Not Brand New? Part II
How spiritual language can keep us from the self-awareness we need to heal.
Everything in me said, run. I was two years into pastoral ministry. Sitting alone in a conference room. Staring at an event calendar scribbled in dry erase marker. The meeting had ended twenty minutes ago. But I hadn’t moved. I was already gone. Locked in the second phase of what I now call my Default Exit Strategy. Back then, I didn’t have a name for it. Hell, I didn’t even know it existed. I just thought I was tired. Frustrated. Ready for a change. But this wasn’t burnout. This was a pattern. And it had been running the show for most of my life.
My Default Exit Strategy Phase 1: Suppress Rage It never starts with a feeling. It starts like flint striking rock—rejection and pain the tinder. The combustion pulses outward like venom, flooding my limbs until I feel the warmth of it in my fingertips. My eyes narrow. My jaw tightens. And just like that, everything is a threat. I am on high alert. This isn’t hyperbole. There’s anger, and then there’s rage— and they aren’t even remotely the same. Both are reactive, but anger is measured. If the offense is a three on a scale of one to five, then the anger is a three. That’s not how rage works. There’s no measure. If the offense is a three, then rage is a full-on nuclear assault. It’s violent. It’s mean. But it served a purpose. Because for me, rage wasn’t about destruction— it was about reclaiming power when I felt threatened. It flipped the table. It rewrote the narrative. If I exercised it, I wasn’t vulnerable anymore. I was no longer your victim. I became your problem. But this kind of behavior doesn’t play well in civil spaces— especially in churches. And this type of rage isn’t quickly regulated or managed. It has to burn itself out. So somewhere along the way, I learned to dissociate from my emotions— to breathe deeply and escape, to walk away from myself. From the fire. From the pain. To feel nothing. Phase 2: Cut Bait Where Phase One was fueled by emotion, Phase Two was pure logic. Granted, it was logic built on bad data— incomplete information, a faulty premise. But dammit, if it didn’t feel like pure truth. In Phase Two, I run the checklist: every person, every interaction, every word said… and unsaid. And I come to the same conclusion every time: I am already alone. Nobody is coming. None of this—whatever this is—will last. So it must not be real. It’s all going to end. And when it does, it will hurt. Just like the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that. This is the pattern: Count on nobody. Invest in nothing. Keep your heart locked and your exit plan close. As I walk through my mental inventory of everyone in my world, a face always comes to mind— someone who disrupts the narrative. They haven’t hurt me. They care. “Yet, Jon. They haven’t hurt you yet.” And just like that, I succumb to the fear beneath it all: That I’ll always feel this way. That life will always be this way. That I will always be alone. So I might as well be alone on my own terms. And in a matter of minutes, I can spin a story that makes isolation feel noble. I can build a case strong enough to justify walking away from everything and everyone that mattered to me… only half an hour ago. Phase 3: Run Phase One is scary. Phase Two is sad. But Phase Three? It comes to me as naturally as breathing. Because once you’ve disconnected emotionally from your unexamined pain and named it reality, leaving is the only thing left to do. I did it in college— cut ties with my best friend of six years because I didn’t feel understood. I did it again after my first serious relationship. Changed my phone number. Took two weeks off work. Moved back in with my parents for a month. Told my roommates to tell her I’d moved out of state. All because her coworkers made fun of my casual clothes at dinner. When I got married, I thought maybe I could outrun the fear if I changed the scenery. So we moved to North Carolina. And when that didn’t fix it, we moved to Memphis. Marriage tattered. Career on life support. I always assumed I was just someone who loved adventure— someone who thrived on change. But I wasn’t chasing novelty. I was avoiding intimacy. I had no idea I was someone terrified of being seen. Someone whose skin crawled at the idea that someone might actually care. I didn’t know it yet, but the pattern was plain to anyone watching. An old girlfriend once sent me a song with lyrics: "So you're changing again— all your clothes, all your friends. Just the same as it ever was." And she said, "This reminds me of you." It would be years before I had a name for the pattern. A therapist helped me see it for what it was: Disorganized attachment. It’s what happens when love isn’t safe— when the people who are supposed to protect you are also the ones who wound you. You grow up learning that intimacy is a threat, that closeness comes with a cost. So you start running before anyone has the chance to leave. Once I had language for it, I could see it everywhere. It was in my resume— a new job every two years like clockwork. Sometimes I stayed with the same company. But a transfer to another state did the trick. Because after two years with the same people, it became impossible to hide. People saw me. Some people even cared. And I loved it. And I hated it. All at once. I loved it because it’s all I ever wanted—to be accepted. I hated it because I knew it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last. It always ended the same way… in ashes. It would be another 4 years before I understood, I was the one holding the matchbook.
Staring at a whiteboard calendar, I was mentally ending every relationship that had dared to invest in me. Building the case for why I needed to transfer campuses… or quit altogether. I wasn’t angry anymore. Just numb. Detached. Narrating a life instead of living one. Already gone, even though I hadn’t moved. And then— the door opened. A coworker stepped in, closed it quietly behind her, and for a moment just stood there. Then she looked straight at me and said, “Jon.” I glanced up—deadpan, disconnected— and she locked eyes with mine. “You’re safe here.” That was it. No sermon. No fix. Just presence. To this day, I don’t know what prompted her to pop in. Maybe it was her years of working with kids from hard places. Maybe it was Spirit-led. I’m not sure. I do wonder if I would’ve been brave enough to stay had she not interrupted. Had she not challenged the narrative I was already halfway through writing. I didn’t heal in that moment. I didn’t even know I was wounded. But I did stay. And that was enough… to break the cycle.
I’d been a Christian for three years. A pastor for two. And not once had I paused to ask why I reacted the way I did. Why I ran. Why I disconnected. Why I couldn't stay. I had no reason to. There was no invitation to reflect—no framework for healing. Because according to the version of faith I’d inherited, I wasn’t wounded. I was just… broken. A sinner. A saved wretch. Now I was “a new creation.” The old had passed away. Everything had become new. So if I still felt anxious, angry, avoidant? That wasn’t a trauma response. That was “the flesh.” If I wanted to grow, I didn’t need to look inward. I needed to read more, serve more, pray more, repent more. And the crazy part? It worked. At least, on the surface. I knew how to behave. How to play the part. But underneath it all, the same patterns were still driving the bus. I wasn’t transformed. I was just well-managed. Here’s what I’ve come to see since then— not as a theologian, but as someone who’s slowly healing: When Brokenness Becomes Identify, Healing Feels Unnecessary I was never taught to explore my pain. Only to confess it. And not in a nuanced, “What happened to you?” kind of way— one that made space for questions that would eventually give life to empathy. Tenderness. Wholeness. Forgiveness. But in a “What’s wrong with you?” kind of way. The kind that leads to shame. Self-loathing. Masking. Performance. Dare I say… religion. Or at least the kind of religion Jesus pointed to when he called the Pharisees “hypocrites.” Actors. Playing a role, but never becoming the role. I was a wretch. Saved, yes. But still defined by my inability to do a single good thing on my own. A gospel heavy on Paul’s “dirty rags,” and light on Genesis 1’s “very good.” So when I felt anxious? That was the flesh. When simple disagreement felt like rejection of my very being— and I spiraled into disconnection? That was just my sinful nature. It never crossed my mind I needed healing. I just needed more discipline. More self-control. More leadership. More Scripture. More of Him. Less of me. Less of the new me... Which only reinforced the shame. After all— how bad do you have to be for the “new you” that God created to still not be good enough? So all of my energy went toward being obedient... but never whole.
Performance Kills Becoming
We’re told to imitate Christ.
To follow someone as they follow Jesus.
So we do what seems faithful at first:
We watch.
We mimic.
We repeat.
We find someone who looks like they’re farther down the path,
and we try to walk like they walk,
pray like they pray,
talk like they talk in staff meetings or small groups.
We read that the fruit of the Spirit looks like
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control...
So we set out to perform said fruit.
Especially in public.
Always in church.
We mimic acting peaceful—
when inside, we want war.
We model gentleness with our words—
while our hearts teem with harsh judgments.
For others.
For ourselves.
We pretend to be patient—
when in reality, we’re trying to rush the hand of God
with our planning,
our strategy,
our systems,
our culture...
and then we call it “His timing.”
It took me years to understand:
fruit isn’t something you force.
It’s something you become.
Fruit trees don’t try to produce fruit.
They simply... do.
Because they’re rooted.
Because they’re nourished.
Because they’re healthy.
Because that's what they were made to do.
But in our performative faith,
we don’t know how to become healthy.
We just know how to behave.
And eventually, we find ourselves in rooms
where the mask slips.
Performance drops.
Reality sets in.
The people you were imitating?
They’re just as tired,
just as guarded,
just as disconnected as you are.
We are not becoming.
We are performing.
Rushing to pose with fruit
instead of healing to produce it.
Taping apples to our branches
to justify calling ourselves followers of Christ.
Real fruit flows from a healed, whole, rooted person.
And it takes time.
It’s slow.
Quiet.
Unearned.
Natural.
And you can’t perform your way into it.
You either slow down enough to become it...
or you pretend until you burn out.
The Cycle isn't Sin. It's Survival
You can’t heal what you’ve only ever condemned.
I wish my coworker’s words had been enough.
Looking back, I wish they were true.
But the fact is—
you can’t really be safe around people who think they’re broken.
Because broken things don’t have agency.
They just wait to be fixed.
And in between the now and that second coming...
the cycle continues.
For me, it played out in self-sabotage.
Especially in relationships.
For others, it’s the inability to be wrong.
Or the obsession with power and control.
Or being nice at the expense of being kind—
because kindness insists on peace-making and disruption,
while niceness usually protects the status quo.
We all have our cycles.
And yes—they cause harm.
To others.
To ourselves.
But they also come from harm.
This isn’t our default setting.
Like animals caught in traps,
we’ve learned to protect our wounds.
We’ll snap.
We’ll bite.
We’ll run away from everything good
if it means we won’t get hurt again.
And when we simply mark that up to “sin,”
we lose any chance at healing.
In this life, at least.
At best, religion becomes triage.
Better behavior often creates better outcomes.
But we’re still treating symptoms.
And when life gets too real—
when we face loss,
betrayal,
grief,
fear—
when something gets too close to the wound
we’ve built our whole life around to protect...
that wound will bleed.
And it will bleed on people who never cut us.
We are hardwired to survive.
But perfect love doesn’t want us stuck in survival.
Perfect love invites us to thrive.
And thriving requires brutal honesty
about the things that happened to us—
the harm we’ve never fully explored.
Because it’s in the depths of those hurts
that we begin to find the parts of ourselves we lost.
The parts we need to make peace with.
The parts we once buried
because they weren’t safe to carry in the open.
It’s in the valley of death
where we dare to dine
with past versions of ourselves—
the ones who created safety
in a world that didn’t offer any.
And maybe those parts protected us for a time.
But what if that time has passed?
What if the cycle that once saved you
is now the very thing that’s harming you?
It took a crushing depression to drive me to therapy.
To finally look back on the experiences that shaped me:
Thirteen addresses before I turned six.
Summers spent stored away at my grandparents’ house.
The rage of my father didn’t skip a generation.
The coldness of my mother lives in my bones.
I had to come to terms with those parts of me—
so I could come to terms with those parts of them.
So I could forgive.
And once I had space to wonder why they acted the way they did,
I saw myself in them.
They too were just surviving.
Doing the best they could
with what little they had.
And I can’t explain how much healing is found
in facing your cycle.
Or how much empathy it will create for others.
Or how your world will begin to open
to the possibility of beauty,
wonder,
and life—
abundant and full.
Maybe you’ve got your own version of the Default Exit Strategy. Maybe your cycle looks different than mine. Quieter. Louder. More socially acceptable. More self-contained. But if you’re honest, you’ve felt it too— that pull to disappear. To protect what once kept you safe. To perform instead of become. To stay in survival, even though something in you longs to heal. And maybe, like me, you’ve been handed a gospel that asked for your obedience but never taught you how to come home to yourself. So here’s the invitation: Go back. Not to relive it. Not to stay stuck in it. But to revisit the places in your life you’ve walled off— the moments that still shape how you show up, how you trust, how you love. Because healing doesn’t happen around our woundedness. It happens through it. And the grace that meets you there? It won’t shame you. It won’t rush you. It won’t ask for your mask. It will simply whisper: “You’re safe here.” And this time, you just might believe it. ✌🏼🧡
Wow. This is stunning! The way you’ve named what so many feel but don’t have language for... it’s breathtaking. Painfully beautiful. Uncomfortably familiar.