On Leaving Church

This month marks a year of me leaving church. This Month of May. You will always hold a spot in my heart for a season that I thought would crush me, that I thought would dry me out, and drag me back home with nothing to show from these Sunday scars. Last year, in May, I knew it was over.

We were over in a way that I could no longer reconcile, and that I could no longer reframe. And here I am, a year later, and it’s May again, and goodness gracious, I am still standing. True characteristics of those who have walked through some fire, and maybe drank a ton of wine.

I remember the last sermon I heard preached from the pulpit. It was on hell, and I didn’t like it. Maybe a better bang of a message to go out on would have been on heaven, but hell seemed more appropriate for the time to walk out, and to actually walk away.

This year marked one of lots and lots of loss, not like the hell that was preached if I didn’t accept a certain theology or way of being, but more of a spiritual hell. Its really, really hard to go from being invited to no longer feeling included.

To feel like the doors that have always been opened now feel shut. That the walls that have always welcomed you with open arms are now feeling like arms that have an agenda, an opinion, and an absolute answer.

What do you do? Where do you go?

I never envisioned myself just walking away. And if I am being really honest, for those who have walked very near and dear to us in this past season, also know that there were a lot of attempts to not let it all unravel and fall apart.

There were a lot of sleepless nights, good counsel, and scriptural ways I abided by to make it “work”. To save what I always believed could be saved. Life groups. Best friends. Church Community. They had to be saved right? If we ALL couldn’t save these fragmented friendships, how could we ever save anyone else? When salvation is the goal, and saving relationships is not, we all start to unravel at some level. We kinda all lose the point. When its more important to be “right” than to be in “right relationship” with one another, where does that land us, how does that launch us and encourage us, and where do we actually go from here?

I wasn’t just going to walk away. Until, I knew I just had to walk away. It wasn’t that simple, and yet it also was too. I was falling apart, and it all was at the same time too. These things all seem to be connected I realize. My relationship with the church, and my theology was starting to tear at the seams a bit, and honestly, I wasn’t the same girl who walked into church all those years ago too. I was starting to form my own opinions, and see things through the lens of a different light, and I wasn’t about to let myself surrender.

I had to walk away to deconstruct, I had to walk away to survive.

There were way too many sit downs, and too many words to count. It was like a game of beer pong that I could never win, {minus the beer of course}. There were so many opinions, and correct communication channels, that I knew by the end, I just couldn’t show up to play on the same playground any longer.

Our time had come, my time as a thirty-something always “in church” girl now became a girl “without a church” to call home. Me, the girl who served coffee in front of the church for so many years, who led bible studies, and breakout groups; our expiration date was now past due.

Our love affair was severed. The balloon had popped; the air deflated, my heart broken in ten thousand pieces. The way in which we had done was done. We had gone stale. The plays had changed. The playground looked different now, and it was time to get off the slide. My keeping up to keep up, and my showing up to show up, it was not serving either of us any longer. It was time to get off the court, and into the community, it was time to go back to the basics where I feel like I was called to the entire time. It was time to leave.

Leaving church for a church girl like me after all these years seems like leaving your homeland. It might sound extreme to those not in the system, but to those who have always served and stood by, it felt like saying goodbye, it felt like loss, and suffering, and sadness and remorse. For me at the end it called one million questions to mind, but ultimately these three stood out: “Should we stay?” “Should we save this”, or “Should we just go”.

The honest truth is there is no answer outside your Heart and the Holy Spirit. The opinions around you will feel like “college credentials”, and the scriptures used to try to keep you to stay will feel like “source”, but the nudging’s of the Holy Spirit for me have always felt like wind, and parking lots, and leaning into the listening that I hear in those spots.

It feels like the beach grass in my backyard, and the shoes I take off at the shore. It feels so much more than what I actually thought I wanted, and what I thought I needed, and what I was hoping to explore.

It feels like Holy Ground. The Holy Spirit has His way of leading us, and it involves His ways, and also the ways He has created us to hear. When I lean in and listen, and when I hear Him the most has zero to do with what’s happening behind the walls of a church building, and in the weather patterns of the church.

The end will feel like the end. Hear me this loud and clear: The end felt like hell.

But what I discovered after almost a year later is that it’s more like the beginning. The start of walking away feels like a stop. It feels like a giant red light. But once you give yourself the green light to go, once you give yourself the permission to leave, there in lies the real adventure. There in begins going back to the basics: the really coming to terms with what you believe, what you want to listen to and how you want to live your life. The Holy Spirit, Jesus, God-They don’t abandon, this trinity of togetherness, they actually seem to draw in more close. They comfort, and they mourn with you, they see you, and remind you that they know you best.

You will be led into the wilderness, and you will be called beloved. You will see things in ways that you never have before. You will be wooed and won over, pursued, and delighted in. You will not be forsaken and left. The wild dance into the wilderness will be excruciatingly painful, but it’s just the beginning, and it’s just the start.