Against a snowy background stands a black iron gate, locked with multiple padlocks of different colors and shapes.

Shunning in the church

When a group shuns, it rejects someone who has belonged. How shunning in the church looks, why it hurts so much – and why you can overcome.

Red, pink and white rose petals, along with tiny yellow leaves, lie scattered on gray paving stones

To the exiles scattered by toxic church

Maybe the church has become bewildering to you. Leaders you trusted and people you respected are acting in ways that do not reflect who Jesus is, nor what they profess to believe. They have turned on anyone among them who appears to threaten the status quo. What is going on?

Back view of woman with brimmed straw hat, standing in field of tall grass, her arms outstretched at her side, her face toward the setting (or rising?) sun

Cries of the shunned

In the middle of that dark-valley time, I often found myself alone with God, crying aloud and writing passionately in my journal. During that time too, I came to identify with David, the shepherd-poet-warrior-king, in ways I had not before. For David was also ostracized by people he trusted. And he cried out in distress - and in faith.

Interesting door handle on a dark door, opening to a hazy, but very green, world

And the future starts now

Even in suffering, even in exile, may you find growing within you: A life energetic and blazing with holiness, conceived by God himself. Life healed and whole. Laughter and singing. Genuine faith proved genuine. Living hope. One-anothering love. A future that starts now.

Silhouette of a person with arms wide open, standing between the bold sunset colors of a wide sky and a wide ocean

The most freeing thing

The work of exile – the work God wants to do through it – is to free you from bondage that masquerades as relationship, to draw you to himself, to show you what is and is not love. Perhaps the hardest thing you can do in exile – and by far the most freeing – is to stay there until it has done its work.