This is a guest post by podcast guest and spiritual truth seeker, Maggie Snow. Read more of Maggie’s work here. and here

By: Maggie Snow

I talk a lot here about God. About my faith and my lack of it. About the very real relationship with God that I have now.

But it was not always so.

A while ago, I posted an essay about my relationship with church and how complicated it has been for me.
To date, it is my most-read essay.

Church, faith, and God are things people wrestle with deeply. Even people who never talk about it out loud seem to carry questions about it somewhere inside them

When my mom read that essay, she told me it made her sad.

And honestly, I understood why.

Because my mom did all the “right” things. My parents did all the “right” things..

I grew up in a Christian home. We went to church weekly. We prayed before dinner. We talked about God openly. My parents were not Christians in name only. They were loving, kind, generous people who genuinely tried to live what they believed.

They sent me and my brother to Christian schools from elementary school through high school, spending God knows how much money to make sure we received a faith-centered education. I took Bible classes. I attended chapel services. I completed volunteer hours. I went to youth group until I aged out and then became a youth leader myself.

I started working at a Christian school. I still work at that same Christian school today. I led middle school groups at church. I was there multiple times a week.

I didn’t drink.
I didn’t do drugs.
I was serious about my True Love Waits promise.
I dated Christians.
Most of my friends were Christians.

I read my Bible.
I memorized verses.
I highlighted passages.
I took sermon notes. Lots and lots of sermon notes.

I tried very hard to live “right.”

Of course I struggled with sin. I was never the perfect Christian.

But that was always the goal to me.

Perfect Christian.

One who didn’t need forgiveness quite so often.
One who didn’t leave every sermon feeling vaguely ashamed.
One who was pure enough.
Disciplined enough.
Holy enough.

And I was miserable.

Not because my parents failed me. They didn’t.
Not because the church was evil. It wasn’t.
Not because my school harmed me. It didn’t.

Everyone around me was trying very hard to hand me God the best way they knew how.

But somewhere along the way, I learned performance long before I learned relationship.

And the strange thing was, I didn’t know that at the time.

If you had asked me then, I would have confidently told you I did have a relationship with God. I thought relationship was built through all the things I had been taught to do. Church attendance. Bible reading. Volunteering. Worship. Tithing. Serving. Avoiding sin. Trying harder.

After all, everyone I knew who left church also seemed to leave God. So somewhere in my mind, the two became fused together.

Church was God.
God was church.
And obedience was relationship.

So when I left church, the first thing I felt was relief.

Not rebellion.
Not a desire to “go wild.”
Relief.

Relief from the constant monitoring of myself.
Relief from wondering whether every friendship or relationship was spiritually acceptable.
Relief from trying to avoid “the appearance of evil.”
Relief from worrying about whether my clothes were modest enough, my entertainment choices holy enough, my volunteering consistent enough, my giving generous enough.

I slept in on Sundays and did not feel guilty.
I listened to music without dissecting every lyric for morality.
I stopped filtering every thought through whether I was being a “good example.”

And for the first time in a very long time, my nervous system got quiet.

That part lasted longer than I expected it to.

I had been terrified that if I left church, my life would immediately fall apart. That I would lose myself completely. That everything would spiral.

But it didn’t.

My life simply…continued.

I did not suddenly become reckless. I did not abandon every value I had been raised with. Most of those values were deeply ingrained in me by good people who genuinely loved me.

But the tether loosened.
The guilt loosened.
And I breathed easier.

Life became more enjoyable, if I’m being honest.

But there was still no relationship.

Just knowledge.
Just information.
Just belief.

God and I became acquaintances.

We knew a lot about one another.
But we were not interacting.

And for years, that’s how we stayed. Existing near each other but never quite connecting.

Until slowly, almost without me noticing it at first, we started finding each other again.

Because eventually, I began to miss something.

Not church exactly.

I missed connection.
I missed transcendence.
I missed those strange little moments where something inside you shifts and you know you are not alone in the world.

And slowly, we found those moments outside the places I thought they had to happen.

We found them in the car.
In music.
In conversations that cracked me open.
In the beauty of being outside.
In grief I could not explain to anyone else.
In the children at work.
In volunteer work that no longer felt performative.
In authors I once would have avoided reading.
In my own writing.

He was everywhere once I stopped limiting where I was allowed to see Him.

And truthfully, I think the church and my schools and many of my leaders were probably trying to teach me this all along.

I just could not hear it yet.

That is not anyone else’s failure. It is simply my story.

And despite everything, church gave me many beautiful things.

It gave me relationships I still treasure.
A job I genuinely adore.
Marriages I deeply respect.

Leaders who shaped me in meaningful ways.
A framework for compassion and service.
People who loved me sincerely.

I can hold gratitude for those things while also telling the truth about my experience.

And the truth is this:

For me, finding God eventually required losing the structure that I thought contained Him.

He had to become bigger than a building. Bigger than a system. Bigger than my performance. Bigger than my fear.

I used to think leaving church meant leaving God.

But strangely, painfully, beautifully…
it was the first time I finally let Him find me.

So if you find yourself wondering whether you have a relationship with church or with God, you are not alone.

There are many people carrying that question quietly. Some still sitting in pews every Sunday. Some who have not stepped inside a church in years. Some who miss God desperately but cannot seem to find their way back through the doors.

And whether it is doubt or pain or judgment or finances or exhaustion keeping you away, I hope you know this:

God is not waiting for you inside a building before He moves toward you.

He comes to you where you are.
As you are.

He is stepping toward you. Not a building. You.