When no place feels quite like home

thoughts on finding sanctuary beyond church walls

“What if beauty dwells in the margins of our undoing and remaking?”

— Terry Tempest Williams, Erosion

When my husband was suddenly deployed a few weeks ago, I felt a particular sense of dread I didn’t know how to name. It wasn’t from a fear of being separated from him (we live the sort of life where separation is common). But I now understand that my body responded from memory, that anxiety pulsed up from the buried grief of his last deployment and my own church wounds. 

Life today could not look anymore different than five years ago. We swapped coasts and climates, moved five times in between, are now satisfactorily unchurched instead of so-involved-in-church-there’s-barely-a-spare-moment-to-breath. Instead of a ship, he’s settled safely on land. And while he exists 16 hours ahead of me, we’ve found spare moments to talk when it’s not the middle of the night or the wee hours of morning.

Yet, when he told me (two weeks before he was on a plane bound for Tokyo) that he was leaving, I panicked. I boarded my own pre-planned flight two days after receiving the news, wandered through the streets of Porto and Seville full of both wonder and anxiety. The last time he left, I’d had ample warning. Our church had ample warning. I remember thinking that it would be a hard but formative time, that I’d get caught up in the life cycle of a pre-existing church community, become a valued member of The Fold. 

By the time we moved away, just months after his return, I nursed a battered heart. I was burnt out (though I didn’t realize it). I was wounded (though I didn’t know it). I was disappointed. And I was done (though it would be another eight months or so before we finally stopped trying to make church work—partly due to the pandemic).

I remember asking my therapist last year (before I had to leave her due to yet another move), “How do adults make friends without church?” Beyond social media connections, I still don’t know. For the majority of my life, church was the epicenter of communal flourishing, the cornerstone and foundation of all that truly matters. It’s with hindsight bias that I now notice the cracks and fissures, the problems excused as marks of imperfection instead of proof of cultish behavior or, even, spiritual abuse.

It’s been 12 months since we left Denver for San Diego and I can feel the unfamiliar slipping into the familiar. I finally feel a bit settled here, trepidatiously at home in a place that’s still very foreign but not so insurmountable. 

I moved to Georgia still harboring the glowing embers of a faith on fire. I left Colorado with mere ashes and I don’t know what I’ll leave California with. I felt triggered when I realized the last deployment was the catalyst for my current aversion to church. I thought church would provide a true sense of home for every new place and every new move. I used to share a sense of camaraderie with anyone who mentioned attending church; now I feel on edge (especially when invitations are forthcoming). Church can be the most vibrant, exciting, wondrous way of living. It can also be demoralizing and crushing. 

And once you’ve been spiritually pummeled, it’s hard to trust the institution—no matter how many “not all churches” may still exist. 

Unlike those first few months in Colorado—still trying to be “good Christians” by visiting churches that failed, on repeat, to feel at all welcoming and more often than not, like private gatherings—we didn’t visit a single church when we moved to San Diego. And I finally felt free from shame or fear of afterlife-repercussions. Like I could just be.

On Sundays, we’d head over to the little coffee shop overlooking the square at Balboa Park. I’d read essays and apply for grad school and Jordan would edit videos and work on the budget (because budgeting is fun for him). We’d walk beneath the swaying palms between the tents of proselytyzing Christians and Muslims.¹ Or we’d drive out to Sunset Cliffs and walk along the bluffs or to La Jolla to watch the barking sea lions dive into the cerulean surf. In Colorado, especially during the pandemic, the forest trails became our sanctuary. And in California, sanctuary spilled out into city streets, corner cafes, and rocky beaches. 

It’s been nearly a month since Jordan’s abrupt departure. The anxiety has settled, helped along by my own trip to Grand Rapids for the Festival of Faith & Writing (where I met so many online friends in real life—finally!). The therapy and emotional repair I’ve done over these past few years, the attention to my own nervous system and the (continued) deconstruction of harmful theology has equipped me to be more attuned, more aware of my body and soul. 

In some ways, I’m very much alone in San Diego with just a handful of friends and yet, I feel safer knowing I’m not relying on an institution to check in, to welcome, or care for me. Does this sound depressing—I don’t mean it to. Because I still long for community (of course I do). And part of me still longs to belong to a *healthy* body of people unified by our shared wonder far more than our beliefs.

Some would call this dangerous territory, the slippery slope of apathy. But it’s a slippery slope the Church pushed me down. I’m cautious and withdrawn because I don’t want to be hurt again.

Still, I’m mulling over Terry Tempest Williams’ provocative question: what if my undoing leads to my eventual remaking, to beauty?

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1. A San Diego Reader headline dating all the way back to 2014 reads, “Atheists, Evangelists, and Prophets take over Balboa Park,” which explains the scene I witness every time I visit San Diego’s stunning park: competing tents with bold, obnoxious fonts blasting conflicting worldviews from Muslim, Christian, and atheist perspectives. According to the article, the proselytizers are drawn to the heavy foot traffic and show up with tents, free Bibles, Qurans, and tracts to lure tourists and passers-by into harassment getting saved.