t. (quote A Hole In The Universe. 1^st page)

 

So, take that guilt and put it in the past. The church may have taught you to live in guilt, but those days are over now. Our lives are too short and precious to spend the whole time looking backwards. For once, we have unlimited permission to be happy- so we should take full advantage of it!