Reply To: Dealing with Grief After Forsaking Religion

[Michelle Varni]

I think it’s a mourning of my loved ones who have passed, and mourning that I’ll never see them again. The main reassurance I received after someone or something died, was that I would see them again in Heaven someday. It was reassuring to imagine them looking down at me from Heaven, like an angel who was watching over me, waiting for when I would join them. It’s realizing that the people I never met, whom I thought I might have been able to see in Heaven again where there was eternal peace, just died, end of story. It’s realizing that those I cherish who are still alive, will also one day just die, and that will be the end of that. I’m not too worried about not going anywhere when I die, though. I just fear that I’ll come to the end of my days and realize I spent too much time preparing for a second, eternal life, and not enough time actually making my life count for something in the here and now, when it really matters (mattered? I lost my sense of tense somewhere in the middle of that sentence).

I think people would be shocked and surprised. I went through a real Jesus-y, preachy stage, and that’s when I went as far as to get rid of nearly all of my secular music and only listen to worship songs. I was a part of the worship team at the last church I attended, and I was one of the most energetic members. Some people might think this is just a phase, even that I’m like this because I got mad at church or God, or something along those lines. I’ve been baptized three times; have been a member of three churches; went to Vacation Bible School and helped out at VBS; was a worship team singer, have gone to Christian camp, and I pursued personal Bible study quite seriously. I have also, on more than one occasion, been called a “church mouse.” For me to come out and say that, after all of that, that I don’t believe in any deity, might be a little too much for some people in my life to comprehend.