About twelve years ago, I lost my way.

That’s a story for another day. And trust me, it’s a story.

I made choices that hurt a lot of people. Not strangers. People I loved. People who loved me. My own flesh and blood.

There isn’t a prettier way to say that, and I’m not going to try to find one.

But here’s the strange part.

Somewhere in losing my way, I found more of myself.

That doesn’t excuse the choices I made. It doesn’t erase the hurt I caused. Both things can be true. I can deeply regret parts of how I got here and still recognize that somewhere along that messy, painful road, I started becoming more honest about who I was.

The problem was, I didn’t trust her.

I think somewhere in the aftermath of my choices, I stopped trusting myself.

I lost my voice because I wasn’t sure anymore that my voice deserved to be trusted.

I lost my daily walk with God. I lost everyday life with my kids. I lost pieces of a life that, at one time, I probably assumed would always be there.

And shame moved into all those empty spaces.

For a long time, guilt and shame consumed me.

Maybe part of me believed they should.

When you’ve caused hurt, there’s this idea that carrying the weight of it forever is somehow proof that you’re sorry enough.

So I carried it.

And I ran.

I ran and hid from God.

Not literally, of course. I knew He was there. I knew the verses. I knew all the right Christian answers.

Heck, I had taught some of them.

There was a time when, from the outside, I probably looked like a woman who was really after God’s heart.

I went to church twice a week. I led Bible studies. I went on mission trips. I served at VBS. I served the homeless. I organized women’s retreats. I stood at the front door of my church and made damn sure that whoever walked through those doors felt welcome—no matter where they came from, what they looked like, or what their story was.

And I loved it.

I miss every single bit of it with all of my heart.

Those were good things.

Beautiful things.

But I’ve learned that doing all the things that make us look like we’re after God’s heart isn’t necessarily the same thing as actually knowing His heart.

Because then my sin wasn’t private anymore.

The things I had done wrong weren’t tucked safely between me and God.

They were out there.

For people to see.

And when your sin becomes public, you learn some things about grace.

You also learn some things about Christians.

Some of the deepest wounds I carry from that time came from other Christians.

There is a wound that we create ourselves that is hard to explain. When everything you already know is wrong within you is suddenly exposed for everyone else to see, it burns something deep into your heart.

The reputation is gone.

The image is shattered.

People have decided what they think about you.

And when I was already drowning in my own guilt, I took their judgment and piled it right on top.

Eventually I couldn’t tell the difference between conviction and shame.

So I hid from God.

Which is kind of crazy when you think about it.

I knew about grace.

I had taught about grace.

I believed in grace.

I just wasn’t sure there was enough of it for me.

Shame told me there wasn’t.

Shame told me I had disappointed God too deeply.

Shame told me grace was something I could tell other people about but no longer had the right to claim for myself.

And for a long time, I believed it.

But over the last five years, something has started changing.

Slowly.

I’ve released a little more.

And then a little more.

Not because what happened doesn’t matter.

It matters.

Not because I’ve decided all of my choices were okay.

They weren’t.

But because I’m beginning to understand there is a difference between taking responsibility for what you’ve done and sentencing yourself to a lifetime of shame because of it.

And strangely enough, learning to trust my own voice again didn’t begin with listening to myself.

It began with listening for God.

I started seeking Him again.

Not performing for Him.

Not serving to prove something.

Not leading a Bible study.

Not sitting in a church pew twice a week.

Not organizing another event or going on another mission trip or doing all the things that once made me feel like I was doing Christianity right.

Just seeking Him.

And let me tell you, it hasn’t always been pretty.

It’s dirty.

It’s messy.

It’s hard.

And it doesn’t always look like what we Christians think seeking God is supposed to look like.

Sometimes there isn’t a Bible study.

Sometimes there isn’t worship music playing in the background.

Sometimes it’s just a woman sitting in the wreckage of her own choices asking God:

Are You still here?

Do You still want me?

Is there really enough grace for this?

And little by little, I started hearing Him again.

Or maybe I finally realized He had never stopped speaking.

God wasn’t the one hiding.

I was.

And that brings me to a question I’ve had to wrestle with:

If God has grace for me, why has it been so hard for me to have grace for myself?

I don’t have a perfectly wrapped-up Christian answer for that.

I’m still learning it.

I’m learning there is a difference between repentance and living in perpetual punishment.

I’m learning that forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending there wasn’t damage.

I’m learning that owning what I’ve done doesn’t require hating the woman who did it forever.

And I’m learning that maybe I understood grace intellectually for a very long time.

But needing grace?

Desperately needing to believe that the grace I had talked about, taught about and offered so freely to everyone else was actually available to me?

That has taught me something entirely different about the heart of God.

There is a lot we Christians still need to learn.

A lot about grace.

A lot about forgiveness.

A lot about loving people when their sin isn’t the kind they can conveniently hide.

A lot about what it actually means to be after God’s heart.

Because these days, I don’t look as much like the Christian woman I once thought I was supposed to look like.

But I think I understand the heart of God more now than I did when I was doing all the right things.

Maybe being after God’s heart has a whole lot less to do with looking like we have it all together…

and a whole lot more to do with discovering that He has been after ours all along.

And somewhere in all of this, I’ve started hearing another voice again.

Mine.

She’s different now.

She doesn’t have all the answers.

She doesn’t need everyone to agree with her.

She’s still learning when to speak and when to be quiet.

She’s still learning to forgive herself.

She’s still learning to trust herself.

But she’s there.

And the more I listen for His voice, the less afraid I become of mine.

I’m starting to trust her again.

She just has some scars now.

And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe the wildest, most beautiful things don’t grow untouched.

Maybe they grow through the dirt.