Honestly, Sandie

POST-CHURCH SUNDAY NOTES
(NO SERVICE REQUIRED)

Mother’s Day in church is… complicated.

Because sometimes you’re sitting there surrounded by flower bouquets and soft piano music while a pastor talks about “honoring the mothers of the house” and all you can think is:

Which version of them are we honoring?

The stage version?

Or the private one?

The woman who hugs everyone in the lobby but quietly teaches people that love has conditions attached to it?

The one who says things like:
“We can’t give energy to those who leave because we won’t have enough for the people coming in.”

And suddenly you realize grief inside church is often treated like bad business strategy.

That sentence has lived inside me for years.

Not because it was cruel in some cartoon villain kind of way.
Honestly, that’s what makes it harder.

It was practical.
Efficient.
Protective of the machine.

And maybe that’s the moment something cracked open for me.

Because I started noticing how often churches celebrate motherhood while quietly rewarding women for disappearing inside service.

The women who never rest.
Never question.
Never take up too much space.
Never make anyone uncomfortable.
Never tell the whole truth.

Just give.
Serve.
Smile.
Repeat.

And if you leave?
Well.

The conveyor belt keeps moving.

I think that’s what has felt so disorienting about deconstructing faith as a woman.

Not losing God.

Losing the version of yourself that learned love had to be earned through usefulness.

I think a lot of women are waking up to the realization that they were taught holiness and self abandonment in the very same breath.

And on days like today, that ache gets loud.

Because some of us didn’t get soft mothers.
We got surviving mothers.
Performing mothers.
Church mothers.
Mothers who were so busy being needed by everyone else that emotional safety at home became collateral damage.

And somehow we are expected to sit politely in padded chairs once a year and clap without acknowledging the complexity of any of it.

But life is rarely that clean.

People can shape you and wound you.
Nurture communities and neglect individuals.
Love you deeply and still fail to truly see you.

Both things can exist.

That’s the part I wish more churches had room for.

Not rebellion.
Not dishonor.

Just honesty.

Because I don’t think healing begins the moment we force ourselves to feel grateful.

I think healing begins the moment we finally tell the truth about what hurt us without needing to turn anyone into a monster.

And maybe that’s the holiest thing I’ve discovered outside the walls of church.

Not certainty.

Not performance.

Just the terrifying freedom of becoming fully honest.

Song of the day:
“Labor” by Paris Paloma

(And yes. That choice was intentional.)