I remember the moment I told myself I would never talk to my dad again. I was sixteen years old, and my dad’s adoptive parents had just surprised me with my first car: a bright yellow used Geo Tracker (that I would soon trade for a truck). After a slight disagreement, we split into separate vehicles to drive back to my mother’s house. In the other car my dad was drinking while driving my little brother, and I drove my new car with his new wife. When we arrived at my mom’s, she chastised my dad because we were much later than expected (at this time we did not have cellphones) and she noticed the alcohol on his breath. He got out and yelled at her. And then he took my keys and told me he was going to tell my grandparents I didn’t want the car. For the first time in my life, I gave verbal expression to the anger I had internalized for years: “Get out of here. You can’t treat us like this. We don’t need you.”

I come from a stock of relationship-quitters. During my childhood, pretty much everyone in my life had divorced at least once, extended family connections were strained, long-term friends were nonexistent, and moves were frequent. Over time I came to adopt a conception of freedom that had destroyed the lives of many around me, and which would threaten to destroy my own as well: the popular idea of freedom as unconstrained choice. Since this is impossible, the default was a more achievable version: the ability to drop commitments and relationships at any point when they become too complicated. Freedom as the license to leave when things get tough. Live by the mantra of Robert De Niro’s character in Heat: “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.” If complications come, don’t worry. You can always go.

All photography by Yalim Vural. Used by permission.

I eventually came to see that such freedom left me and some of those I loved unfree to love and to be known in love. Furthermore, this approach to freedom is a form of self-harm that also harms those dependent on you.

As Andrew Root has explained in his masterful work The Children of Divorce, divorce affects kids at a fundamental level. Their memories are tarnished and their family relations are frayed. Did we truly have any happy moments? Were we ever a loving family? Which cousins can we see now? Where will we go for holidays? How do we navigate the family gossip about our parents? Do we need to choose sides? Will we lose connection with those on one side of the family if we live with one parent as opposed to the other?

Children always complicate things – especially social theories that are fundamentally grounded in the autonomous individual. Children expose the lie that we are primarily individuals who only enter relationships voluntarily according to rational self-interest. The involuntary nature of the most important things in life can be experienced both for good or ill. No, we are not free to choose our parents, and that is a good thing: we do not choose to come into the world; our existence is the pure gift of our parents to us.

But the unchosen can be a curse as well. In divorce, children are not free to grow up in an intact family. And things are often (though not always) made worse with the introduction (and often quick exit) of new parent-alternatives. I had hoped that Michael, my mother’s first husband after my dad, would take care of us, would show the warmth to my brother and me that my father never did, would be a safe person for my mom. I mean, he even played guitar. We would sing together. But the emotional outbursts began shortly and became recurrent. And then one day he was gone. By the time John entered the scene a couple of years later, I had already built up defenses, and I kept him at a distance, certain that things wouldn’t work out and that he too would abandon us. Which is what happened. Frequent moves and multiple marriages meant that relationships were always on trial, always conditional. Best to hijack rejection by preemptively refusing to connect.

As C. S. Lewis vividly explained, connection makes you vulnerable: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.” This is inevitable. For some, though, the lesson is rubbed in one’s face early and often. Love, I learned, is not safe. Commitment is not real. What is safe is hardened independence, especially toward these parental figures. And for me this began to trickle into other relationships.

We moved every year or so, and thus I was always the “new kid.” This meant I had to regularly audition for friend groups. Since I wasn’t particularly funny or cool, I tried to ingratiate myself with others by letting them copy my homework – because at least I was a decent student. Later I would make friends through basketball, which became my first love. When things got difficult in a friendship, as inevitably happens, I would quickly abandon the relationship, knowing we would likely move soon anyway.

In eighth grade, I was living with my best friend’s family so I could finish the school year before rejoining my own family, who had moved to a new city. Right before one of our basketball games, I got in an argument with him and, instead of resolving it, I just phoned my mom to come get me and take me to our new home.

Commitment was for suckers, I was convinced. But what I eventually came to learn was that this “safety” was not so safe after all. Was I ever known? Did I even know myself? With whom was I connected in an enduring way? Was anything stable? Would anyone stick with me? Am I simply unlovable? Are we all alone?

Lewis was correct – safety through hardening is no real safety at all:

If you want to make sure of keeping [your heart] intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

I gave more and more of myself to school and sports, all the while running from difficult relationships. I became increasingly anxious. On perpetual trial in friendships, and never reaching the other side of conflict, I became excessively defensive with others. Because I had no real experience of commitment, every relationship felt fragile, and thus every conflict existential.

During most of my childhood, we were poor and isolated. Moving all the time, having burned our bridges with the rest of the family, our little world consisted of our three-person unit: my mom, my brother, and myself. This led to a constant sense of crisis. When financial hardships would arise, it felt that we were a hair’s breadth from homelessness. This is not an exaggeration. We spent years in group homes; then, for a brief time, we had no secure living situation at all. I came to believe deep down that there was no one who cared about our problems and that we were on our own. As the oldest son, this weighed particularly heavily on me, especially since my brother suffers from a fairly severe disability. Who would take care of everyone if not me?

This brings me back to my dad. He didn’t really know how to fill the role of father. He never knew his own dad and was abandoned by his mother when he was very young. Throughout his life he struggled with substance abuse and anger, which didn’t go away when, as a twenty-two-year-old high-school dropout, he was presented with a baby: me. Our relationship was always fraught and, at some point early on, I embraced the internal mantra: “I don’t need you. You can’t hurt me because I never needed you anyway.” I would take care of myself and my family, so I assumed. If you want to be free of depending on others, you cannot be a burden on them. And thus, a subtle, secondary mantra also slipped in: “Don’t be a burden.” I never wanted to need anyone, and I assumed life was mine to figure out. As a kid with a somewhat responsible disposition, I did pretty well through elementary and high school. I could do the work and mostly get ahead. “Just don’t mess up, and you will be fine.” For years my father and I didn’t talk.

I came to adopt a conception of freedom that had destroyed the lives of many around me, and which would threaten to destroy my own as well . . . freedom as the license to leave when things get tough.

Fast forward to college, when I had come to the end of my rope. I had gotten into a good school, but I was in over my head. And my relational deficiencies were getting impossible to ignore. By the end of my freshman year, I was struggling with a deep depression. I was surrounded by peers, especially as a member of a fraternity, and yet felt completely alone. And it wasn’t necessarily others’ fault. I didn’t know how to connect; I got too upset in conflict; I kept running away from engaging. I would even notice myself at parties trying to quickly find a way out of conversations because I ran out of witty things to say and didn’t want to burden others with my presence. In the film High Fidelity, John Cusack’s character says, “I’ve committed to nothing … and that’s just suicide … by tiny, tiny increments.” Those tiny increments eventually gathered enough steam in my life to generate suicidal thoughts.

Those who don’t come from a similar background probably struggle to understand what it is like to have no solid relational basis from which to approach the world. Folks who come from similar backgrounds to mine are relationally and psychologically deficient. We are not “well-adjusted.” This can make us quick to be defensive. When you have so little to fall back on, when you feel like you are floating alone in this world, rejection feels more existential. You often try to harden yourself out of self-protection, but you end up at the same time thin-skinned. Consequently, you can become more and more alone. This was the path I was on. And some of my family members have taken very similar paths, with different inflections. “You can’t be weak; don’t be a burden; you are on your own; leave me alone.”

Again, I had extended this logic to everyone: “I don’t need you”; and this logic to myself: “Don’t be a burden.” This was producing anxiety, loneliness, and ingratitude. I never wanted to ask for help, but I was also increasingly confused about relationships. I couldn’t figure out why things continued to sour so often, why I couldn’t connect and keep friends, why I would get so defensive. I started to turn inward, but what I found there didn’t provide answers or resolution. This is when the depression hit.

Safety, I assumed, required freedom from others: freedom from commitment, something as close to full material and psychological autonomy as possible. But freedom from others had left me enslaved to an untethered, empty self. In these times it became obvious that the freedom I was pursuing turned out to be utter isolation. Maybe I could just unburden the world of my presence.

And that’s when I encountered God. A campus missionary named Ben had visited my fraternity, offering to meet with folks who wanted to talk about God, spiritual realities, etc. I gave him my contact information, and we met up a few times over coffee. What began to strike me was that he continued to reach out even though it was clear I could really offer him nothing. There was nothing he needed from me. He was just there and he cared. He asked about my life and tried to help me think about God. In one of my darkest hours that year, he asked me if I was happy with my life. It was a blunt, almost offensive question, but absolutely timely. I answered negatively, and he asked if I wanted that to change. He didn’t sell me religion as a quick fix, or an intellectual affirmation. Instead, he invited me to join him on a summer trip with a group of Christian college students. I was at the end of my rope. I agreed.

That summer I found Christ, through the community of these friends. I observed how they loved each other (John 13:35). It was their hospitality to me that broke down all my defenses. I asked many of them, “Why are you like this?” And, with unique variations, they all answered by talking about Jesus. Above all, they seemed connected, they seemed rooted: they were people who had known the security of connection to Christ, and that secure standing opened up the possibility of real relationships with others. That summer I devoted my life to figuring out who this Christ was and what it meant to follow him.

What I received was myself. I was given myself. I was given true community, and a cause worth living for. I realized that I am not my own, but belong body and soul to my Savior, who gave himself for me. My fitting response of gratitude for that great, undeserved gift is to honor him with my life and serve others. And in this new life I found fellowship. I cannot tell you how much the church has meant to me. I know that there are people bound to me, and I to them. I am not alone. As Jesus promised, I have received now “houses and brothers and sisters and mothers” (Mark 10:30). I know that even though I bring burdens, as we all do, my brothers will help me “bear” them (Gal. 6:2). They are not mine alone to carry. I get to live. I get to be connected. I get to be grateful.

Safety, I assumed, required freedom from others: freedom from commitment, something as close to full autonomy as possible. But this freedom had left me enslaved to an untethered, empty self.

This is something I think my dad struggled to grasp. Shortly after my conversion, we were reconciled. It is one of the most profound gifts of my life that God provided me with that reconciliation. When I became a Christian, my heart softened toward my father. I began to consider the brokenness he had endured, and I longed to show him compassion as I had received undeserved compassion myself. So I began to reach out and attempt to connect. One night, months later, we had a deep heart-to-heart, and both asked forgiveness. Then, a couple years later, he surprised my fiancée and me with a costly gift. He was a truck driver, and had saved up for months. He wanted to pay for our honeymoon. It was a symbol that he was trying now to be a dad. It was him moving toward connection, as his life had been even more isolating than my own.

Things continued to improve between us, and when I had my first two daughters, they loved playing with their “Pawpaw.” The other two, and the one who is on the way, will never get to know him because as we were driving across the country so that I could start my PhD studies, I received the call that he had taken his own life. I still don’t really understand it, and I haven’t processed it completely. But I do know this: I am deeply grieved that he missed out on continuing to connect with and bless our kids, who loved him. I think he felt he was a burden on the rest of the family, and he couldn’t see much hope for the remaining years of his life.

But he was not a burden on us; he was a gift. I wish he could have understood that. I wish he and others who struggle in loneliness and depression could know the freedom to love and be known in love.

That is the freedom for which Christ has set us free: the freedom to love. I found this in Christ and the community created by his cross (Eph. 2:11–22). What I needed was not freedom from others, retaining an easy opt-out clause for every relationship. What I needed was a relationship with the one who is “nearer to me than I am to myself,” as Augustine said, and whose love frees me to know and be known by others, a freedom that leads to mutual service (Gal. 5). I needed freedom in fellowship, not freedom from commitment and obligation. I am so glad I have found it in the church. It’s what I pray for others, what I desire for everyone whose grasped-for “freedom” has gone sour, whose lack of tether has led them to the end of themselves. You are not your own; you are not alone.