The Church I Left

It’s been a few years since I left them. I loved my Church, I had many friends and really grew in my walk with God. They taught me so much and for that I will be forever grateful. They taught me about family, and working together for the greater good, how to help others in a way of understanding and healing. Accepting we aren’t perfect, even those who are in leadership and those we look up too. They taught me to use my gifts of patience, mercy, praying for others and healing through understanding. I also learned I was not great with young kids, and assisting in Sunday School. So why would I leave and why would I need to let them go??

The longer I was there, the more I began to feel like a worker bee and not really involved as a person who belongs. They spoke a lot about being a family and being apart of the core group. However I felt more pushed to the side as being older, even being only two years older then the pastor. My bible study group was older then me, and while it seemed petty I was not included in some of the social activities with my age group usually due to my daughter being an adult, most of them had younger kids still and that I was single. I want to believe that wasn’t the case….and it was just shrugged off as we didn’t think you would be interested.

I spent a lot of time trying to prove to myself it didn’t matter and I made excuses for it. Then I moved into justifying why I left and why it was ok to be angry about it….both accounts I do realize didn’t make me very Christian minded. I then moved into the phase of just simply trying to replace them in my heart, which never worked. Finally I tried to make them the villain in my own mind, that they were not very good Christians….

I laugh now because the problem was my own hurt feelings, I could have handled it better and most of all just see I didn’t fit in in that way. Holding on to the anger doesn’t serve me, and it doesn’t hurt them. Moving on and remembering the good is what I needed to keep, and to remember we are all human. Christian or not, we are human and sometimes we just don’t fit even when we try and convince ourselves different. Letting it go, and just sitting with the hurt was tougher then I had expected. But it was needed to move on and be able to try again.