Honestly, Sandie

DAY 5/10 SOFT FOCUS

Inspired by Five For Fighting 100 Years

If you had asked me in January of 2023 whether I thought we were about to leave the thing we had poured thirteen years into, I would have laughed.

Not because things were perfect.

Because leaving was not even a category in my brain.

Church was not where we went. Church was our life.

Tuesday night worship rehearsal. Wednesday Youth nights. Saturday service nights, Sundays. Sundays. Sundays. Leadership meetings. Events. Sound Tam. Video team. Worship planning. Small groups. Summer camp. Last minute calls. The kind of life where people joke that you practically live there and you laugh because honestly… you kind of do.

But January is where this story starts.

Not with a fight.

Not betrayal.

A question.

A weird little question that landed in my brain and refused to leave me alone:

Why do people find something they love and then leave it?

I could not stop asking myself this. So, I started bravely asking people I knew that had left.. why they did.

What is wild was to hear how many things were exactly the same. The way people felt. The things that happend. The love that wasnt extended.

Why would somebody build community somewhere, love people, serve, cry, belong, sacrifice, grow roots… and then walk away?

At the time I thought I was curious.

Looking back, I wonder if some part of me already knew.

February came and things started feeling… off.

Not dramatic.

Just strange.

A person we had served closely beside came back after a hard season away and conflict started building with Alex. The kind where you keep thinking, surely grown adults will communicate this through, except sometimes people only hear the voices they are willing to hear. Alex tried to handle it directly, then respectfully brought concerns to someone in leadership because he genuinely did not know what else to do.

I remember us still believing people would care enough to clear things up.

Still believing proximity meant trust.

Still believing long history counted for something.

Then March happened.

I was sitting in a staff meeting when a sentence landed so hard it still echoes in me.

“You’re in the wrong room.”

Not metaphorically.

Not like some grand dramatic movie scene where the heavens part and violins swell.

Just… a sentence.

But it sat inside me.

Heavy.

Uncomfortable.

Like trying on somebody else’s coat and realizing suddenly yours no longer fits.

I could not shake it.

Then early April.

Another thought that would not leave me alone.

As long as you stay here, the people you are supposed to reach cannot access you.

The image that came with it wrecked me a little.

It felt like standing in a room separated by glass. The people I was somehow supposed to help or love or speak to were right there on the other side. They could see me. I could see them.

But nobody could hear anything.

No one could get through.

And I know how weird this sounds when typed out.

Trust me.

I know.

But when something settles deep in your gut, it stops caring whether it sounds rational.

By then life was still moving. Texas. Helping my daughter move. Family. Flights. Normal things layered over weird feelings.

Then one day I wrote a note to myself.

A messy little note about reconciliation. About how maybe the point of faith had gotten distorted somewhere along the way. About people reconnecting to God and each other instead of whatever machine we had accidentally built around it.

At the time, I thought I was processing.

Now I think I was grieving before I even knew grief had started.

The strange thing about endings is they almost never announce themselves.

Sometimes they walk quietly beside you while you smile for pictures and make plans and keep showing up.

Sometimes they whisper before they scream.

And sometimes, if I am being really honest, I think your spirit notices long before your loyalty lets you.

By mid-April, something happened that finally made me stop and think:

Wait.

What is going on?