Last Sunday I didn’t want to go to church. I wasn’t sick. I had slept well enough the night before. The weather was clear. But I wanted to stay home.
This was not like me at all. I’m the one who would cry when I was sick and stuck at home as a child. That’s a whole different story though.
In my mind, I thought, “I’ll just go teach the four year olds at 9:30. Then I will slip out before the service begins. I can have an extra-restful Sunday afternoon, and my body needs it since I’m working to heal it.”
Excuses. Excuses. You’re probably wondering — Why?
What’s so different about Communion Sunday?
The first word: Communion.
My anxiety had been growing for a month…since the last time my church served communion. I was fine that time. Nothing had changed yet, but I knew the drastic diet restrictions were coming. I had researched plenty to understand nutrition plays a huge role in healing autoimmune disease. I just hadn’t realized how it would affect the way I took communion until the last Sunday I went up front for a piece of gluten-free bread and a sip of grape juice.
That Sunday it hit me, “I won’t be partaking in communion for a while.”
The question was, and still is, will I have to avoid this taste for just two months or is it a permanent requirement for my long-term health?
I didn’t skip Communion Sunday. As much as I wanted to run away from a hard reality, I found the strength to stay.
Part of my healing journey is being more than OK with who I am. I want and need to live in freedom as a whole person. And last Sunday, that meant staying at church and crying during the service. The tears came again right after church, but I didn’t care.
I felt better. I was real. I let myself grieve this loss, even if it is temporary.
I don’t have the answers yet and I don’t know the future. But this kind of freedom brings healing too. The kind that says, “I am broken. I am weak. Yet I am still strong.”
So admit those hard questions and be ready to let go. Hold on to the good things you still have, and wait for what is coming.
it started with gluten 