Sarah Nyhan

You know what the most difficult part of not operating under “signs” is? Taking FULL responsibility for your whole damn life.

Common sense, right? Well not if you were raised in the kind of religion I fell into. 

In that world god always had a plan. And it was your job to figure it out. Because apparently god was tricky and just wanted you to get hints. But then they said it was somehow your fault if you didn’t put the puzzle together. 

Maddening! No peace! And completely unreasonable. 

I don’t know about you, but I finally decided my God isn’t a tricky tyrant. And decided that it was the religious zealots that screwed me up. Royally. Oh and maybe more so the people who are spiritually lazy. 

Because you never have to take responsibility for anything when you operate with “signs”. You can always convince yourself either way that is most convenient for your outcome: either god told you so it’s his fault if it doesn’t work out. Or god didn’t communicate the “sign” well enough so again you do mental gymnastics to TRY to escape accountability.

This also goes for those people who are endlessly praying and never doing anything to fix the problems in their lives and their relationships. I used to be that person. I know exactly what they are thinking.

It took everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING, falling apart for me to finally decide enough with signs and even enough with just trying to pray all my problems away. 

Do I still ask God questions and tell God my thoughts? Absolutely. But I no longer think God is going to always bail me out of my decisions and choices. Even when I made those decisions innocently and with the best knowledge I had at the time.

I don’t think the point is pleasing God. I think God is already always pleased with us in terms of Love and acceptance. 

But I don’t think They are pleased when we hurt ourselves and others. As any Good parent would be. 

So there is no anger. There is no ego. There is no rule book even. It’s just all about healing. To be the best version of ourselves.

And in that I don’t think God is interested at all in Creating robots. We exist in REAL relationship, REAL conversation with our Creator. Whether we knowingly tap into all we have access to or not.

But conversing with God is different than asking for signs. In my opinion. After lots and lots of trial and error. Years!

Because I had no concept at all of my own strength and power for the majority of my Life. I was totally groomed to just be of service to others. An echo. Perform as expected. I just looked for where I fit in. I had very little of my own identity.

When my family, religious, and career systems/community fell away I was at a terrifying loss. I literally had no idea who I was or what to do. I had to build all of that from scratch. In my late 30s and early 40s. 

It’s been 5-10 years since the ball really got rolling and I am only now able to not take weeks of falling all over everything before I can identify how I actually feel and think about a thing. And that’s such huge progress for me.

Do you know how out of touch I was? It took me years to even be able to feel if I was warm or cold. I mean I would feel uncomfortable, but my natural tendency was not to ask myself why I was uncomfortable. I was rather groomed to look around and see if everyone else was comfortable. If they were then I would just automatically assume I SHOULD be comfortable. I would never even ask myself what I wanted. Because no one else really did. I had to learn how to even tell if I was warm or cold.

Same thing with eating. I would get so sick because I have insulin resistance. Since I was a kid. But then I am raised in an environment that tells me I should only eat at such and such time. Or times I can remember asking my parents for food and it’s like: it’s not time to eat.

And I don’t blame them because that’s how they were raised most likely. They probably didn’t know any better. But it’s taken me decades to be able to even identify if I am hungry. Because my whole life people expected me to eat when they eat. I don’t remember regularly being asked if I was hungry or given the freedom to decide that for myself. I was just expected to be hungry when everyone else was hungry.

To the point that before I was old enough to work, I resorted to stealing food and stealing money to buy food. Am I proud of that? Absolutely not. But I forgive myself and give myself grace because it was the only way I knew to not get sick with my insulin resistance when I wasn’t allowed to get what I needed when I needed it.

Just to say basic things like the ability to regulate my body temperature and satiate my hunger were so foreign to me. Learning how to stop thinking what everyone else expected of me. And decide for myself just those two simple things is still something I have to work through on a daily basis. I still have to put effort into it. It’s still not 100% second-nature after 5-10 years!

So can you imagine everything else?!?!

Deciding on a career. Deciding on an educational path. Deciding on where to live. Deciding on how to build community. Deciding EVERYTHING. It is so fucking overwhelming.

Trying to figure out what is actually me. Versus what was put onto me by the family, religion, and society. 

I know who everyone expects me to be. But I had no idea who I actually was. I had no idea what I actually wanted. It’s been all trial and error. Day after day after day. 

And decision fatigue is a very real thing. I feel like I have to think through thousands of decisions a day. Everything. To the point where there are times I go into the store and end up in tears. Walking out without being able to make a decision. 

It sounds stupid, but those coming out of high-control groups may understand. 

Early on I couldn’t even buy toilet paper or paper towels. Just because I didn’t know who I was.

Old me from my family would have bought the absolute cheapest toilet paper. The most volume for the cheapest price. Because the family operated in constant fear of financial devastation. 

But was that actually me? I mean could I give myself permission to even consider different toilet paper? Should I? Was it that big of a deal?

Society told me I was being too cheap. My friends would make fun of me. I wanted them to accept me. I didn’t want them to not come over because they hated my toilet paper.

What would Jesus think? Does Jesus care about my toilet paper choice? If the religion was saying so then I should probably be frugal to give more money to the preacher because “saving souls” is more important than comfortable toilet paper. Right?

But if I don’t think God is going to let me be financially devastated, and I don’t think God sends people to an eternal barbeque pit, then is it okay to spend a little extra so my friends will feel comfortable wiping their asses at my place?

And then who am I? If I am fine with the cheap toilet paper, is that valid also? Does having friends come down to a preference in toilet paper? Is the mark of a real friend whether they still want to hang out with you even though you prefer cheap toilet paper?

Ugh!!!! And that’s just the toilet paper!!! 

You want to know why I wear the same jeans, same blue shirts, same shoes, same hair style, same socks, same underwear, same bras day after day for years?! THAT! I finally found what I like at least in clothing. Enough at least to where I feel mostly comfortable. And it’s one less decision I have to make every day when I am figuring out who I am and what I want with what feels like EVERYTHING else.

When apparently choosing which toilet paper to buy spurs on a full identity crisis in the middle of H-E-B. And don’t even get me started if there are multiple items to buy. And multiple options of stores. 

I have multiple times literally walked out with nothing and had to go take a nap.

It sounds stupid. But it’s all a crisis resulting from years of outsourcing my decisions to “signs” and even to God. Well-meaning as I thought I was being.

You want to hear something “crazy” that I never hear people talk about. Except one video from John MacMurray: https://youtu.be/1kwHMUyyyp4?si=TN_rNAJxVVpMSXqt

I think about what John says in that video almost every day of my life now. He’s the only one I’ve ever heard talk about it.

That sometimes I think God plays, for lack of a better way to say it, devil’s advocate with us. Whichever way we want to go to work out whatever it is we are healing from and whatever it is that Trinity is growing strength in for us. 

Confused? Stick with me while I try to explain. 

In simplest terms: I don’t think God wants us to be robots blindly following rules. I think God wants Living breathing humans to be in even messy relationship with. God is not intimidated by our humanness at all. Much, much unlike your preachers will go on about ad nauseum. As much as I forgive their ignorance. And God also, I confidently believe. 

But just to say I think God wants YOU to develop the heart and mind and spirit that is actually and actively participating in your Life and in your relationships! 

Which I think means God will frustrate your offloading of the emotional, spiritual, and mental labor of decision-making by relying on “signs”. And maybe also you coughing up all inaction just to praying. As if you can just hot-potato all your responsibilities over to God.

How this looks I think is if you insist on avoiding making a decision by asking God for a “sign”, I think God will, depending on the situation, give you even the “wrong” answer or no answer just to specifically frustrate you from the whole “signs” business. 

The end goal being that you are unhappy with the situation you end up in. And if you’re like me, you’ll probably have to go through this fifty thousand million times before you finally get sick of all the bullshit you end up in after following all the “signs” you thought God gave you. 

And then you finally decide you can’t do signs anymore. And then you finally decide what YOU actually want. And FINALLY give yourself permission to make that decision on your own. 

It’s so few words for what takes literally maybe even decades to work through. At least it did for me.

The linchpin for me was working through the story of the rich young ruler. That’s when I finally realized. After I gave up ALL my money and ALL my income. After I left “the world” to work at Manna House. And God didn’t pay all my bills and debts. 

God let me fall FLAT on my face. With my money and with the notoriously cringy Mr. December 19th situation. 🤦 Lord have mercy, I was SO lost in “signs”. I honestly thought that was the way. Boy, what I wouldn’t give to go back a few decades and make so many different decisions. 

But I didn’t know. 

Then another story that helped me give myself permission to make my own decisions without waiting for “signs” is the story of the talents. How the only guy that got reprimanded was the one who did nothing and was paralyzed by fear.

And then the third story that helped free me was the simple story of God telling Adam to name the animals. Because the church folk woulda swore God preordains everything. Hence: asking and waiting for signs. But there plain as day in the first book of our Bibles was God telling Adam to make up his own mind. God specifically wanting to see what Adam would come up with.

Now the zealots will do mental gymnastics to gaslight themselves and everyone else into towing the line and not considering any other perspective. Especially common sense. 

But I have experienced immense relief from discovering over and over that God isn’t tricky. That religion has made an enormous complicated mess out of an extremely simple message. And that we actually don’t have to abandon our minds to follow Christ. That when you work through most things, when you actually dare to challenge Holy Spirit in regards to the dogma, the answers are quite simple. No religious multi-level marketing spiels needed to get others to understand.

The only people who have a problem with common sense are those religious folks that can’t see past their noses. 

God ain’t finished or even frustrated by them though. Also. 

And not my business either. Clearly got more than enough of my own to work on. 

But just writing this because I think it’s fascinating in of course a God-sized genius way. That if you insist on signs, God might tell you one thing today and then the complete opposite tomorrow. Just so and until you get tired. And finally make up your own damn mind.

Good luck to those of us starting over from scratch. After everything fell apart. Because it IS a lot!

I think ideally you should be given the time and freedom to figure out this stuff before you hit puberty. To develop an actual identity beyond just being a robot to fit into other people’s stories. So you can have years to figure out what paths you want to explore and what suits you best. With relatively little consequences when you are a kid.

One of the more frustrating parts of this is that people judge me negatively because I am an adult who doesn’t “have it together” to their liking yet.

They don’t see the big picture. That yes, I make changes sometimes day by day. Over and over. Flip-flopping back and forth. One huge example being social media. But it’s not because I have some disorder. It’s simply because I am like a brand new baby. Figuring out life for the first time. Except publicly with real consequences. Versus the safety of play and imagination as a child of biological age. 

I have to literally try on different parts of who I think I am. I have to show up in real-life scenarios wearing this me I think I have settled on. Just to find there is something else I don’t like or something else I want to change and do differently. 

People look at that as a bad thing. Because they worship certainty more than growth and healing. Which is incredibly frustrating. But also completely out of my control if I decide to be true to myself. Versus just going along for their fickle acceptance. 

People be all kinds of okay with you suffering. Believe that. As long as you don’t challenge them.

But get mad or stand up for yourself. Or admit you are sad and depressed, and they’ll leave you figuring out all this shit on your own if you don’t fall back in line quick enough. Cursory nods are tolerated for the briefest of times. But this deep shit? Boy, don’t I know it. In THICK!

Ironically I wouldn’t have discovered any of this if everyone had stayed for me to mirror. At the end of the day, I probably have to thank those that left me more than those few who dare to tolerate me even a bit.

I am finally discovering myself. I am finally making decisions on my own. Standing behind who I am. Taking responsibility and accountability like I NEVER did while in “the church”. 

I talk to God all the time. But now I ask different questions. Cause I know if I ask for “signs”, it’s most likely going to end in another messy lesson. 

I don’t say, “God, what should I do?”

I instead now ask things like, “Please help me see what I am missing. Please help me see Your heart in this situation. What words or actions could I take to make the outcome that I want? Is there a better outcome than the one I think is best?”

Then it’s a conversation. And an actual relationship.

Then I am growing as a person. Then I am actually participating in this Life.

Then I have skin in the game. Versus, frankly and in crude terms, being a pussy. Being a weakass bitch that won’t stand for nothing. That wants to blame everything on god. If things don’t work out. 

I lived that way for way too damn long. I think God never “blessed” me there so I would realize I have something to offer my fellow humans. And myself for that matter.

That all of us are Created to participate. Not to sit on the sidelines in fear. And also not to march around like soulless sanitized sterilized robots. Ugh.

That’s what I think it means when God kicked Adam out of “the garden”. It just means God refuses to bless our delusions. Just so we don’t get stuck there. When there is so much better for us on the other side. Of fear. Of analysis paralysis. 

Actually stepping up. Actually getting in the game. Instead of mousing away on the sidelines. 

You do you. Zero condemnation. 

But God, please give me my mountain! Please help me go get it. Like Peter said, wash me top to bottom. Please help me go get that GOOD Life if it’s actually out there to get.