Welcome back, friends – it’s been a while!

It’s hard to believe that more than five years have passed since I first shared my story and started this blog. An honest space where I could put words to the personal side of my faith journey, the same journey that fueled much of what I explored in my book a few years earlier. A blog I launched without the faintest idea where (if anywhere) it might wander. And, apparently, a blog that drifted quietly into semi-retirement without bothering to put forward any notice. Yet, when I look back at what I wrote half a decade ago, those first hesitant attempts to say out loud how my faith had shifted, I feel a quiet sort of gratitude. Although I don’t think I take things quite as seriously as I did back then, I still know how freeing it can be to let your questions get some sunlight, how sharing your story can be its own small act of courage, and how naming the struggle can be far more life-giving than the shiny certainties we so often cling to.

I remember how much those first words meant to me, and how much they still mean to me now. They remind me that faith, at least for me, has never been a static thing. It’s always been alive and restless, something that grows, shrinks, meanders, and doubles back on itself in ways that keep me on my toes. I’ve come to believe that if my faith never changes shape as I myself change, then maybe I’m mistaking faith for something a bit more fragile. Somewhere in all that shifting, I’ve realized that maybe the ultimate enemy of faith isn’t change, but stagnation. That maybe faith is less like a fixed monument and more like a flowing river – still recognizable, but always moving, always carving new edges into the landscape of my life. I used to think the goal was to build something unshakable, but now I wonder if it’s more about learning to wade deeper into the current without needing the water to stop rushing. Or at least without needing the current to carry its own inflatable life raft (built-in beverage holders notwithstanding).

Looking back, I said a lot, but I also left a lot unsaid. I told my story and wrote about how I’d come to rethink the nature of faith, and how that process changed my life. How it gave me permission to let go of a version of faith tied to certainty and control, and to open my hands to something humbler, more spacious, more honest. And yet, there were so many other pieces of the story that remained untouched. Things I knew I wanted to wrestle with more deeply but never felt quite ready to pin down in words: things like God, Jesus, the Bible, sin and salvation, heaven and hell, science and faith, the meaning of the gospel, the purpose of life itself, etc. – you know, the small things.

All jokes aside, back then I thought I’d do what I’d always done. I’d read, and think, and pray, and scribble down notes until each topic felt tidy enough to share. I imagined that one day, I’d be able to line up each puzzle piece in a row and hold them up like trophies: “Here’s how I once saw… and here’s how I see now.” I believed that clarity would come if I just pressed hard enough, dug deep enough, found the right books or the right scholars or the right prayers (Spoiler: none of those ever showed up in the mail). That tidy clarity never really arrived, at least not in the form I expected. Instead of neat before-and-after snapshots, I found a growing sense that the questions themselves were part of my journey, not problems to be solved but companions to be carried. The edges didn’t smooth out the way I thought they would. They stayed jagged and complicated. Sometimes I resented that, and sometimes I still do. There are days I’d love nothing more than to slip back into the comfort of an airtight theology, a belief system that never leaks or buckles under pressure. But then I remember that, like all airtight systems, it can get a little stuffy inside.

And yet, if I’m being truthful, I’ve come to respect this uncertainty in its own strange way. I’ve learned that faith is sometimes what keeps you sitting at the table with your questions long after easy answers have fled the room. Still, for all the freedom that realization brought, I couldn’t bring myself to keep writing about it. I kept telling myself I’d pick it all back up when I felt more ready. When my thoughts were cleaner, when my questions had softened around the edges, when I felt less afraid of what people might think. But you probably know how that goes. “Ready” is a mirage that keeps moving just out of reach. I’m learning that my need for tidy answers often comes from fear, not trust. And if trust has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes the best things grow in the soil of our unfinished questions.

Then it dawned on me, what if this space could be less about looking back with the benefit of hindsight and more about giving myself permission to write within the middle of the mess? What if this could be a place where I don’t have to wait until I’m sure, but can instead speak honestly and imperfectly about the wrestling itself? What if the goal isn’t arriving at answers, but the slow and frustrating (but potentially sacred) practice of learning how to find God in the questions? In a world where so many voices seem to speak with conviction at the edges of this spectrum we call faith – some vigilantly guarding the familiar and traditional, others defiantly embracing the radical and provocative – I don’t often hear the ones willing to stay in the unsettled middle, to speak from within the tension rather than past it. And so I suppose my hope is to be one of those rare voices, even if it means staying in the fog a little longer.

When I think about it like that, it reminds me of the whole spirit of what I’m trying to do here. This isn’t about racing headlong in one direction or the other, boldly defending the old or disruptively pioneering the new. It’s more like writing letters to myself, or maybe to the kid who sat in Sunday School with a thousand unspoken questions and a sinking feeling that some of them weren’t allowed. It’s about letting the questions breathe instead of leveraging them into one particular corner of thought. It’s about telling the truth about where I find hope, where I find wonder, where I find tension, and where I feel just plain lost or alone – a kind of spiritual therapy for the soul. And maybe it’s also about trusting that it might help someone else feel less lost or alone too. Because one thing I’ve learned along the way is that faith is a lot less lonely when we realize we’re not the only ones holding our questions with restless hands.

None of what I hope to share is really new – at least, not new to me. These are the tensions I’ve carried in the quiet corners of my faith for over a decade now, the questions that have whispered, prodded, and sometimes shouted. What feels new isn’t the wrestling itself, but the act of finally giving voice to it. Of tracing it in ink, saying aloud what’s lived unnamed for so long. For those reading, some of it might feel unfamiliar, maybe even surprising. But for me, it’s more like finally putting words to the landscape I’ve been walking through for years. I don’t aim to convince or persuade, but to simply share my thoughts honestly. To name the questions for myself, and perhaps others too. Oh, and a quick disclaimer from experience: speaking these things out loud is bound to reshape how I see them, shifting the contours in ways I can’t fully predict. So if the view changes as we go, I hope we can notice those changes together and smile — like realizing the “shortcut” just added three scenic miles but at least came with a decent story.

With all that said, though, I want to finally pick up where I left off those many years ago. In particular, I want to return to the one thing that has refused to let me settle, the one thing that keeps tugging at the edge of my mind no matter how many times I try to put it down. Aside from the nature of faith, it’s the topic I’ve wrestled with more than almost anything else, the consistent thread I keep finding woven through every other question I ask. And that’s the Bible. Yes, the Bible… what a strange, complicated word that is for me now. Once upon a time, it felt like a fortress: solid, immovable, protective. It gave me boundaries, certainty, answers that felt like anchors in deep water. Later, it became more like a puzzle I was sure I could solve if I just found the right study bible or commentary. I devoured apologetics books and footnotes like they were breadcrumbs leading me home. And for a while, that worked – until it didn’t. In hindsight, I probably should’ve realized that breadcrumbs aren’t the best long-term diet plan to begin with.

In any case, eventually, the foundation of that fortress began to shift. The puzzle pieces wouldn’t fit, no matter how I forced them. And yet, I couldn’t walk away. The Bible became a companion I couldn’t quite figure out but couldn’t abandon either. It’s a library full of voices, stories, songs, and prayers that have shaped me more deeply than any other book ever could. It’s where I first learned to name the sacred, to pray in the dark, to hope against hope that love really is stronger than death. It’s also the place where some of my deepest wounds were inflicted, by interpretations that shrank God down to a petty scorekeeper, or weaponized verses used to keep people silent or small. And yet, somehow, despite all that, it’s also where I’ve encountered a depth of grace that has at times taken my breath away. Some days, I think I stay with the Bible because it keeps surprising me. It’s a labyrinth that refuses to be turned into a single, airtight system. It’s a chorus of human voices reaching for God; and sometimes, if I’m listening carefully, it feels like God reaching back. So that’s where I want to begin. Or more accurately: that’s where I want to keep going. Because even when the Bible confounds me, it still calls me back – not to certainty, but to wonder.

So here I am, dusting off my proverbial pen and letting these battered sails catch wind once more. I’m not promising roadmaps or resolutions. Rather, what I’m hoping to offer is a different trail of breadcrumbs: moments of honesty, flickers of light, glimpses of where I’ve found God hiding in the cracks. The voyage ahead may get choppy, my thoughts may tack back and forth like a ship in shifting winds, and I may sound more like a vessel caught in a swirling current than one charting a straight course – so apologies in advance if I leave you feeling a bit seasick along the way. But sometimes it’s in the swirling that I find myself transformed by the One at the center of it all, like clay surrendered to the potter’s wheel, shaped and reshaped around that steady core until it becomes something new.

So I’ll keep writing, and I hope you’ll keep reading. Maybe these honest words will help me find my way forward. Maybe they won’t. Either way, I trust that God will be there, waiting in the questions. And if not, hopefully I’ll at least have given my future self (and a few random strangers on the internet) something interesting to read one day.

Until then, thanks again for reading and – as always – stay curious, seek truth, and love well.