Published in 2013. After more than a year not going to church, I realized I wanted to return to my childhood congregation. I have been there ever since.
I have been in a season of intense joy in my faith.
And I really, really didn’t want to say why.
Here’s why:
The joy started when I stopped going to church.
Sunday comes and I kiss my husband and kids goodbye. I listen to the car pull out of the garage, and the door close, and then I breathe.
And then I am in the quiet, holy stillness for a good two hours before they come home. I pray. I draw. I sit in the sun. Last week I took a walk on the beach, the words of Psalm 93 thrumming in my head:
Mightier than the sound of many waters,
mightier than the breakers of the sea,
mightier is the LORD who dwells on high.
As I whispered the words, the grey-green water rushed up and over my feet in an icy caress.
It took me a long time to decide to stop going to services every week. I thought about it while living abroad for six months. I lifted up the idea to God over and over. Part of me thirsted to stop. And the rest of me was scared.
One day, on the way to church in Buenos Aires, I whispered a different psalm:
Out of the depths have I called for you, O Lord
oh, Lord, hear my voice.
Here were my depths: I had realized that attending a church service every week was slowly chipping away at my faith.
The reasons for that are complicated, especially because there are a lot of things I love about my church. I have been there for nearly 25 years. It is a place where there is space to be different. It is filled with lovely people seeking out God. Sure, it has its strengths and weaknesses. But it is family.
And yet:
I realized that going to church, half-listening to sermons, and saying polite things to people was making me more cynical.
I had the same feeling in a different church in Buenos Aires. Maybe it’s not the church, then. Maybe it’s me.
Whatever. Something about the experience felt mechanical.
Except how do you do Christianity without doing church? What would people think if I stopped going? Would my church family be hurt? And what about my family worshipping together? What message would I be sending to my kids?
Also, what was I looking for, exactly? I didn’t have a plan. I don’t think that church is optional for a believer in the long run. Also, the phrase “church shopping” made me shiver.
“Out of the depths I cry to you,” I said to God as the train chugged me past the park, into the odd angles of Chinatown, past the high sienna walls of Argentina’s presidential compound. “Oh, Lord, hear my prayer.”
I had the very distinct impression as the car swayed from side to side, shuddering over the tracks, that God was listening. That He knew.
And that I should jump even if I didn’t have an endgame in mind. I knew in my bones that could trust God to provide renewal, or community, or whatever it was that my heart was thirsting for.
Maybe God could even provide me with insight about my thirst.
As I whispered the Psalm over and over, I somehow knew He had loveliness in mind for me, for my family, for my church. I had no idea what it was, but it felt like wholeness.
I smiled at God through the windows frosted with dust. I felt excited about the idea of church for the first time in ages. I would stop going. And someday, I was sure, I would be given a way to go back—whatever “back” meant.
I did not want to write about this joy because I do not have the answer yet.
I did not want to write about this joy because I am afraid of hurting someone. I am afraid of being judged.
But I see the prompt, “joy,” and this is where honest is.
I am feeling joy after deciding to take a break—months long—from church.
But the joy isn’t really coming from not going to church.
No: this is about asking God for something I can’t fathom—and somehow knowing God will come through for me.
It is about feeling all the feelings, as my fellow SheLovelys keep saying, and putting them on the altar as a fragrant offering.
It is about being really true with myself about where my heart is, even if it doesn’t look good.
There is joy in the messy place of expectation. There is joy in waiting on the Lord.
There is wild abandon when I step out in faith and know—with a somehow certainty—that he will keep all his promises.
Ever since we got back from Argentina, I have been mostly staying home. And I have been waiting. I am still asking the same questions: what am I doing? Why does church feel broken for me? But I care less about that unknowing than I did before.
I stepped away from the buffet table, afraid to be content with an empty plate. But to my surprise, the food I was hungry for showed up in abundance.
I am seeing abundance, even though the questions haven’t been answered yet. Somehow, despite not sitting in a pew on Sunday, I am experiencing community.
Months ago, I was asking a lot of questions about church—and to those questions I have gotten very few answers.
In the waiting, though, I have gotten the answers I really needed:
God is freedom.
God is present.
God is a provider.
God works in mysterious ways.
God is the source of true joy.
Originally published at SheLoves Magazine
