Done with the Church. Not Done with God.
I saw Jim Palmer promoting a year-long Certified Non-Religious Spiritual Director course this week, and it stopped me cold. Not because I want the credential, but because it named something I’ve been living for a long time.
My disillusionment with the church didn’t happen all at once. It was a slow unraveling. A noticing. A growing inability to unsee the ways fear, control, and performance were dressed up as faith. The lies we were taught about God. About worthiness. About obedience. About who gets to belong.
Post-cult experience, I deconstructed a lot. Painfully. Thoroughly. Then I made a decision that felt quietly radical for me: I was determined not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” which would have been a far easier and efficient solution - in the short term, at least.
No, instead my overthinking brain and INFJ wiring summoned me to explore and examine every nuance of what I learned, who said so, and what their motives were, which reshaped my now unshakeable foundation: I’m done with the church but not done with God.
Not the small, punitive, transactional version I was handed. But the presence that still meets me in silence. The truth that doesn’t need defending.
The God who knows me intimately and can handle my rage and doubts. The peace that surpasses understanding and survives my questions.
What I’ve learned is this: leaving the church doesn’t mean leaving spirituality. And staying connected to something sacred doesn’t require subscribing to a system that no longer tells the truth.
That in-between space without labels, certainty, or institutional permission is where I live now. It’s messier. Quieter. More honest. And disruptive to folks who want to put me in my place simply to ease their own discomfort.
If any of this resonates or if you’re in the process of taking a deeper look into the story of your life and have deconstructed, stepped away, stayed curious, or feel spiritually homeless but not empty—you’re not alone.
I talk about this kind of evolution inside The COVE. Not as doctrine. Not as direction. Just as conversation. Room to breathe. Space to tell the truth without having to land anywhere neatly.
If you want to explore what it means to be done with the church but not done with God, in a place that doesn’t conform to the algorithm, you’re welcome to join me there.
No altar calls. No answers for sale. Just a place to keep listening, becoming, and finding your voice through the noise.
With hope and hugs,
—Kim
What I’m noticing now is how this same unraveling shows up far beyond religion.
When women begin to question the systems that shaped their faith, they often start questioning the systems that shaped their bodies, their productivity, their worth, and their timelines too. The church isn’t the only institution that taught us to override our intuition, push through discomfort, and mistrust our own rhythms in service of someone else’s definition of “good.”
That’s why this conversation feels like a natural continuation. Listen to it HERE.
