Back to the Father: Healing Before the Walls

 Part 1: When Pain Distorts the Face of God

There are wounds that do not bleed, but still bleed out belief.
There are hurts so tied to sacred places that they confuse the voice of God with the voice of man. And when spiritual betrayal strikes, it doesn’t just drive people out of church buildings — it drives them into spiritual isolation.

This is how pain begins to distort the face of God.

We’ve seen it. Some have lived it.
We know the language: “I still believe in God… I just don’t know if I can go back to church.”
And behind those words is a deeper ache: If the people of God could treat me this way, is this how God feels about me too?

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”
— Psalm 34:18 (NIV)

God is not absent from this kind of pain — but neither is He responsible for it. God was never the one who hurt you. And He has not confused Himself with the failures of the church.

💬 Our Story

My wife and I have lived through this.

We gave up everything we knew — she left her family and comfort, I left San Diego and all its familiarity — and we moved to build a church. We didn’t come for comfort or applause; we came to serve.

But when the church began to unravel in hardship, what met us was silence. Distance. Advice that fractured trust, like someone suggesting my wife leave me because I “wasn’t leading her correctly.”

We felt abandoned — left to drift without an anchor or compass.
We missed the fellowship we had poured ourselves into, but it clearly did not miss us. And in that kind of sorrow, the temptation grows to say: Just watch us succeed anyway. Just watch us prove you wrong.

But self-justification cannot heal a soul. Only the Father can.

And He did. He held us — never once letting go. We didn’t leave Him, and He never left us. In that sacred security, we began to heal.

We realized this was refinement, not rejection. That God was calling us to maturity, not obscurity. That our faith wasn’t meant to be popular — it was meant to be pure. And so we began to see our lives in the Scriptures again. We remembered: we are the church, and we know who we serve.

“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son…”
— Luke 15:20 (NIV)

This story is not shared from bitterness, but from burden — the burden to help others find their way back to the Father without shame, without guilt, and without needing a stage or pew to do it.

Because healing begins with Him, not the building.

✝️ Why Now?

Because enough is enough.
How long can we live in slavery to spiritual pain?
How long will silence and disconnection keep God’s children in hiding?

My wife and I are both trained — she as a professional counselor, I as a chaplain — but our greatest education came not from degrees, but from surviving. Now, our work is to reframe modern mental health practices through a spiritual lens, helping people see that evidence-based healing and Gospel truth are not enemies — they are allies.

We are not against the church. We are the church.
But the church must begin to look like the Christ it proclaims.