Having recently encouraged a friend to keep coming to church and to continue asking his questions, it was this question that he posed with some disquiet. And understandably so.

Two months post-wedding, I said to Denis, “If I was a boy, I’d be you up!” The door slammed behind me.

We watched married couples and witnessed public demonstrations of affection as they sat together in their pews on Sunday morning. No one ever admitted having trouble, or that life could be thorny and complicated. Marriage looked easy for everyone except us.

Someone wrote to me about their deconstructing and how they are thinking of risking again:

“It is so hard to feel understood by those without a similar past but also by people who have the same past but hold different beliefs than I do currently. There is lots of hiding and lots of fear.”

In response, as I’ll often do, I wrote this prayer:

Sadly, I’d come to think that Christians were the found ones and other-than-Christian people were lost. But I was wrong. All of us no matter who we are can lose our way and need finding again.