Honestly, Sandie

Song Inspiration: You Might Not Like Her — Maddie Zahm Music has always helped me find words for things I haven’t quite figured out how to say yet. Sometimes a song feels less like a soundtrack and more like a conversation. This one has been sitting with me for a while. As always, my song choices are about themes, emotions, questions, and moments—not a perfect retelling of my life. The lyrics don’t represent my exact story, beliefs, experiences, or conclusions. What resonates is the feeling underneath it: the tension between who people expected you to be, who you thought you had to be, and who you’re becoming when you stop living for approval. This song hints at a lot of things I’ve been wrestling with lately. The discomfort of changing. The reality that growth can confuse people. The moment you realize that the version of you others preferred may not be the version you’re meant to remain. Not exactly me. But close enough to make me stop and listen.

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A question kept showing up that I couldn’t quite shake: Why do so many people get baptized more than once?

I noticed it first in teenagers. A camp experience. A breakup. A rough season. A mistake. A rededication. Back into the water. Nobody thought much of it because that was the language we used. We celebrated fresh starts. We applauded renewed commitments. We told stories about transformation. Yet after enough years in ministry, I started noticing something underneath the celebration. The kids getting baptized again weren’t bad kids. They were good kids. Thoughtful kids. Caring kids. The kind who worried about whether they were doing life correctly.

The questions always sounded different, but they carried the same weight. Do you think God is disappointed in me? Do you think I messed up too much? Do you think I’m doing this right? My phone would light up with those conversations late at night. They would happen after youth group, at camp, in parking lots, over text messages. I spent years reassuring students that one mistake didn’t erase their worth. I believed what I was telling them.

Then one day I realized I was asking a version of the same question.

Not because I had stopped believing. Not because I was considering walking away. I was serving, leading, showing up, planning events, teaching students, carrying responsibilities, and doing all the things that were supposed to produce confidence. Yet somewhere along the way, I found myself evaluating whether I was getting faith right. Was I humble enough? Was I surrendered enough? Was I serving enough? Was I grateful enough? Different wording. Same concern. Was I enough?

That’s what makes the baptism question interesting to me now. It was never really about water. It was about worthiness.

For years, I thought I was wrestling with faith. Looking back, I wasn’t wrestling with faith at all. I was wrestling with the constant pressure to evaluate whether I was acceptable. The strange thing is that it feels spiritual while it’s happening. You think you’re being challenged. You think you’re growing. You think God is refining something in you. Meanwhile, you’re spending an awful lot of time wondering whether every instinct, every desire, every question, and every decision can be trusted.

After all, we’re told the heart is deceptive. The flesh is weak. The world is fallen. Pride is always waiting around the corner. Somewhere along the way, I started noticing how often people were encouraged to be confident in what God was telling them while simultaneously being taught not to trust themselves too much. Be bold, but not arrogant. Be humble, but not timid. Hear from God, but be prepared for someone else to decide whether you heard Him correctly.

It’s a fascinating game because the rules never seem to stay in one place.

The more I looked around, the more I noticed people questioning themselves before they questioned anything else. Students did it. Volunteers did it. Parents did it. Young adults did it. The people carrying the most responsibility were often the first to assume they were the problem. Somewhere along the way, self-doubt got rebranded as maturity.

At first, the contradictions felt small. A pastor once told my husband he needed to put a shorter leash on our teenage daughter. That sentence somehow manages to get stranger every year. Alex and I wanted to create a grow group for young adults because we kept running into people who needed a place to ask hard questions without feeling like they were failing a test. That idea never had much room to breathe.

Then there were the camps. If you’ve ever worked church camp, you already know where this is going. The volunteers hauling gear, solving problems, wrangling students, running activities, and surviving on minimal sleep somehow ended up in the least comfortable accommodations. Leadership, meanwhile, rarely seemed to lose the housing lottery. I watched youth pastors spend more time building relationships with guest speakers than with the students sitting ten feet away. I watched exhausted volunteers point out obvious problems only to be told that if they wanted something fixed, they should probably fix it themselves.

I watched adults ask pastors for permission to make decisions they were fully capable of making on their own.

Should we move?

Should we date?

Should we have another child?

Did you ask pastor?

At some point, “Did you ask pastor?” started sounding less like spiritual guidance and more like customer service escalation.

Then there were moments that stopped me cold. Finding out our six-year-old son’s meltdown had been recorded and shared for laughs. Sitting in meetings where I was informed that a pastor didn’t talk to women. Which was awkward, considering I was a woman sitting in the meeting. Being expected to trust my own leadership until that leadership produced an answer someone didn’t like. Suddenly confidence became arrogance. Certainty became pride. Independence became rebellion.

I was questioned for choosing to help my child move instead of being present for Easter services. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I trusted the team because I had spent years helping build the team. I believed they were capable because I had invested in making them capable. Isn’t that what leadership is supposed to do? Yet there I was explaining myself as though choosing my child required a defense.

The more I sat with these experiences, the more they reminded me of that monologue from the Barbie movie. Be confident, but not too confident. Be humble, but not so humble that you lack leadership. Hear from God, but if what you hear doesn’t align with leadership, we’d like to discuss whether that was actually God. Prioritize your family, but don’t miss Easter. Raise up a strong team, but if the team functions without you, explain why you aren’t there. Ask questions, but not those questions. Be authentic, but not if your authenticity makes people uncomfortable.

After a while, I felt like I was trying to solve a math problem where the answer changed depending on who was grading it.

No wonder so many people questioned themselves.

There was no way to win. Which is WILD if you know the slogan they put on their t-shirts.

The target kept moving.

For years, I thought I was wrestling with faith. Looking back, I wasn’t wrestling with faith at all. Faith was good. I was good. I was wrestling with the constant pressure to evaluate whether I was acceptable. The more I paid attention, the more church started feeling like a place where people were encouraged to question themselves before they questioned the system creating the anxiety in the first place.

That’s when the baptism question returned.

Why do so many people keep climbing back into the water?

For some, it is exactly what they need. This isn’t an argument against baptism. It is a question about what drives people there in the first place.

What belief about yourself makes you think you need another chance?

What story are you carrying that convinces you the last one didn’t count?

What happens when an entire culture teaches people to keep looking inward for flaws while rarely looking outward for patterns?

I watched kids wrestle with those questions for years. Then one day I realized I was doing the same thing. That realization changed everything. Because I wasn’t questioning God.

I was questioning myself.

Even now, traces of it still show up. I caught myself worrying recently that a vendor I hired might judge me because she attends the church I write about. Not because she had done anything wrong. Not because she had said a word. Because somewhere deep down, there was still a reflex telling me to manage other people’s reactions before telling the truth.

Alex listened to me spiral through that thought process and said something simple.

“You’re not talking shit. You’re telling the truth about what happened.” That stopped me in my tracks. When you’ve spent years worrying about approval, telling the truth can feel like rebellion, even when it isn’t.

Maybe that’s why some people won’t like her.

She asks harder questions now. She trusts herself now. She notices patterns now. She no longer confuses guilt with growth or exhaustion with holiness. Most importantly, she finally learned the difference between humility and self-erasure.

One shrinks you.

The other sets you free.