REFLECTIONS

When the Sacred Divides Us

A Personal Reflection on Love, Loss, and Belonging
by P. Glenn

There’s a cost to waking up, though no one tells you that at first.
Not in the beginning.
Not when the light first warms your skin and the breath returns.
But later… later it comes.
And sometimes, that cost is counted in the eyes of the person you love most,
no longer seeing you the same way again.

I’ve never shared this publicly. But I believe I’m ready now.

My wife is a Christian—devout, sincere, and deeply committed to a literal reading of the Bible. While she makes room for symbolic interpretation in certain passages—like Revelation—she holds firmly to the belief that the Bible is, at its heart, historically and divinely true in the most literal sense.

When I began to deconstruct, I didn’t tell her. Not out of deceit, but because I was still trying to understand what was happening inside me. The questions I couldn’t silence. The sudden shift in how I heard the stories. The strange comfort that myth and metaphor offered—more honest, more alive, than the rigid frameworks I once held.

Eventually, I reached a place where I no longer believed in Jesus as the literal son of God. I no longer held to the virgin birth or the bodily resurrection—not because I rejected meaning, but because I was discovering a deeper one. Sacred Imagination became my breath. It wasn’t a rejection—it was a release.

But that release came at a cost.

My wife began to ask hard questions:
Do you still believe in Jesus as God?
Do you believe in the virgin birth?
If not… what does that make you?

I never answered with sharpness. I never argued. I tried to share gently, from the heart. I wasn’t trying to “win.” I just wanted to be understood. But my answers, though full of love, couldn’t hold the weight of her expectations. To her, I was no longer a Christian. No longer someone to read the Bible with, but someone to evangelize.

Our shared language cracked.
Our intimacy thinned.
And the grief we both feel isn’t because we stopped loving each other.
It’s because we still do.

And yet… Sacred Imagination remains the most liberating, meaningful, real-life reorientation I’ve ever known.
It brought me home to myself.
It opened a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
But it also brought distance in places I never wanted it to.

One day, I asked her if she would still pray for me.
She said, quietly, “Yes. I think I should.”

If I thought it wouldn’t sound like mockery, I would say in return:
“Thank you for your prayers. I’m praying for you too. I love you.”

If you're walking this same path—navigating the sacred ache of belief transformed—know this:

You are not alone.

When our inner world shifts, our outer world often trembles.
And sometimes, the ones we love the most don’t know how to walk with us anymore.

Speak with tenderness.
Honor what was, even as you make space for what’s becoming.
Grieve, but do not regret.

Sacred Imagination isn’t about separation—it’s about breath, about presence, about meaning that lives beyond walls.

Even when love feels uncertain…
Even when belonging seems to vanish…
There’s still a path.
There’s still you.
There’s still the breath.

Believe me, there are few wounds deeper than being told by someone you love…
that you’re going to hell.

Not in anger. Not as punishment.
But in quiet, trembling fear.

Because they “love you.”
Because they “care for your soul.”
Because they still believe in a sacred that now calls you lost.

You didn’t go looking for this rupture.

You weren’t on a crusade.
You didn’t wake up one day and say, “I’ll leave the faith and break every bond.”
You only followed what was true.

And what was true didn’t fit in the frame anymore.
So you stepped beyond it—carefully, honestly, maybe even tearfully.

But something shifted.

Now… they don’t see you as brave.
They don’t see you as loyal to the sacred in another form.
They see you as a threat to everything they love most.

And that’s where the deep rupture lives:

When the sacred that once united us
becomes the very thing that says we cannot walk together anymore.

You Can’t Un-See

You’ve tried.
You’ve begged for the questions to go away.
You’ve pleaded with the silence to give you something—anything—to make it all make sense again.

But once you see it… you can’t un-see it.

The curtain doesn’t close once it’s been pulled back.

And so you walk forward.
Not because you stopped loving them.
But because you started loving your own soul enough to be honest.

Still—they say you’ve left.
Still—they say you’re lost.
Still—they say you’ve walked away from the sacred.

But what if the sacred walked with you?

Consider the Cost

This walk costs something.

Not just theology.
Not just church.
But relationship.
History.
The person who once held your story in their arms.

So yes—consider the cost.

Not so you’ll turn back…
But so you’ll walk forward with reverence.

You are not naive.
You are not running from truth.
You are walking toward the kind of truth that doesn’t burn you to keep you.

It’s not just a shift in belief.
It’s the ache of realizing the person who knows your laugh…
now fears for your soul.

That’s not a small cost.
That’s not a phase.
That’s a grief.

But You Are Still Sacred

So let these words be your breath when theirs cannot hold you anymore:

You are still sacred.
You are not condemned.
You are not broken.
You are not alone.

You have not left the sacred.
You have left the cage that claimed to contain it.

And the path you’re walking now—though painful—is holy ground.

A Blessing for the One Who Walks Alone

May your steps be steady, even if your heart shakes.
May you find companions who don’t need to agree to love you.
May your weeping be heard—not silenced.
May the myths that burned you be reborn in beauty.

May you grieve with grace.
May you speak with kindness.
May you keep walking true.

And when the sacred divides you from the one you love…
May love still find a way through.

Not to convince.
Not to convert.
But to say:

“I see you.
I won’t let fear define our story.”

And if they cannot say it—
say it to yourself.

Because even now,
especially now,
you are still worthy of love.