I love Sundays. It’s my favorite day of the week—getting to worship God and learn from His Word, then picking up coffee on the way home to spend the afternoon cooking, writing, taking a walk, and resting. As a little girl, our family’s tradition was going to church, getting a donut at our favorite local bakery, and having Grandpa come over in the afternoon with pizza. My dad did yard work, my mom cleaned, and my grandpa listened to my sister and me play our instruments.
The Sabbath is such a sweet gift from God . . . but I haven’t always been able to say that.
Separated from the Joy of Sabbath
I’ve struggled with an eating disorder for the last ten years of my life, and unfortunately during one of its lowest points, Sundays brought anything but joy.
As I sat on the cold bleachers, it took everything in me to keep from breaking down. The weight in my chest wasn’t new; it was a pile of pain that had been building for years. I wanted to be there, I didn’t want to feel this pain, but it was that pain that made it nearly unbearable to keep pushing through. All I could feel on that cold winter day was, “You don’t belong here.”
Since I was a little girl, as much as I loved Jesus and the church, I’ve had a hard time feeling like I belonged at church. I often didn’t feel wanted. I felt quite different, misunderstood, and out of place.
Unfortunately, my experience growing up in church is not unique. You can be surrounded by believers and still just feel tolerated, unwanted, and even inferior. You can join groups with like-minded people and still feel like you don’t belong. Pastors, despite having good intentions, can still mess up and cause you to put up guards.
Sometimes the enemy uses the people and places we love the most to cause the most pain.
When I first moved away from home, I found a new home church that I loved. I was newly diagnosed with an eating disorder, and while that disease caused some days to be very heavy, I always looked forward to Sundays. Despite my experience growing up, I wanted to get involved and thought maybe it would be different in a new church, a new state, and a new community.
I volunteered, joined groups, and found a community . . . for a little while. However, as time went on, and my disorder progressed, familiar church feelings I had as a kid started resurfacing. It felt like the more I got involved and the more people I met, the more out of place and different I felt. I wanted people to accept me, and I didn’t want to leave, so I started coping with these heavy and uncomfortable feelings through mechanisms that fed my growing eating disorder.
Over a long period of time, my mind learned to numb both the expected pain that came with Sundays and my body’s automatic response to it. Within two years, my eating disorder had completely consumed me, making Sundays heavy and filled with anxiety. I was desperate for hope that something would change.
A Time to Leave
I think the Lord knew that the only way He could heal me of more things than I knew I needed healing from was if I did what no one would have recommended me to do: leave.
It was time for me to take a step back from this place that I loved to heal my mind and body.
I’ll never forget the devastating yet peaceful clarity I had about walking away that day. I got in the car and heard “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.” I had never not physically gone to church, so for four months, I visited a different church in a desperate attempt to find a church. Every Saturday night, I called my sister in a panic, sobbing, and every Sunday morning I dragged my malnourished body to church, broke down in the parking lot, pulled it together, and slapped a smile on my face to walk in and out the door. My body was broken and far from healed, the harmful eating disorder behaviors had not let up, but the thought of not walking into a building on the seventh day of the week was not an option.
After four months of this I remember sitting in the parking lot with puffy eyes, tear-stained cheeks and a growling stomach saying, “Lord, I know you want me to go to church and be in community. . . but at what cost? I’m shrinking, my body’s so weak, and I don’t know how much longer I can do this.” I was so concerned about finding a church—for reasons that included legalism and what others would think—that I never stopped and asked God for His guidance.
The truth was, He had more to heal in me than I’d even thought, and it took a fourteen-month absence for Him to do what only He could do. From that day in the parking lot, every Sunday morning I made a cup of coffee, put on my favorite overalls, and livestreamed my favorite church back home. Slowly but surely, my anxiety subsided. I started eating on Sundays again. I started looking forward to Sundays. Joy was nearly restored.
I prayed throughout these fourteen months for God to completely heal me and help me return to church someday, and even towards the end of those fourteen months, started asking for a miracle that God would make a way for me to return to that beloved church I never wanted to leave.
As much as I wanted to return, the thought of walking through those doors and remembering the pain I felt there petrified me. Until, one morning, I had a surprising itch to know what their current series was. For the first time in over a year I went to their website and saw that the series was on Joy (the word God had put on my heart for that year).
Ready to Return
The door for this miracle felt wide open, and after prayerful counsel I walked through the door that I thought I’d permanently left fourteen months before. With no fear or heaviness and a new kind of strength, I peacefully absorbed the sermon on joy—how suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character, hope (Romans 5:3–4)—and I am overwhelmingly grateful to share that I’ve continued to joyfully return ever since.
The truth is, while Christians are meant to be an extension of Jesus, we are all still just broken people in need of grace. It can be confusing when the people and place you expect to feel the most welcomed by end up making you feel the opposite, but I think it’s important to remember that church and Christians needs just as much grace as anyone or anywhere else.
If you are in a season where going to church is just too painful right now, don’t let anyone invalidate how you feel. If you have things to heal from, let God sit with you and comfort you, and be everything you need. God isn’t concerned about you checking off a box on Sunday saying you went to church, He’s more concerned about your personal relationship with Him.
I never expected to have to step away from getting in the car and going to church, but I learned in that season that God is not a legalistic God. He is my friend who sat on the couch with me every Sunday morning. He loves me and cares about me, and He works in ways we could never imagine.
In this season, don’t rush anything, or do something only because you think it’s what you’re “supposed” to be doing.
Let God be with you and show you who He is to you.
—Written by Hannah Kuhn. Used by permission from the author.
