Honestly, Sandie

DAY 8: OUT OF FRAME

Over the months and year after this season, I listened to a lot of songs trying to make sense of what I could barely explain out loud. Songs for grief. Songs for anger. Songs for heartbreak. Songs for trying to understand what happens when something you thought was forever quietly changes shape.

Nothing sat beside this chapter of my life quite like Taylor Swift’s “It’s Time to Go.” Push play before you read. Not because the song explains the story, but because it understood it alongside me. The ache of staying. The quiet knowing. The strange moment when something in you recognizes the truth before your mind catches up. This one did not inspire the story. It kept me company while I survived it.

If you have ever loved something deeply while slowly realizing it no longer felt like home, this chapter might sit beside you for a while.

By June, I think I was carrying around a kind of tired I did not have language for yet.

January handed me a question I could not stop asking: Why do people leave things they love? At the time, it felt random. Curious. One of those thoughts that got stuck in my ribs for no reason. February brought conflict. March unsettled me. April felt like tiny cracks spreading through glass while everyone kept acting like the window looked fine. May left us sitting in an office trying to understand a conversation that somehow made less sense the longer it lasted.

June broke my heart.

After thirteen years of serving and showing up and youth camps and leadership meetings and carrying things and building things and believing this was forever, I still thought someone would sit us down. A pastor. A leader. Someone.

Not for a dramatic confrontation or some giant apology. Just care. A hard conversation. An awkward one even. A simple, human: Something feels off. Let’s talk.

Instead, my husband got a phone call.

Not from the lead pastor. Not from the pastor we had served closely beside for years. Someone else. Someone newly placed into a leadership role that had barely existed long enough to make sense of suddenly delivering endings.

The call lasted maybe two minutes.

Two minutes.

He was told they were having him step down. That was the language. Not a conversation. Not a discussion. A decision. Already made.

He asked why.

The answer:

“We sought wisdom.”

That phrase still sits strange inside me because what does that mean when nobody sought conversation? Nobody asked questions. Nobody checked in. Nobody pulled us aside and said, Help me understand.

He asked who “we” was.

The response:

“I’m not saying names. Just leadership.”

Leadership.

Such a big word.

Such a vague word.

Such a convenient word.

By the time the call ended, every account he had access to was already gone. Immediately. Passwords changed. Permissions removed. Two minutes.

Like someone planned the ending before explaining the plot.

What hurt most was not even the removal. It was the speed of it. How quickly somebody can go from trusted to gone. From needed to unnecessary. From inside the room to standing outside the door wondering what just happened.

Sunday came and guys from the sound team started texting him because systems were broken. Access had been removed too fast or not quite right, and suddenly people were scrambling to fix things he had quietly helped hold together for years.

That part hurt in a way I still cannot fully explain.

Being needed and erased at the same time.

Being useful while quietly removed from the picture.

Father’s Day became the last Sunday we attended church together. We sat. That is what I remember most. We just sat. No serving, no headset, no role, no backstage conversations, no responsibility attached to the morning. Everything looked exactly the same: same lights, same songs, same familiar faces.

Nothing felt the same.

The grief arrived before I had words for it.

June 11, I wrote something in my notes app that catches in my throat when I read it back. At the time, I thought I was processing church hurt. Looking back, I think I was trying to understand why something sacred no longer felt safe.

I wrote:

If what we do here on earth, and who we spend our lives with, is somehow preparing us for heaven, I do not want what I feel like I have been creating here.

I do not like this environment we call church.

If I am finding things here and losing things here, then I better start making wise choices because I do not like what I am seeing.

Reading that now feels surreal because part of me still wanted it to work. Part of me still believed this could turn around. Another part had already started whispering the truth.

The quiet kind.

The kind you say to yourself before you are brave enough to say it out loud.

A few days later, I texted a friend who had left years earlier. Someone I had quietly hoped would someday come back. Someone I once believed had simply wandered off course.

Perspective humbles you.

It turned into one of those middle-of-the-heart texts where the truth comes out before you are ready for it. I asked if she had ever gone through something so strange that people prayed for her in all the wrong directions because they did not understand what was actually happening. If she had ever quietly said, “I’m okay,” because explaining felt exhausting and being misunderstood somehow felt worse.

Both things felt true.

I was hurting.

I was okay.

Not okay like healed.

Okay like:

I think I finally see through the curtain.

June 25 brought another note. This one felt steadier. Sadder too. Like someone trying to hold onto herself while the floor shifted underneath her.

As we go, they will probably say we were off course. That we lost our way. That they are praying for God to reveal himself.

But know this:

We are on track.

We have not lost the way.

We hear from God.

That realization felt terrible and relieving at the exact same time.

July feels blurry now. We stayed busy. Ripped apart the kitchen, painted cabinets, measured things, built things, kept our hands moving while our hearts quietly tried to catch up.

Youth camp came a few weeks later. Like not even 10 days after Alex getting the call…I thought I could muscle through it. Thought I could stay for the kids because loving them felt bigger than my own confusion. Honestly, I wanted one thing to still feel normal.

My body had other plans.

Sitting there, surrounded by kids I loved, I suddenly knew I could not stay. Not with everything hanging in the air. Not while everyone quietly moved forward as if nothing had happened. No conversation. No acknowledgment. No hard truth. No checking in.

Nothing.

I started searching rental cars because disappearing quietly felt easier than pretending.

Eventually, I called Alex.

Come get me.

Please.

He came and got me and our teen-aged son. He drove the 3.5 hours from home, got us in the car, got our bags and drove back home.

Somewhere in that drive, or somewhere deep in my chest, a sentence landed before I was ready for it:

I do not think we are leaving.

I think we already left.

A pastor texted shortly after we drove away.

Simple. Kind.

“Love you guys. Praying for you guys.”

I stared at that text longer than I should have.

Because kindness hurts when it arrives standing beside silence.

August felt like goodbye.

I still kept waiting for someone to ask what happened.

Nobody did.