Dear Church, I Still Want to Belong
Dear Church, You and I have not communed as of late. At least not without gritted teeth. It’s not that I don’t want us to be close. I know God has a glorious design for our relationship. You and I are meant to belong to the same body, the same bride, awaiting the day Christ returns for His Church. I want that. I want to swim in the beauty of the family that could be. Maybe that’s part of why this has hurt so much. I came to you already carrying wounds from my first family—the one unchosen and born into—with a deeply felt sense that I don’t belong, I’m not understood, I can’t quite get comfortable. I stretched out hope with a lick of promise that entering your gates might fulfill some of what had been lacking. A place and a people who might quench my thirst for trusting relationship, safety, worth, and value. Instead, I often found myself lingering at the surface. Nothing catastrophic. No singular injury I can hold up as the moment everything changed. There are others who have endured t...