The Tension Where Truth Lives

Faith That Remains When Disappointment Has a Voice

There were moments when leaving would have been easier.

Easier than explaining.

Easier than staying present in discomfort.

Easier than holding faith and frustration in the same hands.

I would be dishonest if I said the thought never crossed my mind.

But I stayed.

I stayed not because I was blind to the Church’s failures, but because I was honest about them. I stayed because I understood that disappointment does not cancel calling — it clarifies it.

Leaving can feel clean. Staying is usually costly.

Staying requires patience when answers come slowly.

It requires humility when certainty would be more comfortable.

And it requires love that is not dependent on perfection.

I’ve learned that many people don’t leave the Church because they stop believing in God. They leave because they grow tired of carrying questions no one wants to hear.

Some are told their concerns are divisive.

Others are encouraged to move on too quickly.

Still others are given language that feels faithful but doesn’t touch their lived experience.

Over time, silence begins to feel safer than honesty.

That silence is heavy.

I stayed because I believe the Church is still one of the few places where truth can be spoken slowly — if we allow it.

I stayed because Scripture still forms me, even when people disappoint me.

I stayed because God has never required me to pretend in order to belong.

I stayed because love, when it is real, does not flee at the first sign of tension.

Staying does not mean excusing harm.

It does not mean ignoring injustice.

And it does not mean protecting systems at the expense of people.

Staying, for me, has meant refusing to surrender my discernment or my compassion.

It has meant learning how to speak without hardening.

How to challenge without contempt.

How to remain without retreating into silence.

There is a quiet courage required to stay.

Not the kind that demands recognition, but the kind that chooses faithfulness over escape. The kind that believes healing is still possible — not because the Church has earned it, but because God is patient with unfinished things.

And we are all unfinished.

I stayed because I believe tension can be holy.

Because unresolved questions can deepen faith rather than destroy it.

Because truth does not always arrive fully formed — sometimes it unfolds slowly, through listening, repentance, and time.

This blog exists because staying gave me language.

Language for what I love.

Language for what I lament.

Language for a faith that has been tested but not abandoned.

If you’re still here — still wrestling, still believing, still unsure — you’re not weak.

You may be practicing a deeper kind of faith.

A Closing Thought

Leaving is not always wrong.

But neither is staying.

Sometimes staying is an act of hope.

And sometimes hope looks like remaining present long enough for truth to tell the whole story.