In this episode, I continue the story of my year-long research for a permanent placement in a skilled nursing facility. I also talk about recovering from the emotional trauma of a very bad experience over Thanksgiving weekend 2025. It includes the story of how I found an amazing online faith community that has been a great support to me during these difficult times

I recorded this episode in July 2026, right before I moved to a new nursing facility. It’s taken me two months to get around to editing it. I considered doing a basic edit and not adding any fancy features to the YouTube version. On the other hand, I want to prove I can still maintain the kind of quality episodes I used to make even though I’m in a new environment with an ever-worsening disability. So I encourage you to check out the YouTube version.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to Episode 122 of Contemplating Life.

This is the next installment in my ongoing series about my year-long quest to find a suitable skilled nursing facility.

In my previous episode, I told about the emotional experience over Thanksgiving weekend 2025. Two of my home health aides got into a ridiculous argument that nearly turned violent. I had to fire one of them. Hours later, the other one, Kiara, had her life turned upside down, and she had to check herself into a mental health facility to recover.

Kiara returned to work on December 1. Slowly, she was able to put her life back together.

The emotional toll on me was one of the worst experiences in my life. I didn’t lose the will to live. I’m still scared of dying and want to live as long as possible. On the other hand, I lost the will to fight. It takes a lot of strength and determination to survive 70 years of a severe disability. My tank ran dry.

I couldn’t help thinking about a line from the musical “Show Boat” by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein. In the song “Ol’ Man River,” Joe the riverboat stevedore sings, “I get weary, and sick of tryin’. I’m tired of livin’, and scared of dyin’, but ol’ man river, he just keeps rollin’ along.”

That pretty much summed it up. I didn’t want to die, but I was sick of living. Or at least, sick of fighting to live.

I only briefly described to Carol what was going on with me. I just said something along the lines of, “This scarred me emotionally. It’s going to take a long time for me to get over this, assuming I ever do.” I wasn’t deliberately holding anything back. It was just difficult to put into words what I was feeling.

It was helpful to have a counselor to talk to. I told her the whole story and the lyrics from “Ol’ Man River.”

I mentioned previously that I keep a document called “calendar.doc” in which I write down a sentence or a few phrases describing what happened each day. That document is completely empty for all of December 2025. I couldn’t even take notes about what was going on in my life.

I went back through my Facebook postings for that time. It looks like I busied myself writing podcast episodes, re-creating my RCIA lessons. I also began watching Oscar-nominated films for that podcast series.

Around Christmas, if I’m not feeling the spirit of the season, I often think of the lyrics from Greg Lake’s “I Believe in Father Christmas,” in which he says, “Hallelujah, Noel. Be it heaven or hell, the Christmas we get, we deserve.” I interpret that to mean, “if you can’t have a good time at Christmas, it’s your own damned fault.”

We did have a good Christmas. Carol’s daughter Alaina and her three kids came over. I bought my great-nephew Leighton a robot kit. He came back a while later, and we built it together. It rolls on two wheels and is self-balancing. You can control it by waving your hand in front of some sensors on the front of the device, or you can drive it via Bluetooth using an app on your phone.

I also got three-year-old Beckett a radio-controlled car that, when you stop quickly, flips over. He had a blast playing with it. I bought my great-niece Keeleigh a Bluetooth speaker with a nightlight and a white noise generator.

Carol and I planned to go to a hockey game as our gift to each other, but I wasn’t able to get tickets at the last minute. Later we planned to go to a concert featuring one of our favorite groups, “Heart.” It would be at the Fishers Event Center where we go for hockey. My days of outdoor concerts at Deer Creek Music Center are over. I just can’t handle the stress of being out very late at an outdoor venue. I speculated that this “Heart” concert might be my last ever. I had already missed an indoor concert that I desperately wanted to see. That was Billy Joel and Sting at Lucas Oil Stadium. I was in the hospital for that one. I’ve learned my lesson and always buy ticket insurance.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go to the Heart Concert. I landed in the hospital a few days before and only got out the day before the concert and wasn’t able to go.

As it turns out, the last live concert I will ever see was probably Styx and Foreigner in what was called the “Jukebox Hero Tour.” that was on July 26, 2024 at the Deer Creek Music Center.

On January 4, Carol and I went to see Avatar 3 in 3D. I loved every frame of it. Overall, I would have to rank Avatar 2 as my favorite, then Avatar 3, and then the original. They’re all in a close three-way tie.

A little bit of a spoiler on my life: not only are my days as a concertgoer coming to an end. I thought perhaps Avatar 3 might be the last movie I would ever see in a theater. That distinction goes to “Project Hail Mary,” which Carol and I saw on opening day, March 20. Together, these two films are quite worthy of being my last movies to ever see in a theater. I really finished on a high note.

At a time when I needed all of the emotional support I could get, my counselor informed me that she was being fired. They were replacing her with a cheaper, less qualified person. I was furious. I had already lost the first counselor they sent me. Now I was going to have to start over again with a new person. After discussing it with my counselor, she said she might continue working with me through a different company. She had a connection with several. It took a couple of tries to get things worked out, but eventually I was able to continue meeting with her through a different agency. I’m continuing with her to this day.

One source of great support for me during these troubled times comes from an online church group I joined. Here’s how my journey to this group unfolded.

In my religious episodes, I’ve often talked about a guy named Dan McClellan, a scholar of the Bible and religion. He has made it his life’s work to explain modern Scripture scholarship in ways that the general public can understand. He posts frequently on Facebook and YouTube. He is also on TikTok, but I rarely use that platform.

He has a podcast called “Data Over Dogma.” He makes a distinction between what the Bible actually says (i.e., data) versus the dogmatic interpretations that various denominations apply. I really enjoy his work. However, I disagree with the idea of data over dogma. I think it’s important to know the difference between the two, but I don’t put one over the other. That probably comes from a Catholic perspective, which holds that we believe in both sacred Scripture and sacred tradition as authoritative ways of preserving and passing on what has been revealed.

In one of his episodes, he interviewed a guy named Jeremy Steele, who goes by the name SkepticPastor. Jeremy wrote a book called “How Not to Suck as a Christian.” Much of it is a kind of confession of some of the things he did growing up and working in an evangelical church.

I ordered his book and was blown away by it. In many ways, I think I came out pretty well according to his standards. That’s not to say I’m perfect. One of the things that touched me so deeply was his stories about not being able to question what the preachers were preaching. He was not allowed to have any doubts. Any hint that you doubted something theological meant that you were a toxic danger to the rest of the community. You might spread those doubts and questions. So you were ostracized for having doubts.

I put that in contrast to my experience when I returned to the Catholic Church, and I told the people in my mother’s Bible Sharing group that I had serious doubts about much that the Church believed. Much to my surprise, they told me to focus on the things I did believe, and not get weighed down by my doubts. I guess I never deeply appreciated what a blessing that was. So many people in the evangelical world do not have that advantage.

Pastor Jeremy has an online community on Discord called “Not Church.” He says it’s just like church, but no one is going to tell you you are going to hell for believing the wrong thing. The Discord channels cover a variety of topics. There is Scripture study, a channel called “need to vent,” and another one called “holding space.” That is their euphemism for prayer requests. I had never heard the term, but it was obvious what it was all about. It’s a really useful place.

Most of the people in the community are what I would describe as recovering evangelicals. The process of getting over religious trauma is called “deconstruction.”

By the way, there are other Catholics there who had a rough time in the Catholic Church – much rougher than I had. They are sort of recovering Catholics.

Jeremy also has a podcast called “Unbelief.” He begins each episode saying, “Welcome to the Unbelief podcast. Your journey, actually our journey together, beyond inherited beliefs to a spirituality that works for you. I’m your host Jeremy, a deep skeptic. Also, a pastor. (We can fix that… No?)”

Anyway, I love the phrase “deep skeptic.” I completely identify with it. I also love the phrase “moving beyond inherited beliefs to a spirituality that works for you.” That is a very precise description of my faith journey.

In the podcasts, he breaks down Scripture according to modern Scripture scholarship, similar to Dan McClellan, although little more accessible than Dan. Not quite as technical. He also interviews people in a segment called “Drinks and Deconstruction,” in which ordinary people tell their faith-journey stories. Most of them are former evangelicals, but there are also a couple of episodes about Catholics who had horrific experiences in the Catholic Church.

He holds twice-weekly Zoom meetings: one at 9 PM on Monday evenings and the other at 2 PM on Wednesday afternoons. He rotates between three topics. One week he does a teaching. Another week he offers a meditation exercise. In the third week, we just hang out and get to know one another.

By the way, the name “Not Church” leads to a humorous conversation reminiscent of the classic Abbott and Costello comedy routine “Who’s on first?”

“Where you going today?”

“Not Church.”

“Okay, so you’re not going to church. Where are you going?”

“Not Church.”

Anyway, I began sharing some of my own journey on Discord and in the Zoom meetings. I desperately wanted to be interviewed for his podcast because I felt we had much in common as “deep skeptics.”

I asked Jeremy if I could be on the podcast, and he sent me a link to his calendar to schedule an appointment. We scheduled a Zoom meeting for the afternoon of Friday, January 9. I wasn’t sure what I was signing up for. I presumed it was some sort of pre-interview in which he would get a sense of what I planned to say and then decide whether to proceed with the interview.

We met on Zoom, and I began to outline what I might say. He interrupted me, saying, “Save it for the podcast.” He was ready to record right then and there. So for about 50 minutes we recorded.

I cannot find the words to express how well it went. It was an amazing experience for me. I have been sharing my life story, especially my faith journey, on this podcast. I occasionally get a comment or some feedback, but it’s not like I have someone reacting to the story in real time. He loved everything I said. He laughed at all my jokes.

I told him how moved I was by his book and the stories of how he wasn’t allowed to express doubts or ask questions, and I realized how truly blessed I had been to have the opposite experience.

He was quite touched by the ways I connected my faith journey to my disability.

I don’t want to violate his copyright, or I would just cut and paste the interview into this episode. Please, when you are done listening to this, go listen to my interview with the Skeptic Pastor. I have provided a link.

When we were finished, he explained that he had already recorded several episodes with Scripture scholars and authors. I thought he was about to say it would be weeks until this interview appeared. Then he said, “But we haven’t done one of these in a while. I’m going to edit this together quickly and put it out for this week’s episode.”

I was again thrilled beyond words. We recorded on Friday afternoon. It appeared on Patreon on Saturday. It went public on Sunday.

The editing involved putting his introduction on the front and a closing message on the end. In his closing statement, he gives a shout-out to the people who helped produce the podcast. He references his producers “Matthew and Keith who make everything possible.”

However, an advertisement was also on the front. It was for a book about how to survive the end times. It was all about the Rapture, and it had a decidedly evangelical tone. I couldn’t believe that he would allow such a sponsor on his podcast. I kept replaying the beginning of the episode to see if it was putting up random advertisements. No, this was permanently attached to the front of my interview.

I thought about messaging him saying, “What’s with that advertisement? Maybe you need to get Matthew and Keith, who make everything possible, to make this go away. This isn’t you.”

I decided not to bring it up.

The following week, his interview was with the author of that book. It was a spoof. The whole book was making fun of the Rapture and evangelical nonsense regarding the end times. The author explained they put out advertisements designed to sound like they were from a real evangelical source. The hope was that people would buy the book not knowing it was a spoof.

The following week, at our Zoom gathering, I told Jeremy about how I was fooled by the advertisement. He laughed. He said he would email the author and tell him the story.

I haven’t gone to Saint Gabriel’s in many months. it’s getting harder and harder for me to get out the house. Some days, it’s getting hard for me to get out of bed. I’ve had some difficult interactions with our new pastor. I’ll save that story for another day.

Meanwhile, I’m really enjoying being part of this new online faith community. It’s really filling a hole in my life. I’ve made new friends. I continue to enjoy lively discussions with Jeremy. I told him from the day we recorded, I would be happy to come back for a follow-up interview. A week ago (late June 2026) I pressed him further, saying I had told the story of my deconstruction. Now I want to conclude the story of my reconstruction. He told me to email an outline of what I might say. Then he would have his assistant contact me to set up a recording date. By the time you see this, I will have already recorded that new episode of the “Unbelief” podcast.

Back to my journey to find a new home.

Carol and I both admit it is difficult to talk about these things. On a couple of occasions, I’ve been right on the verge of bringing up the topic, and she beats me to it. That’s frustrating because I don’t want it to look like I’m dragging my feet anymore. I’m committed to working something out. I always kick myself when she initiates the conversation, when I was right on the verge of doing so myself.

On January 31, she started a conversation. The bottom line was that we needed to set a goal to resolve this. It had been going on too long. She suggested April 1. We called it a goal rather than a deadline, but honestly there isn’t much difference. When she moved in after Barb moved out in October 24, it was always supposed to be temporary. This had gone on way too long.

I wanted to go back to Arlington Place to test out my nurse call button. I wanted to talk to them in more detail about my needs. When we had visited months ago, I gave them a brief overview. With the experience at Greenwood behind me, I had many more questions I needed to ask.

On February 11, I emailed Arlington Place to schedule another visit. I got no response.

On February 16, I spoke with their admissions person, whom I had met during our previous visit. She told me she expected they would have a room sometime in March. I told her I wanted to visit again. I suggested the 20th. She said she would get back to me.

On February 23, I spoke with a receptionist who said someone would call me back. That was the last time I heard from them. I’ve not tried to contact them since then. Months ago they said they would have something in 2-4 weeks. Then something by March. Then they quit returning my phone calls and emails.

On the 24th, I told Carol we would make plans to go to Greenwood. Then if Arlington or any other place contacted me, I could always move from Greenwood to a better place.

Carol wanted to return to Texas to spend spring break with her granddaughter. I was going to call Greenwood to make arrangements for a respite stay.

The next day, on the 25th, Amy from Greenwood emailed me to say they could get me a private room. This was a HUGE policy change and a real game-changer. I was reluctant to believe her. I called to talk to her just to confirm it was for real. She said it was. I had thought Amy Webb was the admissions director, but she is actually a community liaison, a publicity person, or something. She had talked to the actual admissions director, and it was okay. I made an appointment to go to Greenwood to test out my new nurse call button. Amy would not be available, but I could meet with her administrator to discuss another respite visit in early March and to test my button.

On the 27th, Carol and I went down there and met with the administrator. She thanked me for my lengthy email outlining the problems I had over Thanksgiving. She specifically said, “If I don’t know these things, I can’t do anything about them.” Then I thanked her for whatever had changed that would allow me to have a private room. She said, “What do you mean? Nothing had changed. We can’t give you a private room.” I couldn’t believe it. I told her that Amy and the admissions director had both confirmed it was possible. She said they were wrong.

We eventually straightened out the misunderstanding. The only reason I got a private room before was that it was an emergency. There were indications that Amy had bent the rules a little bit to get me in. Well, that was nice, but it didn’t help me long-term.

The issue boiled down to a red electrical plug. In hospitals and nursing facilities, some of the electrical outlets are red. This indicates that they are connected to the backup generator in the event of a power outage. They are to be used only for critical equipment, such as a ventilator or an oxygen machine. The private room they gave me before did not have a red outlet.

I tried to explain that I’m not completely dependent upon the ventilator. I only use it at night. It has a backup battery that is good for several hours. If the power goes out, I can still breathe. If the outage lasts long, all they have to do is take me off the ventilator. That wasn’t good enough. There would be no private room in Greenwood.

From March 5 through March 14, Carol returned to Texas to spend spring break with her granddaughter. I would spend that time in Greenwood. It would not be a private room.

It was nearly as big a disaster as the Thanksgiving fiasco. Those details next time.

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