Healing in Unexpected Places

In 2016, I ran away from my Christian college. Literally. As soon as I finished my last class for the year, I packed my bags as quickly as I could and arranged my travel back home to Nova Scotia with plans to never return to this school again. 

During that first year, a lot happened. My fiancé moved back home to work, and I was planning a wedding from my dorm room. I learned first-hand the adage, “If they’ll do it with you, they’ll do it to you,” as someone I considered a close friend started making fun of me and gossiping about me when she thought I couldn’t hear. But what really prompted my fleeing was my newfound passion for theology. I found I strongly disagreed with the theological stance of my school, and some of the Bible teachers I found online ridiculed their beliefs and essentially said schools like mine held to false teaching. With passion and fear burning at my feet, I ran away to finish my education somewhere better.

That summer, I got married and we started attending my husband’s church more regularly. To little surprise (based on the fact that they shared a denomination), I found our church was no better than my school theologically. Again, we found ourselves running away to something that promised to be better.

But we didn’t find something better. At first, the new school and church appeared like they were; my online school promoted and held to my beloved new doctrines, and we found a little church where the pastor held to the same theology and convictions as us (though the church itself didn’t). But the glimmer and shine didn’t take long to dull. The counseling program I was in promoted a school of thought that led me to believe that my anxiety and depression were sins that I should be able to kill with a few of their homework assignments. This in turn dug me into a pit of guilt, shame, and doubt of God’s love for me. I wandered our home in a numbed or doomed state and cried myself to sleep many nights. And the church, after our beloved friend and pastor left, we found to be unhealthy and problematic. 

Years later, in 2020, we found ourselves finding healing in the most unexpected places to us: Our first church and my first university. 

With humbled, aching, and lonely hearts, we walked through the big glass doors of our first church. Everything was the same as we had left it, though the pastoral team had a few new additions and the congregation was a little bigger. The theology was the same, the preaching hadn’t changed, and all the reasons why we left were still there. But as I sang along with the music and listened to the sermon, I wept in my seat. Because I saw the goodness of God there. 

A few weeks later, we experienced our first miscarriage. As I cried over my grief and loneliness, a knock came at our door. A lady I had just met at our church came with flowers and a meal, asking if she could start a meal train for us. A few weeks later, I received pastoral counseling from one of the pastors that helped me through my grief. Not long after that, I became good friends with another lady from our church who challenges me theologically and helps me press forward in godliness. 

In that church, where we still held our theological disagreements, we found healing. 

When I came back to finish my education online with the school I had originally run away from, my first class drew me deeper in the Gospels to the heart of Jesus’ message and ministry. It challenged me as I looked at the Gospels from a variety of angles, not just a theological one—through apologetics and ancient history as well. I grasped a greater context of the world Jesus ministered in, a fuller understanding of the Gospel writers and their intent, found greater confidence in the biblical texts themselves, and came to understand the heart of Jesus better. I also received counseling from my counseling professor, who is helping me take a more holistic view of my mental health and faith—rather than just limiting it to messages of “more faith” and “killing sin.” 

In that school, where I still hold theological disagreements with, I found healing.

This story may sound a little vague to you, especially if you don’t know me in real life. You may be frustrated with me that I’m not sharing my theological position or that of my churches or schools. But I didn’t want this story to get lost in theological terms and doctrines. The doctrines themselves are somewhat irrelevant; this story could have taken place within any theological camps that hold to historic Christianity. I also don’t want this story to be used to disparage certain theological camps.

Rather, this is my story of continually learning humility. I didn’t change what I believed, and neither did my current church or university. Yet God is reminding me that he still works in any place where there are believers and the true gospel is upheld and taught. And even if the discernment bloggers tell you these people aren’t recommended—if they have the true gospel, God is still working through their ministries and changing lives. 

I say my husband and I found healing in an unexpected place to us—because in our pride, we assumed real healing could only come from those who agreed with us. Yet we’ve found over and over again God is at work in our current church and in my current school through making disciples and teaching the gospel. I still hold to my theological differences, but my conscience no longer tries to rattle chains around me as I come alongside them. We are all co-labourers for the gospel that we all love so dearly.