I was raised in an extremely conservative expression of Christianity — the Church of Christ.
I’m not here to bash that tradition.
There are good people there.
Sincere people.
Faithful people.
But inside my family system, church didn’t feel like refuge.
It felt like performance.
Who I Thought I Was Performing For
Back then, I truly believed I was performing for God.
That’s what I was taught:
- show up
- sit still
- look right
- say the right things
- don’t question
- don’t deviate
- don’t bring the chaos into the sanctuary
So I tried.
But I know now that what I was really performing for wasn’t God.
It was:
- appearances
- family image
- reputation
- control
- silence
- denial
Church became another stage where I learned how to look faithful while surviving dysfunction.
And that does something dangerous to a person’s soul.
It teaches you that God is watching…
but truth is not allowed.
Why I Walked Away for So Long
So is it any wonder I turned my back on church for years?
For decades?
That wasn’t rebellion.
That was self-preservation.
I didn’t walk away because I hated God.
I walked away because:
- I associated faith with fear
- obedience with erasure
- holiness with silence
- and God with authority that never protected me
If that version of faith was God…
Then God felt unsafe.
And I couldn’t keep trying to worship a presence that felt woven into control, performance, and threat.
The Faith That Followed Me Anyway
What I see now is something I could not see then:
I may have walked away from religion…
But God never walked away from me.
He carried me through:
- addiction
- collapse
- legal trouble
- survival seasons
- broken identity
- and the long slow unraveling of lies I didn’t even know were lies yet
Too many moments lined up exactly when they needed to for me to believe I was alone.
Rescues I didn’t plan.
Connections I didn’t orchestrate.
Truth that arrived at the exact moment I could finally withstand it.
I didn’t know what was coming.
But God did.
From day one.
What My Faith Looks Like Now
My faith today looks nothing like it did back then.
Now:
- I study in private.
- I reflect more than I perform.
- I listen more than I proclaim.
- I choose faith — I don’t inherit it by pressure.
- I don’t confuse obedience with self-abandonment.
- And I don’t confuse God with the systems that misrepresented Him.
Someone once said something that stopped me cold:
“Religion is for people who are afraid to go to hell.
Spirituality is for people who have already been there — and don’t want to go back.”
That landed because I had already been there.
And I survived.
What I Know Now
God was not in the threat.
God was not in the silence.
God was not in the fear.
God was not in the performance.
God was in:
- the moments I should not have survived
- the truth that finally broke through
- the sister who refused to stay blind
- the clarity that arrived when the fog lifted
- and the slow rebuilding of a self that was never allowed to exist before
The Faith I Carry Forward
Today my faith is not loud.
It’s steady.
It’s private.
It does not require me to abandon myself.
And it does not ask me to return to what once broke me in the name of obedience.
If my faith now has a single foundation, it is this:
God does not require my destruction to prove my devotion.
