IF you deconverted in midlife, can you help?

[pocaracas]

Thank you for that reply.

Regarding how to believe in evolution and Christianity simultaneously, there were too many other questions. If the Bible is not literal in its stories about a 6-day creation or a global flood, then how many other things are not true?

Now that you mention that, I remember thinking the same thing. If the very start of the book is wrong, what else is wrong?
How trustworthy is it?

"Again, I'm curious, what is this thing you call "the God of the Bible"?" 

God depicted in either Jewish or Christian Bible. 

As far as I see it, that God is Forrest depicted as a worker, who works all week and then needs his rest.
He is depicted as a king... Far from omniscient... Who looks over a garden and a couple of people, but easily misplaces them.
He is depicted as a non corporeal entity with the ability to convey sound as speech... But only in a particular location of a particular mountain and to a particular person... He can also interact with the rocky mountain and produce carvings with text.

He is depicted as a bestower of magical powers.

He is depicted again as a king of kings who inspires and supports human kings in their endeavors, so long as they believe that God exists and pray to him... And so long as their human enemies don't have iron chariots.

He is depicted as having produced a human son, through a human woman... Much like Zeus produced a few Demigods.
Fun fact, in Greek, Zeus is pronounced theos... The same Greek word that became associated with the divine, giving rise to other words like Theology, theist, theocracy, etc.
Makes you wonder at the contribution of the mingling of Greek mythology with the Jewish conception of El, Elohim, to the rise of Christianity.

"It's not that you will never again see your loved ones... it's that you will stop being. You will stop having awareness. You will no longer think, no longer remember, no longer feel anything."

The lack of awareness doesn't bother me so much as losing my family soon. My parents are 79. They won't be here much longer. As ridiculous as it might seem, I always believed they would go on, that they wouldn't be absolutely extinguished. Same goes for everybody else I've loved. Death is so final. This new sense of finality of death is really depressing to me. I don't want to lose my family. I don't know how to deal with this. 

I know it's not much comfort but, as long as you live, as long as someone remembers them, the personhood of your dead loved ones remains with those who remember.
They will be memories, not independent actors like they are now, but still, in a poetic way, they live on.
A few people throughout history have managed to live for a very long time, in this poetic way... From Alexander the great, to Genghis Khan, to Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven and many others...
Some can be thought to live forever in our shared human memory....or as forever as humanity exists to remember them.

That is the best we can have in the way of eternal life, I think... But we seldom know in advance that it will be so...

"Some of those atheists out there end up being too logical about the whole thing and try to make you see the logic of it all... but you need emotional support, right now. Logic won't help... logic already did its work."

Yes, unfortunately it seems that the majority of atheists I've met can't really understand the lingering fears or the depression/devastation. Almost all of them lost their belief in God in their childhood. 

Also, don't forget, those fears are (at least nowadays) imparted almost exclusively by the evangelicals.
In southern Europe, where Catholicism has traditionally ruled, such fears are mostly absent.
The notion of hell still exists, of course, but it's watered down, and you just need to be a good person to get to heaven... Even the pope said recently that atheists who are good people get to go to heaven! I suppose he said this to appease doubts from those believers who have come to love atheists and who were concerned about their loved ones eternal status.

"You have to let your mind click by itself... until then, grab on tight to those sheets and be brave."

What if it never clicks? I can't seem to lose the "what if you're wrong?" in my head no matter how hard I try. I'm reading, talking with atheists, and watching YouTube videos with debates between atheists and theists and I'm still fighting not to feel scared. 

If it never clicks, it never clicks... I'm sorry I don't have a better answer.
Typically, our fears are conquered by facing them... But I wouldn't advise dying, just to make sure you have no hell to fear.
If you're wrong, many many many other people are wrong too, and have been wrong throughout history. You will be in good company.
I once heard a guy joke, why would I want to go to heaven if all my friends are in hell?

Regarding regrets after we die, thinking about this has at least made me come to a realization that relationships matter more than things. 

Yes, we are social beasts. Our psyche needs this closeness to others.
Life feels so much better when you're surrounded by people whom you love and who love you.

You didn't cause any more problems. I appreciate your encouragement. I'm hanging in there.

Life is beautiful... And very worth hanging on!
I hope to see you around more.

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That's not a claim.
That's an observation.

Wishful thinking has made people come to desire an option in which that observation is not the whole story. And those people have thus made the claim that "one goes on existing after death".
This claim requires evidence.

The observation is self evident.

I'd counter that by saying observations have been made of people being brought back from clinical death, to recount themselves looking at their own dead body from the outside.

Since observations are self evident...

Yes, because that "observation" is so common, huh?
For those cases you mention, you can't rule out mistakes in declaring clinical death.
You also cherry pick among the much larger sample of people who are equally brought back from such "clinical deaths", reporting nothing... To them, it was like being in a dreamless sleep.
Which makes us wonder if those people who report what you say were just dreaming it, a very human mental activity... Or if their brains played some other trick on them.
Given the overwhelming scarcity of such reports as the ones you depict, the null hypothesis stands.