“Maybe your crisis arrived not with a single heartbreak but with an accumulation of wounds and doubts, compounded by soul-level exhaustion. We absorb these blows for a while. Months, years, decades, even. . . . But eventually, one too many straws lands on the back of that tired camel — and the whole edifice falls apart.”- Catherine McNiel and Jason Hague
Catherine McNiel concludes Chapter 1 of Mid-Faith Crisis with her story about how it started. Catherine grew up in a dairy-farming community in rural Wisconsin. A small life in a small town where her dad became pastor of a small church. Above all, for eight years that multigenerational community functioned as her extended family.
Then, when Catherine turned twelve, her whole world turned upside down, all at one. Her father walked into an elder’s meeting, where they told him the family had two weeks to pack up and leave town. No grace, no help, and precious few friends who stuck by the family when they left.
From the church’s standpoint, Catherine reasons, the elders wanted to make the process as noiseless as possible. To erase the family as entirely as they could. Certainly, Catherine notes, real problems needed to be addressed, and changes needed to happen. However, she underscores, erasure is rarely the best way to enact change or solve problems long term.
Hence, she describes the disorienting effects on her twelve-year-old self:
“There were devastating effects like shelter, salary, and healthcare. But there were many more intangible deaths, of everything familiar, everything that told me how to understand who I was and where I belonged. . . . The door slammed shut behind us and locked on the way out. . . .
That callous decision, made by fathers and grandfathers of my church community, but carried out collectively by everyone I knew, thrust me into an early mid-faith crisis.”
In conclusion, Catherine notes that two options present themselves at this point:
- leave the faith.
- take an honest path, one that allows you to tell the truth yet search for faith.
Today’s question: What Bible verses or hymns refresh and restore you during soul-level exhaustion? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: the August Short Meditation, “Beyond the farthest mortal eye”