I was sitting in my car with both hands locked around the steering wheel, staring at the church parking lot like it had personally betrayed me. The engine was off. The windshield had fogged up. My fac...
I was sitting in my car with both hands locked around the steering wheel, staring at the church parking lot like it had personally betrayed me. The engine was off. The windshield had fogged up. My face was hot from crying, and my throat felt tight and raw, like I had been swallowing pain for months and it finally caught up to me.
I remember thinking, I cannot do this anymore.
Not church. Not the looks. Not the whispers. Not the smiling people who could quote Scripture one minute and cut you open the next.
And honestly? I did not want God in that moment either, because in my heart I had started tying Him to the people who hurt me.
That is the part I need to say out loud for anybody carrying church hurt: sometimes the wound gets so deep, you do not just question the church. You start questioning whether God is even safe.
I almost walked away from Him. I am not proud of that, but I am telling the truth.
When Church Hurt Made God Feel Distant
The hurt did not come from nowhere. It came from sermons that felt like they were aimed at my wounds instead of my healing. It came from leaders who smiled in public and shamed people in private. It came from being treated like a project when I was already barely holding on.
I was already tired when I was trying to keep my life together. There were bills on the table, unanswered prayers in my chest, and family issues I did not know how to fix. Instead of care, I got comments. Instead of compassion, I got correction without tenderness.
I heard things like:
- You need more faith.
- If you were really walking with God, this would not be happening.
- Maybe the problem is you.
- You are being dramatic.
Those words may sound small on a page, but when you are already bruised, they land like stones.
I started to associate the house of God with dread. I would sit in the back row and count the minutes until the service ended. Then I stopped showing up altogether. I told people I was busy. I told myself I needed a break. But the truth was uglier than that: I was angry, ashamed, and tired of pretending I was fine.
I still believed God existed. I just did not know if He wanted me after everything His people had done.
That is a lonely place to live.
I Stopped Singing Before I Stopped Believing
The strange thing about spiritual pain is that it changes your habits before it changes your theology. I stopped singing worship songs because they made me cry in the middle of the grocery store. I stopped opening my Bible because every page seemed to remind me of what I had lost. I even stopped wearing one of my favorite shirts because the verse on it felt too exposed, too honest, too much like a promise I was afraid to touch.
I used to think that made me a bad Christian. Now I think it made me a hurting one.
There were nights I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the wall, trying to talk myself out of my own disappointment. “You are overreacting.” “Other people have it worse.” “Maybe you should just get over it.”
But pain does not disappear just because you shame yourself for having it.
I became a quiet version of the prodigal story. Not the clean, polished version you hear in children’s church. Mine was messier. I did not leave with a suitcase and a plan. I drifted. I pulled back. I avoided. I let disappointment harden into distance.
And still, somewhere underneath all that, I kept asking the same question: What if God is different from the people who represented Him to me?
I did not know it then, but that question was the crack where hope began to get in.
The Night I Finally Told the Truth
The turning point did not come in a worship service. It did not come with a dramatic altar call or somebody laying hands on me while soft music played in the background.
It came on a regular night, in my kitchen, with dishes in the sink and a dull ache behind my eyes from crying too much.
I had been carrying everything around for so long that my prayers had become performance prayers. Careful prayers. Safe prayers. The kind you say when you still want to sound strong.
But that night I could not do strong anymore.
I sat down at the table and whispered, “God, if You are still there, I do not know how to come back. I am angry. I am hurt. And I do not know how to separate You from what Your people did to me.”
It was the most honest prayer I had said in years.
Then I opened my Bible with no plan, no outline, no pretty expectation that a verse would fix everything. My eyes landed on Psalm 34:18, and I stopped breathing for a second.
“The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, And saves such as have a contrite spirit.” — Psalm 34:18 (NKJV)
Near.
That word stayed with me.
Not loud. Not demanding. Not disappointed in me.
Near.
I did not feel fireworks. I did not suddenly feel healed. But something in me softened just enough to stop running that night.
I think that is what mercy looks like sometimes. Not a thunderclap. A small opening.
What Psalm 34:18 Did in Me
I had read that verse before, but I had never read it as someone who was actually broken.
“The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart...”
Not near to the ones with perfect church attendance.
Not near to the ones who never question.
Not near to the ones who know how to use Christian language without ever getting honest.
Near to the brokenhearted.
That changed the way I saw God.
I had been treating Him like He was standing back with His arms crossed, waiting for me to clean myself up before I could come close again. But Psalm 34:18 showed me a different picture. It showed me a God who moves toward broken people, not away from them.
That mattered, because I was not just disappointed. I was wounded.
And wounded people do not need religious pressure. We need truth wrapped in gentleness.
I began to understand that my church hurt was real, but it was not proof that God had failed me. It was proof that people can misuse His name and still miss His heart completely.
So I stopped asking, “How do I get back to being who I was?”
And I started asking, “God, will You meet me right here, even in this mess?”
That was the beginning of my returning to God.
I started reading stories from other believers who had been through their own wilderness, their own disappointment, their own faith testimony seasons. I did not need polished perfection. I needed proof that I was not the only one who had ever almost let go. Some of those stories helped me breathe again, and I kept finding more on the blog when I needed reminders that healing is not a straight line.
The Prodigal Story Was Mine Too
Not long after that kitchen prayer, I kept coming back to Luke 15. I had heard the prodigal story all my life, but this time I read it with different eyes.
I was no longer just the person who had wandered. I was the person who was afraid to return because I did not know if I would be welcomed back.
Then I read this:
“And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.” — Luke 15:20 (NKJV)
I had to read that line more than once.
While he was still a great way off.
That means the father was looking.
That means the father had not given up.
That means the son did not have to earn the embrace before he received it.
For a long time, I believed God would make me crawl back.
I believed He would stand at a distance and say, “You should have known better.”
But Luke 15 showed me something holy: the Father runs.
He does not run because the son is impressive.
He runs because His heart is full of compassion.
That is when I understood my story was not over because I had wandered.
It was just the part where grace met me on the road home.
And home did not look like a perfect church building. Sometimes it looked like a quiet room, an open Bible, tears on my shirt, and a God who was still willing to be found.
Coming Back Looked Small at First
People often talk about coming back to God like it happens all at once. Mine did not. Mine came in small obediences.
I started praying again, but not fancy prayers. Honest ones.
I started telling the truth to God instead of trying to impress Him.
I found a different church where nobody knew my name, and that helped more than I expected. I sat in the back. I kept my guard up. I watched. I listened. I tested the waters slowly.
I also had to learn that coming back did not mean ignoring the hurt. It meant bringing the hurt to Jesus instead of letting it harden into bitterness.
That was not instant. I wish I could say I forgave everybody in one night, but that would not be true. Sometimes forgiveness was as small as saying, “Lord, keep me from becoming what wounded me.” Sometimes it was crying in the shower and admitting I was still mad. Sometimes it was setting boundaries and refusing to hand my heart back to people who had not handled it well.
And yes, one of those small signs of healing was wearing Scripture again.
I remember putting on a simple shirt with a verse across the front and feeling exposed for a second. Not because the shirt was magical. It was not. But because it felt like I was choosing to let the Word sit close to my chest again. Later, I even found a plain one in the shop that reminded me healing can be carried quietly. Not as a performance. As a reminder.
On days when my confidence was thin, I would think about making something with a verse that meant something to me. Not for attention. Just for anchoring. I eventually used create to shape a reminder I could wear without saying a word.
Little by little, those small acts became a pattern. And the pattern was this: God kept meeting me where I was.
If Church Hurt Made You Want to Leave Too
If you are reading this and you have been wounded by the church or by religious people, I want to say something plainly: I am sorry.
Not sorry that your pain made you ask questions. Not sorry that you stopped pretending. Sorry that people who should have reflected Jesus made you feel unsafe around His name.
You are not crazy for needing distance.
You are not faithless because you have grief.
You are not disqualified because you are cautious.
And you do not have to force yourself back into a room that keeps reopening old wounds.
What healed me was not pretending the hurt never happened. What brought me back was realizing God was not the one who mocked me, used me, or abandoned me in the middle of my pain.
He was the one near to the brokenhearted.
He was the Father running toward the son.
He was the voice that kept meeting me in the dark with enough light for the next step, not the whole staircase.
If you are in your own prodigal story right now, I want to tell you this with all the honesty I have: you can come back slowly.
You can come back with questions.
You can come back with scars.
You can come back while still healing.
And if all you can pray today is, “God, I do not know how to trust again,” that is a real prayer. He can handle it.
I almost walked away from God.
But what brought me back was not guilt, fear, or pressure.
It was His nearness.
It was His Word.
It was the Father running while I was still a great way off.
That is my faith testimony. That is my returning to God story. And if yours feels too messy right now, I need you to know mine was messy too.
Still is, sometimes.
But I am here.
And He is, too.