It's Okay to Not Have the Answers

For everyone exhausted by the endless arguing.

Listen while you read:

Life in America is frustrating right now. Who am I kidding—it’s been frustrating, especially for those of us who grew up in conservative Christianity. I’m fairly positive that I’ve been fighting since I was old enough to talk because the world I was born into and expected to swallow did not make any sense, logically or morally.

I remember the very moment I started deconstructing my surroundings. I was five years old, innocently curious, and simply asked my mother, “Who created God?” I couldn’t wrap my little mind around an all-powerful being without an origin story. I still can’t.

My mother answered me confidently: “He always was, he always is, he always will be.” She actually sang this phrase with a little tune. She was so sure of what she was saying, as if my question about God’s origins had never even dawned on her.

And thus began our tumultuous relationship of conflicting worldviews. Decades later, we still see nothing eye to eye. I’m still fighting for validation, and she’s still stubbornly refusing the facts I’m handing out. If I had to describe how it has felt my whole life, I would say I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall over and over—as if I’m completely insane.

And if I’m going to be honest with myself, I need to admit that I have acted completely insane in continuously fighting to be heard by someone who cannot hear me. It’s not just her—it’s the entire religious community. We are screaming, and have been, into a void of people plugging their ears while singing loudly, “Nana nana boo boo, I don’t want to hear you.”

Because they don’t want to hear us. Period.

People don’t like it when you challenge their worldview. They’d rather we nod our heads in agreement and go along with their delusions. However, the political climate has made it impossible for us not to challenge their beliefs, because their beliefs are actually causing real people real harm.

And we can point that out over and over again, and nothing changes. We leave the argument frustrated and bruised again—from the brick wall.

I don’t have the answers. I have no solutions. I don’t know how to move forward, nor do I know how to stop the madness that we find ourselves in. And that’s okay.

We can sit in this liminal space right now. We can do nothing.

Winnie the Pooh once said, “Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something,” and I have to believe in that.

We’ve tried everything else. Maybe we do nothing. Maybe we let the whole thing cook in front of them, because at some point, truth will win out. Love will win. Healing will happen. But it sure as hell isn’t happening right now.

Someday.

Let “someday” be your light in the distance.