Untangling Faith, Marriage, and Identity: A Journey Through Grief, Deconstruction, and Healing from Church Hurt

Have you ever woken up one day and realized the life you built—piece by piece, with the best intentions—was actually built around everyone else but you?

This is a story about faith, marriage, identity, and grief. It’s about what happens when the roles we’re handed by religion and culture leave no room for who we actually are. It’s about untangling decades of conditioning and finding your way back to yourself.

If you’ve ever felt like you lost parts of you trying to “do it right,” I wrote this for you.

How Did We Get Here?

It all started with a rise of emotion in my chest. I felt it surging up into my face, my throat. I kept it held back until the therapist asked me the dreaded question: What's happening for you right now, Rachel? She saw the shift as my mind turned over and over what we were talking about. We - my husband and I - were sitting in couples therapy, untangling the mess that organized religion had left us after 40+ years of doing things one way.

Ring By Spring

I grew up with the evangelical expectations that all women had in the '90s. If you know, you know. Purity rings, married by 23, two kids by 25, and most importantly: being a champion for your husband's vision and purpose in life. My purpose? To raise good kids and be a stellar wife, obviously.

In some ways I excelled. I followed the purity rules, I married just about as soon as I legally could, and had my first daughter at 19 years old. Gold star. Gold star. Gold star. I struggled SO HARD with being a submissive wife. It just wasn't in my nature. I still did a kick-ass job from the outside looking in, but inside I was fighting. all. the. time. I thought it was my sinful nature that made it so hard. So I, being a perfectionist, fought harder. I gave up so much of my desires, wants, and needs all to champion my husband's big goals.

And big goals they were. And accomplished. With my cheerleading and belief in his abilities my husband completed school, pursued his passions in music and in video production, created a business that has sustained our family for decades, was heavily involved in church volunteering, led worship and small groups, planted two churches, moved across the country THREE times (settling and re-establishing our lives from scratch each time), and raised three beautiful kids who are turning out to be amazing adults.

And I? I was the trusty sidekick.

I remember telling a friend that my job was to support my husband's vision. And that's not a bad thing; but when it's all you've got, you start to lose pieces of yourself until you don't know who you are at all.

Deconstruction

In 2015, a strange thing happened that I had no control over. Like a fog, nagging thoughts about my faith settled on me and would not leave me alone. When we adopted our last child, she came at 15 years old - full of questions. Not being raised in any faith prior, she was a blank slate. Her questions were basic and I knew the "answers" but I felt a sense of responsibility that I had never felt before. A shockingly stark contrast between the kids I raised from birth and her: she was not being groomed into the faith, she was being dunked in cold water. It made me pause hard with every response to her questions about God, faith, and expectations. It made me realize how I was led into my beliefs because I trusted the adults in my life without question. As a result, my two biological kids listened to me too (although at this point they had their own questions as well). I'd be damned if I did that to her - I wanted her to question everything and know her truth for herself.

I could handle the doubts I had. I could handle the doubts my kids had (and soon my husband followed). What I couldn't handle was repeating the cycle I had established earlier in my marriage: going along to get along. Telling myself that even if it didn't feel okay I needed to keep pushing on. I was tired of lying to myself. I was tired of trying to convince myself that I was okay with patriarchal themes and gender roles that delegated women to the kitchen and kept them out of real church leadership. I was done acting like I had to be everyone's friend because they were my "sisters and brothers in the Lord" - even when they were slimy men who made me feel uncomfortable, or catty women who talked behind backs with a stupid smile on their face.

And soon it followed that I was done being okay with the discrimination of gay people in the church and the hypocrisy with which people swung certain scriptures but never held divorced people to the same clear standards (from their point of view). I was done with politics in the same space with Jesus, who hated the fruitless arguments just as much as I did. I was starting to feel hopeless and lost, wondering if anything I had done for the church even mattered.

And then it was silent. The same people who were out witnessing and praying, making time for others - sharing about their conversations with strangers - had abandoned me as I walked away from their version of my faith.

It's not entirely their fault.

I didn't fit in their box, and they didn't know what to do with me. But that wasn't new to me - I've never fit in the boxes. What WAS new was that I was no longer pretending to like the box. And only a small handful of friends could try to understand that.

By mid-2020, I was out of the church completely. My life was starting to be defined anew. I was healing from church hurt.

Chaos Reigns

I thought I left the church behind. Like shedding an old coat when spring blooms the first tulip of the year. I moved on and forgave all the hurt and confusion. I redefined myself, my beliefs. I became comfortable with myself, and my husband and I forged our new identities together.

But something was still broken. And it just needed validation (because we don't have a time machine). When I was a young child, young woman, and young wife, I lost parts of myself as I was molded into what the church culture told me was a healthy God fearing person. Putting my husband first meant putting me last. Ignoring my desires meant ignoring who God created me to be. And no one was guilty for this - not me, not my husband - we were trying our best to be the best for each other and were greatly misguided.

Later in our marriage, as I deconstructed my faith and thawed out from the block of ice I lived under for so long, my desires started to warm and come to life. If that sounds beautiful, it mostly was. The dangerous part of it was that I didn't know who I was at all. As a dutiful wife I had been siloing off parts of myself with the choices I made that went against the way God naturally made me. I bought the lie that I was not as important and my needs and desires were second to my husband's. Forgetting so many of those parts led to feeling disconnected from myself and eventually my husband, leading to some really rough times in our marriage as I was vulnerable to anyone or anything that made me feel a connection.

Grief

Those were the tears that made their way out from behind my stinging eyes in therapy that day. The grief of everything lost in the years when I spent so much time trying to do "the right" things and now saw clearly that it all led to disconnection, pain, and a slew of bad choices. Everything I was trying to do right with the right heart, led to so much pain. And that realization was just as painful.

One quote I love, which I heard from Paul Denniston, is that "grief is love with nowhere to go." So as I grieve (even still these days) I can sit with the pain and let myself experience the love that I can finally feel for myself.

If any part of this story resonated with you—if you’ve felt unseen, lost parts of yourself trying to “do it right,” or are navigating the messy aftermath of religious expectations—I want you to know you’re not alone.

As a therapist, I don’t come with all the answers. But I do know how to hold space for the questions. For the grief. For the unraveling and rebuilding of identity, faith, relationships, and self.

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If you're ready to begin your own untangling process, I’d be honored to walk with you.

👉 Click here to book a session with me. Let’s start your healing together.