Church Hurt

It's Sunday and I'm not the least bit excited to head to church. That makes me sad.

Since we started at this church, going has been the highlight of my week. The preaching is good. The music is good. The people are nice. We even started the process to become membera last week.

Somethings happened this week that make this hard. They probably aren't anything so big that we would walk away, at least I don't think so.

In fact, I'm not even going to go into much detail because the person(s) in question have yet had a chance to defend their actions/words or explain them.

What I realized though is that getting into a church again is a scary thing for us.

Our last church, we never connected with beyond surface level. Why? Well, because we were moving and because we kept our distance.

See, leaving our first church was hard. It was painful, like a break up. Things were said, not said, done and not done. I'll never deny that it was time. It was time to sever the relationship and I think both sides would agree. Regardless, it was painful. We felt like we lost our family and we really did.

That pain isn't as raw, but it's certainly still there.

You know what happens when you pick at something before it's healed?  It bursts back open and you feel that raw pain again. Gosh, this is a theme in our lives lately.

I can say that what happened, although much more minor infraction, definitely irritated that not yet healed wound.

I don't know if I'll go to church. It might be too soon. I know we'd like to stay at this church, so I'm trying my best to not go there. Even if I go, it'll be difficult to engage the person(s) who hurt me.

I'm not naive to this either. These people don't know me, they don't know my past and they don't know the experiences which have shaped me and grown me. So, I know they are going to hurt me. I know they aren't going to do it intentionally.

This one just stings a lot right now and raises a lot of questions. I know the person(s) involved have no clue they've hurt me. Honestly, I'm working and praying through grace and forgiveness right now.

Speaking if that....why is the one thing we desperately want when we make a mistake, the absolute hardest thing to give when we've been wronged?

Sad to say, there aren't many other churches worth the time around here. If we don't succeed in this church, we will probably fall away from church. We don't want that either.

Maybe God will give me the ability to forgive what I don't want to and maybe He will use this to heal our hearts and grow us in faith.