My love/hate relationship with my church goes something like this: Girl is young and unafraid because her church gives her all the answers. All her friends are there. They think the way she does. It’s comfortable, it’s warm, it’s bright. Girl flawlessly follows the tenants of that church because they coincide with everything that is right and good and easy. Girl meets and loves people who aren’t in her Church bubble or who’ve left it. Girl realizes these people are happy and fulfilled, yet they don’t have the answers she does. Girl tries to ignore these facts because Church is still a mostly warm place to be. Then her church asks her to make decisions, like voting for or abstaining from or proclaiming things that she is having a hard time agreeing with. Those people she loves, those “others”, they’ve taught her a few things and girl can no longer reconcile her life experience with everything the church tells her is truth. Church becomes less of a safe place because the things she struggles making sense of are brought up at church and she’s told over and over that what she’s come to understand is wrong. She starts to feel isolated. She starts to question what is wrong with her. She tries to ignore these doubts and get back to the way it used to be- when church gave her all the answers, when it was so easy. She can’t ever go back to that. So she tries to limp along, not understanding, feeling alone, but going to church and doing the things that once brought her comfort. It comes to her sometimes. Once in awhile she finds another friend at church who feels the ways she does, but not very often. She wants to stay, she doesn’t want to let go of the church that once brought her so much joy and comfort. But she is forever changed and working hard to find the peace at church that was once there.