to the teenagers I left behind...

letters to the faith that raised me

*accessibility note * I was much too emotional to record the audio for this letter, but you can still have the it read to you. Open this post in the substack app and click the “play” symbol at the top of the page.

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To the teenagers I left behind :

I’ve wanted to write this letter a million times over the last decade. But shame and regret are tricky things and sometimes, after too much time goes by, you can trick yourself into thinking it doesn’t matter anymore. Water under the bridge, so they say.

Maybe you don’t need this letter. But maybe you do. As I’ve been writing these letters to the faith that raised me, I thought maybe you’d like to receive one from the faith that raised you. With that said, I hope this letter finds you well.

We left you too soon. We knew it almost immediately after our moving truck was parked in our new driveway, a thousand miles away. You were so young and we left you so quickly. We’d been trained that when you leave a youth ministry position, you shouldn’t keep close contact with your students because it could make it harder for the next youth pastor. We weren’t supposed to maintain relationships because we were taught that it was better for you to detach from us. So we distanced ourselves from you, believing it was the right thing to do. We thought it was what was best for you, even though it felt icky and hurtful. We never gave you a good reason for our unexpected departure and I think it’s time that I tell you why.

It wasn’t you. It wasn’t the pastor. It wasn’t the church. It wasn’t any one thing.

At the time, I didn’t have the language to know that I was depressed. We’d lived there four years and I’d never found a rhythm for my life. It wasn’t my home, as in - it wasn’t where I was from, and because of that I had a hard time making friends. When you move to a small town from somewhere else, you learn really quickly that relationships have been long established and people aren’t so willing to let you in. Many women my age accused me of thinking I was better than them. Which wasn’t true at all, I just wasn’t like them. I had different interests, I was a “big city girl” as they said, I’d lived an entirely different life before moving there and I found it nearly impossible to assimilate. I was 22 when we got there. We hadn’t even been married a year and I’d never lived away from my family before.

We spent Christmases alone. I cried every Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. Those were family days and I was used to being in homes full of people, spending the entire day celebrating. But when we moved there, it was very suddenly - just us. Every now and then, there’d be the rare invitation to join another family for a holiday, but mostly, our most significant days of the year were lonely and sad.

We loved you all so much. We loved our church family. We loved our jobs. There was no singular event that pushed us to make the decision to leave. But, to be perfectly honest with you, we made the decision when we spent Christmas with my parents in Tennessee. It was the first Christmas in four years that I didn’t cry.

When we got back to our home after the holidays, we knew it was pretty much over. The depression descended on me, swallowed me. After experiencing so much happiness when we were with family, coming back home felt harder and heavier.

But we didn’t know how to say that. We didn’t even know what that was. So we spiritualized it because that’s all we knew how to do. We didn’t know how to name emotions, so we thought our discontent and unhappiness were God speaking to us. We thought that if your mind can’t stop thinking of something (in this case, it was leaving) that it was God. And honestly, having a spiritual reason to turn our lives upside down felt better than saying “we just have to go.”

So we said, “God is calling us somewhere else.” In the middle of the school year? Before graduation? I was pregnant, depressed, scared, unwise, and all I could think of was myself and what felt right for me. And that hurt you. It was survival and it was selfish and I’m sorry.

I want you to know that I have cried many tears over you these last 12 years. I’m crying today as I write this letter to you, not even knowing if you’ll see it or if you’ll care. I hope that you don’t care. I hope that you don’t need this apology, but I want you to know how sorry I am.

I was misguided and scared and sad and I know that it’s likely that it caused harm in your life. You sent us off so well. You threw us a party as we laced up our sneakers and ran. Even in the moment, I felt like what we were doing was deeply misaligned with who we were, but we saw no way out. We couldn’t. Depression blinded us and the hint of a life that might have been more joyful had us laser focused on our exit, even as we recognized that what we were doing didn’t feel entirely right.

And yet, you and your families were so kind and loving to us. Over the last decade, you’ve welcomed us back into your homes and lives many times. I know that your love for my family supersedes the hurt we might have caused you when we left, but I’m still deeply sorry.

My faith frameworks shaped me into the kind of person who would slap a spiritual excuse for abandoning my post and hurting a the people I loved. But since then, I’ve learned to name my pain and be honest about why I do the things that I do. I no longer make God a scapegoat for my decisions so that I don’t have to feel responsible for the consequences of them. “God told me” isn’t a phrase I say anymore. I’m much more cautious about the way I move through my life and much more intentional about the way I engage with my faith, especially when it involves other people.

I think of you all often. You are a permanent fixture in my heart and in my mind and I only remember you with fondness. I only ever want the best for you. I hope you’ve found God to be kind and that your lives are full of joy and good people.

I’m grateful that you were in my life.

Always and forever on your side,
Kristen

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If you want to submit your own letter to the faith that raised you - you can do that here.

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