That feeling. Do you know it?
The one where you come home from church feeling like your world, which seemed all right in the morning, just caved in on you. Not because the message shared from the pulpit wasn’t uplifting and inspiring. Not because the worship wasn’t beautiful. In fact it was. And the message may even have spoken directly into an area in your life you needed guidance on. But there was something else that triggered a wave of crushing emotions.
Sometimes Sundays can be the hardest day of the week.
Not because of where it lies in sequence to all the other days of the week. Not because you must go to church and sit quietly for a few hours. But because it’s the day that boldly emphasizes your loneliness. And I admit that sometimes I wonder whether it would be better to not attend church at all just to avoid this crushing feeling.
Yesterday I was having such a good day. I was able to process a pain in my life with the Lord. I was able to release it at the foot of the cross. And I was able to delight in His love. But this afternoon it feels like I need to start it all over again. Not the same pain.
But that pain of aloneness. That pain of feeling unseen for so much of my life and today all over again. That pain of wondering if anyone would notice if I wasn’t around. That pain of wondering if anyone notices my little dot on this earth.
Sundays have a way of making this pain more painful.
Not because my church isn’t lovely. Not because the people that make up the church aren’t beautiful and caring. But because I come every Sunday. I sit on the third pew from the back. I listen. I worship. And I leave without feeling connected to anyone. My sister expressed the pain well today, “We are so closed.”
It’s not the people in my church who are to blame. It’s myself. The walls I built around myself to protect myself from more relational pain and to keep the darkness of my depression from showing for so many years. I watch others connect and relate and my heart aches with longing to be able to have that as well. But I feel so stuck. Like it is somehow beyond my abilities.
Today I threw on my pjs, climbed into bed, and wrote out my thoughts to try to process it. To sit with these thoughts. To wonder how I can change myself. To see what I can do to heal. I don’t have any answers.
Yet I know that as much as I wonder whether I should just stop attending church to avoid the pain, I will go back next Sunday with a little glimmer of hope that it will be different. That I will connect. That I won’t come home crushed emotionally for the rest of the day.
Is there anyone else out there who holds this hope too?
Please say I’m not the only one. Because if there is, we need to connect. We need to learn how to let our walls down together. To make mistakes and laugh at our relational clumsiness. To find community with each other because not everyone understands.
And to those who don’t understand, please don’t shy away from us. But keep coming back to knock on our walls. Because we need you. We need you to try to help demolish these walls together.
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