Honestly, Sandie

Song Inspiration: Back Home by Andy Grammer Music has always found me before the words do. This week’s post was written with Back Home on repeat. Not because I’m trying to go backward, but because the conversations happening around these posts keep reminding me what it feels like when people find each other again after years of feeling alone. If you’d like the full experience, press play and let it run while you read.

The message arrived sometime after midnight.

I was sitting in the glow of my laptop, the rest of the house asleep, doing what I’ve done for most of my life when something feels too big to carry alone. I was writing.

A notification popped up.

Then another.

Then another.

A comment. A text. A private message from someone I hadn’t spoken to in years.

I read the words and felt that familiar mix of surprise and recognition.

“I thought I was the only one.”

Thirty-seven days ago, I started a blog.

Not because I had a master plan. Not because I was trying to start a conversation. Honestly, I thought I was writing my story.

Apparently, I wasn’t.

Because with every post, people keep finding me.

Women who spent years serving.

Parents who watched from the sidelines.

Volunteers who quietly slipped away.

People who stayed.

People who left.

People who have been carrying pieces of their story around for years without knowing where to put them.

And every message leaves me thinking about something Alex and I used to hear all the time.

“If you guys ever started a church, we’d come.”

People said it for years.

At the time, I never knew what to do with that.

We weren’t trying to start a church. We weren’t building a following. We weren’t secretly collecting people for some future launch team. We were busy enough trying to survive the responsibilities we already had.

Yet the comments kept coming.

“If you guys ever started a church, we’d be there.”

Back then, I thought they were talking about what we did.

The production.

The broadcasts.

The events.

The leadership.

The creativity.

The things people could see.

Looking back now, I don’t think that was it at all.

Because after nearly thirteen years serving and almost three years removed from it, nobody is reaching out to tell me how great the production was.

Nobody is reminiscing about planning meetings.

Nobody is talking about attendance numbers.

What they remember is something else entirely.

They remember being seen.

One parent recently reminded me that I always seemed to notice the quieter kids. The ones who didn’t demand attention. The ones who could disappear in a crowded room if nobody was paying attention.

Another person shared a story they’ve carried since youth camp.

Another wrote about the relief they felt after stepping away.

Another thanked me for putting words to something they had never been able to explain.

Different stories.

Different years.

Different experiences.

The same thread.

They remembered how they felt.

For a long time, I thought church culture taught us to measure the wrong things.

We counted attendance.

We counted volunteers.

We counted salvations.

We counted growth.

But the older I get, the more I wonder if people are keeping score differently.

Nobody remembers the spreadsheet.

Nobody remembers the strategy.

Nobody remembers the metrics.

They remember who sat with them when life fell apart.

They remember who checked on them when they disappeared.

They remember who listened.

They remember who cared.

And maybe that’s why so many women find themselves wrestling with church hurt long after they’ve left the building.

Because what wounds us isn’t usually the theology.

It’s the relationships.

It’s the realization that the place that taught us about love sometimes struggled to love people well.

It’s discovering that serving was celebrated, but questioning wasn’t.

That loyalty was praised, but honesty felt risky.

That exhaustion was often framed as sacrifice.

And that somewhere along the way, many of us learned how to show up for everyone except ourselves.

I know because I lived it.

In September of 2023, only weeks after leaving, I wrote something in my journal.

“I share because I think those strong ones need to know they’re not alone in their wondering.”

At the time, I thought I was writing about myself.

Now I realize I was writing about all of us.

The women who ask questions.

The women who process out loud.

The women who love deeply enough to wrestle with hard things.

The women who were told that wandering was dangerous.

The women who stepped away anyway.

Not because they stopped loving God.

Because they were trying to find themselves.

There’s a difference.

A big one.

And maybe that’s why these messages have affected me more than I expected.

Every comment. Every email. Every text.

They remind me that community was never supposed to be something that trapped us.

It was supposed to help us grow.

Years ago, I wrote another thought down before we ever left:

“If you find a church that gives life and loves you and shows you how great you are, go to that church.”

I still believe that.

Not because churches are perfect.

But because people flourish where they are loved.

Not managed.

Not guilted.

Not consumed.

Loved.

That’s what people were trying to tell us all those years ago when they said they would come to a church we started.

They weren’t asking for another organization.

They were describing a feeling.

They wanted to belong.

They wanted to be known.

They wanted to be around people who cared more about humans than performance.

The irony is that it took leaving to understand that.

And it took writing to see it clearly.

Thirty-seven days ago, I thought I was telling my story.

Instead, I’ve spent the last month listening to pieces of everyone else’s.

And if there’s one thing these conversations have taught me, it’s this:

Home was never the building.

Home was never the stage.

Home was never the title, the team, the schedule, or the role.

Home was always the people who saw you.

The people who made room for your questions.

The people who reminded you that your worth existed long before your usefulness.

The people who cared whether you showed up, not just what you could do when you got there.

Maybe that’s why these messages feel so significant.

Not because they’re pulling me backward.

Because they’re reminding me what mattered all along.

And after all these years, finding those people again feels a little bit like coming back home.