Praying

TRUTH TELLING TUESDAY (HONESTLY SANDIE)

I went back and watched a video of myself from June of 2023. Twelve minutes of me talking about grace like I understood it. Like I was inside something that actually healed people, like I knew what it meant to be part of something that restored others. And I believed it. I believed I was part of a place where healed people healed people. Where if you showed up, did the work, stayed aligned, you would be seen, held, and made better. That’s what we said, and for a long time, I didn’t question it.

Until I did.

Because at some point, I couldn’t ignore what I was seeing anymore. There were people who weren’t just uncomfortable or adjusting. They were hurting. And not in a vague, life-is-hard kind of way, but in a very specific, something-happened-here kind of way. The common thread wasn’t outside circumstances. It was the place that said it healed them.

So I asked the question that kept circling in my mind. I asked the lead pastor’s wife directly, what about the people who have left? Don’t you wonder about them? Don’t you want to check in and see how they’re doing? The answer I got wasn’t harsh or emotional. It was calm, measured, and clearly practiced. “If we focus on the people who have left, we won’t have the energy we need to care for the people who are coming in.”

I remember sitting with that, trying to make it make sense because on the surface it sounds responsible. It sounds like leadership. It sounds focused. But when you actually let it land, it raises a different kind of question. If you’re the one doing the hurting, wouldn’t part of the responsibility be to care for the people you hurt? If you’re a place that claims healing, wouldn’t that include the ones who didn’t stay? If you’re teaching grace, where does it go when someone walks away?

At some point, it stopped being theoretical for me. It became personal. We left, and there wasn’t a conversation, there wasn’t a follow up, there wasn’t a moment of someone reaching out to say, hey, are you okay? There was just silence. And silence will tell you everything if you’re willing to hear it. It’s one thing to sit inside a system and believe what it says about itself. It’s another thing entirely to step outside of it and experience what it actually does.

What I didn’t expect was what came next. Recently, someone from that world reached out. A call that didn’t connect, a moment that didn’t go anywhere, but it was enough to make me pause and wonder what if that was someone starting to question things? What if that was someone looking for a place to land? And it hit me in a way I didn’t anticipate because I know exactly what that feels like. I know what it’s like to sit in that in-between space where something doesn’t add up anymore but you don’t yet have the language for why.

I didn’t process leaving alone. I reached out to people who had gone before me, people who were willing to sit in it with me without correcting me, without redirecting me, without trying to tidy it up into something easier to accept. They just stayed, and that mattered more than anything. It wasn’t about being fixed. It was about being seen.

Now I can feel the weight of that from the other side. This isn’t just about what the church didn’t do. It’s about who I am now that I’ve lived through it. I don’t need to be the answer for anyone, but I do need to be honest about what I carry. Because if I’m still holding onto confusion, frustration, or the need to prove something, then I’m not actually a safe place for anyone. I’m just reacting from a different angle.

This is where it gets real for me. Everyone talks about being a light, but no one talks about what happens when your lens is clouded. You can believe you’re carrying something good, you can believe you’re helping people, but if the lens is covered in everything you haven’t processed, then what people experience isn’t clarity. It’s distortion. And I’ve seen that. I’ve lived that. I’m not interested in repeating it.

So this isn’t just about healing so I can move on. It’s about clarity so I don’t pass it on. I don’t want to just be someone who left. I want to be someone people can find when they start asking the questions they were never allowed to ask. Not someone who fixes it, not someone who has the perfect answer, just someone who will sit there with them and not look away.

Because if something claims to heal people, it should be able to hold the truth of the people it didn’t. And if it can’t, then we have to decide what we’re willing to keep calling healing.

SONG TITLE: “Praying” — Kesha

Song references and lyrical themes are used for creative and editorial expression only. I do not claim ownership of any lyrics. All rights belong to the original artist. Music continues to inspire the way I think, feel, and write.