My Experience With Church Hurt

The following is an excerpt from chapter 6 of my book, To the Unloved: Step Out of Brokenness, See Yourself Through God’s Eyes. These are some painful details about my personal experience with church hurt. For context, I was 19 at the time. I’d stepped into ministry the year before and was being mentored by my pastor and his wife at the small country church I grew up in. I worked at the food bank they operated 4 days a week, helped organize other events they held for the community, and was the sole Sunday school teacher for a dozen children. I’d known this couple and attended their church with my family since I was 6 years old. They knew intimate details about the years of abuse I’d suffered at the hands of my father. The pastor’s wife had been the one to talk me through my escape from that abuse and encouraged me to take steps towards healing. I say all of this to show how close I was with the two of them, and how invested I was in their church. At the time, they were the only family I had. Their rejection did not simply hurt, it gutted me… Though, isn’t that how church hurt usually is? It can leave people absolutely devastated. If the following excerpt helps, please come back for part 2!

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“This is going to hurt, but I will be with you.”

 – God

I was on my way to have a meeting with the Pastor’s Wife, and I should not have felt nervous, but I did. I had been in countless meetings with her throughout the years. She was someone I came to for Godly advice; she counseled me as I recovered from my daunting childhood, and she was the person I had grown to trust more than anyone else. Meeting with her had always felt warm and welcoming, like coming home. However, that day as I got into my car to drive over to see her, something just felt strange about it.

            When we scheduled the meeting over the phone there was coldness in her tone and I asked if everything was okay, or if I had done something wrong to make her angry. She said everything was fine, but everything didn’t feel fine. I’d encountered this familiar surge of dread before – each time something bad had happened to either my family or to me, and I had learned by then not to ignore it. So that day all of my defenses were locked and loaded as I pulled into the church parking lot, and I asked God to comfort me even though I wasn’t injured, yet. But I knew, something was coming, and God was already declaring that He would see me through it.

            When we began our meeting, she got right to the point. I had not done something wrong; I had done many things that were wrong in her opinion. She had neatly written a list of my every mistake dating back almost a year, and we went down the list one offense at a time.

1.     I handed out bottles of water on hot days to food pantry customers without asking permission.

2.     I visited the church to pray when no one was there.

3.     I went on a 2-day vacation (on days the food bank was closed) without telling them first.

4.     I shared about my past too much.

5…. 6… 7… 8… 9… 10… 11… the list kept winding on…

As the woman I had come to love as a mother figure read each grievance aloud, her poker face gained more strength and her brows grew increasingly furrowed. I sat there mostly silent, trying to remember a time when I had ever seen her look at me with such contempt. I couldn’t think of one. Her eyes used to fill with pride when I walked into the room, now her expression seemed determined to erase my face from memory altogether.

The same questions spun around in my brain like a broken record, the same words playing on repeat over and over again, “How could I have done so many things to make her angry and not even know it until now? How could I be so blind? How could I have done so many things to make her angry and not even know it? How could I be so blind? How could I have done so many things? How could I be so blind? How could I be so blind? How could I be so blind… and so infuriatingly stupid?”

Back then how people thought of me, especially those I admired, meant everything, so this was a crushing blow. What shocked me the most was how suddenly it all happened – within one horrible day her love had seemed to sour and I’d gone from being her “sweet Kelly” to a nuisance. I sat there dumbstruck, going over each conversation where I had asked her how I was doing and she reassuringly said “great!” I retraced my steps over every day of that year when I thought I was glorifying God and helping people, and all along I was really just adding a new line to her list. Why didn’t they tell me? Why did she wait until now? I felt like the dumbest person to ever walk planet earth.

The Pastor’s wife had been helping me to have more confidence and would often remind me to stop trying to please people so much, and well, now that budding confidence was one dead plant. The person who had always reminded me that I was worth something, who helped me to see myself as God’s beloved daughter, was now shining an accusing light on all of my offenses, overshadowing the things I had tried to do right with the damning record of all I had ignorantly done wrong. After all of those kind words, it seemed she was taking them all back. Her one pointing finger felt like hundreds. The moment I left her office, I found a place to hide.

As shame crept into my life once more, I wondered, why am I never good enough? Every time someone sees something good in me, I do something to change their mind. What is wrong with me?

That meeting was the end of an era for me, one I loved and hoped would last forever. I apologized to both of them, but something had changed in the way I saw them, and in the way they saw me. I was told that all was forgiven, but my relationship with the Pastor and his wife lost a bulk of its trust on both sides and people around church began to treat me like someone who was on their way out. It seemed like everyone knew what had happened, and it made me to shutter to think I was being talked about. Their kindness turned passively aggressive, making it clear I was not welcomed. So, I did what everyone was hinting for me to do. I left.

My heart broke in a million different ways in the weeks that followed. I was churchless, mentor-less, and friend-less. Growing up, my family often stayed in places that provided a roof for us but only a roof – a motel room, a camper, and the occasional basement. My church, my delightfully dusty, welcomingly worn-out church in all its stained glass and antique-pewed glory, had always been the one safe place that never changed, the one constant in my life. All I ever wanted was for this to always be true. My plan was to be ordained by the people I loved in the sanctuary where I met Jesus, serve God there, and then be buried in the graveyard right next to the tree I had climbed with David when we were little. I never planned to leave or do anything else. However, months before “the meeting,” something happened to give me the impression that perhaps God had different plans.

On a normal night months before I left, as I drove home from one of my treasured counseling sessions with the pastor’s wife and my heart was still soaring (I really loved being able to tell someone everything), I heard a gentle whisper enter my heart, “You won’t always have her in your life. There will soon come a day when you will have to stand without her.”

 The whisper may have been soft, but it stung like a slap across my face. It felt like God, and sounded like God speaking, but I thought, “This can’t be my God telling me this! He wouldn’t take her from me. He knows that I have already had to leave my family’s house and I’m on my own. He knows what I have gone through and that I am only beginning to love my life. He wouldn’t be so mean…” I quickly concluded that it had to be the devil taunting me, making me afraid over nothing. It just had to be. I rebuked the ominous message and hurriedly brushed it off back then, but it really was God who was trying to warn me. The fulfillment of that whisper several weeks later made it painfully obvious.

She promised she would always be here for me. Where is she? Where are the people I love? I don’t even recognize my life anymore. What have I done? I kept hoping it was all a bad dream or a mean prank and any day I would wake up and laugh it off, or the pastor would call me and say “Gotcha!” but the joke was on me.

The year I left my childhood church marked the beginning of one of the most painful and difficult years of my life. What made that year so unbearable was re-learning how to handle problems and just the basic aspects of daily life without the Pastor and his wife to walk me through it. The two of them had known me since I was six years old, so I truly didn’t know what to do without them. Most of the people I would have gone to for advice and comfort were just gone, almost overnight. How would I ever be ordained as a minister now? Who would train me? I still believed God wanted me to teach from His Word, but His voice seemed to vanish along with everyone else. After that meeting, each time I thought of my value, my future, and my calling – my mind always drifted back, like a flashback in some horror movie, to that list of offenses. I would constantly dwell upon the mistakes I had made and watch as my potential shrunk and the daunting steps forward multiplied.

My adopted dad along with my brother, David, tried to be supportive, though they couldn’t really make sense of what happened either. Together, the three of us found a new church to attend, and I think that if we had stumbled upon this place under better circumstances, I may have actually loved it there – the two of them sure did. This church was much larger than the backwoods, close-knit one I was used to, constantly buzzing with people and events and a unified desire to do some good in the community. The place was indeed welcoming and lovable, but so was the last one… and look what happened there.

For the next few months, the anxiety that washed over me each time I went to church became so intense it was nearly impossible for me to stay the entire service. I watched the way they worshipped and couldn’t help but compare their techniques with the ones I had known and loved – how their team of singers stood in place, while ours had danced around; their congregation lightly clapped and lifted their hands, while just about everyone in ours worshipped on their knees, wildly spun about, shook their hips with joy, or lay sprawled out on the ground. The pastor would walk up to the podium to speak and I would think, my Pastor knew everything about me. All this guy knows is my name.           

The only pastor I had ever known was tall, wire thin, completed every outfit with a suede cowboy hat, and eloquently delivered his messages with an endearing southern drawl so tender it painted images of an even more tender God (who I imagined surely had a twang, too). This new pastor was short and dignified, thundering the Word of God from his platform in a way that made me feel uneasy. Looking back, I know my impression of him was unfair; his forceful preaching style just happened to come along during a time when I was already entertaining a host of booming insecurities blasting through my head.

In all honestly, I went through a phase where I was offended by just about everything that had to do with church. Hearing the name of Jesus in church had always given me such hope, but in this new place His name broke my heart. Sitting amidst a large congregation made me feel like a number, which ultimately, offended me. Hearing the Pastor teach offended me. Seeing everyone’s smiling faces offended me. Some days, just driving up to the paved parking lot with its modern building and not a single shard of stained glass was enough to tick me off. Simply walking through those double doors on Sunday mornings was a big step. On a few occasions I walked in, made up an excuse, and immediately left again.

It was strange to fall so out of love with church. No, it was more than that. It was bizarre and unsettling and excruciatingly lonely. I had always been a church girl through and through – never missing a Sunday, never failing to cry off all my mascara, knowing everybody’s name and testimony, marveling over every inch of the sanctuary and the miracle that I was part of the Body of Christ. This had been my life, the culmination of everything I loved. Now it felt like “Church” and I had broken up, and all of “his” stuff was lying around, reminding me of the mistakes that were made and the hurtful words that were said; words that still stung with every thought and movement, as though I had wrestled with a hive of angry yellow jackets instead of my “mom” and “dad” in the faith. I felt like a failure all of the time, and to me, it seemed that my mentors had taken God with them when they left my life.

What am I supposed to do now? How can I ask Jesus to help me when His name offends me? Is God mad at me, too? He must be. He ripped me away from a life I loved.

At this time, I was only 19 years old. There was so much I didn’t know yet and so much I wanted to do. And, having the approval of those more senior than me was at the top of my list. Back then, I thought all of the adults had some kind of secret way of talking with one another, or perhaps that our brains all work the same way once we reach a certain age. I believed that by some means of invisible communication, these people would get the message from my old church family any day and all too suddenly arrive at the same conclusion they had come to – that I wasn’t good enough. So, though I didn’t consciously decide to prove my old mentors wrong before their “signal” could get through to these nice people at this new place, that’s exactly what I did. What had happened back there in that former home I once loved broke my heart – just WHAM! Shattered. Now, all I wanted was to find a way to get over that rejection and make sure it never ever happened again.

I was searching for a place there, an important one, because I felt like I was nothing in the Kingdom of God unless I was well known in the church. So, I signed up for classes I had no interest in, attended meetings just because I was invited, and registered for online college at the school my new pastor recommended. Soon enough I became well known in the church all right – as a restless 19-year-old who was disengaged in classes and not confident enough to speak publicly yet (their words, not mine). I had been outspoken about my call to preach and desire to pursue it, but I was terrified to risk rejection again. A few offers to teach came, but each time I panicked. What if all of the hard work just results in another “meeting”?

It was right around this time when I began to work with teens in the church’s youth group for middle and high school students. Technically, it was a volunteer position, but truthfully, it was more like a spiritual time-out. Because it was the only spot available, I took it, but I hated it. I felt very deeply that God stuck me there and every day I would go and type things and help decorate and clean up and run errands and put my creative skills to use… and count down the minutes until I could leave and go home. The people were nice and the work was good, but I was awfully determined to be unhappy. I felt restless, invisible, and hated the monotony of office life. I wanted to crawl out of my life like a snake sheds its skin and find one that didn’t remind me day-in and day-out how lonely and angry I was. I wanted to sit down on the ground, not caring about the dirt and rocks, and pray with the broken again. I missed the ambiance I knew so well – the cacophony of clucking chickens, undignified chatter, a boisterous “Yes” “Amen” or “Halleleu,” maybe a hearty cackle or two, while the pastor glided through a lesson or I stammered through one.

I didn’t seem to belong at this new place. I wasn’t put together like they were. To me, I was a reject in churchgoer’s clothing, and sooner or later they would all find out. Where would I go then?

God Gives Every Mess A Meaning.

Sometimes where God leads us isn’t necessarily where we want to be, but it is where we can grow the most. And whether I knew it or not, liked it or not, I really was growing. I look back on those days when all I wanted to do was stay home and feel sorry for myself, but went to serve teenagers instead, and I thank God for the way He developed my character through that pain.      

I remember the nights when I would look out at those youngsters lifting their hands high in worship during the service, listening to their voices rise and fall with the melody, and I recall wanting with all of my heart to feel such a hope again, to be swept up in love once more. From where I stand now, though I didn’t particularly feel loved or accepted, I know in my heart that I was, even then. God was right there with me, waving His hands in the air, jumping around me in circles trying to get my attention, but I couldn’t see Him. I didn’t want to be in those days when I was actually in them, but looking back on them brings refreshing clarity to my present day. If God had not given me strength and patience and grace upon grace upon grace, I would have stayed home and wallowed instead. I would have never dared to open my heart again. I would have wondered if perhaps I had heard Him wrong the night He called me to preach and walked away from His church and purpose for me altogether. But because the Lord was with me, there I was, hating every moment of my life… but still pressing forward anyways. God is always good, even when we doubt that He is. We often see exquisite things in the rear-view that we could not see at the time.

Eventually, I did catch on to the Father’s waving arms and very present grace. I started to notice the super human strength I seemed to have that was beyond my own, and knew there was only one place where that could be coming from. Also, to my astonishment, God was still using me to reach people! I felt insecure and inadequate for all ten of those months I served the teenagers, but I am not sure if people even noticed that – and if anyone did, they never said anything about it. I tried to keep people at arms-length and would tackle mostly obscure jobs that kept me hidden behind the scenes, but even still, a few of the younger pre-teen girls clung to me and opened up about some of the problems they were facing at home. In some cases, there were issues of abuse and drug addiction that I had to report. It was clear that it was God who was planning these vulnerable encounters, because of all the volunteers available to these girls, I was the least ready and the most awkward, and yet they came to me.            

Though I was quite blinded by bitterness then, I was still able to see what the Lord was up to – how He tethered me to those girls and gave me the exact right words to tell them. Even though I wasn’t where I wanted to be, God was still making a way for me to do what He had called me to do: connect with the broken and tell them, if nothing else, that Someone mighty loved them and they weren’t alone.

Somewhere in all of that counseling and consoling, the Lord boomeranged those very same truths back to me:

Being rejected by some did not mean I was rejected by all.

A broken heart didn’t have to make a broken life.

Feeling lonely did not make me alone.

God was with me, that I could see. Watching Him help these quirky, intelligent little sisters of mine who could belt out the lyrics to every Taylor Swift song in a moment’s notice and were chock full of big dreams find their way, the hope that He would help me find my way as well became more and more believable as the weeks dragged on.

Hopefully, one day it wouldn’t be so hard to start my day. One day, it wouldn’t take months to make one tiny inch of progress. One day, I would be able to open up to people without the Holy Spirit having to break out a crow bar first. One day, life wouldn’t be so heavy and I would think of church without flinching. One day…

Come back for part 2 next Thursday!

Copyright 2022 by Kelly Goldson

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