Breadcrumbs Episode 3: Crisis of Theology

When you go through a lot of change in a short amount of time, it’s easy to wake up one day and ask: How did I get here?

That question has followed me through my faith deconstruction, my motherhood journey, my politics, and my writing life. And what I’ve learned is that the answer is usually found long before the moment when everything falls apart.

Episode three of Breadcrumbs pulls back the curtain on Chapter Three of Faithfully Dissident Daughters and explores the neighborhood, the friendship, and the embodied community that reshaped my theology long before I had language for deconstruction.

The Crisis of Theology

When I opened Chapter Three of Faithfully Dissident Daughters, I began with a moment that, at the time, felt like the beginning of the end. I was sitting in the lobby of my evangelical megachurch in Orange County, California. The worship band had just led us in a song built around the Nicene Creed, and I realized I couldn’t sing it. I didn’t know if I believed the words anymore. I didn’t know what they meant to me and I couldn’t perform certainty.

But what I’ve come to understand is this: I never had a crisis of faith. I never stopped believing in God or identifying as a Christian. What I experienced was a crisis of theology.

The framework I had inherited was collapsing, and I would have to rebuild it from the inside out.

Why This Episode Is Different

Chapter Three contains a lot. I write about my faith community’s reaction to the 2016 election. I write about the first time I encountered meditation from a Buddhist perspective. I write about the glimmers of healing that followed my move to San Diego.

Before Faithfully Dissident Daughters, I spent three years writing a full memoir. That manuscript didn’t survive in its original form, but pieces of it still exist in my Google Drive, and I hope to repurpose many of them in a variety of ways.

On March 19, we will mark five years since my best friend Rebecca died. As we approach that milestone anniversary, I knew exactly which piece to share: my enchantment with church as neighborhood faith community, the neighborhood itself, and my dear Rebecca. 

Longing for a Different Church Model and Trusting my Intuition

In college, I read Shane Claiborne’s Irresistible Revolution and briefly wondered if I should drop out and move to Philadelphia. Looking back, I can see it for what it was: the beginning of my longing for a more embodied, grounded faith.

I was already questioning the model, even if I didn’t yet question the doctrine. Moving to San Diego was one of the first times I trusted my own inner knowing without filtering it through what I thought God “should” want for me. For much of my life, I had assumed that what God wanted would be the opposite of what I desired. In that season of distance and doubt, I was able to access intuition in a new way.

Belonging Before Belief

When we eventually did move to San Diego, I was deep in deconstruction. I felt distant from God, unmoored and untethered from the version of myself I had always known.

And yet, in that season of spiritual disorientation, I experienced something I had never known before: belonging before belief. And that was what ultimately sent me on the healing trajectory. My longing for something more alive and embodied was the breadcrumb that I trace through this episode.

Full episode video and transcript available below the paywall. 

Next month, we’ll move into Chapter Four: The Divine Feminine and a Mother’s Choice

Why I’m doing this

Breadcrumbs is my humble attempt to map the path. To follow the trail. To honor the version of me who was doing her best with the tools she had.

And if you’re someone who’s gone through massive change—faith change, identity change, marriage change, motherhood change—maybe you’ll recognize yourself in this too. Maybe it’ll help you hold your own past with a little more tenderness.

Breadcrumbs is available to paid subscribers. Watch the full episode or read the transcript after the break!