After 20, years in the military, my husband retired. Our family was in upheaval. My husband got a low paying job. That, plus military retirement, had us making 10,000 a year less than before. My parents divorced and my mother moved in with another man. We moved to another home an hour away from our previous home, but closer to my husband's work. It needed a lot more repair work than we had anticipated and my husband was not a handyman. I was pregnant and had a miscarriage. I got pregnant again. We were traveling an hour each way to church every week to remain with our congregation of ten years. After I had the baby, I got an inner ear infection. The birth had been hard and my infant was a fussy child. I hardly slept, my head was spinning and I was crying all the time. I was diagnosed with postpartum depression. It was all too much.
I temporarily went on antidepressants and did some serious soul searching. I came up with my own techniques to handle my panic attacks. I also decided to "let go" of all the things that I could not handle or control. I let go of the need to be doing the right thing all the time. I let go of the striving to be good enough for god. I prayed and told god that I was giving up trying to please him. I was just going to live my life the way that best suited me and if I went to hell, so be it. It took me almost two years to fully recover, but I was much better by the end of six months.
I wasn't done being a model christian, but something in me had loosened up. My husband and I decided to start attending a church of christ that was more conveniently located. When we left our old church, hardly anyone kept in touch with us or said goodbye. It was then I began to realize the members of the church weren't really my family after all. I got involved with the homeschooling and church communities in my new area, but never felt as connected as I once had. Over the years, as my children grew, I became less and less involved, especially after the local homeschooling group began to require a statement of faith and began to assume fundamentalist beliefs were the norm for christian homeschoolers. I had been studying various science books, secular and christian, to try to decide what to teach my older children. They had been getting a steady diet of creationism. I realized that I had been wrong and proceeded to correct that by changing our science sources to more accurate secular ones.
My oldest child graduated and went away to a CoC college. I had a fifth child, my last. About that time, I found a homeschooling message board website with homeschoolers from all over the world. I participated in many conversations about education, life, and religion. I met people from many backgrounds and learned how woefully inadequate my understanding of other religions was. I also met some atheists. A few times I embarrassed myself by making ignorant statements, but then I began to pay closer attention and read suggested books. I realized that all those years I had heard church leaders say Catholics and Mormons never really read the bible or material from groups outside their particular brand of faith, members of the CoC didn't either!
I began to dip my toe in unfamiliar waters by reading books by many progressive christians like Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Karen Armstrong. It was eye opening. I moved on to Bart Ehrman's books and serious doubts set in. I learned about free online college courses (MOOCS) and watched videos from courses in Philosophy, Sociology, Astronomy, Epigenetics, Paleontology, and Jewish history. I bought myself a book called The Bible in History and carried it with me to church, looking up events that came up in bible classes. It became undeniable that there were serious problems with the accuracy and historicity of the bible. I couldn't give up belief in a god yet, so I progressed into a kind of panentheism. Existence/the universe was my god. All this time, I never discussed my findings with my husband. He was never the type to have deep discussions of ideas, let alone, theological ones. His faith was and is a pretty simple one, very trusting of authority. Plus, I might have unconsciously expected to come across information that would set me back on the track of christianity. It never happened.
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