I recently read an article about how noticing that society is built on layers of lies often results in not fitting in anywhere. The main theme was that anyone who begins to notice these layers and then dares to express an opinion, or worse, asks questions, is quickly labeled an overthinker, an introvert, or eventually made to feel like an outcast altogether.
My immediate internal response was this:
Noticing things, especially contradictions and hypocrisy, and asking questions gets most people labeled as far worse than “overthinkers.” Ignorant. Phobic of literally everything we notice. Racist. Hateful. Unfeeling. Terrible human being. I could go on.
It’s not that we don’t fit in. It’s that people who dislike critical thinking and pattern recognition don’t want people like us around, because apparently thinking for yourself gets equated with being a terrible human being.
But it doesn’t feel like a curse to me. It feels like peace, and peace feels priceless, especially after the caregiving and death I’ve experienced over the past decade, which is really what taught me that literally nothing matters more than being at peace with yourself, with life, with being alone and being okay with being alone.
If you can’t be at peace alone in your own little corner of the world, then you will never truly be at peace or happy in any other circumstance. If you think you are, but you hate being alone, you are missing the reality altogether.
Loss has a way of clarifying things. It removes illusions and exposes what is performative, and it shows you what survives when everything else falls away. What survives is truth, presence, and grace.
Near the end of last year, I shared a thought that has stayed with me ever since: other religions are YOU trying to get closer to GOD. Christianity is GOD who came to YOU. That is GRACE. Only JESUS can give you that.
That single statement got me labeled bigoted and hateful, accused of not accepting people of other religions, which honestly misses the point completely. I don’t hate people of other religions. I love them. That is exactly why I care. What I’m talking about isn’t superiority. It’s grace.
Most religions are built on humans trying to reach God through rules, rituals, discipline, or effort. Christianity is God reaching humanity through Jesus. That isn’t condemnation. That’s rescue. Other systems say “do more, be better, try harder.” Jesus says “it is finished,” and that difference matters, because one creates exhaustion while the other creates rest.
I don’t want anyone spending their life feeling judged, never enough, or spiritually trapped in endless striving, because that is what religion does to people. But grace brings freedom. Grace brings peace. Grace is God meeting you exactly where you are. God loves you, period. That’s what I mean.
I’m not being hateful. I’m being protective. I’m speaking from lived loss, caregiving, grief, and hard won peace. I’ve watched life strip everything down to essentials, so when I see belief systems that keep people locked in shame or performance — including the performative and very flawed versions of Christianity, like the Charismatic or Prosperity Gospel movements, for example — I react because I know how short life is. That isn’t bigotry. It’s discernment shaped by suffering.
People who haven’t walked through death, exhaustion, and spiritual stripping don’t understand why grace feels like oxygen to me, so they twist it into a knot of their own self hatred and exclusion. But I’m not rejecting people. I’m rejecting systems that keep souls tired, and that is a very different thing.
And people who reject the experience of God in order to fit into religious rules they think will create an experience of God are missing the point entirely. Grace was never meant to be earned. It was meant to be received.
The Twin Tree Project 