1. If you’ve gone through a long season of deconstruction and are trying to figure out how to reconstruct your faith, be kind to yourself.

I’d like to share a few things that have helped me over the last few years...

2. Look and notice faith practices that when practiced feel like a long exhale, that you’ve been set down in a spacious place. Do those things.

3. Notice the practices that make you l feel defeated or constrained. Notice what makes you feel condemned, powerless, sad, or ashamed.

Don’t do those things.

It’s okay to avoid certain kinds of teaching or certain kinds of worship services.

4. Begin to trust that doubt and mystery are becoming an integral part of your faith.

They are a gift.

They are not unwanted demons you must reject.

Rather, they are two pillars you must learn to lean on and integrate.

5. Notice when you’re triggered. Pause, think about why. Pay attention to your body and what it’s telling you. It speaks in myriad ways, your job is to listen.

If something feels unsafe or obligatory, chastising, controlling take two steps back.
Run or pause. Both are okay.

6. It’s okay to visit different churches, sit in the back and just be. If you’ve been taught one particular kind of Christianity is bad, I recommend you visit and see for yourself that it’s not all bad. It’s different.

(Some churches are evil cults. There is a difference.)

7. There might be areas of disagreement but note what you like, what is life-giving, and bless that church.

Bless your brothers and sisters. Pray for that church to prosper.

Embrace the tension between your idealistic ideas and their real beauty.

Let them be.

8. Sometimes it takes several years to figure out what you believe, and sometimes it takes several years to figure out that you don’t know what you believe anymore, but you genuinely like Jesus and so you’re going to stay with Him.

8. On the good days that’s enough and on the bad days...

lean on your pillar of doubt,

and touch the pillar of mystery

and God will meet you there.