I remember my voice shaking as I tried to speak the words aloud that had been spinning around my head for weeks. I was spending the day with a dear friend after several months of navigating deep church trauma, and I told her ahead of time that there was something I wanted to process with her. I didn’t expect it to be so hard to get the words my brain had fully formed on repeat to finally leave my lips as I tried to explain the struggles I was having in my relationship with the Lord.
“What kind of God shows up when you are feeling desperate and broken, but then seems to be distant when you’re starting to feel okay? That feels manipulative. Like something an abuser would do.”
There it was. The fear that had been eating at me for weeks. I wasn’t just struggling to believe that God was good — He was starting to look evil in my mind. Where I used to see love and grace I was now seeing manipulation and coercion. God’s character felt twisted, and every time my mind wandered back to this fear, I refused to track down the rest of the thought, worrying where it might lead me.
How did I end up in a place where God’s goodness, the foundation of his being, felt so uncertain to me?
I’m going to borrow a metaphor from Emily Snook to explain how I got here1. I grew up hearing about the importance of placing my identity in Christ and building my life on his truth and in his church. So I tried to do that. I went to a Christian university and studied biblical studies and theology. I got a job working for a local church and the child development center connected with it. I spent my evenings and weekends in bible studies, engaging in worship ministry, and serving youth and children. I made all of my friends and community in one building and centered my life around my church and its service in our town.
What I didn’t realize was that there is a big difference between building a life on top of Christ and building a life on top of the church. It was like I had built my faith on top of glass. When I looked down, I saw the rock of Christ and I always believed I was standing on it. But somehow, I missed the crystal clear, glass platform that was hovering just over the surface. I planted my feet on my role and reputation in the church and let myself feel safe and secure that my identity was in the right place.
I’d been doing this long before joined this particular church — it was what I had been taught to do ever since I was a young child with a parent in church ministry. So when the cracks in the glass started showing up, I convinced myself that I was imagining things. I’m not sure when they first started. Maybe as a teenager when I learned about people being asked to leave spaces in my childhood church because their lives were too “messy” or because their lack of physical cleanliness was offensive to others. Maybe when a co-worker of my mom’s was able to bully and mistreat her for years with no accountability. The cracks were definitely there and spreading further when she was fired for not “growing the ministry” and again when the pastor of the church I attended while I was in college was caught stealing church funds.
But I still stood in denial on the cracked, false foundation of my faith when I was bullied and hurt by my own pastor and boss. I was so afraid of the ground crumbling that I forced myself to stay in a place that was unsafe and harming me. I clung to the spider-webbing glass as shards started to cut open my skin. I was convinced that I was standing on Christ, and so I thrashed in pain and confusion as I tried to make sense of a God who would wound me.
I was aching inside, but I had been taught that you don’t leave a church because of conflict. I believed church membership is a covenant you don’t break lightly – that when hard times inevitably come, those who leave reveal that they were never really committed or that their faith just wasn’t strong enough.
So, I was determined to stay and pursue healing. I tried to search myself for any responsibility in what was happening and accept accountability where I could. I believed that if the pastor knew the effects of his actions, he would certainly change. When I brought my concerns to him and was met with even more anger and hostility, I hoped that if other leaders knew what was happening, their consciences would force them to intervene.
I stayed for another year and a half, begging church leadership to see what was going on, my anguish repeatedly responded to with inaction. I was told that I was too sensitive and didn’t know how to handle a “direct communicator”. That I wasn’t showing enough grace. That I was risking the pastor and church’s reputation in the community. That if I didn’t like how leadership was handling things, I should leave. It didn’t matter when others started independently coming forward too – they just didn’t want to see and acknowledge the hellish reality that many of the church building’s weekday staff had no way to ignore or escape from.
After months and months discerning what I should do next, praying about whether or not I should walk away quietly, God gave me clarity about words I was meant to share with our church’s leadership (you can read more about that process here). He gave me an immense peace over the words that I put down in a letter, and I felt so certain upon writing it that the Lord was going to use it to start a process of accountability and restoration. I knew that I was risking my job and church community, but I trusted that God would protect me. Why else would would God ask me to step out on a limb like that?
My expectations couldn’t have been further from the reality that played out. Without any additional conversations with church leaders to learn more about my experiences, I was fired and barred from almost all of the church ministries I was a part in less than four days of my letter being sent. I was called “heartless” and told that when I was less hurt, I would understand how wrong my actions were.
And that’s when the glass finally shattered.
As I fell through the floor I had trusted to hold me safe and protected, my faith in a God who is good felt like it was shattering too.
If that weren’t enough, several of the friends and mentors who showed up to “help” picked up the remains of the glass I had been standing on and stabbed them deep under my skin, as if they were trying to force my shattered beliefs back inside me so I couldn’t let them go. Conversations with cold words that continued long after I started sobbing my way through them. I didn’t think that the pain of my experiences could pierce any deeper than it already had, but the words of people I trusted to care for my shattered spirit obliterated me in a way that nothing else could.
They told me that speaking about my experience was worse than the words of the shepherd who caused so much wreckage in my life and the lives of many others. That I was judging him too harshly. That it’s never okay to damage the reputation of spiritual leaders. God couldn’t have called me to take the actions I took because they were contrary to Scripture. People who hadn’t even read my words treated them like gossip and slander. I was told that I was experiencing the necessary consequences for my actions and that if I apologized and repented, I might be welcomed back into the church’s ministries someday. Told that the pastor couldn’t be expected to stand up and preach a sermon with me sitting in the sanctuary. I was warned against becoming bitter and told that if I couldn’t forgive my pastor (for sins he refused to acknowledge) and let go of my anger and hurt, I needed to distance myself from those left in my community at the church.
I slowly realized that a reputation had been destroyed, but it wasn’t my pastor’s – it was mine.
I was no longer a member of the flock, but a wolf to be treated with suspicion. People were warned against reading my words or hearing my story. Told that they should let their own experiences with the pastor guide their decision making. If he had never treated them poorly, my pain shouldn’t change their perspective of their leader. So many friends who knew what was happening stopped reaching out or avoided talking to me about the situation.
With others’ words and actions lodged deeply into my battered flesh, I stepped away from a place I still wanted to call home. I felt orphaned and abandoned, like a spiritual refugee.
I started questioning my perception of reality as most of my community continued worshipping, serving, and giving under the pastor’s leadership. I hate that their continued involvement hurt me. I didn’t want it to. But in my place of grief, it felt like a denial that anything wrong had happened – like even my closest friends didn’t really believe that what I’d experienced was traumatic or that the community was unsafe. After a month or two, it looked like life was going on as if nothing had ever happened. Did I make the whole thing up in my head? Did I blow up my world just because I was too sensitive? I truly felt like I was going insane.
I was mad at the leaders who failed me. I was mad at myself for not leaving sooner. And most of all, I was mad at a God who would call me first to serve this church and then cry out to it in warning, only to seemingly abandon me when I was most desperate for his presence and protection.
And that’s how I found myself holding back tears on my friend’s couch in January. Less than three months had passed since my termination, and the pain was raw and real. I had finally stopped reeling from the aftershocks, but I couldn’t reconcile my experiences with the people of God and the person of God. People I expected to protect me had abandoned me. Friends I thought would care for me had crushed me. Those I sought wisdom from had only deepened my confusion.
So I sat in front of a dear friend, speaking fears I was afraid to admit. Worried that my vulnerability might be met with another condemnation. But what I received in that moment was something completely different.
She told me that how I was feeling made sense. More words of comfort and encouragement followed, but her simple affirmation meant the most. She helped me to feel seen. She told me that I wasn’t going crazy. She removed the weight of guilt and shame from my weary shoulders.
In my moment of weakness, she showed the love and mercy of Christ to me. She shepherded my broken spirit. Loved me amidst my brokenness. Her embodiment of God’s character reminded me of who He really is.
When someone you trust speaks harsh words and quiet deceptions over you in Christ’s name, you start to contort your image of who God is to match their narrative. Shepherds have a unique ability to wound. They are intended to care for their flocks with the gentleness of Christ. So when they use their crook to beat down the sheep, the hurt is all-consuming. And when flocks that are meant to provide safety and community turn their backs on the abused sheep, they are left wondering how a God who is good and a Church that is meant to follow his headship could be the source of so much suffering.
But just as people can warp our image of God through harsh words and deaf ears, those who show up with kindness and gentleness have the ability to restore it. We can show up in each other’s lives as people who are indwelt with the Spirit and literally bring the goodness of Christ to the broken. We can heal the wounded. Shepherd the broken.
And I have been blessed by the people in my life who have continued to model Christ’s love and goodness to me in a very dark season. Their presence and willingness to enter into my pain has given me the hope and strength needed to rediscover the solid rock that sat beneath fractured glass.
As I brushed away the shards from my broken foundation, I found that a kind Shepherd was still there. He had been there whole time, patiently waiting for me to let go of the beliefs and systems that were hurting me. He didn’t pry them out of my hands and take away more of my agency – He waited for me to get there myself.
He sat with me in my grief and anger without rushing or judging me as I lamented and sobbed, and even when I cursed and screamed. He wasn’t afraid of my open wounds, because he had been wounded too. He had been beaten, scorned, and ridiculed by religious leaders. He had been called a liar. He had been misunderstood and falsely accused.
I was comforted by the Christ who flipped over tables in the temple when he saw injustice toward the vulnerable. The God who proclaimed woe to the shepherds who scatter his flock. The Jesus who was only ever harsh towards those who caused harm in his Father’s name.
I’m meeting again the Good Shepherd who doesn’t cause wounds, but instead binds them up. One who cares for his sheep rather than devouring them. One who gathers together his scattered, wandering flock, not stopping until every last lost sheep is securely wrapped in his arms.
This is the God we can place our hope in. He is not harsh toward the broken, nor cruel to the vulnerable. He does not justify the pain of one wounded sheep to benefit the ninety-nine. He is loving. He is kind. He is gentle. And He is always good.
May we have the courage to question the cracks in our faith so that we might grow closer to a God who is secure and whole. May we remember when we sit with the broken in spirit that we need only to show up as mirrors of Christ’s mercy, kindness, and love.
- You can check out Emily Snook sharing the metaphor that inspired this post on Episode 31 of the Untangled Faith podcast. ↩︎
Truth and Light 
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