This is the Email I Sent My Mom When I Told Her I No Longer Believed in God
By: Michelle Wilkins
Tags: Hope, Deconversion, Religion And Spirituality, Faith and Life, Christianity

This is the Email I Sent My Mom When I Told Her I No Longer Believed in God Michelle Wilkins Follow May 19, 2020 · 9 min read

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

On Friday, October 17th, 2014 I sent my mom an email detailing my deconversion from Christianity—the faith I’d been raised in, and the very foundation on which my family was built. And I intend to share it today in its entirety. For His glory.

But first, a little background.

At the time of the email, I was 27. By that point, it had already been a few years since I’d actively pursued a relationship with God, or been to church. I’d had a crisis of faith 1–2 years earlier when I realized I wasn’t sure I really believed what I’d always been told to believe.

To add insult to injury, I’d gotten in a serious relationship with a man who claimed he was an atheist and who never shied away from a conversation criticizing organized religion. We lived together for 3 years.

By that time, my relationship with my parents had grown strained. It seemed like we always had to tiptoe around the subject of religion whenever we were together. If one of us managed to slip up, it usually ended in a screaming match. (Okay, I was the only one who screamed).

But that never really stopped my mom from trying. Even when it seemed to make things worse, she’d send me Bible verses occasionally and tell me she was praying for me. Which of course would send me reeling on the receiving end, frustrated that she couldn’t respect my journey, and give me some space.

The day before I sent the email

…my mom had seen something I posted on Facebook that she thought was crude and offensive (she was right). And she made a comment on it, which set me off on yet another one of my twenty-something-tantrums. She sent me a long email that night around 1AM attempting to explain her reaction, and confront me about my own.

The next morning, I typed out what started as an apology:

“You’re right. I’m sorry for overreacting. I have a bad habit of speaking before I think about it, and I was already in a mood from work that I should not have been handling personal matters during.”

I went on to explain why I thought Facebook was partially to blame, and how I felt like it was difficult to be “fully myself” around them. Honestly, now that I read it, it sounds more like an email from a 17 year old than a 27 year old. In hindsight, my maturity level was pretty much that of a teenager most of my twenties.

Okay, now for the faith stuff

I want to share this because I think it’s entirely possible that someone reading this has either sent an email/letter like this before, or received one.

And I felt God calling me this morning to share it:

“As for the larger discussion, I’m sorry that you feel like my deviation from faith was a 180, and happened overnight. You obviously are not me so you can’t have known or been perceptive to what feels like an adult lifetime struggle with faith. Of course for almost 20 years we shared so much in faith together. Because it was what you taught me, all I have ever known. I was asked in EIGHTH GRADE to confirm my faith. 8th grade. In 8th grade I was talking about cute boys and softball, not about the deeper meanings of life and faith. Of course I accepted faith into my life, there was no other choice. Surrounded by a godly family that works in the church is not an environment for free thinking and doubt.”

That wasn’t the last time I explored this idea. I wrote recently here on Medium about why we walk away from the religion of our childhoods:

I even addressed that yes, at one time I had believed:

“For a very long time, I had all my chips in for Christianity. It was comforting. It was how I had been taught to deal with life’s difficulties, and how to rejoice in life’s successes. I wasn’t faking it, I was living the life that I been raised in.”

I went on to explain how my experience in college had shaped the way I lived my life. I confessed that even though I still clung to my belief in God, I never really lived the way Christians are called to.

“Even then, back in college, I did not agree with a lot of the teachings. I had sex, I lived with my boyfriend, there were a lot of inconsistencies with how I lived my life and what I learned in church. I had never been very good at living it, because it didn’t come naturally and I didn’t fully, deep down, agree with it all.”

When I was 25, my previous boyfriend had been in a near-fatal motocross accident that left him paralyzed. I talk about how instead of that experience drawing me closer to God, it seemed to have had the opposite effect:

“I had been relying on faith my whole life to get through life’s difficulties, which, up until then, had worked pretty fine because nothing really bad had ever really happened. I was so completely unprepared and uneducated on how to deal with the grief and pain I experienced with that accident and the following year that I began to resent and become angry with faith because in that instance, faith had failed me.”

Before I delivered the final blow, I did manage to acknowledge how important faith was to her and my dad. And I do remember that this was genuine:

“Your faith is a part of you. It permeates every sense of your being. It influences your every move, your every thought and feeling. And that must be incredible and I hold so much respect for you for it. I know it brought you back from a very very dark time in your life and I am forever grateful that you continue to build strength and love off of it.”

And then, I said it:

“But I don’t have that same relationship. And I am tired of forcing it or pretending in hopes of it sticking. I don’t feel that way about God or religion.”

I wish I could say I stopped there

But I’m kind of glad now that I didn’t. It’s a perfect glimpse into my mindset at the time. And while I won’t claim this is exactly what you, or your family member is feeling and/or experiencing right now, it might be something similar:

“I don’t think that God has to be a part of everything. When I get married, it won’t be a religious ceremony. I don’t believe you have to wait to have sex before marriage, I don’t believe it’s a sin to be a homosexual, I don’t believe that some people are going to hell. I haven’t figured it all out yet. But there are way too many instances in which I look at the Christian faith and think, “Wow, if that’s what they believe, I don’t want to have any part in that.” If there really is a God, who created us just to serve him and if we don’t glorify his name, he’ll sentence us to an eternity of damnation, NO THANKS. I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel.”

To be clear, I still don’t believe some of those things. And while I didn’t know it at the time, I was struggling even then with some of the same “reformed” beliefs I struggle with now:

The real kicker for me was finding out about pre-destination. The idea that this life is pointless for some, because no matter what they do, they’ve been chosen for a lifetime in hell? NO THANKS. I’ve made friends with Jewish girls, atheists, agnostics. I’ve met gay folks and so many different people and I have decided that my religion is love and acceptance. No one deserves to go to hell if there is one.

(Oof, my “bubble” is showing in that ‘graph. Give me grace).

If at this point, you’re still reading, thanks for sticking around. I promise there’s a happy ending.

But first, here’s something that might help you build a little empathy for your “lost” loved one:

“And I have also decided, that because of your fervent belief system, as much as I respect it, your will and your opinions are so strong, that you will never be able to understand anything that I have just said. Which I think is the hardest part for me. And why I find it difficult to imagine talking to you about this in person at this time. I love you beyond belief, and I know that this is hard for you. But it’s hard for me too. Being the black sheep, the odd man out. I feel very alone.”

Rounding third here. If I had to pick probably the most painful paragraph for my mom to read, it was probably this final one:

“I will no longer ask you to refrain from sharing your beliefs with me. If that is something you can not help, that is fine. Just please don’t use it to try and get me to change my mind. The bible and faith is no longer a tool I use to deal with life’s difficulties and successes. If I come to you for advice, I’ll just have to accept that faith is what you have to offer me. And I’ll love you for it, but I will not use those tools. I respect your beliefs more than you know, all that I ask is that you do the same. And that we no longer have this conversation moving forward. I love you. Michelle”

It hurts to read this. It hurts to know how badly this email hurt my mom and dad. And how eerily confident and resolved I seemed in my delivery. I can’t even imagine what my parents must have thought, and I wonder how hard at this point it was to hold out hope.

But that’s precisely what they did. They prayed diligently for me for years to find my way back to God. And I know that’s what they would tell parents or family members in their position now: pray and hold tight to hope.

Oh the irony

I told my mom in an email in 2014 that I would not get married in a religious ceremony. Five years later, I married my church small group leader, with our pastor as our officiant. And minutes before the ceremony, my mom whispered a prayer in my ear:

Photo by This is Feeling Photography

And both my parents and my in-laws stood up and prayed over my husband and I before we exchanged promises to each other under the beams of love from our heavenly Father and the beating sun:

Photo by This is Feeling Photography

So why do I share this?

If you’ve read any of my other writing, you’ll come to find that my faith is now as strong as it has ever been. It may have taken me a few years and a few tears to get there, but I found my way back to God. And I think it’s entirely possible that your loved one could, too.

I don’t say that to make false promises. I just mean if I was able to come back after the resolve and disbelief I once had, it’s at least possible.

What I can promise you is that you’re not going to convince or argue your loved one into loving the Lord. I think we each have to find our own way back, for our own reasons, no matter how much pain it causes us. Our faith has to be our own, or else it will be like the seed with no root that withers away (Mark 4).

So keep praying. For your daughter, your son, your sister, your aunt, uncle, cousin, etc. Pray that they may have eyes to see and ears to hear. Ask God to give them a new heart and new spirit. There’s still hope. There always is.