Previously: Having lost my Lutheran faith overnight while in high school, I felt compelled to tell my parents almost immediately. This was one of the major decisions in my life that I couldn't really explain: I knew it would be infinitely easier for me if I just played along and pretended to believe for the remaining couple of years until I away went to college. "Why couldn't I just do that?" I angrily asked myself over the following months and years. I couldn't solve that mystery until the fall of 2025, when I realized that I'm autistic: as is common with many autistic folks, I have such a strong commitment to truth that it's extremely difficult for me to behave in a way I feel is dishonest.[1]

Since I was no longer Lutheran, it seemed logical to me that I should not have to keep going to church. My poor, surprised parents informed me that I would continue to attend all church activities as long as I was living under their roof. This infuriated me at the time, but I can understand now that 1) they felt they had a moral obligation to try and save my soul, which was most likely to happen at church; and 2) not making me attend would have meant they would have lost face with their church and potentially be seen as bad parents.[2]

My parents asked me not to say anything to the three out of my four grandparents who were also LCMS. My mom told me that her younger brother went through a non-believing phase that devastated Grandma and Grandpa Nischwitz, and I already saw how hard it was for my Grandma and Grandpa Stubbs with Grandma being very devout and Grandpa's not believing. Since we only saw my grandparents every couple of months, I decided that I didn't want to cause them any additional pain and agreed.

My parents then asked me not to tell my younger sister, since she would also be crushed. After some number of months, I mentioned something to her about not being a believer because I had completely forgotten that she didn't know and that I wasn't supposed to tell her. As I recall, she held it together in the moment but ran crying to my parents afterward. I'm sorry for the additional heartache I caused her and my parents, who had to try and comfort her somehow.

Found: One (1) younger sister, who turned out to be one of the best humans I know (which I couldn't recognize until I stopped living with her.) She has since become one of my best friends and my biggest cheerleaders, and it turns out that we have a lot more in common now than I ever believed we could. She is an absolute gem: kind, smart, talented at every creative endeavor she puts her mind to, and absolutely hilarious.

But for newly-ex-Christian Kit, that relationship would be several years away. In the meantime, I was stuck surrounded by conservative Christian family and a conservative Christian church in a majority-conservative-Christian suburb in a majority-conservative-Christian state. Wherever I went, it felt like either the LCMS or some other flavor of Christianity was being shoved in my face. Next time: My angry atheist phase begins.

[1] This also extends to "social deception" games like One Night Ultimate Werewolf. The first time I tried to play Werewolf, I was so overwhelmed and frustrated that I burst into tears and left the table after two hands. I've realized I can only enjoy roleplaying games as long as I'm not trying to make my character do things that I would never do. After spending several years feeling bad for not making myself miserable in search of a "better"? "deeper"? RPG experience, I decided that having fun playing was more important than some imaginary, arbitrary standard of what "good" RPG players do.

[2] If you believe that if you "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6), and the child has departed rather spectacularly, it makes sense to place the blame on parents' poor training (cheers(?) for the logical contrapositive). For what it's worth, my parents taught me a lot about honesty, fairness, kindness, hard work, and staying true to one's principles, and I like to think I've done pretty well at not departing from those.