Leaving Was Holy

The story I couldn’t find when I needed it most—about faith, fear, freedom, and the quiet nudge that wouldn’t let me stay.

For nine years my husband and I gave our entire lives over in service and ministry.

We sold every piece of furniture we had, packed up our tiny red car without air conditioning, and moved ourselves and our baby girl to Southern California. We were all in, and we saw firsthand the beauty of community, the joy of working alongside each other, and the deep relationships that come from walking with people through hard seasons.

For a while, rose-colored glasses kept me from seeing any troubling patterns. I used to think beauty and dysfunction couldn’t live in the same space. But they do—especially in ministry.

We went from living on a California hillside overlooking the ocean to living beneath the Ko’olau Mountains with Oahu beaches just 3 minutes up the road. I think most people would be pretty distracted by that kind of beauty.

As they usually do, the glasses eventually came off. We began to see friends and peers in ministry being broken down by poor leadership. Optics were prioritized over people. Rigid adherence to policy was praised over obedience to the Holy Spirit.

This is where the tension of this story challenges me. Both of these things can be true at once— the beauty of ministry we experienced and the ugliness of high control religion. I’ve dedicated babies, officiated weddings, and organized baptisms, and none of those precious moments are negated by the bad experiences I had leaving that ministry.

The most difficult aspect of telling this story is balancing the truth with gentleness. In my final year, I searched every inch of the internet to find a nuanced perspective from someone who’d left the same organization, but I always came up short. It was either reddit trolls sharing photoshopped images of holiday bell-ringers, extremely vague social media or blog posts alluding to hardship within the ministry, or nothing. I had hoped to find at least one person who knew what I was going through, but it wasn’t out there.

My hope with this piece is two-fold. First, to tell my story with accuracy and gentleness. I don’t want to point blame to any one person, divulge into juicy details that I’ll later regret putting on the internet, or stir up anger in those I know and love who are still deeply connected to this ministry. I just want to document what I have experienced with authenticity and in love.

Second, I feel like I need to share this story for others who might be experiencing the same thing, either in my former ministry or somewhere else. I’m not under any false pretenses. I know that the same kind of hurt I’ve been through happens in churches and ministries all over the world. There might be someone out there who needs to know they aren’t alone, and that people can leave and thrive, even if their situation seems irredeemable.

It’s a sort of love letter to those inside still hoping for change, and a flashlight for those silently searching for an exit.

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”So, is there any specific place you really want to go?” I asked, innocently enough. I’d been in ministry training school for a few months and was already dreaming about where our family would first begin our full-time ministry.

One of teachers responded, “Oh, no. I was called to do this job, and that means I was called to go wherever I’m sent. I don’t even think about it!” In hindsight, I should have thought this odd. But within the bigger conversation, it was seen as admirable and holy. Not only was this person sold out to their calling, but they didn’t even wonder where they might go next.

I probably squinted my eyes, it’s something I do when I’m unsure. My nose kind of crinkles, and I feel like I can think better. It’s not scientific, but it works. Anyway, I’m sure I also nodded, not wanting to look like I was anything other than respectful. I took mental note that wanting to be moved somewhere was not the mature and spiritual thing to do.

But is that really how calling works? Does God call us once, to one career, and never have anything else for us? The rhetoric within our organization was that a calling this big was for life. And answering that call meant never again wondering where God might lead, because He’ll tell the organization and they will tell you. That’s simplified, but not untrue.

With the rose glasses firmly set on the bridge of my nose, I regularly felt guilty for wondering about my own calling. If I’d answered the call to serve in full-time ministry, I shouldn’t be hoping for a position at my favorite camp or near my family. I should be content with wherever they decided our family was needed.

So when a daydream about the Colorado mountains traveled through my brain, I scolded myself. When ideas for ministry programs in big cities filled my thoughts, I shut it down.

Questions about calling were not super appreciated. We romanticized how God called us into this role, but didn’t consider again. At least not seriously. And for a long time, that was easy.

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In our first three-year appointment, we moved homes four times, threw away at least a quarter of our belongings due to mold, had one of our homes burglarized, had a third baby, and ministered through a worldwide pandemic. Some of the hardest years of my life were glorified because we had a Hawaiian island backdrop. We also got a puppy somewhere in there.

Those years made me gritty. They built resilience I could have otherwise never dreamed of. I put on a smile when people said, “Oh! It must be nice to work at the beach!” and met every directive from my boss with a genuine, “Yes, sir!”. I believed a good attitude, respectful obedience, and faithful following of Jesus would gain me favor with God and within our organization. And it really did for a while.

Then we were moved and the lenses in the glasses began to fade. What once was rose was more of a pastel pink. The favor we’d stored up with our boss meant nothing because our new appointment came with new leadership, new systems, new employees, and a new home. We packed up everything that hadn’t been molded out or stolen onto a ship, and sent it toward Yakima, Washington.

For most people, Kailua to Yakima is a very big downgrade, and I understand. The beauty is… not the same. But we were initially thrilled to be back in our home state. AND, Yakima was new to us. It was an adventure for our little family and we embraced it.

Slowly but surely, though, things started to change. The combination of being in a place that was more known to us plus a totally different style of “leadership” and bigger responsibilities began to unravel me.

I was working five times harder than I was in Hawaii— managing more people, running more programs, writing for organizational publications, speaking at events, working on committees— and things were continually being added to my plate. And Aaron’s plate.

And even though we kept the plates spinning and pulled off every program and event, it was never enough. We weren’t adding enough new members, or new children, or new initiatives. We grew our non-profit board from 10 somewhat active attendees to 18 fully invested, excited about the mission members. “But 20 would be better. And add some subcommittees.”

From there, we started a capital campaign to buy a new building and expand our social services and ministry programs. Aaron worked tirelessly with board members, real estate agents, city officials, other non-profit leaders, and in the end, our boss swooped in to take over the most important and publicized parts of the campaign.

I don’t want this to turn into a novel of ranting, or a bullet point list of wrongs that were done to our family. But without concrete examples, I don’t know that others in our shoes would recognize the high control patterns.

Within our time in Yakima, I was growled at, face-to-face, by a grown man who was angry I didn’t bring a pie server to an event his wife was running. I was also reprimanded after a hugely successful fundraiser because my hair touched my collar, and should have been up instead, without any word about the fundraising event.

There were small things—the eye rolls, the condescending tones, the nitpicking about tone in emails. And there were bigger things, like having a mic cut mid-worship because we dared to include Spanish lyrics.

A ministry employee of ours was put on administrative leave following some questionable conduct with minors. When that employee tried to divide the church and made credible threats against our family, we were told, “It’s not really that serious.” No follow up, no support.

Later we found a loaded and unlocked weapon in the office of that employee. We had to leave our home and our city. I threw clothes in bags while the girls watched, and I tried to pretend like it was just a fun, surprise trip to grandma’s house.

Later, I cried in the guest room at my in-laws wondering why our leadership hadn’t called and checked in. Why they hadn’t come when we told them the situation was serious in the first place?

I wondered how we could continue on this way, when something so terrifying was met with crickets.

The next week, after another annual fundraiser, the same leaders who left us alone with our employee issues and threats and weapons texted me at 11pm to ask how much money we ended up raising. I had a panic attack and left them on read.

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That text was the tipping point, but the unraveling had been happening for months. What we had once believed was a season of testing or refining now looked more like neglect. We couldn’t unsee the patterns, and the quiet from leadership confirmed what we feared: this wasn’t just a hard season. It was a system that wasn’t going to change for us.

But leaving isn’t as simple as a resignation letter and two weeks notice.

We had a small savings, and not a single piece of furniture. No car, no equity. We prayed and argued and cried and prayed again. God was calling us to something different, but we’d been taught that He wouldn’t. It was ingrained that this calling was for life, so we were confused and nervous.

The redemptive factor of challenging seasons is that the Lord really does draw near to the broken hearted. And that we were. We had poured so much of ourselves into this life and ministry and loved it so deeply. Even though I still felt guilty about it, we had so many dreams of what the future of our ministry could look like and where in the world it would lead our family.

Deciding to leave meant giving up all of those dreams and hopes.

So we drafted a letter, because you really do need those, and sent it in. We tied up loose ends, prepared documents for whoever took our position, and followed God onto the next adventure.

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It turns out calling isn’t meant to be a cage to keep us in one place. It is an invitation to follow— even when it leads us away from everything we once called home.

On the other side, eighteen months and half a country removed, I’ve slowly been relearning life, calling, and ministry. It’s been weird to be a volunteer at my church without having planned every detail of every ministry. Where we used to need to rationalize every day we took off work, Aaron now puts it in the calendar and it’s done, no questions asked.

Our girls are growing up in a different world now. Gone are the days of shuffling them between childcare and late-night programs, or having them sleep on our office floor during holiday events. They don’t have to be miniature fundraisers. They just get to be kids—tucked in at night, cheered for from the sidelines.

What matters most to me is that they see us following God even when it’s hard. I want them to look back (maybe even read this) and see God’s faithfulness to our family.

I’m writing this for anyone who’s wondering if you’re the crazy one. You’re not. And if no one else tells you:
You can leave, and still love God.
You can leave, and still be called.