evermore

"I had a feeling so peculiar, that this pain would be for Evermore"- Taylor Swift

The End

I wish I could say I had a clean break from church when I quit my job.
The reality is, it took nearly a year of back and forth before I finally walked away for good.

It hit me like a ton of bricks one Sunday: I couldn’t sit in that building anymore. Not that one, not any of them. I couldn’t relate to the people around me. I felt out of place, like a stranger in a life I used to live. Something was shifting in me.

I thought about visiting other churches, but most were just running the same old play. Most importantly, no where that claimed to preach the good news or assume spiritual authority felt safe.

The worst part? The place that once felt like home, I could never let myself go back.

Walking away didn’t feel like rebellion or weakness, it felt like something was dying.

I didn’t know what to do with that feeling, this grief that kept washing over me. Was I really that upset? Did it really mean that much?

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The Beginning

I remember the first hike I took after I stopped going to church.
It felt like a new kind of sanctuary.
The trees were the pastors. The birds, the worship team. Everything else just existed—no expectations, no agenda, no pretending.

Each week, I mapped out a new trail. A new mountain. A hidden waterfall tucked deep in the forest. Sometimes I drove thirty minutes. Sometimes four hours, whatever it took to hike a little farther, dig a little deeper, push a little harder.

Somehow, I always ended up in the right place at the right time. Just me and the scenery. Bigger than me. Ancient in a way that felt familiar. But not asking anything of me when I had nothing to give.

The water still flowed.
The trees still swayed.
Whether I was there or not.

And I was free to just be in it. No theology. No metrics. No performance. Just my breath and the sound of the leaves.

It felt like I was learning a new gospel.
A new kind of good news.

And what was the good news?

That peace for me didn’t come from praying. Or worship. Or reading my Bible.
It came from letting go.
From allowing the stillness to settle in.
From walking away from the noise, and finally, finally hearing myself again.

Each Sunday on the trail was undoing dozens of Sundays in the pews.

The places inside me that had been hollowed out in the name of “holiness” were slowly being filled back in, with breath, with movement, with strength.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like a stranger.

I felt home.

A small waterfall off the blue hole trail at Rock Island.