The Way Back

Nearly three years ago I went to an “intimate worship night” at a small church in Austin with two friends. The musician was the worship leader at our church, and he was hosting a series of worship nights as a kind of art-meets-church experience. The church itself was beautiful—old, full of wood and stained glass, with a meditation trail in the back.

I faithfully attended my last church for three and a half years. Last year, after a series of hurtful events, I was advised to take a break—to try to hear from God elsewhere. “I’ll be back someday,” I would tell people when they asked where I was. But, after 14 months of saying this and feeling nauseous each time I thought about showing up there agin, I decided that I wasn’t going back.

A few weeks ago, I thought about the small church that hosted the music night I went to years ago. I googled their service times and decided to attend the next morning.

The service was similar to my old church’s. I recognized most of the liturgy and had parts of it memorized. When the priest instructed us to greet one another with the peace of Christ, I turned around and saw a familiar face. It was a man with his wife and two daughters.

“I know you from somewhere,” his wife said to me.

I explained how I used to go to their old church.

“What brought you here?” he asked me.

I told him that it was actually a few years ago that I came to this church with my friends to see him perform. I had remembered how beautiful the church was, how beautiful that night was, so I looked it up to attend a service.

I did not have the chance to explain that the friends I came here with that night are no longer my friends. That one of those friends told me we couldn’t be friends anymore when he found out I didn’t want to date him. I did not tell him that this is part of the reason I no longer attend my old church—his old church. I did not tell him that his music comforted me through some of the darkest times of my life. I did not ask him why he stopped attending our old church too, but somehow it felt like none of this mattered anymore. What matters is that I am here, on the path of searching alongside fellow pilgrims.

“We believe in being a church for people from all different faith backgrounds and none. We strive to be a safe place for the wounded and wandering, for the suspicious and the searching. Come as you are,” is a quote from the church’s website under their “vision and beliefs” page. Although I’ve only attended the church a few times, I’ve experienced this to be true.

After the service this week, I walked on the meditation trails before getting into my car to go home. Walking next to me was my boyfriend. He does not attend church except occasionally with me because he knows it matters to me. Along the trail, there is a labyrinth, and without speaking, we walked to the middle, he gave me a kiss, and we walked back out the way we came.

“I decided a while ago that if I want God to accuse me of anything when I die, I want it to be that I was too loving,” one of the priests told me over coffee last week.

There are very few things I would stake my life on at this point in time, but when she said this to me I could not help but blink back tears and respond with my whole heart:

“Me too.”