I Shouldn’t Be Here Or: On Faith and the Never-Ending Story

I have nearly died more times than I can count.

That isn’t hyperbole. I’ve been in hospitals, in rapid decline, close enough to death that it stopped feeling abstract. It’s happened often enough that I can’t even give you an exact number anymore.

The closest was a heart attack that killed 14% of my heart and lasted over eight hours.

That one really should have taken me out.

I remember feeling like I wanted to leave—but not being allowed to. Not by anything I could name. Just… something.

There were no angels. No bright light. No clear sense that I was stepping into something else. I was too overwhelmed by what was happening to even process it fully. It felt more like being suspended than being guided.

And the truth is, that feeling hasn’t completely gone away.

There are still moments when I don’t want to be here. Not in a constant way, but in flashes. Sudden, intense, and gone just as quickly. The kind of thoughts that don’t feel like decisions, but interruptions. They’re disturbing in how quickly they show up, and how real they feel when they do.

I’m in recovery now, which means I hear God talked about regularly. I don’t attend church much, though I still have a deep connection to Christ Church Episcopal. It’s a place that still means something to me, even if I’m not there every Sunday.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about God.

I’ve had to.

When you’re faced with the possibility of your life ending earlier than expected—over and over again—you don’t get to avoid the big questions. You carry them with you, whether you want to or not.

A big part of why I write at all is because of that.

I want to leave something behind for my son. Something he can hold onto. Something that says something real, even if I don’t always get it right. Some of it may be trite. Some of it may not be as deep as I think it is in the moment. But it’s honest. And I’m proud of the body of thought I’m building.

I’ve always wanted two things in life: to be a good father, and to make my life mean something.

What that meaning looks like has changed over time.

I’ve worked service jobs where I could have gone further if I had pushed harder. I spent years in education, trying to make a difference there, only to run into the reality of how overwhelming that system can be.

In another version of my life, I think I might have become a preacher.

But this version filled me with too many doubts.

I’ve seen too much inconsistency in how religion is practiced and presented. I’ve struggled to follow where it often goes—especially when it leans toward certainty instead of curiosity, or when it becomes tied too tightly to politics and identity.

And yet, I haven’t walked away from the questions.

If anything, I’ve just approached them differently.

What has helped me more than anything isn’t traditional prayer.

It’s a combination of analysis and gratitude.

Trying to understand what’s happening, and at the same time, recognizing what I still have. Holding both of those things together has been the only thing that consistently brings me back to a place where I can keep going.

Because one of the things I’ve struggled with in religion—especially in some of the larger churches around here—is the way it sometimes tries to simplify things that aren’t simple.

There’s often a promise of future perfection as a way to explain current suffering. Or a kind of instant absolution tied to identity—believe the right thing, say the right thing, and everything is resolved.

But that hasn’t matched my experience.

And when I look at how faith gets used—especially when parts of scripture are pulled selectively to justify exclusion or reinforce simple narratives—it becomes harder to see it as something that’s meant to expand understanding.

It starts to feel like something that narrows it instead.

And maybe that’s part of what keeps me in this space—somewhere between belief and questioning.

Still trying to understand what any of this means.

Still trying to be here.