To Put Asunder

I’ve been feeling the kind of dull panic in my belly that comes with making a big decision – the doubt, the fear, the unknowing. All very normal, I know. But that doesn’t make it any easier. Leaving my church parish: whoa.

It’s been harder because this wasn’t a decision I was expecting to have to make. Well, at least not any time soon. In some ways, I feel like I’d just gotten there, was still a new arrival (I think I actually showed up in 2009). This is all very sudden, and for those of you who know me you understand that I’m not really prone to making quick decisions. I’m more the kind of person who mulls things over obsessively until I’ve given myself indigestion and the deadline is pretty much upon me. But there is no slow and easy way to do this, so I just pulled off the Band-Aid.

I’m not going to lie: I feel sorrowful that I have to give up the things I’ve been doing. No more reading from the Bible, no more leading prayers; goodbye fellowship, so long occasional opportunities to preach. I’ll probably never have a chance to do some of those things again. Not to mention not seeing the friends I’ve made.

To be honest, I would rather have had the time to discern this carefully, preferably with some guidance. Alas, such things were not meant to be.

I struggle with doubt, with uncertainty. I can’t help but feeling that this is a knee-jerk reaction. That I’m overreacting, or choosing this for the wrong reasons – for selfish reasons, for flimsy reasons, for the kind of reasons that a normal person would just brush aside. I can’t claim with any certainty that I’m acting rationally. I go over and over it in my head.

I am afraid I might be making a mistake. Even so, I would rather make a mistake than do nothing. Mistakes can be good things, and we shouldn’t be afraid to make them. After all, “though [I] fall, [I] shall not be cast headlong, for the LORD is the stay of [my] hand” (Psalm 37: 24).

Still, it’s difficult. I feel a peculiar wrenching. I am afraid that I am doing something wrong, deeply hurtful, simply to make things easier for myself. I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a better way to handle this, and that someone wiser than me might see it.

In the end, I doubt they’ll miss me: I haven’t been doing anything that important. I’m sure individual people will be sad to see me go, and some of them undoubtedly put out that I didn’t say goodbye, but ultimately I will miss my place in this community more than it will miss me – and maybe that’s the part that stings the most.

I still don’t quite know how to respond when people ask why I will not be fulfilling the tasks I signed up for, as one person already has. I don’t have an easy answer, or at any rate an answer I want to give publicly to the church. My answer is personal and petty, and I don’t think it would build up the community. I have no interest in divisiveness or vindictiveness. Is it acceptable to reply simply that I have decided to leave the community, and leave the rest in silence?