Leaving the church wasn’t the end of my faith.
It was the beginning.
This is a story about sacred reinvention, the terror of letting go, and the unexpected places where God shows up when you dare to leave the old map behind.

I was terrified.
Terrified to leave the safety I had spent so long building:
A job, a career path, housing, a retirement plan, a respected role.
I was Pastor Molly.
And that meant something.
It meant belonging. Approval. Safety.
It meant people saw me as faithful, good, trustworthy.

It also meant confinement.

It meant being told how to speak, what to believe, what to value.
It meant swallowing rules that didn’t fit my spirit.
It meant climbing a ladder I wasn’t sure I even believed in anymore.

When I took off my collar, I wasn’t just leaving a job.
I was walking away from the version of myself I had built to survive.
And it was the bravest thing I’ve ever done.

I didn’t have a plan B.
I didn’t have a map.
I had a relationship I knew was holy.
I had a truth inside me that said:
This isn’t where you’re meant to stay.

I loved parts of ministry with all my heart.
The kids’ program we were building.
The feeling of preaching when it truly lit up the room.
The connection with people searching for something real.

But I couldn’t ignore the red flags anymore.
The subtle feedback about my sermons being “too much.”
The pressure to get married to fit into a rigid moral box.
The growing discomfort of staying silent in an institution splitting over queer rights.
The church I loved asked me to fit into clothes that didn’t fit anymore.

And inside me, a bigger voice was growing:

You have one life. Will you spend it trying to fit? Or will you live it?

Leaving wasn’t neat.
It wasn’t clean.
It felt like falling into a void.
No applause. No roadmap.
Just me — standing in the terrifying unknown — asking:
If I am not Pastor Molly, who am I?

And in that void, something unexpected happened.
I met the parts of myself I had hidden away to survive.

The tomboy.
The nerd who loved books and cartoons and Legos.
The tender-hearted listener.
The kid who didn’t want to kiss boys in 5th grade.
The girl who loved differently, who believed differently.

The very parts I thought made me “wrong” were the parts that were most holy about me.

I thought I would find God by being good.
By following the rules.
By earning belonging.

But I’m learning that God was never locked inside the institution.
God was never earned.
God was waiting for me —
In the mess.
In the exile.
In the desert.
In the practice of loving myself.

I needed to leave the “right” way to see if I would still be loved.
I needed to stop earning to see if grace was real.
I needed to stand in the unknown to find a faith deeper than certainty.

And here’s what I’m learning:

Every day, I become more like God by loving myself.

Not by being perfect.
Not by checking boxes.
But by holding even the broken, messy, beautiful parts of myself with tenderness.

I didn’t lose my faith when I took off my collar.
I found it.

I didn’t stop being a minister.
I just stopped needing a title to do it.

This is ministry now:
Living. Loving. Listening. Healing. Speaking.
Telling the truth.

This is faith now:
Standing in the unknown with open arms, not clenched fists.

This is God now:
A Love big enough to find me even at the edge of everything I thought I needed.