Seeing people post things on social media like, "I miss my church family!" is hard. Reminds me of when I belonged like they did to a church family & all the unspoken requirements placed upon me for maintaining that belonging that I never knew existed until I broke them.
Don't get me wrong, I don't fault ppl for missing their church family. But it's hard for me to ever listen to someone talk about their lovely church where they fit in so well w/o wondering about all the arbitrary strings attached to their belonging. Strings they don't even see.
It's honestly been nice to have church attendance completely taken off the table right now. I know a lot of ppl are feeling the opposite, but for me, it's been super healing to *not* go to church and not feel pressured to do so.
Many are really struggling with not having embodied access to their church right now, so I'm not trying to discount that pain whatsoever, because that pain is VERY real.
But for me, after spending a period of my life in tears almost every Sunday, and a longer period trying to get OVER that period, it's been a healing thing to just stay home and not feel like I'm failing my Christian duty. It's been restorative for me.
And by restorative, I don't me restoring myself to the church, but rather the church restoring itself to me.
I believe in the local church, but sometimes when the local church fails, digging deeper into the church universal helps to remind you that the Church capital C is not defined by those failures. Online communities can be havens for restorative experiences like that.
