NEW HOME, OLD TRADITION

KATE MADDEN YEE describes her spiritual journey, which took her back

- KATE MADDEN YEE

I WAS ABOUT 20 YEARS INTO my born-again Christian career when I dropped the dogma briefcase. I couldn’t carry it anymore, even if I wanted to. It was too heavy and the contents were all tangled and shredded. Or to use another metaphor: The theology I’d been trying to wear for decades didn’t fit. The waist was too tight and the pants too short and there was a lot of extra fabric in the arms.

It was terrifying, though, to step out of my long-practiced faith tradition and find myself—where? I didn’t know. I had become a Christian as a teenager, under the kind eye of Mrs. Marks, who led me to the Lord one spring evening my junior year in high school. In college I was part of an evangelical student group that went in for open-air preaching and dorm Bible studies. I married my husband just after graduation and together we spent our 20s and 30s involved in high-commitment, high-discipleship Christian communities. Faith was a transaction between me and Big Sky Daddy: If I did The Stuff(church, incessant prayer, good deeds) he would love me in return. It was my way of tamping down the almost constant panic I felt about whether I was worth anything.