Interior Catholic

  • NaNoWriMo

    50,000 words in one month. I used to participate in NaNoWriMo every year, preparing for weeks beforehand so I could start writing diligently on November 1. It’s been several years, but I decided this was the year to start again. I knew it would be difficult. I don’t have a lot of time to write during the day, and by five o’clock I don’t want to stare at the computer anymore. But I can easily crank out the required 1,667 words a day. I’ve done a lot more than that before.

    I haven’t written anything lately, so I started easy. Instead of fiction, I’d get the writing gears going with a little memoir. I would map out my story of faith, the journey that brought me to the Church. It would be nothing like a final draft—in anything, my first drafts are more like outlines as I figure out where to go. It was fun for a couple weeks. I revisited the church of my childhood and all those pastors I’d connected with. I broke out my journal from Israel, comparing the entries against the photo album (and getting sidetracked flipping through the pictures). But when I got to the actual meat of the story, I… couldn’t do it. 14,000 words in, and I was home from Israel, basking in the light of my Holy Land journey. But I couldn’t remember what ultimately brought me to leave the church—and the people—I’d connected with.

    My conversion story was harder to face than I thought it would be. When I think back, I remember feeling frustrated by what was being preached. I remember searching the Internet and asking vague questions so no one knew I was questioning. I remember when I stopped tithing. But I don’t remember why. I don’t remember what ultimately pushed me out.

    Maybe I’m not ready to face it. Though it was a weird and exciting time, it was also painful. I’d made church friends who’d be left behind; I made a new Catholic friend who ended up hurting me. I didn’t know who to talk to, or what to ask. There was a week that I didn’t know the fate of my soul, because I didn’t know who was right. There’s a two-month memory gap between that Israel trip and my contemplating Catholicism.

    But it is something I’d like to remember, one day. What I thought would be an easy writing project dredged up all this stuff. I wish I’d started my journal earlier. I wish I’d updated social media, or talked to friends, or did anything to chronicle that early journey. Even though those two months were obviously important, I may never remember the details. But I remember a lot from after that time, which is most memorable. I searched for the truth, read the books, and truly connected with God. That’s when my paper journal starts, and it’s really interesting to read it now.

    When I sat in my first RCIA session, it wasn’t about Mary. Or the pope. Or relics. Or even the sacraments.
    It was about Jesus.
    —September 25, 2017

    Those 14,000 words aren’t nothing, and I’ll hang onto them. It was fun to reminisce. But the rest of it is going to have to wait, I think.

  • Faith Unraveled


    I wish I’d had this book ten years ago. I had questions the church couldn’t answer, and it was wrong to even ask them. Things in the fundamentalist sphere didn’t line up for me, but it was the only thing I knew, so I assumed I was just missing something. I wasn’t smart enough, or spiritual enough, or didn’t do enough for God. Though I’m past that initial questioning stage, I recognize the fear and curiosity in Rachel’s story.

    I’d described her as a “former fundamentalist” before reading any of her material, but I think I’m wrong. I was waiting to hear where she’d ended up, what church was finally her church, but the answer never came. Maybe it’s better that way. This isn’t a conversion story—it’s a book of questions. It questions the things you’ve been told to accept. It questions the fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture. It questions where she belongs in this church, but she never quite leaves this church. She just tries to make sense of it, which I can respect.

    Even when Jesus hung on the cross, when God had been insulted to the highest degree imaginable, left naked, humiliated, beaten, and bruised, he said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

    We had a lot of the same doubts: Like, it doesn’t seem possible that Baptists are the only ones in Heaven. Or, how can people who’ve never been exposed to the Gospel be saved? She realizes there’s a lot of focus on the afterlife and not much focus on this one, a theme that always unsettled me. She spends a lot of time trying to unravel these doubts, so I’d expected a big reveal at the end. The last section is titled “Change,” after all, so I was waiting for her grand answers. But there are no grand answers. Slightly disappointing, but also realistic. Any 20-something who claims to have all the answers is either delusional or a liar. The point of this book isn’t to lecture—it’s simply to explore.

    It reads like one big blog post, understandable from someone who started as a blogger. It’s often entertaining, especially when she tells stories of the church’s evangelization efforts. (It’s all so… familiar.) I recall my own frustrations when she’s told “Be careful of what you say” when asking questions, and I laughed when she described the altar call and the droning “Just As I Am” in the background. This is someone who knows something is off, even if she can’t describe it.

    Rachel was around my age, and died in 2019. Knowing this threw me into a weird loop as I was reading. She certainly knows the answers now, and it feels like I can just call her up and ask. I hope she knows the impact she’s had on many questioning fundamentalists.

    The problem with fundamentalism is that it can’t adapt to change. When you count each one of your beliefs as absolutely essential, change is never an option.

And they said to him, “Inquire of God, we pray thee, that we may know whether the journey on which we are setting out will succeed.”

And the priest said to them, “Go in peace. The journey on which you go is under the eye of the LORD.”

—Judges 18:5–6

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