I went to church for the first time since COVID today.
Sitting in the black folding chair, I told myself to calm down, relax. But my body was not convinced. I was tense, alert, shaky. Someone was sitting on my chest.
I couldn’t stop second guessing the pastor’s motives, his words, his theology—even things I agreed with. I wondered: if an emotionally abused woman came to him, would he tell her to “forgive and forget”? Would the leaders hold perpetrators responsible for their actions? Would they protect the vulnerable?
I kept glancing around at all the people, wondering if they were comforted by the singing, the words. Did they feel certain of their beliefs, at least mostly?
Because more and more lately, all I feel is doubt. Fundamental things I’ve known all my life crumble from beneath me. And I wonder, does that make me the man who built his house on the sand? Or is all this doubt just more room for faith? After all, what is faith inside of certainty?
Everyone was kind, and several people introduced themselves, but by the time we got in the car to drive home, I felt like I was drowning in loneliness. Again. Church is the loneliest place I’ve ever known.
But it wasn’t always that way.
Inside the entrance to my church growing up, there was a picture of some of the founding members constructing the cross on the outside. One was up on a ladder, another was below, holding supplies and smiling back at the camera. A team.
We started attending when I was three. The first thing I remember is surprise at going to the same place two weeks in a row. We’d been trying out different churches every Sunday, looking for a place that fit.
An older girl quickly took me under her wing. She did school “in her living room,” which might be where I got the idea to tell my mom that I wanted to do school at home. Mom had been praying about homeschooling, and took it as a sign from God.
Amanda, Ruthie, and I played in the small upstairs library after church almost every week. Really, I just tagged along, listening to the two older girls spin multi-episode dramas full of adventure in other worlds. It was far more interesting than “playing house.”
On Wednesdays, my brother and I would explore while Mom practiced with the worship group. The whole church was our playground. We’d try to sneak down the hall when the secretary wasn’t looking through the window in the pastor’s office. Or, once, I convinced three-year-old Danny to go up in the attic by himself, where the teenagers had youth group. I lamented my cowardice when they rewarded him with a cookie.
As far as I knew, it was a safe and happy place, where everyone knew my name, and I knew all of them. We were a small church, without a lot of money or fancy programs, but we were a community.
Then, the roof.
We thought it just needed to be re-shingled. But when some of the men inspected it, they found severely twisted rafters, barely held together.
It turned out that years ago, a tornado had come through town. From the outside, it looked like it had passed by without damaging the church. However, on the inside, the roof was twisted beyond repair. It was a miracle it hadn’t collapsed on our heads a long time ago.
The building was condemned, and the congregation imploded.
The assistant pastor wanted to start from scratch, make a new, fancy building to draw new members. Other people wanted to simply fix what we had.
There had already been rising tension. The assistant pastor wanted to take our church in a new direction, one my dad called “seeker friendly.” But the roof situation put it over the edge.
Somehow, my dad inserted himself in the middle of the conflict. During the last two weeks of the struggle, debilitating fear seized me. I barely slept for two weeks, watching out my window for an impending tornado. Thankfully, it didn’t even rain lightly for those weeks. I don’t think my nine-year-old heart could’ve withstood the terror.
The conflict ended when our lead pastor was forced out. There was a show of sending him and his family off with prayer one Sunday. We all left with him—all except two or three families.
Both churches still exist, although as shadows of the community I once knew.
The church building sat condemned for years, until finally the fire department burned it down for practice. The last time I drove past, the wooden sign with the church’s name was still there, next to a gaping hole in the ground.
It wasn’t until I was twenty-two that I felt at home in a church again. I was newly married, and my husband and I tried the small church that met at the University I was attending. From the moment we entered, it reached out and folded it into itself. Everyone was welcoming and friendly. The pastor and his wife were always open to questions and conversation after the service. Several times, they invited us over for lunch.
We even went to a pancake brunch one day at one of the member’s houses. They couldn’t fit everyone inside, so they set up folding tables in their yard and on their driveway. We conversed over sticky plates, and I thought maybe I’d found community again.
But then, the sermon about divorce (you cannot leave your spouse except for adultery. Divorce for physical abuse is only allowed because physical abuse is against the law). Then, the women’s group. A book entitled God’s Priorities for Today’s Woman. Get dressed up before your husband comes home. Make sure your kids are well behaved and waiting in a line to greet him. Have dinner on the stove. Don’t say anything that would cause your husband to sin. Beware of gossip—don’t even confide in your friends, but if you must speak to someone, seek out a wise older woman who will point you back to Scripture. Your only purpose is serving others.
Until I want to scream with agony and run, keep running.
Until the questions inside me are their own tornado, twisting my ribcage: What about my father? What about how he treats us? What about the abused women who, statistically, are in this room with us? Who are being convinced that it is God’s will for them to go home and take it?
And then one Sunday, the pastor has an announcement. There has been tension, fighting, people tearing at each other. He has been asked to leave.
And I hear a woman crying behind me. I see people holding each other up, their children staring, not knowing yet what this means. But I don’t cry. I feel the air thicken in my ears, the unnatural stillness in my chest. It’s happening again.
The final nail snapped, and the rafters collapse.
It’s probably the best thing for me, since I’ve realized it is a toxic place, but it still hurts. Still, it is hard to catch my breath.
After that, we tried other churches on and off, but I couldn’t commit to any of them. I was too on guard, suspicious. And then COVID. And then a baby. And then it’s been three years.
Here I am, trying again, even though my whole body screams that church is not safe. Don’t you remember, it says, how everything falls apart? Don’t you remember how theology trapped your mother in an abusive marriage for twenty-seven years? Don’t you remember how no one protected you? How they used the Bible to hurt you over and over until you don’t know what truth is anymore?
So, why am I risking it again? Why am I going back to a place associated with so much pain?
It’s definitely not because it’s what I’m “supposed to do,” not anymore. But maybe it’s because, if there’s a chance that my son can have what I had before it was torn apart, I want that for him. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that, although I am suspicious of the church and the certainty they think they possess, I don’t want to be alone with my questions. I don’t think any of us do.
I don’t know the reason. But here I am. Again.
Broken Things 