They say that ... breaking up is hard to do...

When you become an adult you have to make some extremely hard discussions that really kind of suck.  

Lucky for me, my life hasn't had too many of these really tough decisions that require a lot of prayer and oversight.

I recall one of those was the decision to put our dog down, who had cancer and was not well and most recently was deciding to leave our church community after 12 years.  

Yes, Breaking up is HARD to do.  12 years of service and dedication but a lot of hurt and frustration.  We gave our church the ability to pursue us and restore our relationship... but their efforts weren't timely and unsatisfactory.  

It was easy to decide to leave in our minds, but it was hard to actually decide to leave in our hearts.  We prayed about it and I read many blogs, articles and scriptures about 'when to leave' and 'why to leave'... and in the In the summer we made the jump and started visiting other churches. 

It was weird and different. As a family we knew we wanted to find something that fit all/most of our needs, which was evolving as our children are growing up.  As mature Christians we didn't think it would be hard, but it was.  

We visited some churches once and some for quite a few weeks.  We enjoyed some of the churches music and some churches their message.  We found some churches highly community driven and others not so much.  We found some churches extremely friendly and others who didn't even notice we were there.  We went to big ones and small ones.  Some Affiliated and others Unaffiliated - non denominational.   

It's a strange time for us ... to not be as plugged in to a church family as we once were.  It's hard that we kind of lost many of our friends through leaving our church and the feeling of being rejected once again.  

But I am reminded in Christ ... That this world isn't going to love us as much as he does.  We are going to be rejected (over and over again) and that doesn't define who we are in him.  

I  thought I have made peace and have given forgiveness to the whole fall out.  I thought that was all I needed to do.  This weekend I was reminded about anger and forgiveness... through grace and hope... I am now... going to forget about it.