This is a long post, sorry about that 😨

A bit of background: I've been volunteering to work with the children in my church for about four years now. Over the time I volunteered I had converted to Christianity, as well as coming to absolutely ADORE both the children and the people I work with. I absolutely love them, know them all by name and always looked forward to working with them.

That is, until did a lot of thinking and, about a tear ago, decided that I no longer believed in a higher being. The only change was that I was no longer Christian, but I still loved the people there because they are genuinely wonderful people to be around.

For about a year I was heavily debating whether or not to leave the church, due to the fact that soon after I began to despise the idea of indoctrinating children. Unfortunately I kept doing somethibg I thought was immoral by my standards both because I loved the people and I didn't know how to step away.

This month I finally did it, I gave them a month's notice and told the children's pastor and the woman I work under that I would be leaving at the end of the month. This upcoming Sunday will be my last time volunteering there.

Rather than telling them where my faith lies, I told them that I felt like I was being called to make a greater impact in the community elsewhere - something they were all very supportive of. However, the pastor asked to have a private meeting with me to talk about it more.

My only concern now is whether not I should tell him the truth about my faith during that meeting. These are people that I've been connecting and bonding with for four years, by now they're more than just people I work with, they're friends. I feel like I owe it to them to at least be transparent, but I don't know if it's better to simply say I want to help children in better ways (which isn't a lie, necessarily).