I think this passage sums things up for me in a way that my own words never could. As I started my exodus and began to see how we were all forced to fit into this wierd bubble of conformity - I began to get ill and feel that anything I did or wanted outside of the Rank and File view was just evil...
But these words as i read them sum things up in a way I think most people looking at leaving feel:
" the freedom to be the person we truly desire to be, strive to be, a person who reflects the life of the One each of us follows, though expressed individually as the unique personalities we are. Paul was not a Peter, and Peter was not a John, nor was Mary a Priscilla, or Priscilla a Dorcas. Yet each reflected in his or her life the teach- ings and qualities and spirit of the one they followed, the one in whom they placed faith as the Son of God. There is a beauty to such indi- viduality, a beauty that imposed conformity and rigid uniformity, with their depersonalizing—and sometimes dehumanizing—effect smother and suppress. Rather than being like “peas in a pod,” people can be like flowers in a garden, distinctive, variegated, even contrasting, yet neither weedlike, ugly nor ill-smelling, and all blending together to contribute to the loveliness of the garden as a whole"
Something about the words above just really really really touch me
Just wanted to share a moment